It’s the end of the week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. We’re glad that you could join us tonight. Everyone is welcome. There’s no cover charge. We still have a few tables available. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
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Last night I asked you if the Cubs should try to bring back David Peterson next season. Most of you, 65 percent to be exact, thought that was a good idea.
Here’s the part with the music and the movies. It’s my favorite part. Maybe it’s yours as well. But if it’s not, you can skip it. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we have an All-Star tribute to Miles Davis at the Hollywood Bowl just last month. In this video, we have pianist Herbie Hancock and bassist Ron Carter, who are the two surviving members of the “Second Great Miles Davis Quintet,” along with Terence Blanchard playing the trumpet, Kenny Garrett on saxophone and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums. Garrett also played with Miles when Garrett was first starting out. Colaiuta played with Frank Zappa.
This is Miles’ most-famous tune, “So What.”
Rather than talk about any specific film tonight, I’m going to put on my old-man-yells-at-the-clouds hat and complain about the way so much modern movies and television are shot with muddled colors and low lighting.
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I’ve made no secret of the way that I love the bright, some would say unnatural, colors of the Technicolor films of old. To be clear, Technicolor cameras were bulky and difficult to work with. The process to develop the film was time-consuming and expensive. It also required a lot of light on the set, which made it impractical for some shot. That’s why only big-budget films before the mid-1960s used it. Eventually there were other color processes like Eastmancolor in the 1950s, but that process often gave the same kind of muddled and flat look that I’m ranting about today.
But eventually Eastmancolor and other systems improved enough that directors abandoned the bulky Technicolor process. The Godfather Part II was the final major American movie to use it and the 1977 Italian horror classic Suspiria was the last feature film to employ it anywhere. But Suspiria likely wouldn’t be the beloved classic it is today without the rich color of the dye-transfer Technicolor process.
So Technicolor is dead. Even if someone wanted to use it, there are no longer the processing labs needed to finish the process. The vast majority of movies and television these days are shot digitally as well. But Technicolor has been dead since the 1970s and the films of 1980 to 2010 or so did not look like the muddled mess we often get today. Digital filmmaking has been around since the aughts, so its not just that.
One criticism that younger viewers have of the Technicolor films is that the color is too vibrant and it looks unnatural. Today’s aesthetic prioritizes realism as cynical viewers find that the bright lighting and colors of old Technicolor films doesn’t match up with the world around them. But conversely, I would argue that the low-light and muddled colors doesn’t match up with the way the world looks either. Both are choices, and audiences have just been trained to think that one looks more realistic.
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The most often-cited reason for the dark tones and muddled colors of modern media is that it hides imperfections and is, therefore, cheaper. There’s some truth to that. With modern high-resolution formats and home media that allows views to freeze and scrutinize every pixel on the frame, filmmakers have no room to hide in the corners anymore.
But the cost-savings from dark lighting is overstated. Primarily, it’s a stylistic choice that many trace to the success of the HBO show Game of Thrones. Audiences have been trained to believe that bad light and muddied colors are associated with seriousness and ambiguity. Bright colors and bright lighting are associated with children’s programming.
Another reason for this stylistic choice is that it’s dictated by the programming behemoth that is Netflix. Netflix isn’t concerned with what people watch as much as they are with how much they watch. They also compress the video for streaming so that it takes up as little bandwidth as possible, which often flattens the colors. And since Netflix expects that much of their audience is watching on tablets or phones in a public place rather than in a darkened room in their home, they don’t want anything in a format that won’t translate across multiple viewing situations.
But filmmakers don’t have to make their films look like a muddled mess. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was shot digitally and while the color palette of that film doesn’t quite match the Technicolor of old, it still features bright lighting and crisp, vibrant colors. An action film like George Miller’s Furiosa was shot with the same style digital camera as Barbie and while Miller covers the film in the blue of the sky and the orange of the desert sand, the two colors don’t bleed into each other. While the number of colors is limited, they’re bright, clear and crisp. The films of Wes Anderson have a look unto themselves, but no one would call them dark and muddied.
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But the prevailing aesthetic to make everything look washed and dark is strong. This Guardian article notes how the two Wicked films, both of which are supposed to be in the same world as one of the brightest and most colorful films of the Technicolor era, The Wizard of Oz, made all the colors look like they’ve been run through the wash cycle on hot one too many times.
Big names like Gerwig, Miller, Anderson and Christopher Nolan have enough clout that they can shoot a film however they want. (John Chu does too, which makes his decision to shoot Wicked like that inexcusable.) The vast majority of filmmakers and television directors are at the mercy of the moneymen, and the moneymen want dark, moody and washed. Nothing will change until audiences start to demand change. So I’m here demanding change.
Here’s the trailer to the 2017 4K restoration of Suspiria. Even tough it’s dark at times, you can still clearly make out what’s going on. More films that look like this, please.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
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Talking about the Cubs is probably a dicey subject tonight. So since I don’t believe Pedro Ramírez has any realistic chance of winning the Rookie of the Year award, I’m going to ask you for your vote for the National League ROY Award.
After all, there’s no point in asking you who the NL MVP is at this point.
For most of the year, Cardinals second baseman JJ Wetherholt has been the favorite. But Wetherholt has cooled off after the All-Star Break and Reds first baseman Sal Stewart has taken off. Many consider Stewart the favorite at the moment, even though Wetherholt still has a huge edge in fWAR, 4.4 to 2.5
There are two other candidates as well and both of them are Mets. Mets right-hander Nolan McLean is the easy choice for any rookie Pitcher of the Year awards there are. Meanwhile outfielder Carson Benge has been coming on with a strong second half to put himself into the conversation.
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I kind of hate this Baseball Reference compare tool for several reasons. For one, bWAR is an inferior stat, in my mind, to fWAR. Two, too many people use it, as the old saying goes, like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support and not illumination. There’s too much involved in a player’s game to reduce it to just these numbers.
However, it’s also the easiest and most readable way for me to give you the stats for the players. So I ask you to use this as a starting point for the research on your vote, not the end.
Obviously a direct comparison of McLean, a pitcher, to these three hitters doesn’t work. But in case you are wondering, McLean has made 28 starts, totaling 161.2 innings. He has a record of 11-8 with a 3.06 ERA. He’s struck out 179 and walked 65. His bWAR is 2.9.
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So if you were a BBWAA member with a vote for Rookie of the Year, who is your choice for Rookie of the Year.
Thank you for stopping by, tonight and all week. It’s been a rough week, but we’re getting through it together. Please get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.
