I went to see the movie Lincoln today. Yeah yeah, nice movie, beautifully shot, great performances, narratively clear, emotionally heavy-handed. Spielberg. You know what you're in for. Of course, as is always the case, I did not know what I was in for from the people around me.
Now, I like a weekday matinee. What everybody else can do to contribute most to my enjoyment of a movie is be somewhere else. Being that I've just finished a full university term, I could not wait to get out and enjoy something, so I went on a Sunday. This meant a lot of people inside the theatre.
The couple behind me revealed themselves as the nylon stringed guitar played the opening tones of the Dreamworks logo music. A male voice said (and I could tell the male from the female because everything they said was at speaking volume, not whispered), "This is supposed to be pretty good."
Now, I don't know about you, but when I go to a movie, this is a conversation I have before the movie. Merits are discussed, choices are made, popcorn is purchased. I could only conclude that one of two things had happened-- they had either forgotten to have this conversation before the movie, or this gentleman decided that now was the perfect time for small talk. As it turns out, the latter was true. They had decided that the next two and a half hours were time for small talk. Normally this might make me angry, but in this case, the good lord had given me such a gift, that I could not help but take joy. But back to the opening moments of the movie.
Male voice: "This is supposed to be pretty good."
Female voice: "I'm going to get a popcorn refill."
Now, stop right there, you say. No harm in missing the opening few minutes establishing the tone and plot of a movie about a guy that everybody knows everything about. Why should she not get popcorn? Well, I'll tell you why. Because these people had no idea about the sorts of things that went on in Abraham Lincoln's life.
I fast forward to about halfway through the movie as delegates from the south were making their way north to meet Lincoln and discuss the end of the civil war. If you were not well-versed in history, as I certainly am not, you may have been helped along to this point by numerous hints dropped in the dialogue reminding you that things were not going well for the south. The outcome of the war was being narratively telegraphed, as it were. This did not prevent the male voice behind me from earnestly asking at this point, "Who won this war, the south?"
There is one correct answer the female voice could have provided to this question. That answer is, "We're breaking up. Lose my number, because I've made a huge mistake and I can't see you anymore. If I do, there's a risk that you could impregnate me and I might not abort the fetus in time and there would be a continuation of your genetic code in the world, and that's something that should never happen." This was not her answer. Her answer to, "Who won this war, the south?" was "Uh huh."
Now I want to be clear. Some people spell this in different ways. She did not say "Uh uh," implying a negative response. Or "Uh HUUUH," implying a sarcastic response. Her answer was, "Uh huh." A simple confirmation, that yes, the south did in fact win the American civil war.
The greatest surprise was yet to come.
Now, I don't want to spoil the movie for you if you haven't seen it, but if you are at all familiar with the story of Abe Lincoln, it ends about when you expect it to end. I won't reveal the details or how it was filmed or anything of that nature, but yes, spoiler alert, Lincoln gets shot. Upon being given this information, the male voice behind me said, "I didn't know they killed Lincoln."
At this point, I actually felt pretty proud of these brave little soldiers behind me. They had had no idea upon entering this theatre what they were getting into. All they knew was there was a guy with a beard on the poster and it was supposed to be pretty good. It might have been about space pirates. It might have been about talking dogs. It might have been based on the novel Push by Sapphire. But when it was slowly revealed to them that it was an intriguing yet slow-paced exploration of a famous example of manipulation of the American political system, they stuck it out.
So, good for you, guys. Four stars.
Sunday, December 02, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
No Talent is Required to Play Rock Music
Alright, so this article was published in the Georgia Straight this week. It's a gorgeously well thought out piece of writing that illustrates how all of one type of music the writer (ahem, "writer") doesn't like is bad. I realized he's right and the same argument (with most of the same words) could be applied to any type of music. So I'm applying it to this.
Let’s just cut the shit for a minute and say it: rock music is the stupidest music on the planet. It even has a fittingly dumb name, rock, which makes me cringe every time I see it. More so than the geological moniker, though, the reason it sucks is because the amount of talent required to perform it is precisely none.
Case in point: Nickelback recently played the half-time show at the Grey Cup. Chad Kroeger can't even pick up a girl in the Roxy without getting into a barroom brawl—Christ, you just say you're in a band and ask where she parked her car—but he sure can throw down riffs and power chords to big crowds. Kroeger even sang a few words and it looked like he knew what he was doing. The best part about the whole spectacle was how it showed that trotting out some attractive and vapid idiot with no qualifications to rock out, other than that they have a following, isn’t exclusively a Canada thing. (Hi, Mayor Rob Ford. I loved your set!)
About 20 years earlier, one of the genre’s biggest stars, Radiohead, came forward and said what we’ve suspected all along: "Anyone can play guitar" and all the string-strumming that goes on at a “live” rock show is a sham. The refreshingly candid band behind the lazy eye claims that if you’re remotely dextrous you could learn how to do their show in about an hour. It’s just moving your wrist back and forth and that’s all there is to it.
Surely this means the current guitar-music craze is done. I mean, Nickelback is on the gravy train and Radiohead said that all these $100-a-ticket arena shows are Milli Vanilli with excessive fog machines. No, of course not. See, the fans of this stupid fucking music are fucking stupid too. They’re still lining up to slap down their hard-earned money from their dead-end jobs so they have somewhere to down a couple beers and scream like baboons on a Saturday night.
Some will be quick to point out that producing rock music takes a lot of talent, as there’s no magic “make awesome rock track” string that you can pull and then you’re done. However, if that’s the case, why does every damn song sound exactly the same? Indie, alternative, punk, metal, and any other genres that are created this week and fall under the catchall term rock aren’t something to get pretentious about. It’s dumb music to get fucked up to and nothing more. A four-on-the-floor beat with a chorus of me furiously wanking it would make your typical metalhead lose their shit in the mosh pit. Granted, I’m a screamer.
“What about my soloing?” you retort. I hate to break it to you but no one cares about that pretentious shit except chin-stroking nerds. Then there’s the ever-popular “Selecting the right song at the right time takes skill.” Because, clearly, remembering the tunes you know and finding a song that a room full of people wasted on cheap whiskey will enjoy requires a PhD in curatorial studies. I’ve seen a fucking jukebox rock a crowd better than 95 percent of the bands out there. So no rolling your eyes at me the next time I request that song David Bowie did with Queen. It’s a party starter! That boring classic rock shit you fell in love with in college won’t fly over here, you self-important Fleshlights.
As tempting as it may be, let’s not fault Nickelback, Radiohead, Motorhead, U2, or even Arcade Fire. Ripping off clueless rubes is smart business. And at least they’re giving them what they want: obnoxious party music in a dark room where they can get messed up. In a perfect con, the mark walks away not knowing they’ve been taken. I’m not falling for it, though. For $100 you should always demand more than mere string-noodling. Read into that statement however you like.
Let’s just cut the shit for a minute and say it: rock music is the stupidest music on the planet. It even has a fittingly dumb name, rock, which makes me cringe every time I see it. More so than the geological moniker, though, the reason it sucks is because the amount of talent required to perform it is precisely none.
Case in point: Nickelback recently played the half-time show at the Grey Cup. Chad Kroeger can't even pick up a girl in the Roxy without getting into a barroom brawl—Christ, you just say you're in a band and ask where she parked her car—but he sure can throw down riffs and power chords to big crowds. Kroeger even sang a few words and it looked like he knew what he was doing. The best part about the whole spectacle was how it showed that trotting out some attractive and vapid idiot with no qualifications to rock out, other than that they have a following, isn’t exclusively a Canada thing. (Hi, Mayor Rob Ford. I loved your set!)
About 20 years earlier, one of the genre’s biggest stars, Radiohead, came forward and said what we’ve suspected all along: "Anyone can play guitar" and all the string-strumming that goes on at a “live” rock show is a sham. The refreshingly candid band behind the lazy eye claims that if you’re remotely dextrous you could learn how to do their show in about an hour. It’s just moving your wrist back and forth and that’s all there is to it.
Surely this means the current guitar-music craze is done. I mean, Nickelback is on the gravy train and Radiohead said that all these $100-a-ticket arena shows are Milli Vanilli with excessive fog machines. No, of course not. See, the fans of this stupid fucking music are fucking stupid too. They’re still lining up to slap down their hard-earned money from their dead-end jobs so they have somewhere to down a couple beers and scream like baboons on a Saturday night.
Some will be quick to point out that producing rock music takes a lot of talent, as there’s no magic “make awesome rock track” string that you can pull and then you’re done. However, if that’s the case, why does every damn song sound exactly the same? Indie, alternative, punk, metal, and any other genres that are created this week and fall under the catchall term rock aren’t something to get pretentious about. It’s dumb music to get fucked up to and nothing more. A four-on-the-floor beat with a chorus of me furiously wanking it would make your typical metalhead lose their shit in the mosh pit. Granted, I’m a screamer.
“What about my soloing?” you retort. I hate to break it to you but no one cares about that pretentious shit except chin-stroking nerds. Then there’s the ever-popular “Selecting the right song at the right time takes skill.” Because, clearly, remembering the tunes you know and finding a song that a room full of people wasted on cheap whiskey will enjoy requires a PhD in curatorial studies. I’ve seen a fucking jukebox rock a crowd better than 95 percent of the bands out there. So no rolling your eyes at me the next time I request that song David Bowie did with Queen. It’s a party starter! That boring classic rock shit you fell in love with in college won’t fly over here, you self-important Fleshlights.
As tempting as it may be, let’s not fault Nickelback, Radiohead, Motorhead, U2, or even Arcade Fire. Ripping off clueless rubes is smart business. And at least they’re giving them what they want: obnoxious party music in a dark room where they can get messed up. In a perfect con, the mark walks away not knowing they’ve been taken. I’m not falling for it, though. For $100 you should always demand more than mere string-noodling. Read into that statement however you like.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Brostep, Dubstep, and You!
Oh, the popular sentiments of twitter. If I really wanted to get more twitter followers, it seems like an easy way would be to throw a #dubstep on and make a joke about robots getting raped, and the sky would be the limit.
But I'm a music nerd, and being a music nerd means I like to know what I'm talking about when I talk about music and that I don't throw out an entire genre when I find one bad example. Or to use the more popular colloquialism, don't throw out the droid with the oil bath. So let's talk about what dubstep is.
First, we will address Skrillex. Not because Skrillex is the best or is particularly representative of the sound, but because at over 60 million views, this is the one thing people have heard and called dubstep:
This is pretty representative of what people think dubstep is, when it's actually the much more recent offshoot, commonly referred to as "brostep". To me, it's not terrible music. It's a bit aggressive, a bit noisy, and as a man in my mid-thirties, just a little bit much. I don't hate it, but if I heard this as the first thing someone told me was "dubstep", I would not explore it any further. Of course, if I heard Kenny G, I wouldn't go around saying all jazz music is snoozy and boring. That's just because I'm not a moron.
A couple of big touchstones for dubstep's development are the album Untrue by Burial (the track Etched Headplate is below), and Skream's remix of La Roux's In For the Kill. I recommend headphones for both, especially if you have wimpy laptop speakers like me.
You'll notice neither of these sound like weird robot sex, and it's questionable whether either of these have a "drop". You may also notice upon further research that Skrillex also did a remix of In For the Kill. It was louder. Nothing against that. Just pointing it out.
These are also both fairly late in the dubstep game, arriving shortly before all the squelchy stuff really took over. There is a lot more great dubstep out there, and I will attempt to point you in the right direction at the end of this post.
There is also some good engaging brostep out there. Like television, most of the good stuff comes from Britain. Like Rusko. He's from Britain and he makes some of that squelchy loud music that people associate with the word "dubstep". I enjoy his stuff. Like Woo Boost. Squelchy, bassy, and it uses the sound of breaking glass as percussion. The video could be characterized as a bit much too, but damn it I enjoy the whole thing.
Thing is, even Rusko is getting annoyed with what he did for/to the dubstep genre. Here he is in an interview expressing his mixed feelings of the way his sound pushed the genre in North America.
So there you go, I suppose. Perhaps you've learned something. If you are interested in finding a bunch of things at various levels of aggression/loudness (but all at a high level of quality), I suggest looking into Benga, Loefah, The Bug, and Kode9 to name a few. If I posted every awesome video, you would have given up by now. Also, Benga and Skream are paying in Vancouver March 21st if you want to hear some good stuff.
And one last thing, while looking for the videos for this post, I came across this one, which is essentially something someone else made that is this blog post in video form.
There. Now go back to twitter and stop making jokes that make you look dumb. First person who tweets that BROSTEP sounds like robots anger-fucking each other gets a retweet and a favourite.
But I'm a music nerd, and being a music nerd means I like to know what I'm talking about when I talk about music and that I don't throw out an entire genre when I find one bad example. Or to use the more popular colloquialism, don't throw out the droid with the oil bath. So let's talk about what dubstep is.
First, we will address Skrillex. Not because Skrillex is the best or is particularly representative of the sound, but because at over 60 million views, this is the one thing people have heard and called dubstep:
This is pretty representative of what people think dubstep is, when it's actually the much more recent offshoot, commonly referred to as "brostep". To me, it's not terrible music. It's a bit aggressive, a bit noisy, and as a man in my mid-thirties, just a little bit much. I don't hate it, but if I heard this as the first thing someone told me was "dubstep", I would not explore it any further. Of course, if I heard Kenny G, I wouldn't go around saying all jazz music is snoozy and boring. That's just because I'm not a moron.
A couple of big touchstones for dubstep's development are the album Untrue by Burial (the track Etched Headplate is below), and Skream's remix of La Roux's In For the Kill. I recommend headphones for both, especially if you have wimpy laptop speakers like me.
You'll notice neither of these sound like weird robot sex, and it's questionable whether either of these have a "drop". You may also notice upon further research that Skrillex also did a remix of In For the Kill. It was louder. Nothing against that. Just pointing it out.
These are also both fairly late in the dubstep game, arriving shortly before all the squelchy stuff really took over. There is a lot more great dubstep out there, and I will attempt to point you in the right direction at the end of this post.
There is also some good engaging brostep out there. Like television, most of the good stuff comes from Britain. Like Rusko. He's from Britain and he makes some of that squelchy loud music that people associate with the word "dubstep". I enjoy his stuff. Like Woo Boost. Squelchy, bassy, and it uses the sound of breaking glass as percussion. The video could be characterized as a bit much too, but damn it I enjoy the whole thing.
Thing is, even Rusko is getting annoyed with what he did for/to the dubstep genre. Here he is in an interview expressing his mixed feelings of the way his sound pushed the genre in North America.
So there you go, I suppose. Perhaps you've learned something. If you are interested in finding a bunch of things at various levels of aggression/loudness (but all at a high level of quality), I suggest looking into Benga, Loefah, The Bug, and Kode9 to name a few. If I posted every awesome video, you would have given up by now. Also, Benga and Skream are paying in Vancouver March 21st if you want to hear some good stuff.
And one last thing, while looking for the videos for this post, I came across this one, which is essentially something someone else made that is this blog post in video form.
There. Now go back to twitter and stop making jokes that make you look dumb. First person who tweets that BROSTEP sounds like robots anger-fucking each other gets a retweet and a favourite.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
The entitlement generation meets the Netflix price hike
I was speaking with friends yesterday (actually on an upcoming epsiode of the Justice Pals Podcast) about how the general reaction to George RR Martin taking a bit of time writing his books is a perfect example of the sense of entitlement of the asshole generation behind us. And then this happened today. Netflix changed their price scheme which will cause a certain set of subscribers to start paying more in a couple of months, should they decide to continue subscribing to those plans. And the internet took a shit.
Now, I'm a 33 year old man, so I don't mean to get all "in my day" or "you kids today don't realize" or "GET OFF MY LAWN!", but let me tell you how stupid you kids are.
In my day, we had to go to the video store and see what was available in stock. We'd then borrow a VHS tape, at much lower quality than a DVD (don't even ask how it compares to a blu-ray), and then take it home. Hell, I remember a time when we had to rent the machine to play the damn thing. What you kids today don't realize is that we would have to pay individually for each tape we rented. There was sometimes a subscription fee, but that was just so they'd let you pay more to take out movies. Even as recently as a decade ago, the idea that you could pay 8 bucks and watch as many movies as you wanted in a month would have sounded pretty crazy.
Point is, this is a new thing. Nobody's quite got it figured out, as you can see with studios reluctant to let their movies be released to unlimited streaming services, and with telcomms trying to drive down bandwidth limits so customers will buy their overpriced on demand offerings. So while these greedy jerks try to sort themselves out, you're still getting a hell of a deal on unlimited HD movies-- a service that didn't exist when anyone old enough to pay for it was even born yet.
Now the point about you, you little entitled twats, is that you think the world owes you everything. You're the same assholes who come to my comedy shows and ruin them because you can't tell the difference between heckling and a youtube comment thread (and don't know that you are funny in neither scenario). You're the same idiots who rioted because the Canucks lost and you were drunk and your dentist father can buy you out of this and you're not really that bad because you didn't successfully light a cop car on fire. And you're the same pricks who criticize an aging science fiction writer not because his books aren't awesome, but because you feel he owes you more stories than he's given you.
Your generation worries me with your expectation that everyone else owes you whatever you want just because you want it. You're dickholes. Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Now, I'm a 33 year old man, so I don't mean to get all "in my day" or "you kids today don't realize" or "GET OFF MY LAWN!", but let me tell you how stupid you kids are.
In my day, we had to go to the video store and see what was available in stock. We'd then borrow a VHS tape, at much lower quality than a DVD (don't even ask how it compares to a blu-ray), and then take it home. Hell, I remember a time when we had to rent the machine to play the damn thing. What you kids today don't realize is that we would have to pay individually for each tape we rented. There was sometimes a subscription fee, but that was just so they'd let you pay more to take out movies. Even as recently as a decade ago, the idea that you could pay 8 bucks and watch as many movies as you wanted in a month would have sounded pretty crazy.
Point is, this is a new thing. Nobody's quite got it figured out, as you can see with studios reluctant to let their movies be released to unlimited streaming services, and with telcomms trying to drive down bandwidth limits so customers will buy their overpriced on demand offerings. So while these greedy jerks try to sort themselves out, you're still getting a hell of a deal on unlimited HD movies-- a service that didn't exist when anyone old enough to pay for it was even born yet.
Now the point about you, you little entitled twats, is that you think the world owes you everything. You're the same assholes who come to my comedy shows and ruin them because you can't tell the difference between heckling and a youtube comment thread (and don't know that you are funny in neither scenario). You're the same idiots who rioted because the Canucks lost and you were drunk and your dentist father can buy you out of this and you're not really that bad because you didn't successfully light a cop car on fire. And you're the same pricks who criticize an aging science fiction writer not because his books aren't awesome, but because you feel he owes you more stories than he's given you.
Your generation worries me with your expectation that everyone else owes you whatever you want just because you want it. You're dickholes. Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Friday, May 06, 2011
On the Tragic Closing of Videomatica
There is a great uproar in Vancouver this week as the news of the impending end of Videomatica spreads. I see a lot of talk of how much people "loved" that place. Interesting that they put it in the past tense. Do businesses thrive on fond memories?
Truthfully, I may have rented from Videomatica once in the ten years I've lived in Vancouver. I was certainly more disappointed with the closing of Happy Bats, another independent video store with a shorter history, which closed to more limited fanfare recently. As much as I miss Happy Bats (their well-stocked Blu-Ray selection was what kept me coming back), I have to recognize that they were destined to close, and that if their average customer spent as much money as I did there, they would have closed sooner.
I wonder how many of the people mourning the loss of Videomatica have Netflix accounts now. Or, more to the point, I wonder how many of them have been in the store in the past year. The past five years? The past decade? I think the likelihood is that the vast majority of them will only now be missing the sign as they go past it. The nostalgia is great folks, but the nostalgia will live on without the flailing business. And the nostalgia was always going to outlive the business.
In all of the disappointment, I'm not hearing or reading anyone claiming they are now going to have trouble finding movies to watch, or finding out about movies they may have otherwise missed. And if they are, then they're most likely spreading the word of their disappointment on facebook or twitter, using the exact tools one might use to spread the word of movies others may have missed.
Point is, while the business of watching movies is changing to bigger hands, and that sucks, the joy of watching movies and sharing the experience with friends is getting easier to come by. So stop whining. The same technology that's putting video stores out of business can and should be used for the good of movie lovers. And if you hate losing a business so much, then why weren't you spending your money there?
Truthfully, I may have rented from Videomatica once in the ten years I've lived in Vancouver. I was certainly more disappointed with the closing of Happy Bats, another independent video store with a shorter history, which closed to more limited fanfare recently. As much as I miss Happy Bats (their well-stocked Blu-Ray selection was what kept me coming back), I have to recognize that they were destined to close, and that if their average customer spent as much money as I did there, they would have closed sooner.
I wonder how many of the people mourning the loss of Videomatica have Netflix accounts now. Or, more to the point, I wonder how many of them have been in the store in the past year. The past five years? The past decade? I think the likelihood is that the vast majority of them will only now be missing the sign as they go past it. The nostalgia is great folks, but the nostalgia will live on without the flailing business. And the nostalgia was always going to outlive the business.
In all of the disappointment, I'm not hearing or reading anyone claiming they are now going to have trouble finding movies to watch, or finding out about movies they may have otherwise missed. And if they are, then they're most likely spreading the word of their disappointment on facebook or twitter, using the exact tools one might use to spread the word of movies others may have missed.
Point is, while the business of watching movies is changing to bigger hands, and that sucks, the joy of watching movies and sharing the experience with friends is getting easier to come by. So stop whining. The same technology that's putting video stores out of business can and should be used for the good of movie lovers. And if you hate losing a business so much, then why weren't you spending your money there?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Top 5 Pop-Culture-Inspired Things I Can't Stop Myself From Doing Impulsively
"I'll explain everything to the geeks!" claims The National in song. I will not. You have to figure these out for yourselves (although geeks will likely do the same as at least one of these).
5) When I hear or see the word "exterminate" (or extermination or any of its roots), I must say "EXTERMINATE!" in a rising tone in a slightly robotic voice. I'm terrible at doing the voice, but that doesn't stop me.
4) If I hear of a riot, or see news of a riot, I must say, "Let em riot. We're Sonic-Fuckin-Death-Monkey!"
3) When I hear the words, "the greater good," I have to repeat them in a monotone.
2) When I hear the word "abide," I have to say, "The dude abides." I know. A little populist. What can I say?
1) When I hear the song Carribean Queen by Billy Ocean, I must scream "THE CLEANSING RAIN!"
5) When I hear or see the word "exterminate" (or extermination or any of its roots), I must say "EXTERMINATE!" in a rising tone in a slightly robotic voice. I'm terrible at doing the voice, but that doesn't stop me.
4) If I hear of a riot, or see news of a riot, I must say, "Let em riot. We're Sonic-Fuckin-Death-Monkey!"
3) When I hear the words, "the greater good," I have to repeat them in a monotone.
2) When I hear the word "abide," I have to say, "The dude abides." I know. A little populist. What can I say?
1) When I hear the song Carribean Queen by Billy Ocean, I must scream "THE CLEANSING RAIN!"
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Like TV? Watch this!
Okay, so I watch an uncomfortable amount of TV. I can admit it. But I don't want all that TV watching to go to waste. Here's a bunch of shows that premiered this year, and my take on how good they are.
Louie - The worst thing about the TV and film industry is when the execs demand changes and it sucks the life out of the show. Or they make what is clearly the wrong choice. See: Conan O'Brien. It's refreshing to see what seems like the opposite of that on Louie. Looks like FX just went, "Hey Louis CK, here's some money and a time slot. Do what you want." I don't know how close to the truth that is, but it's resulted in a show that is unlike anything else on tv. It's not quite a sitcom, not quite a sketch show, and not quite anything that will rake in any amount of money for the execs, but it's pretty great.
Rubicon - I watched the first two episodes when they arrived in a pair along with the beginning of the new season of Mad Men. The AMC hype machine had been working pretty hard on this, even giving a sneak preview of the first episode attached to the finale of Breaking Bad on my DVR. The first warning sign that Rubicon was going to be kind of bad was a bit of dialogue that went something like this-- "He used to be late all the time. He was late to meet his wife and daughter at the World Trade Centre and was on his way out of the subway when the first plane hit. He's never been late for anything since."
That was the moment in Rubicon that elicited the greatest emotional response from me, and that was anger at the shitty writing. A couple thousand people died on 9/11. From the number of people in TV and movies in the nine years since who have had personal stories about those they'd lost, you'd think the entire city of New York had been destroyed. Someone reminded me recently that there was a train crash in one of those episodes. That I had forgotten anything had happened at all speaks to Rubicon's level of emotional resonance.
The marketing for this is pretty terrible. AMC runs ads of the actors talking about how great it is. We know they like it. Even if they didn't, they're getting paid to say they do. And none of them seems particularly smart. Also the tagline, "Not every conspiracy is a theory" does not work in any language. Conspiracy theory is a pair of words that go together to mean something. The word conspiracy has it's own meaning that has nothing to do with the word theory. It's like if Smuckers advertised by saying, "Not every jam has traffic in it."
Terriers - FX is a weird channel where Fox inexplicably chooses to put good shows it's not going to cancel because their first two great episodes didn't get great ratings (more on that later). The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, and Louie are a few favourites. (On the other hand, there was Nip/Tuck which should have been cancelled after about half of its run). Terriers sounds like it shouldn't work-- it's the story of an ex-cop turned private investigator an his ne'er-do-well partner who get in over their heads when they stumble upon a murder. But it's pretty great, thanks in no small part to Donal Logue who I've wanted to see in more things since he was the comic relief in Blade. And he and Michael Raymond-James have a great chemistry with a constantly shifting status dynamic.
Nikita - So, some writers saw a few episodes of Dollhouse, rewrote them, and branded them as being based on something else. The most ridiculous thing I saw in the slightly more than one episode I watched was when Nikita was buying weapons from some high-class arms dealer in his penthouse suite and used one of them to rob him. Because he keeps them loaded as he's selling them from his penthouse suite. Because he's stupid, and I'll be honest-- so are you if you like this show. Sorry.
Boardwalk Empire - Yeah, it's as good as you've heard. I'm just hoping Michael K Williams gets a little more screen time because he's had about a line and a half so far.
Lone Star - One of the more promising shows of the year, and Fox cancelled it after two episodes. That's what they do. They comission great shows, and rather than let them build an audience by word of mouth or stellar reviews, they cancel them if they don't pull in ad revenue immediately. Meanwhile, 24 went on 5 seasons after it was any good. Idiots.
The Event - Here's a show that reeks of network exec tampering (that is, if there was anything good in there to begin with). It looked kind of promising after one episode, despite being the latest nebulous title, big cast, secretive plot, way too beautiful cast, Lost rip-off. It lost me after the second episode though, when it started making too many left-field revelations. Personally, I think creative people should make the show they want to make, but if they're going to keep ripping off Lost, here's what they need to do: Make it look like nothing's too odd at the beginning. Build that comfort for a bit while you DEVELOP SOME FUCKING CHARACTERS and then drop some weird science. Lost had something a little odd and threatening in the first episode that was weirdly non-specific, took a bit of time to establish the flashback routine, and then gave you a mind-blowing fourth episode where it revealed that Locke was in a wheelchair until the plane crashed on the island. The Event just keeps throwing weird shit at you. And speaking of flashbacks, if that's how you're going to tell your story, come back to one particular time period. This thing's jumping all over the place with all these characters so the audience never has an anchor, and therefore never really gets to care about anything, or any one of these model/actors.
Raising Hope - This kind of came out of nowhere and is fun and a bit dark. The crazy old lady is its one sitcom thing I've seen too much of, but it gives that the nice touch of letting Cloris Leachman have these occasional moments of lucidity where she is aware of her surroundings and reminds everyone of how disappointing they are before dropping into crazy mode again. It also features the underused Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt. And the wonderful Kate Micucci, who should be a way more gigantic star than she is.
Running Wilde - Okay, the reunion of Will Arnett, David Cross, and Mitch Hurwitz is not the second coming of Arrested Development. On the other hand, it's certainly not the Run Ronnie Run to Arrested Development's Mr. Show either. And it brings Peter Serafinowicz to North American audiences, which is good for everybody. I remember not being too impressed with 30 Rock at first, and I think this show has the potential to build into something that good. That is, if Fox doesn't cancel it within a month.
No Ordinary Family - Oh, how I wanted to like this show. Casting Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz as your leads has to work for your show right? Not if you don't hire any decent writers. The wonderful thing about superheroes is their origin story. And boy did they ruin that on this show. The family's super powers arrive when their plane crashes into a South American river while on vacation. Never mind that they're in a plane on a sight-seeing tour at night in a storm. That's dumb, but not the worst of this. The worst is the plane crashes, the family swims to the shore and huddles together in the wildnerness of the rain forest, and then the next shot is them walking in the front door of their home after the vacation.
Um... really? Even if this wasn't an origin story, you kind of want to see them get out of this jam. As it stands, the audience is left to wonder why they even bothered going. And with the origin story, there are countless missed opportunities. They use their new powers to fight off the dangerous wildlife. They meet a lost tribe of people who have worked to keep civilization away from their magical river. They stop an evil logging company from destroying endangered species. Anything but they go home and gradually discover that they can do things.
And then there's the powers. Some pretty standard stuff. Dad's super strong, Mom's super fast, the daughter reads minds, and the son's super... smart? Being smart is not a super power. I think the writers just ran out of cliches. I honestly thought for a while in the pilot that the son's power was being super mopy. Turns out that's the whole family.
Bonus mention - Better With You - Not worth putting this in the main body of this thing, because I only made it through about two minutes of this, but imagine Cloverfield, but instead of all these rich urban assholes getting eaten by a jerky camera-shy monster, they get to go on living and exploring the foibles of their uselessly entitled lives. That's what this show is. If you like it, take a good hard look at your life, because you should be a better person than you are.
Bonus bonus mention - I forgot about Justified, because it started so long ago. But that's a good one too.
Louie - The worst thing about the TV and film industry is when the execs demand changes and it sucks the life out of the show. Or they make what is clearly the wrong choice. See: Conan O'Brien. It's refreshing to see what seems like the opposite of that on Louie. Looks like FX just went, "Hey Louis CK, here's some money and a time slot. Do what you want." I don't know how close to the truth that is, but it's resulted in a show that is unlike anything else on tv. It's not quite a sitcom, not quite a sketch show, and not quite anything that will rake in any amount of money for the execs, but it's pretty great.
Rubicon - I watched the first two episodes when they arrived in a pair along with the beginning of the new season of Mad Men. The AMC hype machine had been working pretty hard on this, even giving a sneak preview of the first episode attached to the finale of Breaking Bad on my DVR. The first warning sign that Rubicon was going to be kind of bad was a bit of dialogue that went something like this-- "He used to be late all the time. He was late to meet his wife and daughter at the World Trade Centre and was on his way out of the subway when the first plane hit. He's never been late for anything since."
That was the moment in Rubicon that elicited the greatest emotional response from me, and that was anger at the shitty writing. A couple thousand people died on 9/11. From the number of people in TV and movies in the nine years since who have had personal stories about those they'd lost, you'd think the entire city of New York had been destroyed. Someone reminded me recently that there was a train crash in one of those episodes. That I had forgotten anything had happened at all speaks to Rubicon's level of emotional resonance.
The marketing for this is pretty terrible. AMC runs ads of the actors talking about how great it is. We know they like it. Even if they didn't, they're getting paid to say they do. And none of them seems particularly smart. Also the tagline, "Not every conspiracy is a theory" does not work in any language. Conspiracy theory is a pair of words that go together to mean something. The word conspiracy has it's own meaning that has nothing to do with the word theory. It's like if Smuckers advertised by saying, "Not every jam has traffic in it."
Terriers - FX is a weird channel where Fox inexplicably chooses to put good shows it's not going to cancel because their first two great episodes didn't get great ratings (more on that later). The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, and Louie are a few favourites. (On the other hand, there was Nip/Tuck which should have been cancelled after about half of its run). Terriers sounds like it shouldn't work-- it's the story of an ex-cop turned private investigator an his ne'er-do-well partner who get in over their heads when they stumble upon a murder. But it's pretty great, thanks in no small part to Donal Logue who I've wanted to see in more things since he was the comic relief in Blade. And he and Michael Raymond-James have a great chemistry with a constantly shifting status dynamic.
Nikita - So, some writers saw a few episodes of Dollhouse, rewrote them, and branded them as being based on something else. The most ridiculous thing I saw in the slightly more than one episode I watched was when Nikita was buying weapons from some high-class arms dealer in his penthouse suite and used one of them to rob him. Because he keeps them loaded as he's selling them from his penthouse suite. Because he's stupid, and I'll be honest-- so are you if you like this show. Sorry.
Boardwalk Empire - Yeah, it's as good as you've heard. I'm just hoping Michael K Williams gets a little more screen time because he's had about a line and a half so far.
Lone Star - One of the more promising shows of the year, and Fox cancelled it after two episodes. That's what they do. They comission great shows, and rather than let them build an audience by word of mouth or stellar reviews, they cancel them if they don't pull in ad revenue immediately. Meanwhile, 24 went on 5 seasons after it was any good. Idiots.
The Event - Here's a show that reeks of network exec tampering (that is, if there was anything good in there to begin with). It looked kind of promising after one episode, despite being the latest nebulous title, big cast, secretive plot, way too beautiful cast, Lost rip-off. It lost me after the second episode though, when it started making too many left-field revelations. Personally, I think creative people should make the show they want to make, but if they're going to keep ripping off Lost, here's what they need to do: Make it look like nothing's too odd at the beginning. Build that comfort for a bit while you DEVELOP SOME FUCKING CHARACTERS and then drop some weird science. Lost had something a little odd and threatening in the first episode that was weirdly non-specific, took a bit of time to establish the flashback routine, and then gave you a mind-blowing fourth episode where it revealed that Locke was in a wheelchair until the plane crashed on the island. The Event just keeps throwing weird shit at you. And speaking of flashbacks, if that's how you're going to tell your story, come back to one particular time period. This thing's jumping all over the place with all these characters so the audience never has an anchor, and therefore never really gets to care about anything, or any one of these model/actors.
Raising Hope - This kind of came out of nowhere and is fun and a bit dark. The crazy old lady is its one sitcom thing I've seen too much of, but it gives that the nice touch of letting Cloris Leachman have these occasional moments of lucidity where she is aware of her surroundings and reminds everyone of how disappointing they are before dropping into crazy mode again. It also features the underused Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt. And the wonderful Kate Micucci, who should be a way more gigantic star than she is.
Running Wilde - Okay, the reunion of Will Arnett, David Cross, and Mitch Hurwitz is not the second coming of Arrested Development. On the other hand, it's certainly not the Run Ronnie Run to Arrested Development's Mr. Show either. And it brings Peter Serafinowicz to North American audiences, which is good for everybody. I remember not being too impressed with 30 Rock at first, and I think this show has the potential to build into something that good. That is, if Fox doesn't cancel it within a month.
No Ordinary Family - Oh, how I wanted to like this show. Casting Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz as your leads has to work for your show right? Not if you don't hire any decent writers. The wonderful thing about superheroes is their origin story. And boy did they ruin that on this show. The family's super powers arrive when their plane crashes into a South American river while on vacation. Never mind that they're in a plane on a sight-seeing tour at night in a storm. That's dumb, but not the worst of this. The worst is the plane crashes, the family swims to the shore and huddles together in the wildnerness of the rain forest, and then the next shot is them walking in the front door of their home after the vacation.
Um... really? Even if this wasn't an origin story, you kind of want to see them get out of this jam. As it stands, the audience is left to wonder why they even bothered going. And with the origin story, there are countless missed opportunities. They use their new powers to fight off the dangerous wildlife. They meet a lost tribe of people who have worked to keep civilization away from their magical river. They stop an evil logging company from destroying endangered species. Anything but they go home and gradually discover that they can do things.
And then there's the powers. Some pretty standard stuff. Dad's super strong, Mom's super fast, the daughter reads minds, and the son's super... smart? Being smart is not a super power. I think the writers just ran out of cliches. I honestly thought for a while in the pilot that the son's power was being super mopy. Turns out that's the whole family.
Bonus mention - Better With You - Not worth putting this in the main body of this thing, because I only made it through about two minutes of this, but imagine Cloverfield, but instead of all these rich urban assholes getting eaten by a jerky camera-shy monster, they get to go on living and exploring the foibles of their uselessly entitled lives. That's what this show is. If you like it, take a good hard look at your life, because you should be a better person than you are.
Bonus bonus mention - I forgot about Justified, because it started so long ago. But that's a good one too.
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