movies

My son got a degree in being an unemployed actor, and nailed the unemployed part, the actor part not so much. So after a few years of deeply studying film, he's gone back to college at 26, to get a degree in film studies.

He's SHOCKED at his classmates. He just started a class where they will break down a film throughout the entire semester. They watched it in class together, and EVERY single student, except him, absolutely hated it (my son had already seen it a half dozen times before he even knew the class was showing it).

He's getting frustrated that so much of every film class is the prof justifying the choice of film to the students. My son wants to talk about the film's elements, but he has to sit there and listen to idiots disparage a great film because it isn't a Marvel movie. He says the profs are getting frustrated, too.

I told him not to worry about the morons, and to just keep on digging in at a high level, and his professors will appreciate him.

Just fail them. They shouldn't be anywhere near a film set with the attention span of a gnat. It's dangerous.

I love movies, but to be fair, the Brutalist was tough to get through

Have a 19 year old foster uh, kid, and she cant make it through an entire Instagram reel.

Here's the entire article text (speaking of people not having attention spans):

For years, audiences have groused that films are too long, and now, a number of film professors say their students are having trouble finishing films they are assigned to watch for class.

The Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch published a piece Friday based on surveying 20 film-studies professors who shared stories of students struggling to sit through films in class without checking their phones or answering basic questions about said films after watching them.

In an anecdote that gained attention on X, the University of Wisconsin Madison professor Jeff Smith recalled asking his students about the ending of the 1962 François Truffaut film Jules and Jim. Horowitch writes: “More than half of the class picked one of the wrong options, saying that characters hide from the Nazis (the film takes place during World War I) or get drunk with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the movie).”

Professors report they have even resorted to asking students just to watch portions of films. It’s a phenomenon mirroring what is happening in high school English classes around the country, where students might just be assigned portions of books.

Though these are discouraging stories for cinephiles to hear, there’s evidence that members of Gen Z are embracing movie theaters and film culture. Some in Hollywood have dubbed them the Letterboxd generation, and they were credited with helping fuel unexpected hits last year.

As Northwestern professor Lynn Spigel told The Atlantic, “the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.”

Precisely the sort of hot take I'd expect from The Atlantic, swirling the drain of stewardship by hiring David Brooks^.

But look, I get it. I'm a genuine film nerd today, and I kinda always have been. When I was little, I'd watch old movies and everything about them set my mind wandering. They were black and white, the pacing was stilted, shot compositions and lightning were static, the audio quality was equally too drab and too sharp at the same time. All the characters were old, boring adults who wore suits and were busy with... adult things to do. It felt like eating crusty week-old bologna. Everything about "contemporary" movies was great! Crisp colors, dynamic lightning, hyper-focused Robert McKee screenwriting that made sure your brain knew precisely what to be thinking at what moment and give you a right happy dopamine hit at the end. What's not to love?

Bless my dad. I once told him that I thought all black and white movies were boring. I had to be something like 10 years old at the time. He told me to go to the video store up the street and rent an old black and white movie called 'Fail Safe' and watch that. I did. That movie left me absolutely floored. Shook. I didn't know, couldn't even imagine, that old movies could go so hard. That was where my interest in the medium really started.

It took a lot of time, discovery, honing of taste and learning the technical limitations of the decades to develop a palette that could appreciate classics.

I don't fault younger people for having the same aversions I did. If I were developing film studies cirricula, I'd ensure that foundational education about expectations of the various cinematic eras was already complete before throwing students into Truffaut.

^ Who is David Brooks? This is David Brooks.

What's next? Philosophy students that can't make it through Heidegger's Sein und Zeit?

"... this course covers contemporary cinema. We will start with the avengers (parts 1-23), followed by superman vs. Spiderman vs. Batman vs. Green Lantern (parts 20-50), and close with Star Wars: the Return of a Return."

One of my friends takes several days to watch a movie, no matter the length, and everyone in our friend group pokes fun at him for it.

Does this mean we can see the end of the overly long film trend?

I miss films being ~80 - 90 minutes. I've had a long day, I don't want to commit to three hours unless it's something really special.