Too slow qnd long

This is a common complaint in the past 20 years, with this latest generation that has too short an attention span to watch a fully-developed movie. If a movie is clipped and minimized so that it fits that shortened time constraint, it is trite and one isn't properly moved or affected by it. Computer instant messages, cell-phone text messages, short sound/video bites from news and entertainment media sources, these are the nature of today's communication. Much is lost in the haste.

I grew up in the '60s and early '70s, and we expected a movie to last at least 2 hours. [Yes, that's right.] That length did not include end credits, which didn't even exist until roughly 1968 ("Bonnie And Clyde," I think), with a few exceptions that were usually epics (3-4 hours). We felt cheated if they *were* shorter than 2 hours. Indeed, in those days and throughout film history through that time, we expected and almost always (the exception being those epic-length movies) got a double-feature, plus a cartoon or short subject before the movies. That's right, we usually spent about 5 hours in the movie theater.

Pictures had much more substance and much more satisfying story detail -- getting to know the characters makes us care more about them.

You just don't know what movies really should be like. Yes, there were some short ones, but as I said, we were unhappy with that, though there were some good ones. Some stories really can be well-told in 1 1/2 hours, but not most of them.

Learn the truth of this. Watch old movies, which typically were much better than what is produced today. Indeed, a big percentage of today's movies are remakes of truly great movies from that era. Learn to love black-and-white. You'll be glad you did.