Old Movies vs New Movies

I gotta admit it, I do love an old movie; really I do. There's just something about watching an old Fred Astaire movie like 'Shall We Dance' or 'Follow the Fleet' or better still 'Royal Wedding' and watching that guy dance as though he has a cushion of air underneath his feet. Even when he's got a dance partner (which, in those days was hard on her because Mr Astaire expected his partners to do the exact same steps as him; but in high heels!) it was an amazing sight! Fred was such a close dancer and he was such a perfectionist he hated getting things wrong.
But old movies weren't just about dancing and singing. I love the old movies for another reason. There was less visual violence in them. In the old horror movies, a shadow, blood going down a drain and somebody's blood-curdling scream was enough to make a lot of us jump out of our skins. You didn't need to see the mutilated body hung up for all to see in the trees or dug up after two weeks of being left in the mountains (yeah, eewww!)... you also didn't have to see some poor soul's body laid out on a slab with their chest peeled open and the ME weighing the organs one by one making a recording as he went. No, in the old days, all that was skipped and the report came through at the police desk. Or you saw the draw being rolled out and the sheet being pulled up, but you never saw the goriness of what laid beneath that sheet; only the hapless relative - who normally turned away looking like they were going to throw up (they were great actors when they could do that).

Today's movies are brilliantly cast, the cinematography is fantastic and the special effects are top knotch! However, some of the movies I've seen only work because if the special effects weren't in it, there wouldn't be much of a storyline. So, I look for movies where it's character-driven; and that's hard to find now. With the way movies are being made and how computers are used for a good part of them, it seems that it's not only easier (which takes the high risks out of being an actor) it also helps the director see the whole picture before the movie leaves the cutting room floor.

Now, we can't say they're cheating at this. Like anything, we've gotta move forward.

I suppose, I have a soft spot for both types of movies - the old-fashioned where there's not a lot of gun battles, swearing all the time, punch-ups and revenge in the worst possible ways. Then, I love the sci-fi, high-tech kind of ones where it's an amazing feat of computer graphics to see how far we've come to see what we can do with movies. And owning a huge variety of them is a start. I own a good mix between the old Fred Astaire (as I've mentioned) to 'The Matrix' trilogy, 'X-Men' and 'Grease'. So, I guess, I love to watch a good lot of movies... even the old-fashioned vampire movies are a lot of fun to play around with.

So, what do you watch?