I think it has always been this way. I worked in a video rental store in the 90's, and every movie was either a military story (Vietnam: bad, Russians: bad, current US military: good), courtroom drama, divorce drama, or high school / college comedy. A few decent psychological thrillers and campy horror flicks too. Basically a never-ending stream of the same movie with different actors. Hollywood has never been accused of being creative or daring.
At least in the 90's, most movies were around 90 minutes. Nowadays, if it's less than 2.5 hours, it's a minor miracle.
All that said, I'm still a sucker for mindless entertainment. Even if movie night has become a bladder endurance contest.
I think the '90s had a bit more variety than the '10s and (for now) '20s.
E.g. we seem to have lost good legal procedurals, thrillers, weird fiction, and "small scale" sci-fi.
Fo example, what are the'10s equivalents of "A Few Good Men", "Seven", "Dark City" and "The 13th Floor"?
There is _some_ stuff, but less than before, replaced by a massive amount of super hero movies or long-running franchises.
As a support clue, I invite you to consider the winners of the MTV Movie Awards, which are more "popular" than other Awards:
92 Terminator 2: Judgment Day
93 A Few Good Men
94 Menace II Society
95 Pulp Fiction
96 Seven
97 Scream
98 Titanic
99 There's Something About Mary
00 The Matrix (bonus: not 90s)
compare with the 10s
10 The Twilight Saga: New Moon
11 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
12 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
13 Marvel's The Avengers
14 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
15 The Fault In Our Stars
16 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
17 Beauty and the Beast
18 Black Panther
19 Avengers: Endgame
I have the feeling most "risky" movies, for lack of a better word, have moved to streaming services.
The 90s also coincides with the end of the theater business. It trickled into the 00s a bit, but not by much.
You could have a first run movie in a movie theater that cost less than a few millions to make, and it had a shot of finding an audience. Movies could hang around for more than a couple of weeks because it didn't cost three digits to take a family to the theater and have a box of popcorn.
Now, if the movie doesn't make $900 billion by the end of the opening credits, it's yanked. Movie makers can't compete with major studios with tent pole IP for screen space, so they've taken their talents to streaming services like Neflix, or even YouTube.
There's also a communal aspect of movies in the US that's gone. Cultural touchstones aren't made in the movie theater anymore. It's all divided and subdivided by algorithms so the geeks and jocks (or greasers and socs, or Jets and Sharks) never have to mingle unless they make an effort. These days you can mix in a constant stream of ethnic and racial grievances about who is represented or not, or how much, or all the other social justice palaver that makes our current world so very lovely and livable.
> At least in the 90's, most movies were around 90 minutes. Nowadays, if it's less than 2.5 hours, it's a minor miracle.
I didn't even notice this inflation in movie length until I went back to try to watch older 90 minute movies. They feel short now, almost unfulfilling. Gladiator (2000) at 2h35m feels like the right pace.
I think after Game of Thrones (ex the last 2 seasons), I'm used to more drawn out scenes and development
A deadline is not the defining factor of a project; a clear definition of "done" is the defining factor. I have dozens of projects that have no specific deadline, but I know for sure when they will be done, because I will have achieved what I intended to do.
Agreed. Thiago's introductory PARA writings do seem to imply a strict deadline, but like the parent, I use a concrete definition of completion ("completability") as the defining characteristic of a project. If I can't do this, then it's a major red flag and there's some deeper problem and the thing either isn't a project (e.g. it's an "Area" - something you to want to maintain a standard on over time) or it's not well defined enough yet and there's prior work needed.
Case study: Frederico Vittici of MacStories recently wrote about revising his own system to eliminate deadline times from his system as unnecessary overhead that he'd picked up long ago. It was a case of an item from "someone else's system" which was adding stress for no benefit.
All organizational systems are really custom-fit jobs. Look at others' systems and understand the individual techniques and how they fit together. Then apply those to your situation. This is a bit like the advice to not just take someone's complicated dotfile setup (vim, shell, etc.) and add it to your own wholesale. Instead to learn and apply piece-by-piece, understanding that sometimes several pieces must "go in together" to make everything work as intended. (this also applies 100% to every single software team's process in my entire career, btw.)
I will also add that, for photographers, there is bundle from Adobe that I consider to be a tremendous value. For about $10/month (where I live, it's easy to spend more than that on a single drink in a bar), I get access to both LightRoom and Photoshop. I've tried open source alternatives, and they are good, but none of them are necessarily better than the Adobe product.
I hate the fact that I am paying for yet another subscription, but in this case, over the course of 5 years, I am just barely paying the retail price of the old CD-based product. So (a) I don't feel like I'm being fleeced, and (b) I get to spread the payments out without really paying more.
Every time I've tried moving into the world of FOSS photography, I've wasted dozens of hours trying to figure out how to do relatively simple things, modifying and tweaking configurations, or completely removing and reinstalling because an update broke something that should have never broken. I work in software, so I'm not exactly a dummy on this stuff; and I know that sometimes that's just part of the deal - especially in a world where you get what you pay for.
In the end, I had to decide whether I wanted my hobby time to be focused on working with my photos or working with my software. And that is why I happily pay.
> whether I wanted my hobby time to be focused on working with my photos or working with my software.
Exactly.
I aggressively delete most images as-soon-as they are on the file system. (Is this image worth my time?) So less of an image management problem.
I use ~5% of what RawTherapee provides, because I no longer struggle to make OK pictures from flawed images. Instead I make pictures I like from OK images.
On the photography forums it's hilarious to see people spend $5k-$10k on camera gear and whine about spending $10/mo because it's too expensive. Time is money like everything else and I'm sure a ton of time was spent getting this all together to save how much?
I've tried open source photo editing before, and honestly, the editing experience is pretty good. I've always struggled to match Lightroom for library management however, even if Lightroom doesn't deal with my network drive properly (it always thinks it's out of sync). And so, like you, I've always ended up going back to Adobe's photography plan.
I would really love to use open source tools instead, the network drive bug is very annoying and not being able to run on Linux is pretty unfortunate. The overall process just ends up being quicker with Lightroom than Darktable or RawTherapee though :(
I would challenge the need to track partial completion. A well-crafted item in a checklist is either done or it is not.
If your concern is about indicating that you started something and are now waiting on results, then I would argue that there are actually 2 separate items there ("do the thing" and "receive the results").
The problem with a "partial completion" indicator is that it doesn't really tell you anything about how much of the thing is still left to do. You'll have to think about it when you come back to it, which you will do anyway if you simply leave the item unchecked.
Good point! (And this is how I’m currently operating). If your list will be stretched over a team or over multiple days, I think it’s worth it to prioritize the specifics of what has been done and not done.
However, for a single day, personal todo list, I’d prefer to have fewer lines in my list and keep the details of what exactly is still pending in that partially complete item in my head. Seems easier to glance at. It would be nice for markdown interpreters to have an option for this for those who want to use it. I wonder if this could be added as a CSS tweak …
Agreed. Partially completed might be nice if you're tracking someone else's work (subordinates) but for my own, I would need at least one more item saying where I left off or why I didn't finish in one sitting.
I'm sure this works for Adam making god knows what at ILM though.. its just not for me in a software dev environment.
