this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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[–] Myron@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Of course. Give them a camera. Their natural desire to be in control will take over.

[–] BigMilk13@lemmy.world 92 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

thumbnail of The Brutalist (4 hrs long) okay perhaps not the best example

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 34 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And not exactly 4 hours of easy watching.

[–] SweepTheLeg@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's not for the Marvel crowd but it's an amazing movie wIth world class cinematography and it sucks you in.

It didn't seem like 4 hours at all to me.

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[–] milk@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not a film student but I assume that long, comparatively difficult films by Tarkovsky, Ozu, etc are a lot of what the film students are watching and I would imagine that the professors are commentating on more recent developments

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Tarkovsky films are incredible but are a "watch once in your lifetime" sort of deal.

I asked my grandmother if she had seen STALKER and she said yes, when it came out in theaters, like 40 years ago (in the USSR), and I asked if she was interested in re-watching it with her grandkids

She said: "No. It's a very difficult film. A very difficult film. You watch it only once because you don't get the same feeling a second time"

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I watched it like thrice and it only got better and more fascinating on every rewatch.

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[–] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That may be true but the example in the article, Jules et Jim, is under 2 hours long.

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[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 52 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Love that people complain about the length of movies while simultaneously happily siting through eight, hour+ long episodes of Stranger Things over two evenings.

Especially when many hours could have easily been left on the cutting room floor of most streaming shows, but they need to streeetch the runtime so that the writers can meet their contractual, or whatever other internal requirements.

[–] toddestan@lemmy.world 43 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

My favorite is when they they say something like "it starts getting good in season 3". Like I'm going to watch tens of hours of a show that kind of sucks just to see if it actually starts getting good or not?

Of course, the reality is that they aren't really watching the show like I would - as in, they aren't sitting down and giving it their undivided attention. The show is on, but they're also on their phones the entire time, or it's on in the background and they are doing something else, or whatever. Probably one of the reasons why the show feels like it's full of filler - they need to make sure that someone that's only sort of paying attention can still follow what's going on.

[–] konalt@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] toddestan@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

Doesn't surprise me at all, really. Seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy too, because if you make a show like that, then someone who sits down and actually tries to watch it is more likely to start getting bored and starts to get out that second screen.

The other issue, particularly with movies, is a lot of this stuff is created with the idea of making it easier to translate to other languages, hence things like the overly simplified dialog.

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[–] PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 28 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Love that people complain about the length of movies while simultaneously happily siting through eight, hour+ long episodes of Stranger Things over two evenings.

Because a movie is a constant continuation, where as each episode has a hard end and you can stop and decide if you want to continue or stop.

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[–] morphballganon@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Not to completely invalidate your point but streaming shows are pretty formulaic in terms of pacing, with convenient break intervals, and are seldom very deep. Films are harder to break up around a bathroom trip or decide to put on hold until another day.

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I read the other day that Netflix goes out of their way to restate the premises vocally and frequently as possible, and has as much plot duplication as possible so that people can still enjoy it while they're watching their phones.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago

i mean some of the movies film professors pick, i had trouble sitting through, uh, 20-30 years ago (that is not an estimate i was one of those students) so is this on the professors? what are the films?

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey chadGPT, summarize this Fellini for me.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 weeks ago

Great question, let's dig into this! Federico Fellini's is a sequel to his previous hit film Se7en, and its protagonists are a group of eight friends. One of the friends becomes a father, and his baby counts as the "½" in the title. The group gets into various crazy adventures, such as being a failed film director, fantasising about hot women, having mommy issues, and hating religion. The overall message may be summarised as: friendship is magic.

Do you have any further questions on French New Wave films?

[–] _lilith@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

You want to re-calibrate from the constant barrage of content? Find a way to watch The Wrath of God its a good movie that opens with a series of 30 second set shots of water flowing. Its like anti-transformers level of stillness

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That's like saying math students are having trouble sitting through a calculus class. All that means is the better, more deserving ones who put the work in will be successful. A tale as old as time.

[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Or it means that the education system is tailored for one specific learning style and that those with different styles or a neurodivergency are shit out of luck.

[–] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

Or the more likely, it's a bunch of new students who've grown up watching everything in portrait mode and short bursts with Subway Runner or someone cutting soap for some reason on half the screen.

[–] Tilgare@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I'm absolutely not an expert and not qualified here. But if we accept that you're 100% right and need way more broad options, is it even possible to solve this at scale? (I'm assuming we're all talking about the US since our education is atrocious). 350M Americans spread out across 3.5M sq miles - only smaller in landmass than China, Canada, and Russia, but with substantially LESS uninhabitable land and a relatively large population. That means our population density is nearly ¼ of China's.

How many different learning styles do we support? Do they each get their own tailored schools, each with their own full staff? How do you equally support the 1/5 of the country (60M+) that live in all those spread out rural communities? And what time scale can we even fix this problem on, understanding that we're in the midst of a teacher shortage as it is?

I think proper spending on education absolutely is part of this equation, but someone will have to gut our military spending, so that's hurdle number one. But regardless, tax dollars being a limited resource... I wonder how much spending doing this right would cost. For a full educational overhaul.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There’s a difference between a movie you want to go see in a theater and the film assigned as classwork by a professor.

Same as if you were told you had to read a book by an author you don’t care for in a writing style that doesn’t click with you snd maybe even from a different time with framing that doesn’t exist today.

It’s work.

Maybe desire to play with a phone and use social media might be an issue, but at least some of these same kids that have a hard time sitting through a film would have doodled, started falling asleep or just daydreamed instead.

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[–] Gates9@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

Oppenheimer was rough. The whole fuckin thing about whether he was a commie or not, or just how commie he was, is it commie to not want to drop the bomb, etc. Myopic, tedious. You could cut an hour out and it would be the same movie. They didn’t even get into the “Demon Core”.

[–] Jayjader@jlai.lu 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm surprised that's what your experience of it was. To me it was about his hopeless (arguably naive) struggle to do what he thought was right and true in a time where both truth and morality were mostly becoming weaponized in service of alignments of power. He thought he could thread the needle only to time and time again have simply been used by others to further their own agendas, leaving hurt bystanders in his wake.

I somewhat agree that an hour could be cut out, though I don't exactly know which parts.

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[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I only ever had Facebook, Twitter and Reddit and just couldn’t get into Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. so this is really perplexing to me. It just can’t be true can it?

I also can’t stand using a phone while watching a TV show (paid streaming, no ads) or a movie. It’s sad to me that people are unwilling to immerse themselves in something for just a while.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Did you have an iPad/phone shoved in front of you during mealtime, or when waiting for a sibling during their sports practice or game, or while waiting at the doctors office, or if your parents had guests or were visiting a friend, or in literally every single potential moment of boredom that could be filled with learning patience, reflection and just enjoying silence?

Because that's the new normal for a whole generation of kids.

I have young kids in gen alpha, bought them up with quite minimal screen time, and the behavioural differences between them and their peers that have been bought up with heavy screen use iPad as the primary tool of choice is stark and very concerning for those kids' future.

And lemme tell you, none of the parents I gently tried to encourage the importance of boredom with over the years changed their behaviour much. As soon as it became a regular tool to deal with an child needing attention it became a very hard thing to part with.

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

It distresses me to see this trend. It's like some parents have a reflex to stick a tablet in front of their kid, even if the kid doesn't need it or ask for it.

I work with a 4 year old kid who loves looking out windows. When he has free time, he often goes to look through them, even though there's nothing particular interesting going on out there. He's a chill little dude, completely mute, and I've never seen him angry. I've been told he likes to sit in a big chair on his front porch and watch everything and everyone go by, like a little old man on a summer day.

Yet every morning he comes in, he walks in holding a tablet. It doesn't make any sense to me. I'm fairly certain this kid would be happy staring out a window for the whole 15 or so minutes it takes to arrive.

I always loved staring out the window in the car - I loved long rides because of it, showing little to no interest in whatever our destination was. It gave my mind the space to wander, to ponder, to go on imaginative flights of fancy that helped me learn to organize my thoughts. It's upsetting that kids are being deprived of such moments nowadays.

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Why pick a major you hate??

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I don't think the kids hate it, just that the attention span isn't what it used to be.

But it also works for us imo, to a degree. I at least find the pacing of 80's or 90's tv much calmer. And I daresay a movie from the B&W era would be slower still.

And I don't think there's yet a professional short-form making masterclass so that's where the kids end up

[–] limelight79@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (18 children)

Ever watch 2001: A Space Odyssey? I love it, but man it's slow.

Also it's a movie that asks more questions than it answers, which annoys a lot of people.

I saw Terminator 3 in the theater. The first 20-30:minutes, with that crazy chase, I was like, is this going to be the whole film? Eventually it does show down and take a breath, but I still remember my initial reaction to that.

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[–] kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

I watched both "Dune" from Denis Villeneuve yesterday, back to back, thats gotta be 4h straight. Went to pee once

[–] Dadifer@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

To be fair those older movies are long as fuck. I watched something with 10 minute long opening credits the other day. I had to skip it.

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I remember watching 2001, a space odyssey, and being thoroughly underwhelmed by it. Visually stunning, but if I hadn't also read the book, I'd have had absolutely no idea what was happening for most of the film.

[–] hanke@feddit.nu 9 points 2 weeks ago

Watching it builds character

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)
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[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

The Truffaut film referenced is an hour and 45 minutes.

What movie had 10 minutes of opening credits? Back when credits were at the open, it used to be about 30 seconds of credits.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 18 points 2 weeks ago (15 children)

Plenty movies from the 40s and 50s ran all the credits at the beginning along with an overture. IMO the overture is one of the best parts of older movies, which often had amazing, sweeping soundtracks

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[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I saw It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World recently and the whole movie was like 1 hour too long at minimum, with 10 minutes to both start and end the movie. Funny, but way too long.

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[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

Well they should fail then I guess.

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

What about three-hour films?

Some modern ones are absolute garbage, but some are worth the bladder pain!

[–] boydster@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 weeks ago

I don't think he knows about Second Disc, PattyMcB

[–] t_berium@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

No wonder most of of what's being released is utter garbage by people with no life experience and anything to say.

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