Speaking of 1999: anyone seen this video by the "
Space Opera Society" where they propose Lucasing 1999?
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keWCX3guy5w[/yt]
They used to have a site specifically dedicated to this project a few years back, but it was taken down at the request of the current rights-holders of SPACE:1999.
It's still on a website I stumbled into. Glad to see the project was nixed by the rights holders.
I wonder if all this Lucasing of existing shows is just the path of least resistance for people who don't have the facility or ability to produce something original, so they try to figure out some way to tweak something they like to make money from it.
Yes, that's cynical.
The 'Lucasing' as you put it was similar to the restoration job done on the episodes of
Star Trek TOS and
TNG, and nothing more than that.. ITV Studios (the current rights holder) must not want the show to be shown on TV anymore, then; they'll get their wish soon enough.
God, that's awful. The original suffers from a ton of problems, but it is what it is. [Edit: in regards to the '99 Lucas-izing]
What was wrong with the proposed restoration job? Nothing that I could see, just something similar to the
Star Trek restorations that would enable the shows to be seen on HDTV sets.
I fight the good fight by showing the original Mr. Smith Goes to Wash., Grapes of Wrath, and Bad Seed in class. Black and white is very off-putting to many teens. They do not grow up seeing old movies on UHF* stations as we did. TCM is WAY up the cable lineup, far beyond what they see. Though I use all three for curricular reasons, I feel I am also doing my part to help a few broaden their tastes and imaginations a bit to see that old can be good, too. What is a deification of "the new" called? I feel like there is a word, and I am not finding one in my gray matter.
Well, gotta go, Fibber McGee and Molly is coming on, and the Mrs has my pipe and slippers warmed up.
Not everybody wants to spend time in the past?
Also, TCM
is a premium cable channel (on the same tier as HBO) and maybe they don't have cable or can't afford it to be watching TCM, or they prefer watching TV on Internet (like many people here in this BBS do). As for the films not being available on
UHF channels like they used to be, blame that on the owners of most of these channels, who are mostly greedy fucking assholes always wanting to maximize profits (that's why you see nothing but infomercials on them now, and
if you want to see movies, you have to watch the digital sub-channels, for which you must get an antenna.) The major studios must also take their share of the blame for not promoting older movies enough when they release them on DVD as in years past when they were released on cassette and laserdisc and used to promote them a lot (e.g., Warner Archive and it's putting movies on burned DVD that has to be ordered from Amazon vs. pressed DVD sold in a store.)
I find it odd that so many young people profess being unable to get into movies which are black and white given how common that look was in music videos, etc. I suspect that black and white is just convenient shorthand/excuse for media which they consider to be out of date and inaccessible to them for a lot of things from acting style to music to cinematography.
It may be that many of the students are of color and don't relate to all-white cast of said older movies (particularly when said movies feature people of color in subservient roles to whites.) I don't think that something being in black and white is bad to them as much as it's the movie that they might object to, IMHO.
Keep fighting the good fight (what do you teach?).
It really is depressing how averse many teenagers are to watching films made before they were born. One of my friends taught a film genre course last quarter, and at the beginning, not a single one of her students had seen a movie made before 1980 (and only a few had seen movies that "old").
Again, same thing I said above.
I find it odd that so many young people profess being unable to get into movies which are black and white given how common that look was in music videos, etc. I suspect that black and white is just convenient shorthand/excuse for media which they consider to be out of date and inaccessible to them for a lot of things from acting style to music to cinematography.
I suspect you're onto something here. I watch way too much TCM (including
Sullivan's Travels last night), but there's no denying that vintage movies are different from modern films in ways both subtle and not so much: the pacing, the fashions, the slang, the censorship restrictions, the gender roles, etc. Which can require a mental adjustment if you're not used to them. That's probably what younger people are actually reacting to, not the lack of color.
I think that you got it.
The best way to solve this would be to start getting pissy about local TV stations and who owns them (as well as getting pissy about the content) so that older movies are shown again and only people who care about TV as something else besides being a perpetual money machine would be the ones to own stations (I'd even say getting cable rates lowered so that people could afford TCM might help, but I don't know if that would work.)
(KIDDING: Couldn't help it.) People like what they're used to, and older movies require more attention and listening ... not our culture's strong suits. 
When that happens then your perspective might broaden.
