Moving Pictures
Amba ponders how new technology will enter into the movies:
It must be my nature, because I've thought instead about how new technology will make old movies incomprehensible to our children. So much of the plots depended on things the characters didn't know, or couldn't do, which everyone now can know or do.
It was a dark and stormy night. The car died on a lonely road. The young woman was alone at the wheel. She had to call a tow truck, call her dad, call her husband -- call anyone. But the only sign of humanity visible for miles around was from the lonely farmhouse at the top of the hill. She turned her head slowly up to that sickly yellow rectangle of light and trembled at the thought of what she must do ....
"Duh, mom. Why doesn't she just use her cellie?"
I was trying to think of a comparably artful use of today's technology. People obsessively staring into their laptops and checking their e-mail or Crackberrys in social settings is pretty boring and annoying, but somewhere there's a director who will make it gripping.
It must be my nature, because I've thought instead about how new technology will make old movies incomprehensible to our children. So much of the plots depended on things the characters didn't know, or couldn't do, which everyone now can know or do.
It was a dark and stormy night. The car died on a lonely road. The young woman was alone at the wheel. She had to call a tow truck, call her dad, call her husband -- call anyone. But the only sign of humanity visible for miles around was from the lonely farmhouse at the top of the hill. She turned her head slowly up to that sickly yellow rectangle of light and trembled at the thought of what she must do ....
"Duh, mom. Why doesn't she just use her cellie?"
Labels: Movies
