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Thursday, October 23, 2008

I can't wait.
Posted by Jill | 10:01 PM


You know, for eight years I spent part of every weekend in a darkened movie theatre. I wrote review after review, amassing a pretty sizable archive. And one day, it just wasn't fun anymore. I don't know if it was movie review burnout, or the demands of trying to gain "print-type cred" or taking time off work to go to things like Full Frame Fest or what -- but after writing a review of Unleashed in 2005, I hung up my Roger Ebert Commemorative Film Critic Hat for good.

I've never really figured out what happened, until this year, when after seeing commercial after commercial for one Seth Rogen stinker after another, combined with trailers for SAW 1,862: The Return...Again, I figured out that movies just suck.

Perhaps that's why so many movie actors are migrating to television, especially when television seems far better than the movies these days. Even guilty pleasure trash like Dirty Sexy Money is better constructed, with its murder mystery and deliciously dysfunctional Darling family, headed by deliciously creepy Donald Sutherland, seems better than most movies. Heroes may be suffering from Lost Season Three Disease this year, but at its worst, it's more interesting than much of what Hollywood is cranking out these days. Go over to cable, and you have even more vistas of wasting time, especially over at Showtime, where Michael C. Hall is making viewers forget David Fisher ever existed, and giving Jeff Lindsay's serial killer Dexter Morgan layers even Lindsay couldn't have imagined. With directors like Keith Gordon and Tony Goldwyn helming this series, it's clear that they too have decided that the two-hours-and-out format just isn't what it used to be.

If I watched everything I wanted to check out I'd never leave the house. The discipline I impose on myself, combined with the mandatory viewing of Countdown, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report eating up huge quantities of time, means that there are a bunch of shows I haven't been able to check out yet. And when Rufus Sewell and his cheese grater cheekbones star in Eleventh Hour and I don't even watch once, you know things are at a sorry pass indeed.

What are YOU watching these days?

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4 Comments:
Blogger Fran said...
Rachel Maddow! And I do like, and I said like not love, Fringe. I have kept up with it, thanks to the DVR, I have hope for it.

Bill Moyers Journal.

Go ahead, think less of me- The Family Guy. I blame my husband for that. It is like he brought home a gallon of ice cream and I had no will power over the junk.

And I cannot wait for Lost!
10/23/08, 10:17 PM  
Blogger adam k. said...
Battlestar Galactica. Well not NOW, since it's on hiatus again, but come January, I'll be living and breathing it again. Best show ever, sci fi or no. Though it actually suffered some Season 3 disease of it's own. Fortunately, we're now into Season 4, which has been awesome.

I've also been getting into 30 Rock a lot. But I'm still not caught up... I have to buy Season 2 on DVD.
10/23/08, 11:14 PM  
Blogger D. said...
Odd. I found myself writing another essay (I have noodled off and on about this for years) on the screwball comedy and the barriers to making a modern one (not, I hasten to add, a modernized version of My Man Godfrey [which has been done. Ugh] or Bringing Up Baby or The Awful Truth [in which the insuperable obstacle is the lack of Cary Grant substitute]) and was about to cite the Bechdel test and the Hathor Legacy post when I ran out of paper.

On the other hand, it's a pretty pompous essay, even without the word 'reify.'

But yeah. One of the major problems is that all movies not directly aimed at adults must be comprehensible to a six-year-old. A six-year-old fascinated by bodily functions. With a potty mouth.
10/23/08, 11:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I'm with YOU on the Olberman, Maddow, Stewart, Colbert offerings. I do sit at my computer, a lot, reading and writing ineffectual comments whilst using my tv controller to flip incessantly between cable news programs...or sometimes finally landing on No Reservations/Tony Bourdain...the odd Discovery program, or History program...and generally way TOO much television for anyone's health and productivity.
10/24/08, 6:56 AM  
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