I love Twitter, am on it every day, and always get a kick out of interacting. Having said that, at least once a week, I am privy to conversations that have no reason to be in a public forum. I have no examples to provide here--partly because I don't recall the specific instances, and partly because it would be hypocritical to rehash things I shouldn't be seeing to begin with--but it's always borderline obnoxious when I read, for example, various film writers sniping at each other in ways that should be kept to face-to-face conversations or phone calls. Hell, use IM if you want to bitch at someone else. Twitter's not the worst place for this kind of thing, but it always makes me feel uncomfortable.
...I know it's common every once in a while for there to be backlashes against popular culture standbys, but after watching some 1980s-era animated movies this weekend, Pixar needs to be kept out of it. Yes, if you read this blog, you know I am a Pixar apologist (well, not completely; I have little love for Cars and cannot muster up excitement for its sequel), but the movies I've seen this weekend--including Balto, The Land Before Time, and Oliver and Company--prove that Toy Story is not only a clearly influential film on a new type of animation, but is a truly unique, special, and brilliant film. The animation in the three older films is flat and dreary; the scripts are catered to children only, and stupid ones; the characters are bland. Nothing in these films is worth pointing out. Clearly, things changed with The Little Mermaid in 1989, and last year's The Princess and the Frog proved that great animated films don't have to be done by computers all the time; still, these three movies filled me with more respect for Pixar than ever before.
...It is incredibly disheartening to think that nearly 30 days will go by with nothing in multiplexes that I want to see. There's The Town and The Social Network, but that's it for the next 8 weeks or so. And the arthouse cinema is too far to justify a casual drive. Pity.
...The same goes for television. Aside from Mad Men, Louie, and Childrens Hospital, the TV world is slow going for another month. Doldrums of August indeed.
I despise the clubby atmosphere among film writers on Twitter. I guess they can use Twitter however they want, but the sniping and pissing contests and showing off goes against why I expect most people follow them.
ReplyDeleteI also hate the boring up to the minute personal updates that don't have anything to do with movies.
Like I said, it's not for me to tell anyone how they should be using twitter, but I'm on the verge of kicking a number of them out of my film list.
Thank you for giving me a place to rant about something that's been bugging me!