Xref: utzoo news.groups:15924 rec.arts.movies:27902
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From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: preliminary call for disussion: rec.arts.movies subgroups
Message-ID: <50113@bbn.COM>
Date: 27 Dec 89 13:48:19 GMT
References: <49987@bbn.COM> <496.25976370@devsim.mdcbbs.com>
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Reply-To: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
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In article <496.25976370@devsim.mdcbbs.com> jmi@devsim.mdcbbs.com ((JM Ivler) MDC - Douglas Aircraft Co. Long Beach, CA.) writes:
>I would like to see another name besides .classic, but I am at a loss of what to 
>call it... perhaps .vault as in 'film vault' the place that films go when out 
>of first and second run. The .classic conotation seems to me to be a breeding 
>ground for discontent as what is a classic to some people (for instance WHIFFS 
>a rather lame movie with Eddie Albert) is trash to others.


Yes, "classic" does have this problem. How about "classical", as in
"classical Hollywood style"? This denotes only a specific way of
making movies and says nothing about relative merits. One kind of
argument I do *not* want to have is "what is a 'classic'?" -- I agree
that this is a pointless exercise.  The point of this particular
subgroup is to discuss the huge group of films (good AND bad; Orson
Welles AND Eddie Albert) which could fall under the heading of
"classical Hollywood style" -- broadly speaking, feature films from
the Hollywood studio system, 1920 through the early 1960's (see the
excellent book _The Classical Hollywood Cinema_, by David Bordwell,
Janet Staiger & Kristin Thompson for further details).  By any
measure, this group of movies has been the single most dominant
influence in the history of cinema. And yet, it's rarely touched upon
in r.a.m, except in the occasional "list the films" query. The reason
may be that no one is interested. But it's at least possible that it
has more to do with the volume of traffic on r.a.m and the
concentration of that traffic on (1) contemporary movies and (2)
lists/trivia.

Someone else has suggested r.a.m.lists as a home for (2), which I
think is a great idea. Also, the suggestion above for r.a.m.tech, for
discussion of technical aspects of film-making, is an idea I would
support. 

All of this suggests to me that we should leave r.a.m primarily for
discussion of recent/current movies (since that's by far the dominant
tendency in that group anyway). It would still be a busy and active
group, though perhaps slightly less unwieldy than it is now.  And
people with other movie interests could use the Net without each of
them having to set up elaborate filtering programs.

So, after a bit of doubt, maybe I'm coming back to believing that 
rec.arts.movies.classical is a feasible idea.