The Letterboxed Generation

[Lyle Romer]

What can you call a generation that aspire to grow up to be nothing but social media "influencers?"

The "last generation?"

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

What can you call a generation that aspire to grow up to be nothing but social media "influencers?"

The worthless generation is one, the clueless generation is another.

[Randy Stankey]

Damned kids! Get the hell off my lawn!

[Frank Angel]

I'm willing to bet they do that because if they just left it blank they would get calls from people complaining their widescreens are not being filled.

Worse, Martin; the end user would grab the remote and push "settings" and try to STRETCH that vertical band to fit the 16:9 screen...no doubt in my mind.

Spoiler Alert -- RANT ahead (I apologize in advance).

Talk about news today vs news in the era of Cronkite and Chancellor and Koppel, our local ABC station here in NY (WABC), at the end of every broadcast...EVERY broadcast, the whole news "team" of dunces invariably as the program is concluding, these talking morons joke and laugh with each other, guffawing like the preceding was some stand-up comedy show. You hear the men laughing and the women squealing and all at the same time, usually OVER the theme music, which tells me, they WANT the audience to hear this unprofessional noise. Really, it sounds like the carryings on that you heard before the teacher came into the class room in high school. It wasn't that long ago where that kind of kibitzing during a news program would be so totally unprofessional that someone would get fired. When was it OK for the news to be presented as a damn comedy? And to make it worse, you know it is contrived and that the program director TOLD them to "joke it up," because no one at the same time every day can coincidentally break into laughter over nothing, all at the same exact time, ALWAYS at the end of the newscast. Walter would turn over in his grave, as would every TV news producer and on-camera personality of those years. The announcer who made that emotional report of the Hindenburg fire in real time who, as the dirigible crashed in flames, said "Oh the humanity..." He was effin FIRED on the spot for breaking professionalism. Yet these buffoons break composure EVERY NIGHT and there they are still with jobs again the next night.

And btw, network evening news is no longer news...it's barely headlines. Walter Cronkite once said that he couldn't give the news in any meaningful way in 30 minutes he was allotted; he wanted an hour in order to get background and even a modicum of depth to a story. And back then, he had actually about 27 minutes in his 30 minute time slot. What about today? Well, I've timed all three network evening news shows (we used to call them news programs now we call them news shows, as in entertainment shows), and I discovered that if you strip away the two minute cold opening tease and then the tease before each commercial break (the "When we come back..." tease) and then strip away the WEATHER, and then the "feel good," "touching," "up" and "tug-at-you-heartstrings" stories that MUST end their show -- they don't want to get viewers too depressed with the unpleasant news that preceded as that may make them not tune back in tomorrrow night or (gawd forbid) not tune in to the yakety-yack morning show -- you are lucky the news content gets all of 18-20 minutes. So much for Walter's hour newscast he longed for; here's hoping they put him in a box big enough to allow him to turn over comfortably because he'd be doing flips if he saw what passes as network news today.

BTW, the reason in the days of Huntley and Brinkley, weather was not covered in those newscasts is because weather is LOCAL and of most concern to LOCAL audiences and so it was appropriately covered by the local stations...what is happening all over the country NEVER was part of the network news. But of course today they can get exciting ooh & aah images -- dramatic storms, fires, mudslides, floods, hail and of late, actual locusts, so hey, no modern news director is going to put LOCUSTS on the air! Everyone knows, if it bleeds, it leads. So many nights, weather will lead the network news, why -- just because it can; it's easy. There is not much depth they need to cover when showing cars floating buy in flood waters.

Rant over.

[Kieran Hall]

It's an interesting one this, of course, because the same kids who're filming and watching vertical videos over on TikTok are the same kids pontificating about cinematography over on the Letterboxd site the headline is referencing, so I don't think it can be said that a generation as a whole is cinema-illiterate (if anything, I think it's probably more popular for the 18-year-olds of today to be into deep-diving into film than it was for my generation -- possibly a byproduct of Covid lockdowns?).

I have to say that sort of online "content" has passed me by as whole, but I reckon there's something to be said for a certain style or form acting in the same way as slang does in everyday speech or in writing, and I suppose it's no surprise that it winds up those who aren't in on it in the same way probably all of us wound up our parents. I end up thinking of that (possibly apocryphal) story of a family member of one of the Beatles being driven up the wall by the use of 'yeah' in She Loves You because "what's wrong with the word 'yes'!?".

(The strange blur to pad out vertical video to fill the screen, though? Can't stand it! )

[Harold Hallikainen]

Worse, Martin; the end user would grab the remote and push "settings" and try to STRETCH that vertical band to fit the 16:9 screen...no doubt in my mind.

My in-laws watched broadcast TV in fat mode. They paid for that big screen, they're gonna use it!

[Frank Angel]

I was over the family's house last week and noticed the image on their TV wasn't just in FAT mode (good way to describe it), it was overshooting the screen frame, so lots of text was cut off. I asked, "don't you see the picture is being cut off -- you can't read half the titles?" They were clue-less first, then they were annoyed when I went to their 15 remotes trying to find the one I could use to make the correction. "Why do you ALWAYS complain about EVERYTHING...when we watch TV you find something wrong...when we go to the movies, you find something wrong...even when we play a CD you complain about something that's not set right!" A profit is never accepted in his own country.

[Martin McCaffery]

A profit is never accepted in his own country.

A profit is always accepted in this country. A prophet, not so much

Sounds like we share relatives.

[Frank Angel]

A profit is always accepted in this country. A prophet, not so much

Sounds like we share relatives.

That's why, when thinking up clever proverbial quotes, I always wear Pro-Fit Synthetic Surgical gloves.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

That's why, when thinking up clever proverbial quotes, I always wear Pro-Fit Synthetic Surgical gloves.

In the UK, The Drain Unbolckers use Ansell "Touch N' Tuff) gloves...for what they touch, they need Tuff.

[Randy Stankey]

Sounds like we share relatives.

Same here! My answer is that I work hard to make movies look the way they are intended but, when the slightest thing goes wrong, I'm the one who gets the phone call or, worse, called up to the boss's office, and *I* have to take the heat for it.

I get upset when other people don't care because it feels like people are throwing my hard work in the trash. Then, at the same time, they are the ones who bitch the loudest when their McDonald's french fries come out cold!

It's INSULTING to be treated like that!