A Decade In Front Of The Tube

With the 2008/2009 TV season drawing to a close there is only one reasonable thing to do - make a list of the decade's best TV shows. Am I jumping the gun? Maybe but my feeling is that the exemplary serieses have already proven themselves, the shitty ones won't all of a sudden get good and new shows debuting in the summer or fall are too new.

In order to make the list a show must have lasted at least 2 seasons. Also, rather than declaring a single show the greatest I've picked 2 dramas and 2 comedies. In my opinion these 4 shows both reflected and defined the past 10 years. So without any further ado...

BEST DRAMA

Great art can take the specific and make it universal. By intensely exploring 5 years in the ghettos of Baltimore Maryland The Wire was able to make profound statements about crime, politics, media, addiction, etc. This show was able to take material that is usually relegated to the editorial page and make it riveting entertainment. Couple that with an amazingly talented ensemble of actors and you get a classic that will be remembered for years to come.

I have to admit that I was pretty late to the game on this one. I was being an elitist in assuming that nothing with that title could possibly be anything more than fodder for the Comic-Con crowd. When I finally started playing catch-up mid-way through season 3 I found that I was only half right. In addition to babes, bots & blasters there were also intensely relevant ideas in play. Torture, religion & terrorism. Not your usual sci-fi trifecta but it worked like fraking gang busters. So say we all.

BEST COMEDY

Combine two of the shittiest elements of post-millennial life (reality TV & Enron) and what do you get? One of the funniest and most quotable shows ever! So what if not a single character was sympathetic? People love to laugh at buffoons. The more self-aggrandizing the buffoon the better. Though the show died an unceremonious death after 3 underrated seasons the waves it started can still be felt in film & TV to this day. You're welcome Michael Cera!

Laugh for laugh this is the best thing going on TV currently. Industry insider shows never work. This is because very few people are actually inside, yet somehow this show has succeeded in bringing people inside its' weird fucked up little world. We want to go to there. Only this show could get away with having an Amadeus or Harry and The Hendersons themed sub-plot. God bless Tina Fey!

So there you have it. Discuss!

Before I Was Cool

Let me start out by saying: Nobody in 4th grade is cool. You may think you were but honestly look back at 4th grade - you were not cool. Trust me on this. But anyhow...

Back in 4th grade when I was busy being uncool I accidentally did something cool. And what was this inadvertently cool thing you ask?

I watched The State

And now that wonderful program is finally coming to DVD. They've promised this before but this time I think they mean it for reals.

The State DVD


So if you want to have any hope of being cool in the future you should start saving your milk money for this bad boy. It's more fun than a barrel of monkey torture.

So Say We All!

This past Friday brought us the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. By and large I really dug it. Just the right balance of explanation and ambiguity. Though I'm sad to see it go I'm also glad that it was able to end on its' own terms rather than through cancellation.

With Battlestar gone, TV is starting to look like a scary place. For my money the only truly great shows still on the air are 30 Rock, The Office and Chuck (go NBC!). Sure there's Gossip Girl, Reaper, Heroes and Criminal Minds but I don't NEED to watch them. Gossip Girl is fun trash with no depth, Heroes stopped being great long ago, Reaper I can take or leave and Criminal Minds is a standard procedural.

The apartment my fiance and I just moved in to doesn't have TV, and even once we get a converter box and such we won't have cable or DVR. In the past this would have been a sign of impending doom. Daddy needs his stories! But with the present decline in quality television, it's not that scary of a prospect. After all, I can still get all the worthwhile stuff on Hulu.

Goodbye Television. It was fracking great while it lasted.

Ciao Middleman!

Yet another brilliant and funny TV show has bitten the dust. According to The New York Post's Pop Culture Blog, ABC Family has decided to pull the plug on Javier Grillo-Marxuach's pop savy series.

This show was brilliant in so many ways. It was funny, filled with great pop culture gags and had an ass-kicking latina for a lead. I still need to pick up the comics on which it was based. Le sigh. I hope all of the talented people behind this show are able to find work that makes use of their awesome talents.

Let us at least take comfort in the fact that the season will soon be coming to DVD as well as a comic book realization of the unfilmed season finale.

Farewell Middleman - we hardly knew ye.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Though it has been rumored since forever...

It looks like the Bluths are one step closer to the big screen.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, series creator Mitch Hurwitz and Ron Howard have signed deals with Fox Searchlight to write and direct an Arrested Deveolopment movie! Time to bust out the DVDs and brush up on all the quotable goodness.

Also, I never thought I would find myself having to say this but...

Thanks Sex and the City movie! Your box office returns made studios more willing to give feature film versions of TV shows a try!

Yes I'm aware that most TV to film transfers amount to little more than an extra long episode and that it will likely be a box office dud. But I don't give a fuck. Wanna know why?

WE'RE GETTING AN ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT MOVIE!!!!



source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i3727898fb2739b043733d6fbf0b66e7a

'til Death Do Us Part: An Appreciation

I love John Waters. If I were ever to expand my favorite directors list from 3 to 4 Mr. Waters would claim that spot without a fight. Everything he touches turns to gold. I love his films. I love his books. I love his photographs. I love his immense knowledge of the perverse. I even love the little seen true crime show he hosted.

Back in 2007 courtTV decided to try something new by greenlighting a weekly which depicted dramatizations of cases where one spouse murdered the other. Now I know what you're thinking:

That sounds depressing. Why would i want to watch that?

Normally you'd be right. Usually spousal murder is serious business. But thanks to John Waters as the GROOM REAPER along with some seriously warped writers, it becomes downright HILARIOUS.

The show is much more "Tales From The Crypt" than it is "Law & Order". The set-ups are condescendingly obvious, the dialogue and acting are ludicrous and the resolutions are always spectacularly random.

One episode featured a detective who was absolutely convinced that a mortician had murdered his wife. The only problem was there was no body. Finally while enjoying a hot dog from a street vendor he has an epiphany. TWO FOR ONE! The woman's body was stuffed into the lining of another coffin!

Not your cup of tea?

OK.

Maybe this show isn't for everybody. Maybe my friends and I are just a little bit too warped. But if anything I've written about above sounds the least bit interesting to you, please check out the show. It's available on DVD and I highly recommend "The Clown Case" and "Time Capsule Murder" episodes.

Now the perfect ending to this blog would be a nice clip of the Groom Reaper telling us he has to hurry off to another wedding. Hope it's not yours. Sadly youtube has no such clips. I guess I'll leave you with this -

Way Down In The Hole

Last night I had nothing better to do so I decided to finally watch “American Gangster”. Though by no means a horrible film, I could not help but compare it to a far superior piece of filmed drama -

Like many people out there, I discovered “The Wire” on DVD. Though I’m sure the show was just as great when broadcast, I feel DVD is the ideal way to experience this epic. When compressed into a few weeks of multi-hour chunks the show ceases to be amazing television and starts becoming Cinema with a capital C.

Though each season is a complete unit in itself, the true beauty lies in watching the overall story develop. While the human drama is absolutely riveting the real star of the show is Baltimore Maryland as herself. Other characters come and go but she remains.

Though some might mock me for this statement I would like to go on record having said:

I think “The Wire” is a work that will endure the test of time.

Movies like “American Gangster” attempt to compress way too much information into an "acceptable" runtime. They're like a frantic marathon runner who kills himself trying to make it to the finish line. "The Wire" on the other hand, is in no hurry. It has all the time it needs and until movie theaters start showing 60 hour films, it will be always be able to defeat any and all comers. This is the pure shit. Uncut.

Now update your Netflix® cue and start watching!

The TV Plan

The democratization of digital cinema is merely half of a revolution. Everyone is so hyped up on the fact that anyone can make a movie for practically no money that they become shortsighted to the other possibilities. The next logical step is television.

Since the 1946 film and television have been at odds with each other. This is primarily due to the arrogance of the film industry. For over 50 years these two mediums have come to exist as islands unto themselves. TV does its thing while the movies do their thing and never the twain shall meet…or so we thought.

It seems that today people are hipping to the fact that film and TV are not as different as we thought. The traditional three-camera sitcom has given way to an abundance of high quality single-camera shows like “The Sopranos”, “Freaks and Geeks” and “Veronica Mars.” It has come to the point where a laugh track is just as anachronistic to a TV program as a musical number is to a film.

In spite of all of this there are essentially no independently produced television programs out there. Film schools are filled to the brim with people trying to express themselves with digital cameras and laptop computers yet almost none of them even consider TV as a possible outlet for their passion. Thanks to technology it is now just as easy to make a TV program, as it is to make a movie. It is with that in mind that I propose the formation of a collective for the purpose of creating independently produced television programming.

The Truth Is Out There

At the start of the summer I was really hyped to see “X-Files: I Want To Believe”, but now thanks to extremely poor reviews I think I’ll be waiting for video or cable. This brings me great pain because from about 1997 to 2001 I was a really huge X-Files geek.

The X-Files is easily one of the BEST shows in television history. It was scary, funny, had two extremely well crafted central characters, played around with the form, had intense mythology and was also able to go off on single episode tangents.

I think this is why the show was able to appeal to such a wide audience – it had something for everyone. None of the current sci-fi/fantasy shows out there seem to be able to garner an audience anywhere near to that of X-Files.

It has been years since I’ve actually watched an episode. I’ve seen the big box set and have toyed with the idea of getting it. What holds me back is a question gnawing at the back of my mind, ‘was it really that good?’ Would it still scare me? Would the effects still look as good? Has my own deep sense of nostalgia built it up too much?

After reading review upon review about how * shoulder shrug * the new film is I’m about ready to accept that the X-Files is something best left in the past. Or maybe I’ll borrow someone’s DVD and try it out at no financial cost to myself because, like Fox Mulder –

Youth of the Beast

Recently I read Rob Schrab’s “Drywall Unzipped” in which two AWESOME Don Ho songs (“Happy Me” and “A Lover’s Prayer”) are referenced. When I was done with the comic I instantly sampled the songs on iTunes and bought them. They are pop perfection and I have been playing them incessantly since.

While listening to the songs on our way down to San Diego the other day, my lovely fiancé mentioned that Don Ho had appeared on an episode of her favorite TV show – “I Dream of Jeannie.” Tonight, having nothing to do, we found ourselves watching not only that episode but also two others featuring Phil Spector and Sammy Davis Jr. respectively. It is here that we encounter a, ‘chicken or the egg’ situation.

Watching these episodes I encountered so many period-specific things that I adore:

- Pathé Color©
- Mid-Century furnishings & fashion
- Lounge Music
- Space-Age obsession
- Animated title sequences
- Exotica
- Random musical numbers
- Self-deprecating celebrity cameos
- Crazy opticals & transitions
- Jabs at the youth culture of the time

I then began to wonder:

“Do I like these things because I watched “I Dream of Jeannie” as a child, or do I like “I Dream of Jeannie” because it has these things in it?”

I know that I watched a lot of “I Dream of Jeannie” when I was young, and I admit to looking back on my childhood with nostalgia, but is that enough to really build an obsession? Plenty of people my age watched this show and others like it growing up and they don’t give two fucks about the things that I find beautiful.

Where does obsession begin?

I guess it’s kind of like, “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll© center of a Tootsie Pop©?”

The world may never know.


Mahalo.

Something For The Yanks

Finally! After seven years, American fans of Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson (Hynes), Nick Frost and Edgar Wright can own the entire 14-episode run of “Spaced” without also needing to own a multi-region DVD player.

For those un-initiated, “Spaced” was an amazing British sit-com put together by the same people who eventually went on to do “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”. The show focuses on Tim and Daisy two complete strangers who pretend to be a married couple so they can get an apartment. Yeah I know it sounds like your standard sit-com circa 1977 but it is really so much more.

The thing that made “Spaced” really stand out for me was the references to pop culture. There are so many that the Region 2 DVD (and now the Reigon 1 DVD) comes with an “homage-o-meter.” Now I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re thinking, ‘I don’t need to see another dialogue heavy, Tarantino-lite, naval gazing festival of look how hip I am’. At least for the sake of this blog that’s what I hope you’re thinking.

I’m aware that there is a contingency out there that thinks popular culture has become that snake that eats its own tail (Ouroboros). And to some degree that is true. We do have films like “Snatch” that consist of nothing but style and witticisms with absolutely NO substance. But then there is a television show like “The Simpsons” which some people believe cultivates a more intelligent audience due to the fact that so much extraneous knowledge is required in order to simply get the jokes.

What makes “Spaced” so awesomely original is that it really gets to the heart of why characters make references. Pop-culture is the prism through which we view our lives. It is our frame of reference. When Daisy finds herself working at a Mexican restaurant ("Neo Nachos), we see it through her eyes and it looks a LOT like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. These characters all see themselves as stars of their own mental movies and at least for me that’s how life really is.
I highly recommend this series to anyone and everyone. If you have the ability to check it out please do. The DVD comes with all kinds of goodies including commentary tracks with guests like Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Diablo Cody, Patton Oswalt and Matt Stone.

Check out these two clips:





And now it's time for the part in my movie where I sleep.

Mahalo.

In Praise of Nancy Kulp

During my formative years I was watched by either my grandparents or my great grandparents while my parents were at work. Needless to say I watched a LOT of TV and since neither had cable my viewing consisted mostly of syndicated shows from the 50s and 60s. Lots of "I Love Lucy", "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Bewitched".

Recently Becca and I were visiting her cousins when one of them put on an episode of "Beverly Hillbillies". I remembered loving the show but had not seen an episode in years. Part of me was afraid that I was going to be let down. That I'd see the episode and wonder what the hell I was thinking growing up. Fortunately I was wrong.

The episode was great but what really stood out was Nancy Kulp as Ms. Jane Hathaway. I went home that night and started researching her. She was quite the woman. Actress, Patriot, Democrat, Linguist, Lesbian and -for your viewing pleasure - comic genius: