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Thursday, January 12, 2017

I Miss Old-Style Movies

My original plan was to blog today about how my crochet class is going (okay), but I changed my mind after watching White Christmas.

Over the holidays I watched some movies with my dad. It's so hard to find things he enjoys so  a lot of the movies were old--from the 40s, 50s or early 60s. Among these movies were musicals. Delightful songs, dancing, sweet stories.

As we were watching White Christmas on Saturday I started thinking about how they don't make movies like this anymore and haven't for decades. Oh, sure, there's an occasional musical now and then, but once upon a time these were released all the time. Actors and actresses could sing and dance as a matter of course. Now I'm not so sure they can do anything except act. Which is fine, but still I can't help thinking we're missing something special.

There are no words for how sick I am of comic book movies. Marvel Universe, DC Universe, I just don't care. I'm tired of Batman and the Joker and X-Men.

Part of my problem no doubt is related to what I consider the poor offerings Hollywood has released in the last ten or fifteen years. It's all the same and it's part of their chasing the blockbuster and that they're gearing movies to the foreign audience. They now make more money overseas than in the US and this has meant we've lost dialogue-heavy films, especially if there's subtlety involved. I do love action and adventure, but I also love witty banter.

And I love singing and dancing. I loved White Christmas. I never get tired of The Sound of Music. I heard there's a new musical out right now and that it's not bad. I'll have to make a point of seeing it at some point, but I kind of doubt it will have the same magic as the old musicals.

Edited to add: Not that White Christmas is by any means a perfect movie. The conflict in the romance part is the Big Misunderstanding which could be resolved with one conversation and the secondary romance is pretty much non-existent. The characters aren't really well fleshed out either. I look at the movie as more of a vehicle for the singing and dancing and that I enjoyed tremendously.