Speed? Adam, really. Speed?
> All of the best movie innovations were made (roughly) in the years
>between 1980 and 1994, starting with The Empire Strikes Back and running
>through Pulp Fiction.
I see your point, but i think you're just feeling the trunk of the elephant
and calling it a snake (an anaconda!). You gotta look at the big picture.
The best movies can't be pinned down to a decade - Citizen Kane, Hair,
North by Northwest, The Seven Samurai, Harold and Maude, Cool Hand Luke,
and ET all offer something, but i think the best innovations were made in
the 70's and exploited in the 80's --
Spielberg's Jaws (1976) was the first blockbuster of its kind - paving the
path to Star Wars and Empire (nothing started with Empire, it was just a
great link in the chain)
Scott's Alien was 1979, touching off the powder keg of the New Enemy (as
the cold war was melting and Russia wasn't as scary anymore)
Woody Allen has inspired intelligent comedy since 1965, and he was immortal
before 1980.
Taxi Driver, half of Woody Allen's movies, all of Altman's good stuff,
Corman's initial exploitation films and later B-movies, The Godfather,
Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti, Dr. Strangelove (60's), A Clockwork
Orange, all paved roads for 80's movies to drive down. In fact, i think
that although a lot of great movies came out of the 80's, probably the only
one that really started anything new was the Breakfast Club, which i loved,
but i will never forgive it for eventually inspiring its 90's anti-christ
little brother, Kicking and Screaming (very clever dialogue, but that was
its only dimension).
My biggest complaint of the 80's is that there were no good war movies that
hadn't already been done (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, et al were fantastic,
but reruns), or westerns outside of Clint (heretofore known as, "the man").
You can't call a decade the age of movies if it didn't have a magnificent
seven or a dirty dozen lurking in some dark foxhole or corral.
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****** "The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new
landscapes but in having new eyes."
- Marcel Proust