I’ve been watching 70s movies lately, and it’s reminded me how much fun it is to watch Cybill Shepherd on the screen. Which eventually led me to wonder… “was Moonlighting any good?” I saw some episodes of that back in the 80s, and I remember it being an amusing if dopey show, but I don’t remember much else.
I looked around for it, and:
Er… OK… so it’s a sought-after item, but not enough to make them re-release it on 4K blu ray or anything.
It’s available for streaming — but not around these parts. So I went all “arr arr” and half an hour later, I had the complete series. It’s apparently so popular that it’s well seeded, too.
So how is it? Well, it’s amusing but dopey, so I remembered correctly, but the most striking thing about it is:
Look at this! This is a short sequence to illustrate how dull her life is. But over 40 seconds, there’s five (or six) complete setups, and each one is perfectly, intentionally lit and blocked well.
(And not only that, she isn’t talking on a phone saying “I’m so bored and I’m so dull” to a friend, because you need that these days to inform the audience what’s happening (they’re on the phone, too).)
Look how great it looks!
Compare this to something modern, that also (I think) has a larger-than-average budget, The Four Seasons. (Chosen at random because it’s also something I watched yesterday.)
Look at that! It’s horrible! Totally flat lighting, because that’s easier to set up, and because that makes it easier to deal with post processing — perhaps they’ll decide to fly in a new background instead of that bar, and if there’s anything but this unsaturated, dim greigeness, that’s much more difficult to do.
(And The Four Seasons is much better than the average TV show — there’s a lot of location shoots and stuff. But still.)
Watching Moonlighting really brings home how visually unpleasant modern TV and movies are visually — and for economic reasons, not for creative reasons.
Another thing we also need to bring back:
Stunts where the long shots feature a stunt person who’s 30% taller and 70% wider than the actress. It adds a certain jennesequa.
Anyway. That’s today’s “tsk tsk kids these days” talk. You’re welcome I’m sure.