Topic: how good things are now (Read 1942 times)

  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
I was reading some article about this on a website the other day, and it's something that I think about sometimes. I think it's got something to do with why everybody keeps saying gw stinks now, although that is really just a totally unimportant symptom of what this is.

The article I was reading was all about how we're in a 'golden cultural age', and I don't know how you can possibly measure this but basically the gist of it was how people are always saying how whatever decade was better for music, movies, whatever, but that generally it's never true. I think I agree with that, and none of it is really a revelation or anything I think alot of us know this, even the people who come out with shit like that - it's lazy, it's nostalgia. I think the whole cultural aspect of it is just the way it manifests when people talk about culture, but it's just something that happens to people as they pass from one stage of their life to the next. I already feel it and I'm only 21. Well, I feel myself feeling it and then try to disregard that bullshit as best as I can, if that makes sense.

What I mean to say is if we're talking culture stuff then yeah I think there's a good case to be made that things right now are better than ever. All media can be accessed for free by us westerners, so there's the fact that right now isn't the 2010 really, there are so many people getting into so many subcultures and niches that it can be whatever time you want to escape into. The vast majority of people probably won't be there with you, but would they ever really have been even when that thing you're into was at it's peak? I don't think it's worth worrying about how mainstream stuff is going as long as the stuff you are into is being provided for, and there is so much space with the internet now that I think you can probably find anything. I read it mentioned that TV is going through a golden age now and that is absolutely true. The amount of good TV on this past decade has been so much more than all the stuff on in years past. I'm not talking about Lost - forget about lost, it could have been made in the 60's or any time, but starting from around the sopranos there have been probably like a dozen tv shows that you weren't being made before - breaking bad is on now, there was the wire, there was deadwood, there were some other ones I heard were great but I haven't seen yet. You've even got the crap which was trying new things but it didn't turn out too well - Oz and Dexter. Actually those are both made by the same people, come to think of it. Actually, fuck those shows. TV is so regularly good right now that you don't even need to put up with it.  I don't know of any TV show was actually just pure high quality not just for tv stuff before this time other than twin peaks. I mean you can talk about buffy or the x files I guess but I think those shows are pretty trash, too.

But that isn't really what I was gonna talk about that's just some rambling. What it relates to is that you get alot of people talking about how this or that was better before and it's not true, really. I mean it might be true with some things, but it doesn't mean everything has gone to hell now it just means it's time to move on to the next thing.

I'm 21 and I still reminisce about my teenage years now. They were only a couple of years ago, and I didn't even have a very good time when I was a teenager. By the end of high school I had lost touch with all my friends, they didn't like me and I was just wandering around but it doesn't even matter what actually HAPPENED, I was going to get nostalgic about it anyway because I think it's just a programmed inclination to be attracted to what is known/safe and stuff and it is boring as fuck when you actually try to recapture whatever it was after you get beyond the initial flood of emotion over seeing something you haven't seen in a long time that you used to care about. Because you aren't actually trying to recapture anything other than your feelings, and they probably had very little to do with the object you are using to recapture them.

I want to keep moving on and looking forward to things that are still to come as well as things right now. Nothing is over! I wish I was better at keeping my guard up against ideas that something is over because nothing is friggin over it's just harder to get excited over dumb bullshit now which is actually a good thing because now the really good stuff that's out there is going to start coming in to my life more and more.

cos I'm going to uni in september and I am just mega excited for what I could start doing. I'm gonna get a more level start on that whole thing (this is my second try at uni) and just focus on what I actually want to be doing and actually doing the things I know I should be doing. I hope everyone here is here to hear all about it...

sorry this topic turned out kind of similar to some other ones including ones I made, but I think there's some stuff I wanted to talk about here that I haven't.




Last Edit: June 27, 2010, 08:32:34 am by jamie
  • Avatar of King of Spooks
  • Dog: "Just tell me what the hell you want me to do!"
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Aug 30, 2004
  • Posts: 1189
what if this is 'as good as it gets?' -J.nichol
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Member
  • Joined: Aug 10, 2008
  • Posts: 336
I know the general thing, but I don't personally feel this practically at all. It's very clear to me even on an emotional level my life is better right now than it's probably even been, and when I look back a few years there are a few things I can say I miss, but those are single aspects of my life then and it's on a rational level. When I think about, it would be nice to have a similar social environment in the university as I had in high school (or the Finnish equivalent), where everybody knew everybody on some level. In the university I've got a few friends and then a mass of people I know absolutely nothing about. But that's an exception I can find when I start to really think about it. Generally when I look back at the things I used to do then I feel no attraction, no nostalgia but sometimes a little repulsion. Not because of self-hatred, but I'm just glad I got over some of those things and am doing something else now. As a feeling, that's stronger for me than any nostalgia.

That of course is much due to things actually going fine for me, but it hasn't all been good. It relates to a sort of personal optimism I have that isn't rational. When I think about the world in 50 years time, I feel optimistic. Make that 5 yeras and that optimism disappears and is replaced by a more balanced realistic view. But when I think about my personal future, the same optimism makes a strong comeback. I have always had and still have a strong trust that my life is gonna be even better in a few years. So three years ago I was thinking "aint' life great, but man it's gonna be even better when I get to university and live on my own etc." so now that those things have actually happened, I study in the uni and live on my own etc., I almost suppose life has to better than it was, because this is after all what I was waiting for then. And that cycle goes on, now I'm waiting to get my masters in a few years and start working on a PhD, damn life must be great then.


--------------------------------------


What are going to study jamie?
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581

Quote
What are going to study jamie?

it's called a general arts degree, so i have alot of flexibility in what i end up going for honours in but i'm going to be focusing on film studies and take a few classes in other areas here and there.
  • Avatar of GaZZwa
  • Funky Monk
  • PipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Nov 30, 2001
  • Posts: 284
Did you read this article at the AV Club?

Anyway, I completely agree. We have the huge privalege of having access to everything that's come before, as well as the great unknown - the future, so things are always getting better, right?

to bring up the counterargument, however, I totally get it. I think it's a little unhealthy towards art to be always looking backwards and moaning "things were better [when ][/when]", but I get it. For a start, we've all seen a movie or looked at a black and white photo of a band playing live and just "goddamn, if only I was there then". And, I was thinking about this the other day, and there was once a topic here about roughly the same thing, what a good year for music 2007 was. In 2007 there were all these records coming out by bands I loved, there were bands I'd never heard of putting out records that I discovered, I had the money to go see many of these bands live, I was at university, my own band was finally starting to come into our own a bit, my friends were making music that was good...looking back it seems that this was one amazing year. And yeah, there was some really good stuff released, but it wasn't a revolutionary year in the way that people talk about 1977 or 1967 or 1991, it just so happened that a bunch of bands I liked who had been doing their thing throughout the decade put out their best or defining albums in that year. Or that I discovered them in that year, so they seemed new and fresh and exciting to me. Fact is, it's not important. Keep looking ahead. That's important.
Last Edit: June 27, 2010, 09:31:40 am by GaZZwa
Your Pussy's Glued to a Building on Fire

"We're gonna live like kings! Damn hell assed kings!"
www.myspace.com/tvdreams
www.myspace.com/untitledhead
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
Quote
Did you read this article at the AV Club?

yeah i think i clicked a link on imdb. usually the links there are total trash but i guess i thought this one was pretty interesting.
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Member
  • Joined: Aug 10, 2008
  • Posts: 336
You can't really argue against the fact that through fast and easy information transferring and globalization as a whole, internet being the culmination of all that, all kinds of cultural phenomena can spread in a completely different way than any time before. That's a fact and it's huge advantage. Or not really even an advantage, it changes the whole playing field, it's a categorical leap. It really makes zero difference today if I wanna find an album that's 5 years old or 50 years old, and I live 600km from proper civilization. That really is something new.

But what if we drop that? If we just focus on what's actually new and currently relevant? I don't really watch tv but even I have noticed that tv series have really been living a golden age the past decade. Is this still going on by the way? Did any promising new series come out last year? That's just a side note, I'm curious.

And music then? Of course there all kinds of subcultures going around that I know very little about that are probably pushing out all kinds of good stuff, 2010, the best year of minimal techno in history! Most of that will be niche forever, some may rise to popularity later on. Mainstream then? Quick look at Spotify top 10 looks depressing at first, popular music sucks today, but then when you get top 10 hit singles from '72 it isn't really filled with classics either, most of the stuff is something nobody ever listens anymore, and probably for a reason. But some stuff will live on, and most artists people are getting nostalgic about now were at least somewhat popular in their time as well. I love guessing which now popular artists will be remembered and which will not. Radiohead, yeah, people are gonna listen to that in 30 years as well. Coldplay? Hmm, probably somewhat. Foo Fighters? Nope. Rihanna? Nope. Arctic Monkeys? I think so. Shakira? Could be. Most of those have made their supposedly most memorable records before 2005, so when we are really talking last two years I don't have any idea. For example all these indie bands, Fleet Foxes and whatnot. I haven't really listened to them much, but most of it is obviously garbage, but I would be very surprised if one or two don't live on, and I would be extremely curious to know which ones.

I just reread the opening post and realised jamie is talking more about psychology and less about culture, but I'll post this anyway now that I've written it, this is a cool topic.
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
well it was all to do with how people say things about when culture was better generally based on their own nostalgia. even if they weren't there! like i know alot of people (including myself) who kind of let themselves think that music was in a better situation 20 years ago than it is today, i guess because now since ANYBODY can make music that it matters a whole lot less, that it's harder to get to grips with what the heck is going on - but that's just bullshit talking, i think. it's taking a lazy, conservative kind of way of thinking that just because things from the past are easier to understand (and they are only easier to understand because what has been passed down to today is like a tiny fraction of what actually happened), they are better.

and there are peripheral things you learned to attach to that kind of nostalgia that don't really mean anything like say how all old music videos are shot in really soft lighting with blurrier cameras, or are transferred onto video and lose some clarity and stuff like that. it LOOKS old and gives me a little thrill of comfort despite the fact i was never even really around back then? i mean maybe i picked up some stuff when i was like 4 - and picking up stuff like that when you are a kid I think throws people on whatever track they're going on - but i think it mostly all springs out of how you associate stuff like that with just seeming simpler and more important. like nirvana was alot more important to the early 1990's in most people's memory than I suppose they would SEEM right now because you can pretty much choose entirely what part of popular culture you want to spend your time exploring now, and maybe not even popular culture at all, because while I am more or less aware of people like lady gaga i honestly didn't know what she looked like until i just looked it up right now. i couldn't care less about lady gaga because i've been able to totally avoid her in my life besides hearing people put here songs on the radio at work sometimes. i get to avoid all that crap now. I'm off doing my own thing.

man oh man I don't even really know what I just said but I'm gonna call it a post and then post again.




  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
on a smaller scale, nothing to do with media, I think it's just totally ingrained in people to seek out safer, smaller things in the past. I mean that's a really obvious thing to say I know, but I don't think most people ever really even challenge the notion in themselves and it leads to alot of diving into dumpsters of your past to to try grab whatever rotten, slimy piece of garbage you haven't already chewed up. It doesn't even feel that good, you know? Like going back to your home town after having been away for a long time - I know that feeling. I went back and walked around the streets for a while just getting a rush over like 'shit i haven't seen that betting shop in like 10 months! i used to see it every day walking to school!!!' etc but after like 2 days i realised that the whole place was empty now. all my friends were gone, i didn't even talk to them, my home seemed a little sadder because i wasn't a kid anymore so the warmth of crawling back in there was a little less comforting, all the sounds/sights/smells/events of the place had faded away. I'm not saying you've got to leave home and never return - I'm even going back there this autumn - I just mean to say if you are going in expecting to be cuddled just like it feels like you were before, it's not going to happen. Whatever you thought was there never really was, but time passes on and you forget everything that made it seem harsh and remember only the things you understood about that period and that makes the whole thing seem very safe. When I go back I assume I'm going back to nothing, except my family who are actually a continuing source of comfort and support, and I'm going to work outwards from there and start making things happen.


  • Avatar of Hundley
  • professional disappointment
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 24, 2002
  • Posts: 2426
i don't think that the way television has changed over the past ten years is all that you really need to proclaim this era of artistic accomplishment as a golden period. really all television has done is fill the same function radio did roughly around the 40s to the 60s, and to a significantly poorer degree. NOBODY is doing with television what people like orson welles and spike milligan and countless others did with radio. i wouldn't even argue that television has necessarily reached some apex right now. i'm not familiar with a television show made within the last ten years that is as strong as serling's the twilight zone.

you also have the problem that film is going through its DARK AGES at the moment. the past ten years have been an exceptionally bad period for film. i could only name like two or three people honestly doing significant and/or interesting work out there. more than any other era, film has been completely industrialized, leaving virtually no room for legitimate artistic endeavor. i'd be completely at a loss for words if someone challenged me to name the best film of the past ten years. i'd probably say something like revolver or children of men, which is completely absurd as neither are particularly great movies.

another problem is that a significant chunk of the cultural spotlight is being hogged by the artistic black hole of videogames, which is a medium i don't really think anybody could HONESTLY tell me is of any real significance or merit at this point.

yeah, i just don't see it. every decade has had these cornerstone creative accomplishments that you could point to as the best of that time period, and we've gone ten years without anything really like that. if there HAS been stuff like that, i'd be overjoyed if someone could point it out to me, because i'm not familiar with anything like that.
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
i don't mean to say that enjoying memories is a bad thing, because that's just ridiculously harsh and i don't think anybody would even want to try and deny themselves that. i just think it's important not to let ourselves mix that up with seeking out those memories to re-experience them, because they are gone and seeking them out like that will probably just ruin them. sometimes that's a good thing if you need to be woken up. like when i was 14 i used to listen to placebo. so last year i thought 'man, why did i ever stop listening to those guys?' so i checked em out once again and three songs about having sex while pretending to be on drugs later i was cured of giving a shit. so maybe people need to go through a certain amount of seeking out the past to realize what they are actually doing.

something else was, i was out with this person a while ago and she is like 21 one and i was out with someone who she went to the same school as and she kept going on and on about their old school like, how she went to the old school all the time and was going on about old teachers they had and their reputations back in those days and how she's gonna go to the friggin 4 year reunion and i don't want to insult her because she really doesn't deserve it but ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

  • Avatar of Hundley
  • professional disappointment
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 24, 2002
  • Posts: 2426
edit: actually no wong kar-wai made in the mood for love in 2000, so that's something. still, ONE great movie in a decade is awful.
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
Quote
could only name like two or three people honestly doing significant and/or interesting work out there.

you know i wonder what kind of movies you are watching because while i don't know nearly as much as you about this stuff (YET sucker i'm gonna catch up on ya) i've seen like 50 movies this year i really liked and i don't think our standards are necessarily very different?

okay you just mentioned wong kar wai and he'd probably be one of the names i'd mention as an example of someone who is doing good stuff now but i don't know if he'd even be in my top 5 lately because hasn't he fallen off a bit? and there are frigging lots of asian directors going nuts over there right now. there's stuff going on in film!! i mean CINEMAS themselves are packed with 100% pure bullshit yeah but there is stuff that has been coming out and stuff still to come out I am really excited about.

edit: like i'd wonder what your stance is on all this art film stuff that is coming out cos there is alot of it and alot of it is being recieved really well - not that that matters, but i have checked out alot of it by now and some of it i really like. i don't know what to make of some of it but i don't feel comfortable dismissing it. like uh goodbye, dragon inn made me actually laugh by how slow it was but that film was actually kind of creepy too and there was so little said i had to pay attention in a way i usually don't. so like, i'd be ready to listen to someone saying that film stank just as much as someone saying it was the best one they'd seen in a while (although i don't really with either opinion).

in the same kind of area though there is jia zhangke who i think is great and apichatpong 'skibblybipblipple' weerasethakul who has been getting all kinds of awards lately who i like, too. and hou hsiao-hsien who made millenium mambo which i don't think i was that crazy about, but it reminded me of wong kar wai especially like days of being wild or chungking express.





Last Edit: June 27, 2010, 01:16:13 pm by jamie
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
i am at a slight risk of over-loading this topic.
  • Avatar of Hundley
  • professional disappointment
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 24, 2002
  • Posts: 2426
you know i wonder what kind of movies you are watching because while i don't know nearly as much as you about this stuff (YET sucker i'm gonna catch up on ya) i've seen like 50 movies this year i really liked and i don't think our standards are necessarily very different?

okay you just mentioned wong kar wai and he'd probably be one of the names i'd mention as an example of someone who is doing good stuff now but i don't know if he'd even be in my top 5 lately because hasn't he fallen off a bit? and there are frigging lots of asian directors going nuts over there right now. there's stuff going on in film!! i mean CINEMAS themselves are packed with 100% pure bullshit yeah but there is stuff that has been coming out and stuff still to come out I am really excited about.

edit: like i'd wonder what your stance is on all this art film stuff that is coming out cos there is alot of it and alot of it is being recieved really well - not that that matters, but i have checked out alot of it by now and some of it i really like. i don't know what to make of some of it but i don't feel comfortable dismissing it. like uh goodbye, dragon inn made me actually laugh by how slow it was but that film was actually kind of creepy too and there was so little said i had to pay attention in a way i usually don't. so like, i'd be ready to listen to someone saying that film stank just as much as someone saying it was the best one they'd seen in a while (although i don't really with either opinion).

in the same kind of area though there is jia zhangke who i think is great and apichatpong 'skibblybipblipple' weerasethakul who has been getting all kinds of awards lately who i like, too. and hou hsiao-hsien who made millenium mambo which i don't think i was that crazy about, but it reminded me of wong kar wai especially like days of being wild or chungking express.
humor me and suggest some recent titles then, because i've had no luck finding good stuff. i've been finding myself going rather far back for things to watch rather than even bother with contemporary work of late. i don't doubt that there are great things that i'm missing, particularly in light of the fact that i never dug too deeply into asian cinema, which seems to be one of the best places to look right now. but it feels like american film(admittedly the easiest for me to keep tabs on) can be taken out of the equation almost entirely right now.
  • Avatar of thecatamites
  • clockamite
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: May 6, 2007
  • Posts: 1445
I'm not even sure if this decade had any real culture to speak of. I'm not being snippy but it seems like a time of... subdivisions, basically. Maybe this is just INTERNETPERSPECTIVE but it's like everything crawled into its own little niche. Like, uh, I'm sure there are a ton of good art films but I can't see any of them because my local cinemas are all playing Gerald Butler action films. There's a ton of great music but you won't hear any of it unless you actively work to check out all the minute subcategories (shitgaze lol). Maybe this is reactionary thinking etc and I certainly don't want to be dismissive of the possibilities of cheaply-produced-and-distributed art but I think when you're talking about CULTURE MOVEMENTS you have to consider them not in terms of specifics but as general, uh, overarching paradigms (don't hit me) for the whole decade. Basically I think a worthwhile cultural moment doesn't just involve the underground presence of good art, it involves the values of that art shifting the culture as a whole. I'm rambling but basically I think what was worthwhile about previous decades wasn't actually the quality of what was produced but the way it took over the public...cultural...sphere thing so you had PiL on Top Of The Pops and Public Enemy in the charts. Nowadays I'm not sure if that public sphere even exists (and if it does I suspect it's more about Britain's Got Talent and awful reality shows than Dubstep or The Wire or anything people here would hold up as worthwhile). Like I say this is kind of a reactionary/nostalgic way of looking at things in itself but I just think that whatever a GOOD CULTURE DECADE is it would involve bringing people together through that culture and not splitting them into ever-more-arbitrary subdivisons.

Also even when considering the good stuff, that doesn't mean it's all good in the same way! I enjoyed watching The Wire more than Twin Peaks but I don't think it's as interesting a show: it's great but still basically traditional in format, in style, etc. (or not exactly traditional but you know what I mean). There's been some good books but have any of them been as revolutionary as modernist shit from almost a century ago? There's some great bands but aren't they basically an extension or mixing of ideas from previous decades?

I dunno maybe I'm just too pessimistic/thinking about it the wrong way?? Just Points To Ponder anyway  :fogetlaugh: *retreats to cave trips over beard*

edit: aaaa this sounded horrible! basically I dislike nostalgia but I don't think the antidote is to be ahistorical or whatever, and I think if this were really a golden age people would be less defensive about it (every time someone brings up the arctic monkeys it's like WELL THEY'RE GOOD FOR WHAT THEY ARE or THEY'RE DERIVATIVE BUT or something and it always depresses me because I understand the urge to defend your culture against smirking nostalgia dorks but that doesn't mean lowering your standards to whatevers going on at the moment and then saying YEAH THIS IS ME)
Last Edit: June 27, 2010, 03:41:22 pm by thecatamites
http://harmonyzone.org
  • Group: Member
  • Joined: Jun 6, 2009
  • Posts: 42
I think about this a lot. I love being a part of the first generation to have free, unlimited access to all of the information in the world. Nobody's had anything close to this in the past, ever. (Google)

https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/88/the_coming_barbarism.html
lazy
something about crispus attucks' great grandson twice removed
  • Avatar of Shadow Kirby
  • Star ninja and Québec random guy of GW
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Feb 2, 2003
  • Posts: 1358
film has been completely industrialized, leaving virtually no room for legitimate artistic endeavor.
...
another problem is that a significant chunk of the cultural spotlight is being hogged by the artistic black hole of videogames, which is a medium i don't really think anybody could HONESTLY tell me is of any real significance or merit at this point.


The video game industry has exactly the same problem the movie industry is having; it was completely industrialized. Even worse, video games didn't really have time to enjoy an era of artistic freedom before become a mass producing industry, leaving anything creative on the margin.

There are probably some amazing films made in China, Africa, South America, who knows where, that will never get out of their country because they will never attract the attention of big companies to bring them to the world. Same thing for games but the divide isn't between rich/poor country, it's between games by companies made by focus group trying to sell to a target group and dudes in their room trying to say something through the medium. Not to say you can't find anything interesting to say about AAA tittle (Tom Bissell does a good job at this with Fallout 3, Gears of War, Far Cry and GTA4 in his new book ), but you have to search a little deeper in the cracks of the Internet in order to find interesting games that could be considered as a legitimate artistic endeavour.

Leigh Alexander pointed me to this game two days ago. It's a game made by an individual with a message or an idea to pass through the specific tools of the medium. I think that can be called an artistic endeavour.
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
Quote
humor me and suggest some recent titles then,

okay, a few released from the last couple of years I can think of quickly are:

Platform, directed by Jia Zhang Ke. It's about a traveling stage group in 1980's China and like all of his movies about how the old communist China is morphing into the new open market China and leaving a lot of people behind. I liked this one alot, but another one he directed I also liked is The World, which is about a theme park in Beijing which actually exists and it's slogan is 'experience the entire world without ever leaving Beijing' and it's just about the same theme as the other movie set in this crazy, hollow, bogus theme park. There's also 24 City by the same director, which I think is his most recent movie. I just saw it a few weeks ago - it's like a faux-documentary mixed in with some actual real stories of a factory being closed down in a small town in China. You get the idea with this guy - it's interesting if you give a flying hoot about what's happening in China.

Songs from the Second Floor, directed by Roy Andersson. This guy is really distinctive - he uses pretty much only these very detailed wide shots which are kind of desaturated and look like paintings because there is so little movement in them alot of the time. I really liked this movie - my current avatar is of the stomach of one of the main characters. It's really funny and also pretty cruel and sad sometimes. There's a trailer on youtube but it's kinda crappy, you get an idea of the scope of some of the shots, though:


That director has only done like 3 films and he's 60 or something. I think he only started directing this decade.

And there are the Dardenne bros who make the kind of small, real life movies about people who have pretty shitty lives. I like these, I could list off a whole bunch of them but I guess maybe check out Rosetta to see if you like them. I won't link the trailer cos like alot of these films the trailers are obviously made by james lipton like assholes after the fact of the movie when it gets some awards recognition.

these ones are all kind of slow, sparse kinds of movies. I have been watching alot of that lately though. I watch movies from every time period, like you I go back to find things from decades ago, but as far as good stuff coming out these days that isn't immediately obvious, this is the kind of stuff I have found. i'd talk about it some more but i wanna keep talking about the other stuff in the topic, too.


Last Edit: June 28, 2010, 08:28:17 am by jamie
  • Avatar of jamie
  • ruined former youth seeking atonement
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Premium Member
  • Joined: Jun 4, 2003
  • Posts: 3581
HEY HUNDLEY, DID YOU EVER CHECK OUT ANY OF THOSE MOVIES?

You are officially on call. Time to step up to the plate, champ. The deal is done.