MOST OF THE CAST...
...on this here film were high as low-orbit satellites and it makes for honest performances.
This is the problem with actors today - while "working" they're happily sober.
I miss Altman and the 70's.
You said it all. Altman, and this film are perfection in my eyes.
I could catch a falling star if you asked me to, but I can't seem to find one to hold on to.
The cast of this film were all PERFECTLY CAST. That is something that can't be said about ANY film in todays day and age. Nobody really takes their character into consideration, or thought. No one writes any underlying themes for the characters, or reads them as human. And the films like "Atonement" are so focused on the theme that they forget the character involvement and narration.
Nashville, as stated before, is and always will remain a staple of how American A films with the right mindset and agenda should be, Honest depictions of our world today.
Today.
Young man is angry! Girl is afraid! He wants to get high, she wants to get paid! City's Burning!
I'd say The Dark Knight was pretty perfectly cast. Pulp Fiction, too. No Country For Old Men. Zodiac. The Departed. Traffic. No films in this day and age are perfectly cast? You need to watch more movies.
Anton Chigurh is dead and Spider-Man 3 is superior in every way to Funny Games.
Yeah, Hollywood movie making in general may have been in a decline for a long time, but there´s a real wealth of talent out there as far as acting´s concerned. If only there were enough interesting pictures to match that talent.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
I'm so sick of hearing this. Hollywood has always made tons of bad movies. The only reason there seem to be more great movies from yesteryear is because all of the awful movies (which there were actually more of back then, because more movies were being made) get forgotten and not put on DVD. Such a lame cliche about modern moviemaking. It's neither true or intelligent.
Anton Chigurh is dead and Spider-Man 3 is superior in every way to Funny Games.
Yeah sure Hollywood has always produced heaps upon heaps of crap - it´s just that in the seventies, there was an uncommonly large number of great, original pictures to balance things out. How many really great Hollywood flicks have there been this decade? Out of the ones I´ve seen, I´m not sure the number would even be in double digits.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Not to mention that movies in the '70's weren't drenched in CGI. There was still a level of personality and "interaction" between the audience and the story. There seemed to be an emphasis on an actual story. These days, it's all about remakes and making movies "inspired by" toys or tv shows.
I suppose it's all just a reflection on society in general. Back then our movies didn't have alot of special effects but the little bit they might have were so cool cuz it was all new and exciting. We didn't expect more cuz we didn't know what more could be. Our personal lives weren't drenched in technology so therefore we didn't mind that our movies weren't.
Smokey & The Bandit wouldn't have been the same with cell phones instead of c.b. radios. :-)
For comparison, here are the nominees for Best Picture in 1975 and the two years preceeding
1975:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (winner)
Barry Lyndon
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
Nashville
1974:
The Godfather Part II (winner)
Chinatown
Lenny
The Conversation
The Towering Inferno
1973:
The Sting (winner)
A Touch of Class
American Graffiti
The Exorcist
Cries and Whispers
Those three years have at minimum NINE classic films and, arguably, as many as a dozen.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Nominees for Best Picture in 2008:
Slumdog Millionare (winner)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
2007:
No Country For Old Men (winner)
There Will Be Blood
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
2006:
The Departed (winner)
Babel
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
Obviously we don't have the weight of 35 years of reflection on those contemporary films but straight off I'd declare only 3 potential classics: Milk, No Country, and There Will Be Blood.
Agree or disagree?
[deleted]
First of all, yes, the cast is amazing. Karen Black, Geraldine Chaplin, and Shelley Duvall all in one film? Secondly, the films of the seventies WERE better. Then filmmakers cared about making quality pictures with good stories and deep characters and actually had very little studio interference. The success of Jaws and Star Wars began changing that. Filmmakers and studios started wanting BLOCKBUSTERS so more movies geared toward 14 year old boys were rolled into production. If a film couldn't guarantee a multi-million dollar opening weekend it wasn't worth it. The result of that sort of thinking on today's marketplace? The theaters being saturated with remakes of old horror films and comic book adaptations. Who are today's Altman's? Scorsese's? Allen's? DePalma's? Darren Aranofski is good but who else?
We'll see whose the filthiest person alive! We'll just see!
I see only 3 or 4 classics in the 70's list. That said, I only see one potential classic in the recent list.