'Oldie movies'

Well HELLO THERE.
If you're saying that you haven't watched a single movie released before 1993 or so, my god. I must say that you are missing out.

Yeah, people don't say that about other arts quite as often.

I seldom hear people say "I don't listen to old music like Beethoven or Led Zeppelin" or "I don't read old books like The Lord of the Rings or Anne of Green Gables".

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Let's be honest - "normies" typically only watch recent movies and shows and only like recent music.

Not saying I like it, but I have made my peace with it.

Meh. Their loss.


Have fun listening to Taylor Swift but I'm sticking to my Micheal Lai.

I'd feel so incomplete if I had that attitude that I kind of feel sorry for this person. Even when I was snotty and 17, I found that, at least in my private moments I could appreciate old music. I started watching old movies, which used to be on regular broadcast TV back when I was a kid, way before that. It's a shame to narrow and constrict oneself so much as to miss all that.

I was very lucky because my folks really went out of their way to introduce me to older movies when I was growing up.

But I guess even if it hadn't been for that, I still would have been interested when I found out how much of the modern-day era blockbusters "borrowed" from the older movies.

Isn’t that her decision? Do we really need to make a thread calling out someone over her preference for movies?

Just a little curious as to the genesis of this thread. Did Sook create the thread and then delete her original post, or is this response ported over from another thread? If this is a new thread, I think the subject is interesting and well worth talking about; dragging another MoFo from some other thread, maybe not so much...

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No, it got started with a reply from the "Have you watched it?" thread (Games and Tabs)

I never understood the need to worry over who watches what and what they haven’t watched. It doesn’t effect me and it’s completely easy to understand that not everyone likes older movies without creating a thread over it or lamenting the state of “normies”

The general trend is that the art people are exposed to between childhood and adolescence defines what they come to think about film, and then they coast with that definition the rest of their lives. Some eventually will develop the fallacy in thinking that somehow their generation was the only generation that watched good movies or listened to good music, or some other such drivel.


But it has nothing to do with it being good. More often than not, what grown adults really crave is familiarity, not quality. They resent having their preconceptions challenged. And the reasons they want things to stay the same is because they resent the contemplation and wonder and thought that accompanies watching something they don't quite know how to process. Adults don't want anything beyond mild surprises, in the vein of all the other mild surprises they have once been mildly surprised by in their boring and not worth talking about adult lives.


So basically, what this means is that children's brains are way more open to what they might initially receive as a piece of art, and more likely to enjoy the challenge of interpreting what has been put in front of them, sometimes even completely happy to not entirely understand what they are watching. And adult brains just keep asking for more of the same. You might even hear from one of these lowly adults from time to time talk about how they 'just want to turn their brain off' or that they are just trying to 'kill time'. This means it is already too late for them. Continue on without them. Don't even offer them a sip of water.


Now what is the conclusion to all of these wise words? In short, children's brains are better and old brains are covered in filth and dust. And so anytime any adult tries to use the excuse that 'even a child could have made that', it isn't an insult. Because most adults can't do anything half as well as an average child.


So before it's too late, introduce your children to Tarkovksy along with their Pixar movies. But also Stanley Brakhage, and Orson Welles, and Murnau and Chaplin and John Waters and Jackie Chan and Sergio Leone and David Lynch and Errol Morris and anything else to make sure they think all of these different kinds of geniuses as being the exact same thing: movies.


Just movies.


Don't let them become boring. It's a horrible way to live a life (I would assume)

So I have a kid's brain?

An adult with a child's brain was actually the plot of Poor Things.

If you're lucky

People maybe shouldn't worry about the average viewing habits of any particular individual walking down the street. So, no, I wouldn't go up to someone waiting at a traffic light and say 'hey fukface, you seen any Cassavetes' (well, at least not often). But I think it's just fine to worry about general trends of what people are, and maybe more importantly, aren't watching. They mean something. They tell us a lot about what people think about art and the place they put it in their lives and what films might continue to be recognized for years, and which ones are going to be eventually completely forgotten (rightfully or wrongfully)


Also, conversationally, especially in a place like an internet forum where people are specifically coming to talk about a specific thing, ya, it can also be annoying when there are these giant and constant gaps of knowledge to contend with in basic conversations. Maybe that's petty, but it's still annoying. If I went to shoot the shit in a forum where they talk about history, and if someone asked about my opinion on something regarding Europe, and my response was "I don't do Europe", it would be completely understandable if they wanted to bludgeon me to death with eyeroll emojis.


Also, let's not overlook the importance of not letting swaths of film history fall by the wayside because it's old. That should be something anyone who cares about film should be anxious about to some degree, especially when it is such a common trend (and frankly always has been) for each successive generation to shun the art that came from those generations before them. I want as many of these older movies to be seen as possible. I want as many of them to find as many fans as they possibly can, even after everyone involved in their creation is long dead. I want to believe art isn't simply something that speaks to one generation of people and then becomes obsolete. It's at its best when it speaks to us from across decades or even centuries. And when we see people throwing up their arms when asked if they have seen anything from before they were born, as if it was the dumbest thing they could have been asked, I worry that not much can possibly survive that kind of apathy for very long.

Agree with a lot of this, but would also point out that, especially with my generation when I was younger, and especially with music, the opposite situation started to develop, where we tended to shun anything new, even entire styles and movements, while trying to adhere to the previous generations (since I was Gen X, this was the boomer's claiming this) insistence that the music from their generation was superior and would never be topped. Yea, their generation generated bands such as Zep and Pink Floyd, so maybe that had at least somewhat of a point, but my point is, don't fall into the trap of disparaging anything new that comes out just because it's new and isn't Pink Floyd. Unless your band is trying to cut a double album, in which case you should ask yourself if the name of your band is Pink Floyd, and if it isn't, don't cut a double album.

I always thought Minio might be Emma Stone. Alas, here we are...

While I tend to agree with a lot of this, I also realize it’s not for everyone, regardless of the site’s purpose. You learn to identify who those people are and just move on. There’s plenty of us who do watch older movies, and aren’t stuck in certain genres and are willing to explore what cinema has to offer.
However, an eye shrug is a far cry from calling out someone in a thread as if shaming them for it. I think it’s also important to note that at least she isn’t pretending to be anything other than a casual fan. There’s no pretension in her case. She doesn’t like older movies, and while we can agree she is missing out on so many good films, it’s like that person who we all know who won’t watch a foreign film because it’s subtitled. We just shrug and move on, knowing they are missing out.

And is that what I'm responding to?


Or am I responding to you saying you don't understand why anyone else should care about what anyone else watches?

I'm not into writing anything off for these kinds of glib reasons, new or old. I pulled the old 'nothing new is any good' crap when I was a teenager, and like most teenagers, I didn't really know what I was talking about.

It was one of the points that started the thread, and also was a part of your post.
Pretty sure I did respond to what you had posted, however, and even agreed to most of it