Age of Progress

I will say something for digital film and
technology; it has made filmmakers a bit bolder. A fascinating offshoot in experimental filmmaking took off midway through this last decade that many revered directors have fronted. While teenage boys like Zach Snyder put their masturbatory digital effects on display for 300 and Watchmen, art house directors took the new advances in stride and used them for interesting forays into once-popular genres. Lars Von Trier used digital technology in his films Dogville and Manderlay to take on American drama and the conventions of small towns that populate a century of laconic small-town plays. He stripped down his set to an elaborate, empty stage, not unlike a black box theatre and used mostly foreign actors to comment on American hypocrisy and challenge hypocrisy Eric Rohmer used it for his film The Lady and the Duke to recreate the French Revolution using enormous spliced-in oil paintings as backgrounds for each outdoor scene, giving the film the unromantic historical feel it needs. Michel Gondry's movies wouldn't exist were it not for the things he does with digital technology. So while I will from time to time rail against digital filmmaking taking all the backbone out of epic filmmaking (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Pirates Of The Carribbean) there are some people who decide to use this power for good.