I dont really know what you mean. Of course older films look like they have more "motion blur", the new films are made with better and more high tech cameras.

"Imperfection equals Realism"

I'm also not sure what you mean. Do you mean when viewed in the cinema? Because if you're talking about viewing on tv the resolutions tend to be better these days which could account for it. In cinema it might simply be the increased use of close-ups (I think this is because of television as well) and less use of soft lighting and camera tricks to hide imperfections.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

cinema has always competed with television. Every time tv starts doing something better, the film industry tries to trump them with something equal if not better. With the HD craze these days, people are demanding high-quality pictures. TV is becoming known as a medium that produces a very high-quality image. So naturally, the film industry wants to combat this. If you do some research you will see what i'm talking about. Film has always had superior image quality, but after all the processing and after it loses some quality running through the projector, it comes out to be just a little more than what an HDTV can produce. So film is trying to look better.

traditional tv-525 lines of resolution
traditional film-roughly 1300-1400 lines

then hdtv got popular

HDTV-1080 lines
HDFILM(COMING SOON)2000-4000 lines (projected digitally)

As you can see, the film industry is just trying to stay in the competition and keep people in the seats.

But as far as right now goes, it's most likely the processing of the film negative. For example, if you look at old films from the early 1900's, they look horrible. However, if you see a re-print from the negative that was processed recently it looks as good as movies made today. It's all in the processing, and there are always advances being made in film processing. That said, of course, the newer film cameras and technology have improved film image quality.