Do You Have Trouble getting others to watch classics?

[RedRiver]

I've only vaguely heard of this movie. Are The Stooges played by known actors? Is it about their persoal lives? Or is it an attempt to replicate the trademark nonsense? I enjoyed the TV movie a few years ago.

[moira finnie]

Chris, have you seen the trailer for the new 3 Stooges movie? It is so not PC, I can hear the screams of outrage already! Parents will swear their child has turned into a finger-poking, head bopping monster because of it..

WoW! I just watched this after coming across your comments. I had nuns like that! But, anyway, the guy playing Curly really seems to have the right "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk" air. Moe sounds just like the original (and that ain't necessarily a good thing). I'm not sure about the Larry imitator, but then, I was never sure about Larry, period.

I don't think I'd pay to see this, but curiosity might make me take a look for a few moments if and when it is released on the tube.

[CineMaven]

I have trouble getting Seniors, Boomers, Adults, and young adults to even consider watching classics with me. They make fun of my passion for the old movies. I love musicals and their female stars. I get ribbed and scoffed by my friends and family. I have 368 movies, old and newer but have to watch them all alone. My wife seldom will consent to watch with me. Do you have my problem also?
Uncle Stevie

For me with the classics...three's a crowd. It's just me and the movie.

As for "THE THREE STOOGES" I laughed in spite of myself, at the trailer. Curly looks like James Gandolfini. Could it be Tony Soprano going "Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!" If I do see this movie...I'll take that secret to my grave.

[Rita Hayworth]

Here is my take ... I have a very difficult time to get my family together for a movie night because most of them do not really care about the movies that came out from 1930's to 1970's that been around for years. My family is almost exactly like Uncle Stevie described (but, more extreme) in the previous post by CineMaven and that's the truth!

For Example ... I have the movie "Love Affair" starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne (a 1939 Film) in my DVD collection and for years I tried to get them to come over and watch this movie together and so far no luck whatsoever.

I'm the only family member that watch movies on a regular basis and they all have cable and guess what ... Have you ever watch any movies on Turner Classic Movies & they said NO ... and sad thing is that they never once turn on that channel at all. I watch at least one movie on TCM on a daily basis since 2007 when I retired from work.

My family never, ever turn on to TCM ... its really bothers me big time!

[Fossy]

As one who lives alone this is a problem I do not normally have. However there have been exceptions.

My sister-in-law and her husband (Brian) were visiting. I put on a movie, “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty”. Brian decided not to watch it and would go for a walk instead. I was surprised to learn that he had not seen the show, and had never heard of Walter Mitty. I told him that if he did not see himself in this movie I`d go he. Brian stayed to watch the first ten minutes and ended up staying for the whole show.

Last year when I was ill, my son flew up to care for me for a month. He flatly refused to watch a movie, but when he brought a cuppa in to me, I was watching an Irene Dunne movie. He was smitten and watched the movie ( I think it was Roberta), but that was all he watched.

My younger daughter (Karen) had an operation. She had family difficulties at the time so I persuaded her to fly up here and recuperate for a couple of weeks. She couldn`t do much so she watched movies. She fell in love with Deanna Durbin`s movies, and watched them all. She also watched all of Mario Lanza`s movies. But she did not think much of Jane Powell or Jeanette MacDonald, and she said (sob) that Kathryn Grayson sounded like a chook being strangled.

Of course it must be said that Cairns is a very scenic part of Australia and there is plenty to do. Visitors do not fly thousands of kilometres to sit and watch movies with an old man. (Well, some people seem to think I am old).

[Uncle Stevie]

I am beginning to get the drift of all the young people not able to watch very old movies. I cannot understand or watch much of what is in the movies today and I certainly cannot tolerate most of today's reality TV. We are generations apart and find it hard to coexist. It makes me wonder about national political decisions made by generation gap people. We do not think alike. I remember my Father thought little of Rock Music and Elvis Presely when I was growing up. In fact, when I was a kid I did not like musical movies. Now I love them. What has changed to make me slovenly romantic?

[RedRiver]

Yet, when I was growing up in the 1960's, we all watched movies from the 30's and 40's. Nobody I knew was turned off by the more melodramatic style or the black and white picture. Of course, most of us had black and white TVs! When did OLD become UNACCEPTABLE?

[movieman1957]

I get the sense that many younger people find old movies too static. No movement (quick editing) means it is all too slow. Many younger folks won't watch black and white films. It is so foreign to them that they just as well be done in another language. But they even refuse to give them a try.

[RedRiver]

I guess I'm no different. I won't watch a movie that has anybody named Justin in it!

[JackFavell]

Because we had nothing else to occupy our time. No video games, no computers. It was old movies or the parents' bookshelf.

[intothenitrate]

I love this thread. In my universe, it's my two younger sons--ages 11 & 13--whom I try to induce to watch a classic movie now and again. Saturday night is perpetually "movie night" over here. My latest triumph was a month or so ago when the older one was sick and decided to stay with his mom for the weekend. I watched Desperate Journey (1942) with Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan with my youngest. That story moves along pretty briskly, so you don't have to have a Herculean attention span to stay interested. He stuck with it all the way through and said he liked it.

Now, I'm dropping hints about watching Sunset Boulevard together. They haven't taken me up on it yet, but I'm biding my time.

I just think hard about what's going to appeal to them, and then give the filmmaker twenty minutes to set the hook. Those old spells are still potent!

[CineMaven]

When my nephew was three years old, he sat in the room with me and watched "THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE." I kept expecting this little guy to get up from the room and go, but he stayed watching. I dare say he probably didn't understand anything that was going on, other than liking to be with me back then. I can still see his little face sitting in that big ol' chair swinging his feet. He's a twenty-five year old man now and probably has no recollection of ever seeing the movie.

Years later, I got his nephew (my great-nephew) to sit and watch (the more reasonable) "Jason and the Argonauts" with me. He ran in to the living room and acted out for my parents (his great-grandparents) the scene when the statue came to life...

Funny how life is...

[RedRiver]

This is a good thread. Nitrate, your sons are so young, even the Reagan angle probably had little appeal. At least with somebody over 30, you can say, "Yes. THAT Ronald Reagan!" Teresita, your now grown nephew probably thinks of "Manchurian" as a Denzel Washington film!

JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS was practically a life changing experince for me. My whole family went to see it. Big screen. Little people. Wow! I still love The Bronze Man! Possibly the peak of the great Ray Harryhausen's career.

I've recently shown a friend MALTESE FALCON and ASPHALT JUNGLE. May as well start with the best. She was impressed. But she dozed off during the second feature. That's OK. I do that all the time!

[JackFavell]

I watched Desperate Journey for the first time yesterday! It was so good I was going to write it up for the Raoul Walsh thread, but there is really nothing to say about it except it moves fast and has great snappy dialogue and a brash plot line - like all of Walsh's best work. Flynn is still at his peak here, and has great rapport with his leading lady. Don't stay away just because of Reagan, he's super. Great comeraderie from the rest of the fellas - Alan Hale, Dane Clark, etc and some great German characters too, Sig Rumann, Raymond Massey (with a faultless accent - he sounds exactly like Philip Dorn, I wouldn't be surprised if Dorn was his dialect coach) Albert Bassermann.... It was a hoot from beginning to end and just what I would expect from Raoul Walsh. An underrated picture.

Maven, that story of The Manchurian Candidate is oddly familiar, because my young Alice, picky as she is, once sat and watched The Grapes of Wrath with me at age 7 or 8. I kept expecting her to turn away, or tell me that she didn't want to watch, as she usually does with classic films ("This is boring mom"). But she sat through the whole thing spellbound, and cried and cried at the end. I am so glad she watched it, because it's the movie that most affected me as a young person, teaching me about the haves and the have-nots in this world, and to always be tolerant.

Unfortunately, this is the exception to her "no old movies" rule.... Maybe she would like The Search.....

Jason and the Argonauts Sinbad, and Hercules are staples from my childhood in front of the TV. It's hard for me to believe that kids now never see these movies at all...

[charliechaplinfan]

I haven't tried for ages but both of mine love Monkey Business, once converted they want to watch the same movie again and again. My love of classic flim came from watching movies on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when it was raining outside, never did I watch a film all the way through as some always changed channel or we went out and I never showed any interest in the actors or actresses, even now I have memories of slight pieces of film that I remembered.