The Graduate

[jyl]

My 16 y/o daughter and I just watched "The Graduate". Most of us have seen that 45 y/o movie many times, and no longer have any reaction to it. She's been brought up on "modern" movies, and her reactions were interesting.

The deeply shadowed, almost film noir shots - that's something she was not used to, and impressed by. I hardly see those shots in modern movies.

Ben is a character with no concrete reason for his actions, beyond being an empty, lost soul. Today a character like that wouldn't work, his aimlessness would be distracting to modern audiences, unless he were made a parody of something.

The end, what end, "that's the end?" In 2012, you're thinking this must be a set-up for a sequel, no movie can actually not have a conclusive wrapped up ending. But back then, as I recall, this sort of non-ending was pretty common.

Oh, I'd forgotten just how creepy Anne Bancroft is in the movie. Some of her shots are so scary. And Katharine Ross - well, let's just say no more.

Are there older movies that impressed your kids, even without special effects or Johnny Depp?

I made my kids watch "Breaking Away". They were moaning bored for awhile, then they started to get into it, by the end of the movie they were jumping up and down screaming.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

Breakfast Club, The Graduate, Dr. Strangelove, Rooster Cogburn, Dr. Who (Jon Pertwee), Rumpole, 12 Angry Men, Mr. Smith, Meet John Doe, Peter Lore in The Man Who Knew Too Much, D.O.A., Rebecca, I'm sure there are many more I just cannot think of them!

Fabulous acting in The Graduate, I need to watch it again, it has been more than a decade!

[red-beard]

LIttle big man

[ramonesfreak]

are kids so different than they were in the 80s when i saw the graduate? i dont have any kids so i really have no idea. all i remember is that when i was a teenager in the 80's i hated anything contemporary and loved all the stuff from the 50's, 60's and 70's. Now I appreciate alot of 80s music and films alot more than i did then. What i do notice with kids these days is that they seem to actually like all the current crap and dont look as far back as my friends and i did...

personally, i think the world has gone to hell and all the young people (anyone less than 30) of today are lost and too accepting of garbage

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

If it makes you feel better, I spent some time last weekend with a group of early 20 somethings who were discussing classic literature, Maths, Engineering, old techniques of farming, silent film, impressionist art, improvisational theatre, computer intelligence/intelligent design, board games, face to face RPG games, etc. I do not remember any phones or pads coming out and one of them knew more about Python, Monty than I did!!!

I hope that all is not lost! But yeah, these are kids who are bound for their Doctorates and beyond within the next two years.

I got to sit with a bunch of the other type yesterday. From what I gleaned in the conversations going on around me, they felt "entitled" to have video game players and felt working was beneath them. They expected the state to provide for them if their parents did not.

Don't know why, but the net worth in the room might not have been enough to buy my dinner last night, I cooked a pizza for The Mrs and myself and we enjoyed ciders and water. Maybe I was supposed to have fed the room????

[Icemaster]

Godfather.

[kanadary]

rocky horror or a clockwork orange..

[R K T]

The Grapes of Wrath

[jyl]

There's a wide range of kids today, from ignorant louts to brilliants to old-fashioned hard workers. Same as there has always been, in my lifetime, and probably as long as homo sapiens has been around. Go and read stuff from any era, the old fogeys were always complaining about the new generation of kids.

My 16 y/o daughter listens to Bowie, Hendrix, Steely Dan, Charlie Parker and Lady Gaga and various new artists I've never heard of. She reads classics and Vogue. Getting A's in her pre-calculus class and her darkroom photography class but alas a B in her chemistry class. Fluent in French but she dropped Chinese - where's the respect for her elders? Doesn't play video games but loves YouTube. Loves both The Phantom Of The Opera and SpongeBob Squarepants. You get the idea - hard to paint kids with a singe brush.

[ramonesfreak]

Originally Posted by Groesbeck Hurricane

If it makes you feel better, I spent some time last weekend with a group of early 20 somethings who were discussing classic literature, Maths, Engineering, old techniques of farming, silent film, impressionist art, improvisational theatre, computer intelligence/intelligent design, board games, face to face RPG games, etc. I do not remember any phones or pads coming out and one of them knew more about Python, Monty than I did!!!

I hope that all is not lost! But yeah, these are kids who are bound for their Doctorates and beyond within the next two years.

I got to sit with a bunch of the other type yesterday. From what I gleaned in the conversations going on around me, they felt "entitled" to have video game players and felt working was beneath them. They expected the state to provide for them if their parents did not.

Don't know why, but the net worth in the room might not have been enough to buy my dinner last night, I cooked a pizza for The Mrs and myself and we enjoyed ciders and water. Maybe I was supposed to have fed the room????

I dont mean to derail this thread, but i think its relevant to the overall topic of the OP.

I have thought much about this in recent years. Regarding why kids today dont seem motivated or they feel entitled: Just take music as an example. When I was a teenager, like many kids, I was (and still am) obsessed with music.

If I wanted music, I had to work very hard to get it.

If I liked just 1 song by an artist, say "call me" by Blondie, I had to buy the entire record in most cases. Sure I could buy the 45, but I had a walkman and a CD player. Today, if a kid wants "call me", he can go get it for at most, $1. He can most certainly get it for free from a friend or his local library for free. I had to pay $9.99 to get that song.

To get that song, I also had to drive to the record store which required a car and gas to put in the car. I couldnt download it at 3am or whenever it was convenient.

To get that song, I had to mow lawns, detail cars, repair bicycles etc.....

Where are the record stores today? Where are the HiFi shops? gone, or going because kids can get anything they want on the quick and cheap!

When I was a teen, I wanted to get a HiFi like Alex in Clockwork Orange, so I worked for it and got one!

....the world has changed. i can feel it in the water, i can smell it in the air

[BeyGon]

I just remember I was in Singpore when The Graduate came out, saw it in a very nice theater. The place was great back them.

[foxpaws]

Ramones -

I bet your folks said the same thing about your generation...

People have been saying this about every generation.

Older movies my daughter likes - Anything by Kubrick (she is a huge Spartacus fan), almost all Hitchcock, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Silence of the Lambs. Also many DePalma movies - we have watched Phantom of the Paradise and Blow Out a few times together. Doesn't like Scarface though... Isn't a Godfather fan. We have Time Warped together though... And spent a few late nights at Eraserhead...

< edit > Forgot- we just watched The Loved One a couple of weeks ago - what a great movie - I had forgotten the hilarious performances in that movie, Liberace as a casket salesman - a true classic.

[ramonesfreak]

Originally Posted by foxpaws

Ramones -

I bet your folks said the same thing about your generation...

People have been saying this about every generation.

Older movies my daughter likes - Anything by Kubrick (she is a huge Spartacus fan), almost all Hitchcock, Raging Bull. Taxi Driver, Silence of the Lambs. Also many DePalma movies - we have watched Phantom of the Paradise and Blow Out a few times together. Doesn't like Scarface though... Isn't a Godfather fan. We have Time Warped together though...

I dont think they did. I think they saw my generation through me, which wasnt all that much different than their own. My folks didnt mingle with younger people the way I do, they only mingled with their own kids. Not only that, I appreciated and loved the stuff their generation watched and created which was of very high quality....music and film of the 60's..I wasnt even born till 72. People who were teens and 20's in the 1960's rarely ever refer to that generation's art as crap the way generations can now about their own product


Even back in the early 80's, we teens could see that there was alot of interesting and great stuff from "way back" before we were born

[ramonesfreak]

oh, and if your daughter likes Kubrik's style in Spartacus, have her check out Barry Lyndon. I think its right up there with his best. A little too sexy to feel comfy watching with your dad though...

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by Groesbeck Hurricane

Don't know why, but the net worth in the room might not have been enough to buy my dinner last night, I cooked a pizza for The Mrs and myself and we enjoyed ciders and water. Maybe I was supposed to have fed the room????

If you feed them, they will come. Sometimes even if you don't want them to come...

[foxpaws]

Originally Posted by ramonesfreak

oh, and if your daughter likes Kubrik's style in Spartacus, have her check out Barry Lyndon. I think its right up there with his best. A little too sexy to feel comfy watching with your dad though...

Oh, she loves them all - even Eyes Wide Shut... I have a huge boxed set of all his films...

She will put on Barry Lyndon just for the Chieftains on the soundtrack...

[ramonesfreak]

Originally Posted by foxpaws

Oh, she loves them all - even Eyes Wide Shut... I have a huge boxed set of all his films...

She will put on Barry Lyndon just for the Chieftains on the soundtrack...

If you have the box set im pretty sure you have that awsome documentary Kubrik..A Life in Pictures. What a great film

The making of The Shining is also really cool to see...



One thing I can say positive about today's youth, they seem way more interested in good suchi than we ever did, and because of it we have alot more sushi joints to choose from

[foxpaws]

actually I have the 'white' boxed set that came out in 1999 - the one that Kubrick oversaw the making of, right before his death and the release of Eyes Wide Shut (which I picked up later). It doesn't have the documentary - but I have seen it.

I have a friend who has one of the Moloko 'ladies'. The plastic statues they used in the Moloko bar scene in 'Clockwork'. It is weird.... but cool in many ways.

[McLovin]

Originally Posted by jyl

The end, what end, "that's the end?" In 2012, you're thinking this must be a set-up for a sequel, no movie can actually not have a conclusive wrapped up ending. But back then, as I recall, this sort of non-ending was pretty common.

Oh, I'd forgotten just how creepy Anne Bancroft is in the movie. Some of her shots are so scary.

I watched it the other night on Netflix, for the first time in a while.

Not sure why you say it has a non-ending. Love prevails, he gets the girl and they drive off (literally) into the sunset. Not sure how much more of a definitive end you can get. Show them all the way to the nursing home/grave?

(Although if the movie were current, and a hit, there'd for sure be "The Graduate II - Beleagured Mid Level Office Worker" where they are married, Anne Bancroft is the wacky now-remarried grandmother still hitting on Ben, etc.)

Agree 100% on the Anne Bancroft thing. I had that exact same reaction, I'd forgotten how creepy she is in the movie. My recollection was more straight MILF-y. 60" of modern high def doesn't help her much!

[Z-man]

They don't make them like they used to. Back then, movies had more depth. The filming required more thought -- if a tree was out of place in the background, you couldn't just CGI it out. Thus, they had to be more careful and deliberate with their camera placement -- that was a talent, and that is all but gone today. Camera angles were also used more to express the mood of the scene -- nowadays, not so much.

Some other movies I'd recommend:
-Hitchcock's The Birds and Vertigo - Seeing his creative talents behind the camera alone make these movies worth watching.
-2001: A Space Odyssy
- American Grafitti
- Apocalypse Now
- Carrie
- Christine
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original from 1951)
- Duel - Speilburg's directorial debut - talk about setting the mood through camera angles...
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The Maltese Falcon
- The Great Escape
- The Italian Job (1969 Original)
- On the Beach (1959)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Rear Window
- Rebel Without a Cause
- The Sound of Music
- War of the Worlds (1953)