Loyal Reader Sean F. explodes in my email:
I gave up going to the theaters for movies years ago, because it was a teenage wasteland of people talking or on their cellphones. I just wanted to watch the expensive movie with no distractions; is that too much to ask?
Well, here we are in the internet age where streaming is king. I signed up to Paramount because they had my American football games for my local channel I don’t receive on my antenna. Aha, movies were included!
So I watched some old Bond movies and classics, but they ran out. I decided to go by ratings (thought I was clever) on Rotten Tomatoes.
Guess what I discovered after abstaining for years? I didn’t miss a fuckin’ thing! Modern movies – 98% SUCK. I guess the plot 1/8 of the way through, and then by 1/4, I have already discovered the ending. UGH – who wants to even try to watch this shit??
I am so disgusted, I watched “Casablanca” for the umpteenth time the other night. What the fuck has happened? Liberal influencce, WOKE, gay, bad directors??? I like Eastwood,Tarantino, and Stone, but they are almost gone. Ford, Kubrick, and Hitchcock are my favorites, among others, but the list shrinks every year. what’s a poor boy to do?
You forgot the bad lighting, bad sound and mumbling dialogue.
My only suggestion — because I am in precisely the same boat, as I suspect are many of my Readers — is to lay in a supply of your favorite classic movies on DVD/Blu-Ray and a backup all-format DVD player.
I know what people are going to say: “I get bored watching the same old movies all the time.”
Frankly, that’s just because you don’t own enough of them. There are literally hundreds of old movies out there, and while not all are Casablanca-classics, I would suggest that even a mediocre Bogart movie (e.g. All Through The Night ) is going to be a hundred times better cinematic experience than Fast ‘N Furious 27 or Captain America: Queer Hero.
My own Christmas- and birthday lists for friends and family are going to be almost exclusively old movies from now on, and I would humbly suggest that you could do a lot worse than that.
If you’re short of ideas, then start with Bogart and Mitchum, and go from there. Or pick a director like John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch or William Wyler, and pick from among their offerings.
Just those five will afford you hours and hours of pleasure. At some point soon — probably on a Saturday — I’ll put together a list of some length, to include not only movies I know well or have in my own collection, but ones I plan on getting in the future.
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is militant about tamping down on cell phones, talking, and other distractions and you can have a beer or cocktail delivered to your seat.
As for the crap coming out of Hollywood… well Alamo shows the classics sometimes too. But otherwise not much else can be done until they realize woke=broke.
We have 5 DVD players, 2 of them are all range and will play anything.
Over the past 15 years we have created a large collection of DVD’s. About 10 years ago we started collecting TV series on DVD’s from the 50’s and early 60’s. 1/2 hour and 1 hour shows, and we watch one or 2 at suppertime. That is the only time we watch TV.
Currently our DVD players have 1) Perry Mason (1hr), 2)Riverboat (1hr), 3) Tall Man (30min), 4) Overland Express (1hr), 5) Gunsmoke (1hr). Sometimes we’ll stream an old show.
Unfortunately TV as you used to know it has moved on and many despicable things have filled the void, so it will require some effort on your part if you want to continue to enjoy this venue. No, I don’t like it either, but there is no other work around except to just abandon the whole thing and do other stuff.
FWIW, OTA (over the air) TV has morphed into “everything negro” and even trying to watch 30 seconds worth is unbearable.
My wife and I have also taken to watching Perry Mason reruns at suppertime. I especially like seeing the old cars that are shown. The show wasn’t sponsored by a car company so all brands are seen. You’re also right about OTA TV. If it’s not negro, it’s queer.
Yep. The negrification of nearly every damned thing produced in the last five or more years has made it unwatchable. I just can’t. It’s made sorting easy though, one negro in the primary characters photo and out it goes. It wasn’t always like this. Pulp Fiction was a work of genius, and to have rejected it because of Samuel Jackson and Ving Rames would have been a mistake. But today it seems they’re thrown willy-nilly into the cast to satisfy some sort of ….. QUOTA …. Tonight was a case in point. Sat down to watch RIPD2. Rise of the Damned on Netflix. The trailer seemed to indicate that it might be sort of a comedic take on zombie movies set in the old west. Nothing but white people in sight. But sure enough these black sisters show up as the white dead sheriff’s daughter and shit, I can’t go on. Let’s just say it was the most contrived, bullshit way of shoehorning blacks into a show I’ve ever seen. Avoid at all costs.
I was born and raised in Apartheid South Africa and that’s where I live now. I am as White as White can be because I have ginger hair and can’t tan. Yes I have some problems with South African black personnel in TV shows because I don’t relate too well to that culture. American blacks, that’s a lot easier. I go mainly for humor and if the show is authentic and humorous I will buy it black or no.
This post awakened a longing in me. I have tons of good movies on VHS, tons more on DVD. I should be watching THEM! So, I went looking through the garage for the old video machines I packed away years ago.
Nothing.
“Oh,” says Significant Other, “we sold those at the yard sale we had a few years back.” (My old slide projector and screen are nowhere to be found, too.)
My Delima: what do I do now? Is there a good, DEPENDABLE, multi-format player available on the open market? Do I dare buy used over the Net, or from a second-hand store? Right now, I sit on the sofa, looking at the boxes and cases, telling myself what a good movie that is, but it’s just not the same.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
The problem with VHS ( or Beta ) Tapes is that they degrade over time in quality and the risk of the tape fusing to the next layer, rendering the whole thing inoperable. The players also have similar problems with ” heads ” needed for reading the tapes suffering from wear and contamination. So if the tapes have not been stored in controlled environments ( and even if they have been ) they are likely junk even if you can resurrect a player.
These problems are the reason DVD became the successor format.
With the advent of cheap digital memory space, everything is now stored ” in the cloud ” . Lots of Old movies can be found on You tube and similar platforms. Most everything is available via streaming.
… and digitize your old 35mm slides with a good slide scanner before they also degrade. search Amazon for a Kodak Scanza Film scanner _
I’ll agree with the assessment of theater-going, the non-quality of current movies, and as far as the state of television these days goes, I consider it something of a public service that so many companies are not just willing but eager to use their advertising dollars to tell me they don’t want any money from straight, white people.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll go elsewhere. Or, just keep my money (whatever’s left over after The Necessary Purchases – see below).
On the topic of all-format DVD – and Blu-Ray – players, what’s a good one? I need, first, a backup to the US-only Blu-Ray player I have and it seems smart to make it an all-format one. I don’t need fancy audio, 2-channel out is plenty.
And, Kim, I apologize – I was several days late on my 11/19 ammo purchase but did my best to make up for it with as much volume as finances would bear. Would you consider moving your birthday a little closer to Black Friday next year? (Could be that we’ll be putting our stocks into play by then, but just in case we’ve got a little more time…..).
Ahhh, come on! What’s with the hate for Fast and Furious 27? It was a real treasure to the franchise with excellent story line, a fresh development of the central characters, and wonderful (and largely realistic) action scenes. One of the all-time classics.
The wife and I have been enjoying some of the 1970’s sitcoms. But even there, I can only stand so much. TV is a wasteland.
I’ve never seen a F&F movie (seeing as I was 28, not 13, when the first one came out) though I did get a good laugh at some of the youtube criticisms. For some reason, millenniums think that down-shifting a manual transmission is a form of turbo boost, and that it’s absolutely normal for a sports car to have 2 or three reverse gears.
I just don’t watch movies anymore, and hardly any TV, a bit of BritBox, the odd movie or series, maybe 2 hours a week.
I’m back to reading and, out of boredom, I have opened up to other activities. My wife always wanted to go to musicals, she wanted me to learn to dance, she wanted me to take her on a cruise instead of our standard travel mode of flying + driving.
We’re doing all of those things. I had no idea the West End in London had such interesting, high quality, theatrical and musical productions. Likewise for Stratford, a small town in Ontario Canada. It gets visited by hundreds of thousands of Americans who come up to see truly professional theatre. We’re maybe going to try New York some day.
The ballroom dancing lessons got us out 3 or 4 nights a week for lessons and, after we learned a bit, we’re actually going to all kinds of dance venues. It’s kind of fun going to some local bar with a small band on a Latin night and showing the kids how a Mambo, Salsa, Samba etc. are actually done. We have fun, the kids seem to welcome us olde phartes to their bars and often approach us to ask where they can learn the weird stuff we are doing on the floor.
I’m back to the gym 3 times a week.
Cruising turned out to be great and the way my wife does it, a high energy activity. Excursions every day we’re in port, fitness classes, gym, dancing every night, often in 2 or 3 venues. For the first time in my life we closed down a disco at 2 AM on a cruise ship last October along with 4 American ladies seriously annoyed that their husbands had gone to bed leaving them to dance with each other.
Dump the videos, there’s lots else to do and better too.
Yeah, I’m in that boat, too.
But I find if I attend an afternoon show, the theater is mostly empty. No kids, no distractions to speak of.
The problem of no content remains, of course. The studios seem unable to produce anything with a new idea, and are unable to replicate old ideas with skill. Of all the movies on the circuit right now, the only one that might be appealing is ‘Devotion’, if for the CGI if not the story. Or I can wait a few months.
The last movie I saw in a theater was (pre-covid) John Wick 3 (2019). The only movie I saw in 2018 was ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’, which was the second time I viewed it (I saw it at the very end of 2017 as well). That may have been the only movie I saw in 2017, I know I saw something in 2016 because I was there on election night. Don’t recall what it was.
But something I’ve noticed about the theater experience: They play it too damned loud. I even have some hearing loss and tinnitus (thanks US Air Force!) and these days I take earplugs to the theater to be able to stand the sound levels.
I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, but it depends on your personal taste in film. I go out to the movies about once or twice a month. I avoid all the superhero movies and the race baiters. (No Wakanda for me.) However, I thought two recent movies I’ve seen – “Where the Crawdads Sing” and “Nobody” – were very good.
The cinema I go to also shows classics on the big screen. Two weeks ago, I saw “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I have probably seen that movie at least seven or eight times in my life, but until now, I had never seen it on the big screen. It was worth every penny of the price of admission. Indeed, I still have Elmer Bernstein’s theme music stuck in my head.
Maybe it’s an artifact of where I live, but I rarely encounter rude people in the theater. However, it must also be said that ever since Covid 19, the theater is almost never crowded. (I consider that a positive.)
I’m really hoping that Hollywood gets off of this superhero kick soon. (… whatever makes money, I guess.)
I’m still working on my collection of Mel Brooks movies.
Also need some WW2 movies. Got Patton, want Midway and In Harm’s Way.
The Guns of Navarrone and Where Eagles Dare are also on my list.
May I suggest a couple of WWII Naval Movies that usually don’t make the cut (but absolutely should!)?
The Cruel Sea, by Montserrat, and The Enemy Below…both great movies.
That Tom Hanks abomination was an attempt to recreate The Cruel Sea…it failed.
And for Mr. Brooks (may he live another thousand years)…the 12 Chairs…my first instruction on the horrors of communism.
I agree wholeheartedly about “The Cruel Sea”. Both the book and the movie are very good. However, assuming you are talking about the Tom Hanks movie “Greyhound”, it was not an attempt to reproduce “The Cruel Sea”, it was based on the book “The Good Shepherd”, by C. S. Forester. “The Good Shepherd” was a very good read, by the way. I enjoyed the movie “Greyhound” also, but like most movies it failed to come up to the level of the book.
Being the frugal guy I am, I’ve found a lot of film noir movies, most of them excellent, for free on YouTube. Bogey, Widmark, Hayden, Cagney, plus many others are on YT. Of course, other genres are there too in case noir doesn’t appeal to you.
I’ve given up on modern dramas. If it’s not in b&w, I probably haven’t watched it in years. I think the last one I saw in the theater was My Dinner with Andre. I’ll go see an action/adventure, sci-fi flick in a theater, as long as it’s not a CGI-fest, or woke crap. (Dwindling, I know. sigh.)
So, my DVD & Blu-ray collections are getting bigger. I’ll go to my local Half Price Books & Disc Replay stores to find movies & TV shows at a discount, then go to amazon or elsewhere online to find something I haven’t been able to pick up offline.
As Insty says, beware of streaming. If a movie is declared “problematic” by the woke mob, it could disappear. Discs are near forever.
May I suggest a couple of WWII Naval Movies that usually don’t make the cut (but absolutely should!)?
The Cruel Sea, by Montserrat, and The Enemy Below…both great movies.
That Tom Hanks abomination was an attempt to recreate The Cruel Sea…it failed.
And for Mr. Brooks (may he live another thousand years)…the 12 Chairs…my first instruction on the horrors of communism.
Das Boot, of course, is the ultimate WWII submarine movie. Tom Hank’s recent Greyhound is surprisingly good.
Victory at Sea, in the proper 26 part 13 hour version.
Available in at least 2 BluRay versions.
Yep. The negrification of nearly every damned thing produced in the last five or more years has made it unwatchable. I just can’t. It’s made sorting easy though, one negro in the primary characters photo and out it goes. It wasn’t always like this. Pulp Fiction was a work of genius, and to have rejected it because of Samuel Jackson and Ving Rames would have been a mistake. But today it seems they’re thrown willy-nilly into the cast to satisfy some sort of ….. QUOTA …. Tonight was a case in point. Sat down to watch RIPD2. Rise of the Damned on Netflix. The trailer seemed to indicate that it might be sort of a comedic take on zombie movies set in the old west. Nothing but white people in sight. But sure enough these black sisters show up as the white dead sheriff’s daughter and shit, I can’t go on. Let’s just say it was the most contrived, bullshit way of shoehorning blacks into a show I’ve ever seen. Avoid at all costs.