woolcovered

I read an interesting article on MTV.com the other day beamoning the apparent death of the opening title sequence in modern cinema. I've got to say this intrigued me, as not too long ago I was enjoying the 'retro' feel of the Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater intro. Basically, it was like all of the older Bond movies - a cheesy song, some silhouttes, vibrant colors, and all of that. However, MGS is a good example of how these things can get a little out of hand. Although the excessively long ones do get to me, I can sympathize with Karl Heitmueller's point that the opening title sequence "allows the audience to settle in and recover from the barrage of advertising they've just endured, to prepare for the cinematic experience that's getting under way". More often than not I actually forget what movie I'm actually going to see by the time it starts, something I'd attribute to the strange hypnotic effect of trailers preceeding the feature. I find that still recovering from trying to rapidly wrap my mind around these other stories presented when pluged into the feature presentation. This disoriented feeling also comes as a result of one of my other major peeves with the modern cinamatic experience - when exactly did it become ok for commericals to be at the start of films? Isn't shameless product placement enough? The fact that we as an audience have endured more and more ads while witnessing inflating movie ticket prices (although they apprently are starting to level off now, which gives me at least a little hope) disgusts me.

Anyway, although the article ends on a pretty bleak note for modern
filmmaking, I will say its worth checking out as its fairly well-written. Lastly, I espescially enjoyed the part of the article fretting over the excessively impractical repetition of names in different roles we see during titles: "why can't multi-taskers like Guillermo del Toro take a page from Ed Wood's book and slap all those credits on one card? It goes instantly from being tiresome to impressive".