When one hears mention of Gregory Peck or Audrey Hepburn, a nostalgic trip descends upon him. Until he finds himself hallucinating about a bygone era of the film industry. A time where movies sat upon the pinnacle of American Entertainment, unbothered, unchallenged, and free from the intrusions of television. A time where studios possessed an ironclad grip over every major blockbuster, and game-changing production. A time bereft of the flattering convenience of CGI, forcing actors, writers, and directors to dig deep, and mine tirelessly for every ounce of raw talent strung within every fiber of muscle, every strand of string used to wound their hearts. A time where if things certainly weren't better, they were simply easier.

It's inconceivable. How easy it really is to romanticize, to fixate upon a time and place so distant by the rendering of time, and of place, that how we perceive ages long past becomes distorted into a delirium of maddening proportions. Pushing us beyond the bounds of reality. Beyond sanity. Yet behind the blind ecstasy of the lights, drawn back like a blanket, like a spell unleashing the last of its entanglements even as it untangles itself, lies only a truth capable of only being unable to match the acuity of our conjurements, the grandeur of our idealism. Standing before us unspoken, even as we ourselves are left unable to speak. With no voice daring to mutter the shame, the disappointment, the sobering weight of disillusionment -- that the time, the place we exhausted the highest, and the mightiest, of our confidences and hopes to see realized, was anything but high and mighty. Here are five reasons why we should be glad the Golden Age was but no longer is: