Your basic points are good ones with which I don't disagree (the studio system did turn out a lot of junk and classic story-telling does stand in a class by its

Your basic points are good ones with which I don't disagree (the studio system did turn out a lot of junk and classic story-telling does stand in a class by itself). Insofar as I implied otherwise in favor of what might have come across as a nostalgic view of the past, I stand corrected. If I were to rephrase my basic point, I would say that (in my view) technology, however good, is less important to good film-making than are other creative elements such as good story-telling. Thus, if film producers have limited resources to devote to a project and pour most of them into expensive technology as opposed to paying for quality scripts, story lines can and do suffer, as do the films associated with them. I think that has happened a lot in recent years but will grant that it is subjective on my part (there are, of course, a good number of original, quality scripts around in today's movies, with Pixar's output coming to mind among others).