let me just say that I spent A LOT of time on the 211 (STCUM bus). A fucking lot of time. I hated that bus. I really hated it. But for what lay at the other end, after getting on the stop at Beaconsfield Boul. and Boul. St. Charles ...heading east. Lionel Groulx (which American's bastardize as Lion-El Gr...Gr....Grullux?) and then you are on your way to excitement.
And then as a Master's and PhD student, I lived in NDG, just a stone's throw away from multiple metro stops and only a brisk 45 minute walk to Concordia.

I can't stand superzero movies. So formulaic. I refuse to watch them. Jurassic Galaxy or whatever they are amped up to now, also sucks donkey balls.

I did like "Joker" (dark as hell, but it reminded me of Taxi Driver, which is one of my all time favorites, and is also dark as hell.) Gimme Scorsese 70s-90s movies over the stuff being churned out today.

One thing that I love about so many scorsese-style films is the setting. I love seeing the shitty, gritty New York of old times. Fascinating as hell.

This is the most New York circa 1970s scene of all time:
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And this (esp. the oily drummer busker)
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And what else depicts New York City attitude more than this?
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This movie is a time machine. Skip to 0:55 for the magic.
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Raging Bull and Goodfellas are equally amazing, and Casino is not far behind. Brilliant stuff.

Yeah, no interest whatsoever. I never read comic books as a kid either. Only Mad Magazine. Or Cracked. I wasn't interested if things weren't realistic. My Matchbox and Dinky cars had to be as close to the real thing as possible. Had no use for those exaggerated caricatures with massive engines popping out of their hoodless chassis.

So I was a spoilsport. Could never get past the plot holes and logical impossibilities. Same with movies dealing with the supernatural. Ghosts walking through walls but knocking dishes off kitchen counters? What's that about? The Exorcist was well-done, shocking and somewhat compelling. But it was never frightening. And when she turns her head all the way around? That was amusing and funny, in the same vein as cheesy horror movies.

Tangentially, and this could be a generational marker, I never got into video games. Oh, I spent mucho time and quarters in arcades playing pinball and Pacman, but I grew out of it. I'll never forget how surprised I was in the mid-1990s when I encountered a crew of early twenty-something Canadian and American ESL teachers in Taiwan (I was late twenties) gathered around the TV set with remotes playing video games at their apartment.

"We got a great deal on this Nintendo console!" one of them enthused. "What, for video games?" I said, stupidly. I thought maybe one of them was going to take it back to a nephew for Christmas.

Having haughtily said all that, I always liked those racecar games at the arcades where you sit down inside the unit and control the car with an actual steering wheel and foot pedals. The Youtube videos I've seen look realistic and enticing.

Crikey...yeah, this is a generational divide. And I totally see what you're saying. What's funny is that back in the 1980s I would have said the same thing about TV shows from the 1950s or early 1960s. Too caricatured, too over-the-top, did people really talk and act like that? Etc.

I would only argue that there are undoubtedly some gems out there from the olden days that someone otherwise averse to the general vibe of the era might still find worth watching.

Ha. I could have written this post. Mad Magazine was a major formative part of my childhood... so were Matchbox cars, the more realistic the better :haha:

I was never much of a video gamer either. The last home console I ever seriously played was an Atari. My wife got a Wii when that was the fad, and now I have a PS5 for my kids. But I seldom ever pick up a controller unless my son wants to rag doll me in NHL or FIFA. I did like pinball though, although I didn't play a whole lot of it.

Still haven't seen Joker but I'd like to. Life has been too much of a downer to watch it recently.

That scene from taxi driver reminded me of the time I was waiting for my wife at the dentist in the newly rebuilt Century Gardens in DT Calgary. They opened it up to improve sightlines as it always had problems with drugs and homelessness and other unsavory activity. Unfortunately the previous problem users moved right back in.

I was with my son and noticed a woman with a baby stroller. Eventually her erratic behaviour tipped me off to the fact that she was on some serious drugs. I couldn't see if there was actually a baby or not. There were people shooting up in the public bathroom and doing God knows what else as some sketchy guy kept riding his bike past and kicking the door and yelling. The cherry on top, which that scene reminded me of, was a black woman screaming obscenities from the lrt platform. She walked the entire perimeter of the block yelling and thrashing like that guy. She must have been schizophrenic or something. I heard her coming long before seeing her.

With the vacancy rate at 32% in DT, Calgary's core is getting sketchier and sketchier.

https://i.cbc.ca/1.6086226.162507444...ns-calgary.jpg

Is there a generalization to be made here about people interested in cities? Seems like a natural progression from wanting your toys to be realistic simulacra to being drawn to the brute reality of the urban form.

If you think about it, why would someone transfixed by Superman flying through the air give a shit about the cornice on a row of charming Victorian shopfronts?

I dunno. I like Batman. The argument could be made that Gotham is a skyscraper enthusiast's dream city.

I played a lot of Sim City as a kid - the original was fun but really got into it with Sim City 2000 where I would try and make things as realistic as possible. Even moreso with Sim City 3000. Of course you couldn't get all the way there (Sim City 4 with lots of fan made downloads was the closest) but I would try!

I'm glad I was able to see the original Century Gardens built for the Centennial.
Even though it was sketch, I did enjoy the brutalist dream of a park with conifers and numerous water features.

The new one looks totally "neutered" lol
https://calgary.skyrisecities.com/ne...rys-100th-year

Yeah, I can see that. But just to tease this out a bit, I would counter that for me, I've always been more interested in street-level scenes than skyscrapers.

A big skyline has always served as an indicator of a big city for me, a promise of lots of downtown goodness to jump into. It's never really been about the skyscrapers themselves for me. So while I find the approach on the Gardiner in Toronto tantalizing, it's mostly due to the anticipation for what comes next when you get onto the surface streets: Yonge, Queen, Spadina etc.

My kid loves the Olympics so he was excited to see Olympic Square in Calgary this past summer... but there was definitely a sketchy element present. It made me feel like I was back in Winnipeg ;)

Maybe I was just blind to it when I was younger, but I get the impression that Calgary's downtown is getting a little grittier these days.

They preserved the most interesting sections as you can see in this shot during construction on streetview. It took forever to finish and had multiple delays.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.0461...i6656?hl=en-US

Sadly they chased away all the parkour enthusiasts and replaced them with crackheads. It's much more open for the most part but the section with the bathrooms is really sketchy. Also there's a shitty pseudo parking lot beside it where there used to be a building. There was a proposal for a new office tower to go beside the park that is in limbo so I'm not sure if that is what it's from.

Here's an old streetview of it post building demo but pre reno:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.0469...i6656?hl=en-US

That parking lot is still there.

Edit: Here are other angles of it plus the site plan:

https://i0.wp.com/livewirecalgary.co...78%2C381&ssl=1

https://i.cbc.ca/1.6086233.162507452...ns-calgary.jpg

Here is the site plan featuring the never built office tower. It was slated to go where the grass field is now.

https://cdn.skyrisecities.com/sites/...722-118797.jpg

Looks like other deplorables are drawn there now along with the drug dealers and crackheads:

https://albertapressleader.ca/wp-con...lgaryRally.jpg

Gotham has plenty of alleyways and gritty / interesting streetscapes! :P Also, plenty of rooftop activity.

Olympic plaza is one of the worst areas due to the amount of hiding places it has. Glad to know we are reaching Winnipeg levels of urban decay and crime lol!

There always was an element of that around but it seems to be getting worse lately due to the pandemic and 32% vacancy rate. There's less people DT and less eyes on the street. I've read about a few stabbings on the lrt platforms, one of which was totally random. There's an element of danger there that I didn't feel in the past. Having kids does make you hyper alert to it though it seems.

Haha, you're far from our levels... you have a long way to go ;)

Yes, things have escalated in Winnipeg too since the pandemic began. One of my buddies is a cop and oh, the stories he tells.

I agree, having kids in tow probably does make your spidey-senses a little more attuned to what's going on around you.

O-tac, thanks for sharing. Glad they didn't destroy all the elements of the park. With Calgary having what 18-20M? square feet of office space vacant it must feel a lot more dead and sketchy

Having lots of time on my hands right now, I was trying to think about why most recent movies are annoying compared to older ones. Two things I came up with.

1) In movies with some sort of a fantastical premise, the plots made sense within that fantastical premise. In the original Star Wars the audience understands what is going on, why the characters are doing what they are doing, why events are happening. In the recent sequels that is much less clear.

2] While some humour would now be considered inappropriate, the jokes were more or less timeless (physical comedy, human situations, etc), they did not rely on some recent cultural reference or recycled humour to be funny. The humour in the original Ghostbusters or the Princess Bride is mostly understandable and mostly funny to a modern audience, in a way I don’t think would be true of a more recent movie in say 2050.

The prestige inversion between film and television is only part of the story. I'd call it a convergence. The preponderance of sequels among big movies these days is thanks to cinematic universes--movies becoming more like television series.

It may be repetitive and unoriginal, but it's worth remembering that only ten years ago, when Marvel was getting deep into the cinematic universe that launched them all, everyone thought it was a doomed experiment. Robert Downie Jr. would move on, and what would they do without their biggest star? It was an unprecedented risk and something totally original. Obviously, it paid off.

Would it have been so bad if someone had pulled this off earlier? I wouldn't complain if Spielberg had made three more Indiana Jones movies, back when Harrison Ford could still pick idols up off the floor and Shia Labeef didn't exist. I'd have taken a few more trips Back to the Future too if anyone was offering. And the Goonies--wouldn't it be a better world if Corey Feldman had just had a job this whole time?

Anyway, these cinematic universes have produced a lot of duds, but there's a reason Marvel is successful: they put together a consistently good product. I'm not saying I'm a fan, but I catch some of them and I typically don't regret the experience. But the world can only make so many good movies. If you aren't watching Marvel movies, you're missing out on the work of generational talents. Thor Ragnarok, thanks to Taika Waititi, was fucking funny. Shang-Chi, thanks to Awkwafina, Simu Liu, and some good writing, was also really funny.

Now that they're all roped into the MCU, though, they're not going to make as much original stuff. Awkwafina won't have time to do much like (the excellent) The Farewell again. Taika won't make another What We Do in the Shadows. Simu Liu's days in charming Canadian comedies are over.

Imagine if Ghostbusters had become a cinematic universe back in the '80s and roped all those guys in for the next 15 years. No Groundhog Day or... I guess that's it. Nobody would miss Coneheads.

The MCU is somewhat analogous to the American tech scene--a few juggernauts gobble up all the talent and creativity. Disney is the Google of filmmaking. Good luck getting around that.

The other downside of the cinematic universe model is that, like TV, you have to keep up with it. My wife recently watched the new Spiderman. She was excited to see the Sam Raimi characters make an appearance but was totally thrown by all the other MCU stuff. "Why the fuck are there wizards and aliens in Spiderman?" she asked. That's just the MCU at this point. If you've watched enough of it, it makes sense. If not...

Like I said, I don't even watch many of these movies but I feel like I need to read articles about them and shit, just in case I do watch one.

Anyway those are your big, culture-unifying films. Those are your watercooler (if we still worked in offices) films. Those are your funny films that everyone gets. If you ignore them, that's cool. It's daunting getting into a whole damn universe. But they make billions of dollars because people love them. And once they're hooked, they keep coming back.

But yeah, I miss the days when when you could just drop in on the movies.

Being nostalgic about movies reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mniOdBXH2Yk

Ah the '90s: when every movie had a way out of place and way corny rap track in the credits.

Acajack said he misses movies with good soundtracks. I for one don't. I'd deliberately rupture my eardrums if we still had to listen to that Aerosmith song from Armageddon, or Celine Dion's Titanic song, every time someone turned on a damn radio. And don't get me started on Will Smith. Nobody's going to the wild wild west, asshole.

It's funny, power has concentrated so much in the movie industry. But musical pop culture has dissolved.

It's thanks to the internet making distribution and discovery easier. It started with indy culture in the 2000s, it continues today. Why would any of us listen to whatever generic pop record labels and radio stations tell us to, when our music players have all the music ever? Why would I give a fuck who Post Malone is when I can get to know Lou Reed, or Bill Withers, or Big Daddy Kane just as easily.

Millennials were pretty retrospective in our musical taste. Zoomers seem to be even more so.

But I do miss the days when people made new music--actually new music. And that's because I miss live music.

Musically, the 20th century will be an anomaly in history. Music changed a lot; every generation could claim a new genre or two. It was all thanks to the advent of recording technology which allowed music to move around the world and become something greater than vernacular culture.

Now we've gotten to the point where recording and distribution is so good that we barely need anyone to actually pick up an instrument. Kids can sit on their computers and not only find whatever they want, they can make just about whatever they like too.

But that's not an environment for innovation. Playing music live is a chance to experiment and discover instantly what audiences react to--it's the same reason comedy writers do standup. As a man danced, so the drums were beaten for him--as the proverb goes. Furthermore, playing in a band is a chance to collaborate and bounce ideas around. You get that same instant feedback. Try getting that from Ableton and Soundcloud.