Hey don’t knock 60 year old movies. I started reading Alex Cox’s book about Spaghetti Westerns and I’ve been watching the movies after he talks about them, and I’m only up to 1965.
As for not 60 year old movies my most anticipated are Alex’s “last movie” (so he’s billing it) Dead Souls which is on the festival circuit right now and I should be getting he bluray soon, and Odyssey. And I’m sure there’s a ton of other stuff. Oh the Madden movie with Nick Cage playing Madden, there’s a good possibility that’s going to be horrible, but I must watch it anyway.
I don’t knock 60 year old movies. I have plenty of them on my GOAT list.
But circling back to basics ... I started the ping list for a specific culture war reason. We may be aging out of movies; many freepers clearly have.
But the younger generations are terminally addicted to their screens, to the point that it’s a mental health issue ... not to mention a critical political issue. The craziest leftism seems heavily correlated with siloing in toxic online echo chambers.
We are losing the culture war. Movies and tv are just one of many fronts, but they are significant. Even if we don’t watch much any longer, it makes a difference what the rising generations are watching.
We can’t beat something with nothing. And we can’t tell young people to watch exclusively movies that came out when their great grandparents were doing date nights.
We have an interest in keeping independent voices, sometimes even conservative ones, in the cultural industries.
I will never take another college course, but I’m still concerned by colleges that don’t have a single conservative on the faculty, except maybe an 87 year old professor emeritus of chemistry who gets trotted out on diversity day to convince alums that the place isn’t a monoculture and indoctrination mill.
It’s hard to talk back to universities; all I can do is stop donating. At least with movies, I can buy a ticket and directly support someone who is doing good work in a system that is stacked against them.
We can at least recognize the good movies when we find them. And hope that at least some young people will find them too. Otherwise they’ll just see what the Borg spoonfeeds them.