Funny, I was probably one of the few people who thought that "Private Ryan" SUCKED!!! (Please, don't take this as an insult to the men who sacrificed more than we will EVER be able to comprehend!) Typical Hollywood schlock, predictable scene climaxes, tugging of heart strings in a manipulative way (no style or panache), and the MAJOR problem...TOO LONG!!! (Hey, have you heard what the latest Tom Hank's movie is about...it's about 3 hours long!) What does Tom Hanks have for a contract, a minimum movie length of 3 hours? Especially since the last 2 hours of "Private Ryan" was filler when compared with the first hour! And sorry, I don't think that 1 hour of beach landing scenes shot in 8 or 16 mm. "jerky cam" is art...it's just a boring excess! The strongest, yet subtlest, scene is the one where the G.I.'s were playing "dog-tag poker" with the column of battered and disillusioned troops marching by while staring on with disgust. Sorry to go on, but I HATE a bad movie masquerading as a good one, due to a heroic theme. Considering that many movies use market research testing for endings or character development, is it any wonder that many are commercial pieces of fluff? Let's not forget about the megabuck advertising campaigns, either. Does anyone REALLY believe that "Titanic" was the best picture of the year?
Home Theatre Software: Insulting?
This may be just me but how often after you seen the "cabon copy" explosion riddled movie trailer and said to yourself "God is this stuff stupid or what" and even worse.
As a music listener how long would we put up with consistently poor quality software that offends our intellect?
Seems to me that the movie industry thinks we are just stupid apes willing to buy anything the Hollywood Marketing guys/gals can regurgitate at us. Seriously, think about this next time you see a totally pointless plot but with your rerun "Take" 865.95 of bombs and flashes.
On the other hand where would Casablanca or Citizen Kane be without that great 7.1 sound :)?
I saw a bumper sticker a few years ago that read: "The more you know the less you need" . In the case of movies, maybe another sticker could read "The more you think the less you are willing spend in front of the screen watching carbon copies". Once in a while it is fun to watch a good boom boom if there is something to fill the space between the boom boomies such as Saving Private Ryan.
I am probably missing something here but why is home theatre worth ten's of thousands of dollars of our discretionary income?
Maybe that old song "In the year 2525 we will not need our minds, will not need our eyes...." was overly kind with respect to the date.