Colorization
"A few of the comments on the board have addressed the issue that kids like colorization because they won't watch films in black and white. My opinion on the subject is, if your kid won't watch a B&W film, fine. Don't force it on them. Kids today have notoriously short attention spans, and they're just not going to get the whole idea of the mastery that goes into making a film in black and white. In fact, one of the reasons that classic movies have been slowly relegated to specialty cable channels like TCM or AMC is because executives think 'We can't show this -- the kids won't watch black-and-white.' I remember sometime back on one of AMC's Film Preservation Festivals where Bill Maher (Politically Incorrect) was bemoaning the fact that kids today have been conditioned to think that anything in black and white is bad -- a comment that has indeed stuck with me for some time now -- particularly since kids don't seem to mind when somebody shoots a music video in B&W.
"Many colorization activists use the argument, 'Well, they only made this movie in black and white because it was too expensive to make in color.' I don't totally buy into that argument (Hitchcock, who had carte blanche in that area, made The Wrong Man in B&W because it better suited its documentary-like nature), but as far as I'm concerned, I don't particularly care. Mastering the monochromatic scale is a definite art, and I'd rather not see somebody from Binney and Smith come in with a box of 64 Crayolas and ruin all that."
Shemp
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