Yeah, back in uni I used to do one with my friends at least once a year. We’d get about 10 people crammed into a room with a monitor, bring an unhealthy amount of snacks, plan to start at 9am, have tech issues till 11 or 12, and then watch until midnight or 1am with a break for pizza in the evening. It was great.
I find myself dreading watching anything made after 2010.
I’m not saying everything is bad, or that everything that was earlier was good. But dang…it seems like a good 90% chance the modern movie or TV show is just a bunch of flashy and disruptive CG, incredibly fast editing to try to compete with cell phones for attention, tons of with clips and one-liners. Everything is poorly lit, the dialogue is inaudible, and all the other sound is way too loud.
And I don’t think it’s just “things were better back when I was a teenager” bias. I can still find older movies with those some annoying traits earlier, 2010 is just the arbitrary cutoff I’m using here. And I can look back at movies from before I was born, like Hitchcock movies, and see how much better they are at handling a lot of those things.
Everything is poorly lit, the dialogue is inaudible, and all the other sound is way too loud.
The thing you’re noticing is that they’re mastering movies for home theater setups and then everyone else gets a bad re-encode.
When you’re watching a non-HDR 1080p version with Stereo sound using streaming services’ low quality streaming codecs you’re missing a lot more than if you had a HDR1400 4k OLED and a 7.1 Atmos setup with a Blu-ray encode of the movie.
The problem is that now there is just such a large gap between ‘smartphone on a slow connection’ and ‘$80,000 home theater’ that it’s hard to make content that pushes the latter while still being viewable on the former.
Well I’m watching my own Blu-ray and dvd rips on my own Jellyfin server.
And it’s like that in theaters too- parts of things are way too dark, but also with HDR parts are way too blindingly bright. Which causes my pupils to constrict and males it even harder to see the dark parts. When I turn HDR off at home it’s better, but the dark parts are still too dark.
I think it’s an overall obsession with hyper-realism and spectacle. Make the bright lights seem as bright as possible. Make the loud parts seem as loud as possible. There are trillions of dollars fighting for your attention and movies want to do what they can to get a piece of that. So dynamic range, in all ways, is being pushed past the point of comfort, and even further past the point of realism.
That’s like saying “I refuse to drink wines older than 2000.” Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s good. But, some of the old ones are very, very good.
I know a highschooler that won’t watch anything from before 2000, won’t watch lotr for other reasons like broken attention span.
A marathon of the extended editions is exactly what they need. Phone locked away during viewing.
Did this with my 16yo a couple months back. She was sick last week and marathoned them again on her own.
I was so proud
It’s honestly one of my favourite marathons to do on a cold winter weekend, excited for my annual viewing :)
Yeah, back in uni I used to do one with my friends at least once a year. We’d get about 10 people crammed into a room with a monitor, bring an unhealthy amount of snacks, plan to start at 9am, have tech issues till 11 or 12, and then watch until midnight or 1am with a break for pizza in the evening. It was great.
That does sound great, may be time for a sleepover viewing with the friends methinks, with some pipe weed
The fact that we’ve gotten to the point where looking at little screen is bad so we need to lock it up to stare at big screen, is depressing.
And I love movies, but the thought of that as a society is depressing.
But, it’s all good FreeVee isn’t it?
I own exactly one Blu-ray set, and got my Xbox series X because it plays blu-rays.
For the extended edition directors cut of lotr. 12 hours of goodness.
Yes! Lock the phone! Such a pet peeve
There have always been idiots.
I find myself dreading watching anything made after 2010.
I’m not saying everything is bad, or that everything that was earlier was good. But dang…it seems like a good 90% chance the modern movie or TV show is just a bunch of flashy and disruptive CG, incredibly fast editing to try to compete with cell phones for attention, tons of with clips and one-liners. Everything is poorly lit, the dialogue is inaudible, and all the other sound is way too loud.
And I don’t think it’s just “things were better back when I was a teenager” bias. I can still find older movies with those some annoying traits earlier, 2010 is just the arbitrary cutoff I’m using here. And I can look back at movies from before I was born, like Hitchcock movies, and see how much better they are at handling a lot of those things.
The thing you’re noticing is that they’re mastering movies for home theater setups and then everyone else gets a bad re-encode.
When you’re watching a non-HDR 1080p version with Stereo sound using streaming services’ low quality streaming codecs you’re missing a lot more than if you had a HDR1400 4k OLED and a 7.1 Atmos setup with a Blu-ray encode of the movie.
The problem is that now there is just such a large gap between ‘smartphone on a slow connection’ and ‘$80,000 home theater’ that it’s hard to make content that pushes the latter while still being viewable on the former.
Well I’m watching my own Blu-ray and dvd rips on my own Jellyfin server.
And it’s like that in theaters too- parts of things are way too dark, but also with HDR parts are way too blindingly bright. Which causes my pupils to constrict and males it even harder to see the dark parts. When I turn HDR off at home it’s better, but the dark parts are still too dark.
I think it’s an overall obsession with hyper-realism and spectacle. Make the bright lights seem as bright as possible. Make the loud parts seem as loud as possible. There are trillions of dollars fighting for your attention and movies want to do what they can to get a piece of that. So dynamic range, in all ways, is being pushed past the point of comfort, and even further past the point of realism.
That’s like saying “I refuse to drink wines older than 2000.” Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s good. But, some of the old ones are very, very good.
I watched Altered States for the first time a few years ago and that one got me more than most modern sci fi. It’s a masterpiece imo.
iirc that movie is like a crazy abstract art film, it’s surprising that Hollywood was willing to make it
It totally is but it’s so engaging! I had trouble paying attention to things like Mad God, but Altered States drew me right in.