It’s not novel for me to be on here moaning about the limitations of modern-day film making, particularly with regard to the efforts of our American cousins. There’s a lot to dislike; cliché ridden dialogue and scenes, an obsession with superheroes, prequels, sequels and ‘re-imaginings’, and worst all, incessant wokery.
To this list I’ll add the penchant for that incredibly annoying technique referred to as ‘fast cut’ editing, where many shots of short duration are piled one on top of another in rapid succession, presumably in an attempt to inject pace or excitement into the film at a given point.
I was confronted by the perfect example of this infuriating trope when the wife and I sat down a couple of nights ago to watch ‘Jason Bourne’. We came to the inevitable car chase sequence (a cliché in itself these days), with the inevitable attempt by the production team to try to outdo all such previous ‘smash ’em up’ efforts.
So what did we actually get? You guessed it. Hundreds of short little takes rammed jarringly together, throwing the viewer around the action in dizzying fashion. Chuck in the inevitable shaky camera and CGI for good effect, and you’re left with a confusing, disorientating, frustrating mess;
As a further evidence to support my case, I offer the undernoted classic by way of contrast. Look at how the director starts things off slowly, with the protagonists prowling around each other like a couple of sparring Siamese fighting fish. Then, aided by a some superb scoring, he shifts through the gears, gradually building the pace and tension to a superb denouement. No fast edit (and no shaky camera or CGI), just superb film-making technique;
M’luds, the prosecution contends that ‘fast edit’ is shit, and rests its case .
Nominated by: Ron Knee
Pleased it’s not just me who thinks this renders a film into totally unwatchable shite. The first Daniel Craig Bond film was the same, so I never even bothered with the later ones.
Well cunted.
12
Thanks fatjon.
As a general point, I think that action film makers need to come up with something different to the car chase now. It’s old hat, and every chase has to try to find some way to outdo the last.
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Thanks Ron for this cunting. It meant I could comment on the other side of the spectrum I’m more accustomed to.
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No probs Sammy.
I really can’t be arsed with about 95% of the shite that comes out of Hollywood these days.
I go back now to my ‘golden age’ collection mostly, or to Europe, S America and Asia for more recent films.
Hollywood can shove its sequels and its wokery up its arse.
8
I want to know where you can buy a motor with an 18 speed gearbox? All the ones in car chases seem to have them
7
Get a Sandero like me Sir Mali.
Nought to thirty in under fifteen minutes. Fantastic for high speed chase sequences around central Brum.
6
And what idiot accelerates into a bend and changes gear? Surest way to end up in a ditch.
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Good Morning,
Excellent cunting. I find modern films almost unwatchable due to CGI, it brings absolutely nothing to the enjoyment of a film as at the current technical level it is just too obvious. I know it saves a shed load of money in the production but it is the cinematic version of having the finance director running the company. Throw in a load of wokery and anything made after the turn of the century is hardly worth watching.
10
Couldn’t agree more Wank.
CGI overload makes it pretty obvious that you’re watching just that.
It ruined ‘The Hobbit’ trilogy in particular for me.
5
CGI-laden shite is now the cue for me to utter ‘where’s Shrek?’ every five minutes.
I never bothered with the End game portion of Avengers. The previous one was purple Shrek.
I shouldve fucked off half way through, grabbed a takeaway and watched First Blood or Wild Geese (again).
0
The overused cinematography stylistic that started with The Blair Witch Project (no not cinéma vérité, although that’s always been shit and has also outstayed it’s welcome) – no I’m talking about shaky-as-fuck nausea cam. Dutch angles and lens flares are another annoyance which are hugely overused by hacks like J.J Abrams.
Modern films and TV shows of any and all genres are all-too-often bait and switch melodramas. Think you’re watching a sci-fi or fantasy tv show? Think again, you’re watching a soap opera set on a space ship with people standing in corridors talking about feelings or standing in corridors talking about feelings while crying.
Shows like Halo and “Star Trek” Discovery and Strange New Worlds are really bad for this. Does any body remember when TV shows and movies had actors playing characters in a story and the characters would actually talk about things while HAVING feelings rather than talking ABOUT feelings?
This seems to be the case with everything that comes out now and I’m absolutely certain it’s because many off the script-writers are diversity-hire wimminz and benders who got the gig due to their immutable characteristics rather than for their writing chops.
AS a result of this, they use constant drama to disguise the fact that they can’t write a compelling story and what little story there might be is often dragged out across 13 episode when it could be done in 5 or 6 if you cut out all the pointless padding which does little to advance the plot.
Film and TV have been declining in quality and quantity for years but I think it really started in 2016 with that woefully shite all-female Ghostbusters reboot. 2024 Hollywood wishes it could be even half as good as 2016 Hollywood.
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I like films with a message.
Something you can learn from.
I watched this smashing film about this small town sheriff.
This hippy type turns up and the sheriff politely asks him to leave.
This hippy was autistic and had a speech impediment,
They tried to wash him and he went doolally!!
Killed most of the inhabitants and destroyed the town.
Which goes to show you may as well kill a hippy on first sight.
This sheriff had a lovely sheepskin coat!
Suited him.
14
That sounds like the plot of Rambo: First Blood….. although he was more of a scruffy drifter than a hippy.
5
You should of seen what that same hippy did when he went to wellbeing centre in Vietnam..
Apparently they run out of cucumber water..
5
The autistic bloke played the hippy was in this other film about boxing.
He was constantly henpecked by some miserable fuckin pensioner
Who kept calling him a ‘bum’.
He had to fight this negro.
Anyway it was rubbish.
6
True, but I have reservations about Colonel Trautman. Very effeminate for a SF guy! Probably a raving Marmite Badger!
4
Brian Dennehy. Scared me in Cocoon.
0
The first minutes of Narc are a good example of cam-work and edit. In fact, Narc would be a classic if it were 10 minutes long.
2
@ Foggie well he did cop it up the ‘arris’ in that filllum ‘The rape of richard beck’.
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Shaky cam is worth a cunting in its own right.
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I got about 4 episodes into Star Trek Discovery, then gave up.
0
French Connection has one of the best car chases, no official traffic control. Fucking mental!
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An original little twist that; a car chase not actually involving other cars, but a train.
Great film.
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The 7 ups a little shown film same stunt crew as bullet and the French connection, fantastic car chase well worth seeking out.
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Indeed Chris
Another ‘back in the day’ film when there was no CGI to speak of.
Roy Scheider was good in it as well.
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I’m shooting a car chase scene in Central London as we speak..
Should have enough high speed footage to cut together by 2042..
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Couldn’t you nick some of the footage from the Markles’ recent death defying high speed chase through the empty streets of central New York?
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Can’t beat Spartacus….if they re did it in London nowadays the famous line would be…’i am white’. 🏛️
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no I’m white, my wife’s white and our cat’s white too
0
Hate fucking films, full of shite. Having been interested in WW1 for 50 years decided to watch 1917.
Dead horses in no man’s land, I suppose the poor fuckers climbed out of the trench by ladder, found their way through the wire….
Then a mixed company of Anglo Indians…. what fucking ever.
Films are for cunts, Debbie does Dallas was OK but
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And you had the audacity to pull me up on MY language yesterday😡
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They don’t call him Harry the Bastard for nothing Jill.
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I was fairly indifferent to 1917. 1971 on the other hand was pretty good. It was about a British squaddie in 1971 Belfast who gets disarmed and trapped in an IRA-held area following a riot. Pretty brutal movie and frightening if I’m honest.
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Yeah I’m the same. ‘Dunkirk’ left me cold as well; a completely uninvolving watch.
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Morning Harry,
Have you seen the remake of All Quiet On The Western Front on Shitflix?
It’s bloody good and highly recommended.
4
Years back when Fast and Loud was still on the air, Richard Rawlings got together with Steve McQueen’s son and a stunt driver to recreate that Bullitt chase scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiE4sinScT
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The 1971 film ‘The Duel’ is a good un.
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Amen to that – brilliantly shot and Weaver was great.
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I saw it decades ago and haven’t come across it since. I wonder why it doesn’t seem to have been shown again?
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@moggie63
It has been shown on TV a few times. Most recent was last year on talking pictures I think it was. Good film👍🏻
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Thanks for that Jill. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
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Get yourself a crappy freeview box like mine.
You’re bound to come across a programme or film you may have missed as everything is repeated all times of day or night.
After a considerable stint on one channel it will move to another and the process starts again.
I shouldn’t really moan, I grew up with just 3 channels so I suppose it’s an improvement.
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It’s awesome. I could watch it over and over. Always rooting for the truck driver of course.
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Indeed.
Tremendous bit of film-making on, I would guess, a pretty restricted budget.
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They couldn’t make it now, the fuel bill would bankrupt them.
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Lol!
CGI’s probably cheaper!
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One of the first films i remember watching on my nan’s TV. Loved it.
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These two:
The Driver
Baby Driver
Baby Driver also has possibly the greatest ever movie soundtrack.
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Nah it’s pish.
Films are a visual medium. Who cares about the director’s appalling taste in music.
Baz Luhrmann woukdve been a better choice.
2
Cant wait for the first film to have an all electric car chase, 3 miles in and the battery goes flat and the pursuit car catches fire and burns for the entirety of the film, and the sound of all those electrons whizzing around will never eclipse a V8 or supercharged climate destroyer.
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That made me laugh cheers
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I hear that Keanu Reeves is making ‘Speed 3’ using an electric bus.
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its going to be called “Gone in 30 hours” once you’ve charged up the battery
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Those speeded up then slowed down then speeded up sequences piss me off too. Every cunts copying it now.
7
The ‘slow mo’ sequences that piss me off most are;
1. where the hero/heroine group are strung out in a line walking towards the camera
2. where the hero tosses a grenade into a building and turns and walks away; cue massive explosion behind
Predictable and boring as fuck
7
Pre modern,ie before 2000,has the best films..the 70s and 80s unsurprisingly produced immense stuff and no CGI bollocks.
Hard Times with Charles Bronson and James Coburn being a personal favourite.
In those days you had directors,editors,cinematographers and writers who knew how to make films as they should be,full blooded entertainment.
Most modern films seem designed to bring on vertigo and a suspected case of the Gay.
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Coburn in Cross of Iron, top notch.
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Coburn was great in that Bond piss-take ‘Our Man Flint’.
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any film with Coburn was good
0
Ronin. That’s one hell of a film! If I don’t watch that once every few months, I start coming across all weird.
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With these large screens in most homes, I can tell if someone is watching shite due to the continual flashing of an imaginary firework display. It makes me having to divert my eyes away whilst walking down the street incase I end up the same way, under a car. These people showing off their enormous screens, leave the curtains open for that sole reason. I’ve occasionally stopped to stare briefly to experiment the length of a scene and in never goes behold a few seconds. Laughable, with a shake of the head and walk on.
The film “Russian Ark” which was filmed in one take comes to mind and I smile with a shake of the head and go home to watch something similar.
3
Alright, Sammy,
“Russian Ark” – a Cunter of culture, I see.
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scene, or shot?
0
As a massive motorsport/car fan, I can’t watch any modern films about either topic. I’ve never seen an 18-speed gearbox, and the stories are too overdramatised. I just end up shouting “oh, for fuck’s sake!” at the telly or “that’s not right.”
I tried watching that film about the titanic battle between Audi and Lancia for the ’83 WRC title recently. It’s historically inaccurate and sloppily done. The rally scenes are fucking dreadful, too.
As for The Fast and The Furious, I saw the first one when I was about 15. I’m fast-approaching 40 and haven’t seen one since. Nor do I plan to. The latest Bond car chase scenes under Daniel Craig can do one, too – that one in Quantum of Solace gave me a fucking migraine.
Rush was a half decent film, mind. As was Ford vs. Ferrari. Le Mans with Steve McQueen is the pinnacle of motorsport movies, though. Pure aural nectar, no fannying around with plot lines. It’s pure fantastic cinematography and racing – pretty much like the race itself!
Some years back when he wasn’t the size of an ample moon or a kindly farmer, Jeremy Clarkson did a segment on The Grand Tour about these fast cut films. It’s called Farmkhana. Despite the predictable twatting about, it’s a good insight into how filmmakers turn something quite naff into something engaging… for some.
1
Quantum of Solace was fucking crap, French shaky cam twat directed it and the massive budget didn’t show on screen. Obviously out wanked by the last one with bull dyke sheboon 007.
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Hi Cuntis, why not relax by watching “Genevieve” the vintage car race film. It will make things more thrilling and exciting when going back to more modern speeds.
Thanks for the cunting.
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I saw that last year after seeing back in the 70’s, Before my time but one I would happily go back to now. And Dinah Sheridan was sexy as hell.
0
I was 20 when ‘The Railway Children’ was released in 1970, and she was 50.
Thirty years my senior, but she made me feel as though I had a sweltering fever.
1
For chase afficionados, here’s one I like. It’s not without its faults, but it’s miles better than the ‘Bourne’ effort referenced above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5YwQt07JK8&t=46s
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I avoid any films made after the mid nineties because I reckon they use subliminal messaging to bring on the gayness and wokery.
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Besides the “black as the hobs”.
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Just watched Dune 2. Fucking rubbish compared to the 1984 version. No suspense and too many people who are cursed with the gayness!
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Francesca Annis was stunning. A really beautiful woman.
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I’m with you on this, Ron. We see this in a lot of ‘action’ films these days and some tv shows too. It’s done presumably to create an effect but if scenes change before you can focus then that effect is lost on me.
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Allan;
Quite an interesting take on this that I saw was a critic who said that action directors liked fast cut precisely because it didn’t allow the audience to dwell on any scene. Meaning that two or three different camera takes could allow for one sequence to be chopped several ways without giving the viewer a chance to realise that that’s what he was seeing. Cheaper, plus it cuts down continuity errors.
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Yes. Far to many “irons” in drama these days.
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He’s pretty good though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOYi4NzxlhE
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ive never like anything Dune-related. All seemed a bit silly.
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I grew up with Thunderbirds and was really looking forward to the live action film. It really was the biggest pile of shit. I watched about 20 minutes of the new series, all CGI bollocks. Fuck me, it was dire. The puppets on strings rock!!!
2
I quite liked it. It had the right spirit. I was 15 years too old for it but thought it was a pretty good update.
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My grandkids love it. I suppose that the child market was its primary target.
The actress playing Lady Penelope was only 24. Needed a more mature type to the play the part, somebody who was proper hot mind.
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Little known fact:
Steve McQueen was due to co-drive a Triumph 2500 in the London to Mexico Rally, but had to ditch it due to filming commitments.
Imagine the status of the 2500 had McQueen participated? They would have become the UK equivalent of the iconic Ford Mustang!
1
About 15 years ago i went to see a Transformers film directed by Michael Bay with some of my sillier friends (one of whom has sadly died since, aged 37).
It would have been just as much fun if Bay had held a sheet of foil in front of my face snd scrunched it noisily for two hours.
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