Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#321

Post by smegsicle » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #315

dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

Men are portrayed this way all the time. Why would portraying women this way get so much attention and concern?

showcasing female heroes as displaying exaggerated masculine abilities (in a sexualized female body) is belittling to actual feminine virtues

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#322

Post by bsder » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

aikinai wrote: post #180

bmelton wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with tropes is that they weren't always tropes. This reminds me of the Seinfeld effect. Seinfeld was arguably brilliant, but even if you disagree with its brilliance, enough people thought it was brilliant that practically every bit in its entire run has been ripped off so many times that they've all become boring clichés. So pervasive has the ripoff been, that watching Nickelodeon episodes of Hannah Montan…

It’s like people complaining the Lord of the Rings is just all the fantasy tropes. Well they weren’t tropes yet when Tolkien invented them.

Worse, they were counterculture. "Bored of the Rings" came out in 1969.

People also forget that fantasy tropes were "evil and satanic" up through about the 1980s.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#323

Post by bawolff » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #213

driverdan wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've watched Interstellar with multiple audio setups and didn't have an issue understanding the dialog. It may have a higher dynamic range than most movies but that's a good thing.

Definitely a known Nolan issue. I will go to my deathbed attesting that Tenet was the absolutely worst sound mixed movie of all time!

I don't think not understanding the dialog matrially changes that movie.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#324

Post by wildrhythms » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 8:07 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #212

Pasorrijer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A response to your edit, I was on a zoom call with current musical editors / producers and that is 100% part of the problem. Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything.

I remember that back in the day, actors re-voiced what they said on the set, but from a studio with proper recording gear, and sound engineers mixed these voices into the general soundscape. Are modern movies shot in reporting style instead, with all the visuals and sounds recorded once and simultaneously? That would surprise me.

In some recent musical-to-film adaptations they recorded the voices ON THE SET during filming, often with no backing track or metronome, and then forced the music director, post-filming, to conduct the orchestra along with whatever the hell the actor was filmed doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ikqU6G6Xgs

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#325

Post by thfuran » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 8:18 PM UTC

drexlspivey wrote: post #242

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a lot like "dynamic contrast", i.e. varying the display's light source brightness with the scene brightness. I can't speak to whether or how the iPad implements it, but it's a common behavior of LCD screens. It's configurable on some devices.

You can just cover the light sensor (right next to the camera) if you don’t want to mess with menus instead of using a blanket.

But that would dim the display. Selectively illuminating the sensor would boost display brightness.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#326

Post by glandium » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 8:25 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #282

Pasorrijer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A response to your edit, I was on a zoom call with current musical editors / producers and that is 100% part of the problem. Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything.

Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything. Sorry, but I work with a lot of Hollywood production companies and have been on plenty of sets, and this is a load of crap. Today's actors and actresses speak their lines just fine. The problem is the trend t…

I always wondered what people have against Tenet's audio. I originally saw it with headphones and using vlc and it was fine. Then I saw it on a TV and it was awful. I wonder if it was tested in normal environments.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#327

Post by glandium » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 8:32 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #210

viraptor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles The silver lining here may be that people stop treating subtitles as torture and see some non-English titles more often. There are some fun movie cultures out there beyond Hollywood, but I've found the "ugh, I've got to read‽" response common.

I definitely watch all movies, English and foreign, with subtitles, and can't stand dubbed movies. I've found an amusing effect of well subtitled movies is that sometimes I forget that they're on, and, if I walk away and can only hear the dialogue but not see the subtitles, then I have to take a minute to process why I can no longer understand it ….

I have the opposite problem. Subtitles draw my attention, even when I understand what's said just fine. And then it's extra distracting when the subtitles change the meaning of what is said (which happens both when watching Japanese movies with English or French subtitles, or English or French movies with Japanese subtitles)

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#328

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 8:33 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #207

ElephantsMyAnus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a native speaker, but, I think it's rather the opposite. It's very inauthentic. English is a rather unusual language that the meaning is mostly carried only by consonants, while vowels are almost meaningless. What actors seem to be doing is that they focus too much on their accent, and the vowels that define it, and mostly ignore the consonants. Which means you can only hear the accents, but not what is being…

> English is a rather unusual language that the meaning is mostly carried only by consonants, while vowels are almost meaningless. Sorry but this sounds like nonsense. Vowel distinctions absolutely matter in English. Think of how many words would be indistinguishable otherwise: bout, bought, bet, bat, bit, beet, boot, boat, bite, but, and bait are all distinguished from each other only by a vowel. (And, yes, these al…

[deleted]

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#329

Post by makeitdouble » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

throwmeariver1 wrote: post #165

makeitdouble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d see this as an already well established field we call either “propaganda” or “advertisement. No need to go real deep, with a “follow the money” approach, the amounts that are spent im product placement and effort to shape narratives through work of art speak for themselves.

This gets pondered everywhere but product placement was worse in the beginning of television like the "The Colgate Comedy Hour" and it's abbreviations from Coke etc. or the characters from sponsors directly integrated into the plot of a tv show. Imagine your favorite character going into the kitchen making a coffee and the coffee salesperson comes in and makes a 5-minute pitch. You can say about modern advertisement…

I hear you. France had to pass rulings limiting the frequency you can say a product name on tv.

Advertisement and propaganda have always been the bread and butter of tvs (and to a lesser extent movies). The whole industry grew leaps and bounds during the last century, yet people still dismiss it as low brow, or only care about images/narratives influence when it’s children looking at boobs or games that are supposed to be too violent.

On getting better or worse, I think it got more sophisticated as the reach increased and the market for attention became more competitive. All in all I don’t think the core of it changes much, the army is still heavily supporting war movies and games to the same extent for instance, the landscape just got more diverse making it less prominent.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#330

Post by dvdkon » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

whycome wrote: post #273

benreesman wrote: post #175

In general I’ll watch anything the Drinker recommends (I’ll never stop being grateful that’s he got to me to give the Expanse a second try for example). With that said, there are lot of fantastic movies getting made, they’re just not big budget. You could watch nothing but stuff Pattinson (to name a single example) has been in over the last 10 years and have a, uh, good time. I personally think that these days the mo…

So, I should give the Expanse a second try? .... My biggest issue these days is that there isn't actual development within the world created. Superman falls for Lois lane, not because of some sort of event or circumstance that we experience on screen, but because they're 'supposed to get together'. Or it's also bad when movies rely on a wider generalized context rather than actually developing something within the wo…

The Expanse isn't a "remake" of a decades old comic book storyline, quite a few movies aren't. I like movies that try to fit into an overarching "mythos", but that's just one particular approach to storytelling.