one of the greats, and one of the to-be-greats

I’d never seen an episode of either Gunsmoke or Mad Men before today. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed both of them, and hopefully will get an opportunity to watch more of both.

Gunsmoke got me to thinking about the western as a genre, and how intriguing it is to go back to a time when villains could change their face and changed their names from one city to another. As a writer, remembering the article we read on westerns basically saying we’ve exploited the genre as much as we possibly can makes me sad, because it seems like it’s just so rife with opportunity. Yet, at the same time, I’m sure that any idea I came up with could probably be traced back to something that’s been done before, even if I had an ‘original’ idea.

Seeing Mad Men right behind it sparked a thought that both of these shows are probably going to be well known in the pantheon of television for their times. I sincerely doubt that people are going to stop remembering Gunsmoke anytime soon, even if references to the show aren’t necessarily in our current pop culture consicousness. And in fifty years, I fully expect classes analyzing television to be watching Mad Men with the same sort of reverence and historical respect.

quality television education

It occurs to me that maybe what is behind the new wave of great TV is the idea that it’s finally being seen as a medium worthy of being called art. TV aims to be more cinematic at premieres and finales, or even during the dramatic mid-season cliffhanger.

And in those ‘better’ shows, it’s about showcasing what TV could be if given the chance. But for the most part, those aren’t the shows I watch (mostly because of access to HBO or Showtime). I do have a handful of channels that I watch regularly (USA, TNT and FX being at the top of the list), and I wonder: am I closing myself off to new ideas?

I might be falling victim to the very problem I voiced in class about being able to switch off anything that doesn’t appeal to my usual ideologies; except I’m taking it one step further by not even allowing new things onto my screen. I’ll try to keep that in mind the next time I’m scanning channels and skipping past anything that doesn’t immediately appeal to my sensibilities, and try remember to do what Kevin Hart says: 

the drama of the bottom line

I think it’s interesting to think about American television as opposed to European (specifically British) TV, since one of the articles got into how different countries advance their own political sensibilities. I find that American television is focused more on the bottom line of trying to last as long as possible.

For example, Glee should have a shelf life of three years, but because Fox wants to milk the cash cow it had become, they’re (planning to) stretching it out further. British shows seem to tend toward making much more contained seasons/series, but with higher stakes. I don’t find that knowing there will be explosions in Doctor Who is played up too much, unlike when Castle used them. Maybe there’s a sort of cinematic feel to British TV than American, and that it’s much more likely that a character will die in a sci-fi show than a crime drama.

But I think Firefly is an example (and sci-fi to boot) of how TV differs from film (in American media, anyway). A film only has a couple hours to put it all out there, so the stakes feel so much higher. Aside from Joss Whedon’s tendency to kill characters, the idea that the characters were going to survive week to week is a relative surety. When we got to the movie, I believe there was a carryover of that same expectation, which Joss promptly subverted.

I think some of the best shows on TV right now have taken the assumption that characters will continue to live simply to assure the longevity of the series and thrown it out the window.

mumblecore can go mumble itself

Longest 78 minutes of my life. Hyperbole totally intended. 

I can appreciate different types of cinema. I can understand that these movies were made with a very specific purpose; just to make movies. To do the amateur thing (kind of like Michel Gondry’s point in Be Kind Rewind) and take it upon yourself to use a small budget and people you know and make movies. 

But I can’t handle this. Not only because there was a grand total of one person of color that I noted (an Asian girl with no lines in the second half of the film), or because there isn’t much of a linear narrative to speak of. I saw some interesting shots, and tried to get into the story of the movie but it just doesn’t work for me. 

Absolutely killing me. It’s just… young adult white people with money talking. I usually don’t notice a lack of minorities (partially because I’ve been trained not to thanks to mainstream Hollywood cinema), but as the movie dragged on and I heard a million ‘like’s and ‘you know’s and ‘um’s it just became more and more obvious. 

Maybe if there had been an underscore for the whole movie I would have enjoyed it more (because I didi like the moments when music was used). Maybe I just don’t get the point of it all, and I’m supposed to want these two STRANGERS to become an adorable couple. Maybe I’m not supposed to notice glaring potholes like a missing friend and the dangers of going home with a guy you met on the subway. Maybe I’ll understand it more after we talk about it, but for right now, I’m not getting a single mumbling thing out of this mumbling movie. 

critic review vs. critical review and how I might punch you if you badmouth Captain Kathryn Janeway

As we were discussing today, we asked a lot of questions about what makes a critic a critic. It seems that it’s very self-defined and about who can get the most attention/hits on their blog these days and a lot less about academic vocabulary and education. 

Ross mentioned the idea of beginning to qualify what makes a critic, about instituting some sort of standards about what makes on a critic so that their opinions possibly become more valid? But I think that goes down the slippery slope of what makes good movies and bad movies. We decided at the beginning of the semester that all movies are art, regardless of ‘quality’ of good or bad. 

And it is those very qualities that fanboys (and fangirls, get at me) seem to be able to gloss over, mostly with the bad being excluded for the nuggets of good to be mined out of whatever it is that they love. Whether it is nostalgia factor, tendencies to gravitate to a certain genre or a simple, if inexplicable, faith in the original lore of a work, it is very interesting to see the biases that we all have— and how they show up, however eloquently, in critics’ reviews.

There are a great many things I will go to the mat for, knowing full well that I’m wearing a type of ‘blinders’ to the unsightly plot holes or poor editing or whatever else it is that is flawed in shows, movies or books I hold near and dear. I think it all comes down to the ability to look at something objectively and assess all pieces of a work; for a film, including the cinematography, the script, the directorial decisions, the acting, the editing— all of it creates the final product, and while we should grade the end result, we should also acknowledge and assess all the parts of that whole. 

That being said, don’t try and tell me Star Trek: Voyager is bad. Seriously.

The Purple Rose of Cairo

A couple thoughts that occurred to me during the viewing today:

• It was odd sitting through the credits at the beginning of a movie. I wonder when the transition from posing them at the beginning to following at the end happened. I watch classic movies like The Thin Man, and I’m guessing placing a significant amount of credits at the beginning of this movie was to give us the impression of the older movies. 
• I’ve only seen clips of a lot of Woody Allen movies, the only one I’ve seen in its entirety, except for the animated Antz, being Midnight In Paris— and yet, I can see his auteur influence clear as day. I feel a lot of it is in the music overlaying certain shots, quirky/magical realism and choice of long shot (or something between long shot and extreme long shot, often with tight framing) where many other directors would choose close ups. 
• Although the movie does end with the tiniest sliver of hope, I think it really subverts the happy ending we were all expecting— which I suppose is Allen’s intention. We’ve been geared up to look for the happy resolution, or at least one that isn’t as bleak as all that.

Understanding A Woman Is A Woman

I was explaining this class to a couple of friends who came in for the weekend, and in it I got to talking about A Woman Is A Woman. They asked me if I thought it was a good movie, and I said that possibly after multiple viewings, I could come to appreciate it more.

I was explaining the sound to them and realized that after about half an hour, I had gotten used to it. I thought it was only going to be used when there wasn’t dialogue (or a capella singing), but there were moments when the music was laid over the dialogue. 

I was also trying to explain the weird thing with the camera. At some points in the movie, there were moments when Angela acknowledged the camera, and it wasn’t done in a way to break the fourth wall. Rather, the camera had become a character that Angela could interact with, like a spectator to her song, or during the fighting moments in the apartment. (Which I will say, after she directly acknowledged the camera before, was much more easily understood the second time.) It takes a strange level of interactivity: because the moments are few and far between, it doesn’t seem to be something the audience is supposed to feel consistently. 

Ultimately, I think I’d have to give this film a few more viewings to understand it better, but that I could say it is an enjoyable film right now.

considering the director

“Although the auteur theory emphasizes the body of a director’s work rather than isolated masterpieces, it is expected of great directors that they make great films every so often.”

I said in class that I haven’t really thought about the directors of the movies I watch, and it’s hard for me to notice a pattern or see an evolution of a director even if I do see several of their movies if they’re not all in the same vein. Just for kicks, I decided to look up some of the directors of my favorite movies in my DVD collection, and I found that rarely did I have a director more than once on the list. These are the few that did:

• Len Wiseman - Underworld, Underworld: Evolution, Live Free or Die Hard
• Zack Snyder - 300, Watchmen 
• Johnathan Lynn - Clue, My Cousin Vinny
• Ben Stiller - Zoolander, Tropic Thunder
• Kevin Smith - Dogma, Clerks II
• Adam McKay - Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers
• Chris Columbus - Home Alone, RENT

What are we afraid of?

“In the 1950s, science-fiction movies capitalized on two of America’s major fears: flying saucers and the atomic bomb.”

While I was reading the piece on science fiction, this quote jumped out at me, and I immediately scribbled next to it: 

• Current fear: apocalyptic WWIII with results of zombies, or a zombie apocalypse which results in post-apocalyptic landscape that descends INTO war/WWIII?

I find it interesting that my mom grew up going to see movies where aliens were straight up hostile invasion forces intent on decimating, enslaving or destroying humanity outright, with no regard to our feelings or defenses. These movies did the job of frightening the bejeezus out of people then (much like zombie movies do now). I think these fears coincided with the space race America found itself engaged in with the Soviet Union, and the misunderstanding or nonunderstanding of the science part of the science fiction. We fear the unknown, and space is a vast, looming unknown.

However, I would like to note that the original Star Trek premiered in 1966. While we were launching people into space aiming for the moon and worrying what the Soviets had on the other side of the Iron Curtain, Gene Roddenberry created a more optimistic view of the future wherein humans were the explorers, people who could hold their own against aliens, the ones flying the saucers in a society that had moved past atomic bombs… but only after World War III. 

So, what’s it gonna be?

Zombies or Star Trek?

(Maybe both.)

I was raised in front of the TV and I turned out TV.

Couldn’t/didn’t sleep tonight, so I’m starting the log at 5:50am with channel surfing.

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