Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Land of the Losties
The Onion sounds the alarm: "Lost" is coming!
Final Season Of 'Lost' Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sound and Fury
Michael Lind on the decline of intelligent political commentary on TV:
In addition to multiplying the number of commentators, cable news channels restricted the scope of commentary to two subjects: immediate reactions to breaking news, and "who's up, who's down in the polls" handicapping. In this age of narrowcasting, the news junkies who follow cable TV and the blogs define politics as partisan gamesmanship. They don't want to know whether the healthcare plan makes sense or not. They want to know whether its passage will help or hurt Democrats in November. For these viewers, politics is a game, as the stock market is for the viewers of Bloomberg and CNBC.
In this new media universe, where cable news channels are forced to fill up an entire day of programming with talking heads between news segments, the producers and bookers naturally turn to experts in daily polling — the dreary, interchangeable "Democratic strategists" and "Republican strategists" who populate cable news and the equivalent blogs. I don't blame the producers. They are trying to make money for their corporations in a battered and declining industry. Having lost the general audience of yesteryear, they are feeding their smaller, more homogeneous audience of political junkies the drugs that the junkies want.
For economic reasons, then, genuine public intellectuals like Buckley and Galbraith probably could not get on TV today. Bill Buckley was fond of quoting the philosopher Eric Voegelin to the effect that liberals were trying to "immanentize the eschaton." Use six-dollar words like those on TV today, and you'll never be invited back. And I can only imagine the icy silence that would have followed, if a chirpy news anchor had asked Professor Galbraith what he thought of the latest poll in the Massachusetts Senate race.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The Straight Dope
Rachel Maddow's two segments on "straightening out the gays" therapy tonight are a must-see.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Monday, November 9, 2009
Snobbier Than Thou
Michael Bérubé beautifully takes down Benjamin Schwarz's critique of "Mad Men."
There really should be a name for this kind of criticism. Begging Amanda’s pardon, this is not merely about “feeling superior to the writers of ‘Mad Men,’” though it certainly is that. It’s also about feeling superior to the rest of the show’s audience, who are clearly insufferably middlebrow, like that Charlie Rose fellow, “who can always be counted on to embrace the conventional wisdom”: “not just Rose but also Mad Men’s affluent, with-it target audience are particularly susceptible to liking what The New York Times’ Arts and Style sections tell them to like (30-plus articles in two years!).” Unlike the Arts and Style sheeple, however, Benjamin Schwarz likes this extraordinarily accomplished show—but for the right reasons.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Stewart Does Beck (And How!)
A must-see:
The 11/3 Project
The 11/3 Project
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Friday, October 30, 2009
Oh, Fox!
Jon Stewart does Fox as only he can:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Friday, October 23, 2009
When Is News Not News?
Rachel Maddow explains what's wrong with Fox News's claim to be just another news channel.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A Post About Nothing
I admit that I never got "Seinfeld." But I like this video: every Kramer entrance in chronological order.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Rainbow Disconnection
Jon Stewart on media coverage (or lack of it) of the gay rights protest march.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Queer and Loathing in D.C. | ||||
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Getting CNN's Goat
Jon Stewart on fact-checking.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| CNN Leaves It There | ||||
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Friday, September 4, 2009
One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
I don't know why I was reading Tim Goodman's column in the Chron today about new shows on the CW, which I never watch and am not even sure how to find on my DirecTV feed. But I came across this sentence in its account of the new revival of "Melrose Place":
I was reminded of the old "Sesame Street" bit, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others." That is, death, prostitution, drug abuse, "mean publicists," infidelity and art theft can all more or less legitimately be considered "corrupt." But in this day and age, and especially in San Francisco, isn't bisexuality just another orientation?
Old prejudices die hard, I guess.
But L.A. still corrupts: Someone dies in the pilot; a med student has to essentially become a hooker; there are drugs, mean publicists, bisexuality, infidelity and the world's least believable art thief.
I was reminded of the old "Sesame Street" bit, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others." That is, death, prostitution, drug abuse, "mean publicists," infidelity and art theft can all more or less legitimately be considered "corrupt." But in this day and age, and especially in San Francisco, isn't bisexuality just another orientation?
Old prejudices die hard, I guess.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Mad Mannion
Lance Mannion's take on "Mad Men" here is provocative. But lots of works -- Shakespeare's romances, the plays of Chekhov and Beckett, the fiction of Kafka -- can be played or read as both comic and tragic. Criticizing "Mad Men" for not being played as a comedy seems to me to miss the point -- we do laugh at it. (Well, I do, anyway.) To assume that its creators intend it to be taken seriously because the actors are playing it straight is to miss the genius of the work. And to reduce Don Draper to just "a jerk" is to miss the devastating portrayal of the compartmentalized life.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Clunk! Clang! Clunk! Clang!
And so another season of "24" counts down. Yes, it's a guilty pleasure, and yes, it's sometimes little more than terror 'n' torture porn for Dick Cheney and the dittoheads. And I bailed on last season when Jack Bauer's Rambismo got completely out of control. But like Michael Corleone (or for that matter, like Jack Bauer) I keep getting dragged back in.
I admit it's nice to see Bill (James Morrison) and Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and even the implausibly resurrected Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) again, even if Tony and Jack seem to be engaged in a contest to see who can out-glower the other. And if you can compartmentalize away the right-wing politics, the glaring continuity gaps, and the complete absurdity of the premise that all this is taking place in "real time" -- it seems, for example, that no place in L.A. or, this season, D.C. is more than a commercial break's distance from any other -- then you can have a litte fun.
For me, the pleasure of "24" is watching some really fine performers do what they can with really awful material. Who can forget Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart as the Logans? And this season we have the miraculous Cherry Jones as the president, a part she plays as a kind of mixture of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and Margaret Thatcher. And the wonderful Janeane Garofalo, who seemed to be taking on Chloe's old role as the put-upon techie brainiac until Chloe herself showed up and got into a split-screen duel with her over control of the security system. We can only hope that Garofalo and Rajskub get lots of screen time together.
This season's McGuffin is a gizmo that can override all the security protocols of the federal government, including air traffic control. And the villains are African warlords on a genocidal rampage, who seem to have their fingers into everything, including the murder of the son of the president and the first spouse (a gaunt and glum Colm Feore). The ripped-from-the headlines premise of "24" has always been bogus, however. Best to just sit back and disengage your expectation that any of it should bear a resemblance to the real world.
I admit it's nice to see Bill (James Morrison) and Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and even the implausibly resurrected Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) again, even if Tony and Jack seem to be engaged in a contest to see who can out-glower the other. And if you can compartmentalize away the right-wing politics, the glaring continuity gaps, and the complete absurdity of the premise that all this is taking place in "real time" -- it seems, for example, that no place in L.A. or, this season, D.C. is more than a commercial break's distance from any other -- then you can have a litte fun.
For me, the pleasure of "24" is watching some really fine performers do what they can with really awful material. Who can forget Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart as the Logans? And this season we have the miraculous Cherry Jones as the president, a part she plays as a kind of mixture of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and Margaret Thatcher. And the wonderful Janeane Garofalo, who seemed to be taking on Chloe's old role as the put-upon techie brainiac until Chloe herself showed up and got into a split-screen duel with her over control of the security system. We can only hope that Garofalo and Rajskub get lots of screen time together.
This season's McGuffin is a gizmo that can override all the security protocols of the federal government, including air traffic control. And the villains are African warlords on a genocidal rampage, who seem to have their fingers into everything, including the murder of the son of the president and the first spouse (a gaunt and glum Colm Feore). The ripped-from-the headlines premise of "24" has always been bogus, however. Best to just sit back and disengage your expectation that any of it should bear a resemblance to the real world.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
...Or Maybe Rachel Maddow Is the Smartest Person on TV
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Mansfield Misfire
Mansfield Park is sometimes called Jane Austen's "problem" novel, the problem being that its moral vision is so very different from ours, and its heroine seems so much less like our contemporary than Emma Woodhouse or Elizabeth Bennet do. Austen herself admitted that Fanny Price was a heroine that no one but she would like, but she also said Mansfield Park was the favorite of her novels.
Still, it's not so problematic a book that adapting it for the movies or TV should result in such terrible hashes as the two versions I've seen: The 1999 film written and directed by Patricia Rozema and the British TV version that aired on PBS Sunday night. The movie is better: Frances O'Connor is a good choice as Fanny, and the film at least follows something that resembles an outline of the novel. The chief difficulty with the film is that Rozema tries to interpolate into it a contemporary New Historical view of the book, pointing out that its wealthy idlers are wealthy and idle because of the exploitation of slaves in the West Indies. It's an intellectual premise that Rozema fails to translate into dramatic sense.
In this scene from the film, Sir Thomas (Harold Pinter) returns home to interrupt the theatricals. Jonny Lee Miller is Edmund, Embeth Davidtz Mary Crawford and Alessandro Nivola Henry Crawford. The conversation about breeding mulattos is, of course, not in the novel:
But at least the film version provokes you into thinking about something. The TV version allows for no thought. It's as if the adapter, one Maggie Wadey, was embarrassed by Fanny Price -- whom admittedly some readers regard as merely a prude, a prig and a wimp -- and is determined to turn her into a Harlequin romance heroine, with cleavage enough to catch any man's eye. Billie Piper, so wonderful as Rose on "Doctor Who," is miserably miscast in the role. She's made into a boisterous little child-woman, with a mad crush on her cousin Edmund (who is at least attractively embodied by Blake Ritson). She's supposed to be the conscience of the household, but when it comes to the amateur theatricals that are the moral crux of the novel, in the TV version she doesn't hold out against them as obdurately as Austen's Fanny Price did. And with this, the TV version crumbles into pointlessness.
Moreover, Wadey utterly botches one of Austen's greatest characters, the poisonous Mrs. Norris (Maggie O'Neil), reducing her to a figure sitting to one side doing her needlework and making the occasional mildly anti-Fanny remark. So when she gets her final comeuppance -- one of the novel's most satisfying moments -- we hardly even notice. A Mansfield Park without a Mrs. Norris is like a Snow White without a wicked stepmother.
Mary Crawford (Hayley Atwell) is another of Austen's great creations. In the novel, she's the embodiment of cleverness and wit -- an Elizabeth Bennet without a soul. Here, she's only a rather attractive woman twirling a parasol and being mildly snippy about Edmund's plans to be a clergyman.
This version also omits Fanny's journey -- her banishment -- home to Portsmouth: a key episode for the character, who discovers in the squalor of her old home how much she values Mansfield Park and all it represents. It's an essential contrast that no amount of flowery talk about how beautiful Mansfield is can compensate for.
In short, I don't think I've seen a worse travesty of a great novel. (Well ... maybe Demi Moore's version of The Scarlet Letter.)
Still, it's not so problematic a book that adapting it for the movies or TV should result in such terrible hashes as the two versions I've seen: The 1999 film written and directed by Patricia Rozema and the British TV version that aired on PBS Sunday night. The movie is better: Frances O'Connor is a good choice as Fanny, and the film at least follows something that resembles an outline of the novel. The chief difficulty with the film is that Rozema tries to interpolate into it a contemporary New Historical view of the book, pointing out that its wealthy idlers are wealthy and idle because of the exploitation of slaves in the West Indies. It's an intellectual premise that Rozema fails to translate into dramatic sense.
In this scene from the film, Sir Thomas (Harold Pinter) returns home to interrupt the theatricals. Jonny Lee Miller is Edmund, Embeth Davidtz Mary Crawford and Alessandro Nivola Henry Crawford. The conversation about breeding mulattos is, of course, not in the novel:
But at least the film version provokes you into thinking about something. The TV version allows for no thought. It's as if the adapter, one Maggie Wadey, was embarrassed by Fanny Price -- whom admittedly some readers regard as merely a prude, a prig and a wimp -- and is determined to turn her into a Harlequin romance heroine, with cleavage enough to catch any man's eye. Billie Piper, so wonderful as Rose on "Doctor Who," is miserably miscast in the role. She's made into a boisterous little child-woman, with a mad crush on her cousin Edmund (who is at least attractively embodied by Blake Ritson). She's supposed to be the conscience of the household, but when it comes to the amateur theatricals that are the moral crux of the novel, in the TV version she doesn't hold out against them as obdurately as Austen's Fanny Price did. And with this, the TV version crumbles into pointlessness.
Moreover, Wadey utterly botches one of Austen's greatest characters, the poisonous Mrs. Norris (Maggie O'Neil), reducing her to a figure sitting to one side doing her needlework and making the occasional mildly anti-Fanny remark. So when she gets her final comeuppance -- one of the novel's most satisfying moments -- we hardly even notice. A Mansfield Park without a Mrs. Norris is like a Snow White without a wicked stepmother.
Mary Crawford (Hayley Atwell) is another of Austen's great creations. In the novel, she's the embodiment of cleverness and wit -- an Elizabeth Bennet without a soul. Here, she's only a rather attractive woman twirling a parasol and being mildly snippy about Edmund's plans to be a clergyman.
This version also omits Fanny's journey -- her banishment -- home to Portsmouth: a key episode for the character, who discovers in the squalor of her old home how much she values Mansfield Park and all it represents. It's an essential contrast that no amount of flowery talk about how beautiful Mansfield is can compensate for.
In short, I don't think I've seen a worse travesty of a great novel. (Well ... maybe Demi Moore's version of The Scarlet Letter.)
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