Quote Originally Posted by miles View Post
I think it is a bit harsh to condemn all cinema as I think there have been a lot of great films over the years. Over recent weeks I have been re watching my Hitchcock collection and you can't argue against the quality of films like Strangers on a train or North by Northwest. Just brilliant. They are not the same character doing the same things again and again, though Hitchcock does like his innocent man on the run quite a lot.

I do despise modern celebrity culture though and all the crappy TV that exists these days. Society is extremely dumbed down and you see it in the plethora of low brow and downright stupid films we get these days. The plots are skin thin and its all about the CGI. I haven't been to the pictures in ages and for good reason. Indiana Jones 4 really let me down.

Books are definitely a far richer experience than film. This year I have worked my way through a number of Dostoevsky novels and the depth and scope of the writing is at times just astonishing. In many ways it is quite humbling as I can't write like that. I draw much more on the simple, say it direct Orwell style approach to expression. Likewise, film by its very nature has to be relatively simple, but popular films of several decades ago seemed to have a linguistic richness and depth that is all too often missing from today's popular films.
The fact that you called it the pictures means that I dont doubt this for a second