I was wondering if there were any threads or a section of the site that has discussions of older shows. I'd love to discuss shows that have gone by. I'm currently rewatching BABYLON 5 and ANDROMEDA.
I agree about the use of 'older', but since everyone I work with or am around at any point thinks anything made or done before 2000 is 'older', it sort of came out like that. But yes, anything made before 2000 works.
I believe their is still a good Stagate forum called gateworld.com. Plus Aint it Cool News.com might still be around. The person who created turned out to be a creep but I think he got fired. You should also read Jammers reviews about Trek and other stuff. Jason
Last week somebody referred to Super Mario Galaxy as a “Classic” and I felt old. Somehow, to me, 1990 feels closer to 2019 than 1979. There’s this wall between times you experienced and times you did not that you perceive as an eternity. It feels bizarre to me that Nirvana is closer to the Beatles than present day. Or TNG and TOS.
To be fair 'classic' can just mean the game is an instant classic. I bought a brand new Gamecube game once that said 'Best Seller' before it was even release.
Or how some tv shows are pimped as 'New Hit Series'... weeks before the pilot aired. The CW is especially guilty of this. Jaffrey, I know what you mean. I was born in 1979, and most of my references or phrases, I have to explain to people who were born while I was in high school. My wife once said that the phrases I sometimes use make me seem even older. (I will say, however, that if you looked at me, I could pass for someone in their late 20s. Working in Frozen Foods in one form or another for over 20 years probably cryogenically preserved me somewhat...)
I think there's also a gulf between the stuff you grew up with as a kid and the stuff that came along afterwards. The likes of BACK TO THE FUTURE or THE TERMINATOR or THE PRINCESS BRIDE are all "new" to me since they weren't part of my childhood, unlike, say, the original STAR TREK or DARK SHADOWS or TARZAN movies or whatever. And part of me is always kinda shocked when someone mentions watching VOYAGER as a kid, even though I know I shouldn't be. (I was in my mid-thirties when VOY debuted.) True story: this is an actual conversation I had with a very bright young college student a few weeks ago. "You keep mentioning 2001. What was so significant about that year?" "Oh, I'm sorry. I meant '2001,' the movie, not the year." "Movie?" "You know, '2001: A Space Odyssey.'" (Blank look.). "Still not following."
It's funny when looking at Star Trek, TNG is now exactly as old as TOS was in the late 90s when Star Trek's popularity was beginning to wind down.
It's all relative. A friend and I were once lamenting that young people these days don't watch older movies the way we did when we were kids. Then we realized we were mistaken. Younger folks DO watch older movies; it's just those movies are now the likes of BACK TO THE FUTURE or THE TERMINATOR, which are even older today than, say, FORBIDDEN PLANET or THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON were when we were growing up. (Says the guy who saw "2001" on its original run back in '68.)
2001 is a movie you need to be in tune with art films to appreciate. Otherwise you’ll spend the first hour waiting for Hal to appear then end thinking WTF?! I didn’t really watch older films (Pre Star Wars) until I explored on my own in my late 20s. There’s such a huge gulf between Star Wars and before in terms of audience attention span and the role of women in films, when you’re trying to watch older films with the same mindset one would watch Avengers they seem slow and sexist. I agree that there also seems to be a big gap between 1999 and 2001 for me. Just because 2001 is when I went to college.
I found that reading the novel helped with my appreciation of the movie. Even though they are both very different, I still think they complement each other in the core concept. As for older movies, I tend to define "older" as anything before I was born. So, technically a movie released a year before the year I was born would be considered older.
Watching 2001 at the Cinerama back in '68, I brought an older set of expectation to it. Accustomed as I was to the likes of FORBIDDEN PLANET or THIS ISLAND EARTH, I honestly expected that the astronauts would eventually run into some humanoid aliens (probably in shiny silver outfits) who would explain the plot to us: "Ah, I see you have encountered our monoliths. I am Doctor Jupiter, leader of the High Council, and this is my beautiful daughter, Europa . . . . " Instead the psychedelic ending (as we called it back then) completely flew over Lil' Greg's head!
I saw it in the mid-00s, with my expectations formed with pop culture references to Hal. So I fully expected the entire movie was about a murderous AI. It wasn’t until discussion of the movie with other cinephiles that I noticed the themes of “The pen being the new means to power” and space exploration being all about photo ops. Then the thing about the monolith being a movie screen rotated 90 degrees and symbolically an instrument of futurist propaganda.
Not too surprising, perhaps, since the HAL plotline is the closest thing to a straightforward narrative in the movie. Certainly it was the part I found the easiest to follow as kid.
The first time I saw Angry Red Planet was when I realized that the science fiction films of the 1970s were the first to consistently have orchestral scores. For most science fiction before that, the pop music of the day often served as inspiration, and four-piece house bands the execution of science fiction music. There are exceptions, of course, but not many.
Just keep telling yourself, "It was directed by Stanley Kubrick. It was directed by Stanley Kubrick. "