tv or movies

and i don't even ask for "art" in either movies or TV shows ... i just ask to be entertained!

the thing is that a 'tv show' fundamentally just doesnt seem that concerned w/imagery or the way it looks &c &c and in order to be successful you can be so ugly and formulaic, no one watches 'seinfeld' for the way it looked but its about as good a sitcom as you can make. even shows that had real visual style and grace like 'the sopranos', some of their best episodes are still about dialogue, character, plot and some of their weakest episodes were the most cinematic. (whats the one w/carmela in paris called?)

you could make like non-narrative tv that addressed the role of the camera but then would it really be a 'tv show'? its not even that tv is junk food or a narrower format or w/e its just... its not concerned w/images and the senses the way film can be, its sorta a hybrid medium that has its own strengths but its limited too i guess

xp can't really pirate a big-screen football game w friends, families are never going to crowd around the computer screen to watch their shows, etc. daytime talk shows, late night shows, soaps, sports, maybe even the crap reality shows on Bravo, i don't think these things will ever be fully relegated to the internet. and if they do, they'll find a way to strive there. there's no reason a netflix model can't basically replace cable as long as it costs as much as cable. if/when free ad-based sites like hulu either die out or become entirely subscription-based, that model would make sense. and piracy hasn't killed netflix, etc

basically, there are a million things that can happen. tv's survival and continued evolution (haven't even mentioned the internet's capability to foster low-budget indies) is more likely than its death imo

TV has sports.

Newer digital TVs with a good sound system kind of makes going to a theatre not as big as big a deal as it once was.

the thing is that a 'tv show' fundamentally just doesnt seem that concerned w/imagery or the way it looks

this is a trend based in a history of ad-based, network-meddled-with television, not an inherent fundamental truth. a tv show isn't a sentient thing, and if a showrunner/head writer wants and has the capability to concern the show w imagery, no reason why not. i would if i could! also not buying that there aren't shows right now that achieve beautiful imagery. even the x-files was pretty capable of it at points.

people already watch stuff on their ipads / the internet is easier than ever to connect to someone's tv screen. owning a large tv screen, computer screen or projector or whatever =/= "tv"

xp to lamp

its limits are 100% commercial I think, something is a tv show because it is X minutes long (w/ or w/o commercials) - beyond that there is nothing really that defines tv as an art form when I watch a daily show clip on youtube it's not 'watching tv' but if I watch the whole episode it is.

xp to my last post: i'm no film historian but i imagine you might be able to say the same thing about film in the 20s/30s, before studio productions were overtaken by (at least the concept of) the auteur

voted tv just to enrage morbs like everyone else

its limits are 100% commercial I think, something is a tv show because it is X minutes long (w/ or w/o commercials) - beyond that there is nothing really that defines tv as an art form when I watch a daily show clip on youtube it's not 'watching tv' but if I watch the whole episode it is.

true, but this seems like arguing the difference between a short story and a novella and a novel and a flash fiction.

television is a medium that includes serialized stories, mini-series, made-for-tv movies, etc. not to mention a million other bits of non-fictional media. so maybe the comparison between "tv" and movies doesn't work unless you specify what kind of tv. all i know is that film is basically always 90-120 minutes, while television offers the possibility of every single other narrative length/scope, and that is necessary.

cmon bro nothing is sadder than when 'breaking bad' tries to get cinematic or visually inventive its just like jeez tell yr stories, this is so embarrassing grandpa

also film was p much always visual tv is abt words but it cant actually use words as effectively as books

i know i basically said that too upthread, but tv just uses words differently. also words are better than images.

sure thats why books are better than movies but cmon

haha wait are you granting my five-year-old "argument" that words are better than images? i am really embarrassed that i still think that, but i do. maybe there's something wrong with my eyes.

I think the fact that tv doesn't have the image-thing going for it is mostly due to realities of cost and the production schedule. but again, just like the fixed time, it proves to be an artform that can only be defined by the limits of a budget.

it doesn't have to be like that tho? i think i am alone here in seeing serial tv drama as a very young thing. not in terms of years alive but actual development.

for the record i think that breaking bad is an overrated show and i agree that its visuals are not very great

the sopranos had plenty of both and time and money in its later seasons its just intrinsic in the way a tv show communicates its purpose like i sd the most 'cinematic' episodes of the sopranos were not nec its most 'successful' or enjoyable, tv tells stories and presents its ideas diff than film

does every beautiful image in film exists because of a high budget tho? or even most of them? it's a subjective thing of course. not sure why this is such a huge deal either, didn't know beautiful images are the only judge of a film

above: ya your last part is what i'm getting at, agree. but that doesn't mean television in incapable of 'cinematic' beauty. maybe just indicative that the good cinematographers are in film or that tv suffers too much from serialization, which could possibly be rooted out eventually (like it was in novels).

no Lamp's right what's good about tv is not the cinematic beauty stuff.

an artform that can only be defined by the limits of a budget.

how cynical and rong is this? i mean, apply this to Taxi

to clarify my second part so it makes sense -- i think weeding out ad-based broadcasts = less importance given to serialization = dramas running more fluidly with episode lines blurred and more like chapters in a book that finds chapters arbitrary. i think there might come a point where seasons of television are released all at once rather than week-by-week, which would make tv dramas more novelistic in scope and cinematic in presentation.

how cynical and rong is this? i mean, apply this to Taxi

how long were episodes of taxi? how much time did they have to make new episodes? that's all I meant.

ernest dickerson and agnieszka holland directed several episodes of the wire (which most certainly had some "cinematic" style). neither is ingmar bergman or martin scorsese, but juice and europaaa, europa were solid movies!

Newer digital TVs with a good sound system kind of makes going to a theatre not as big as big a deal as it once was.

I love seeing things in cinemas because it can be so joyous to surrender to being part of ~an audience~

I hear the director of Bridesmaids is thinking about doing some slumming in tv yo

I heard that about the star, too.

want to cosign lamp's points abt movies doing imagery etc better and tv doing plot, character etc better.

Why this could ever be a point in favour of movies escapes me.

bridesmaids is tv xxpost

(oh and stupid thread)

(but movies obv.)

also there is no golden silent era of television

films every time. i've never fully been able to get into tv as a regular thing (wasn't brought up in a tv-heavy household, living in a few houses with no tv at all completely weaned me off the habit). i actively resent it when tv is default "background noise" in a house.

i'm kind of all-or-nothing when it comes to getting into things, and tv series aren't very conducive to that. remembering to be around for it every week is a massive commitment! and the minute i miss an episode that's it, have to stop completely. last time i tried to do this was the lost/desperate housewives era and i didn't even make it to the end of the first series.

which leads into the most important point to me - films = socialising for me. you go out to the cinema, meet friends, maybe go for a meal or a drink, you talk about it afterwards. tv = a block on socialising. instead of going out you have to stay in at the same time every week.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Lex have you heard of VCR, Sky+, Tivo, iPlayer even? Totally removes the need to be in a room at the moment something is broadcast.

VCR - never could work out how to record on videos
sky+ - haha I haven't heard of this
tivo - didn't think we had this in the UK?
iplayer - oh god this just makes me too lackadaisical about catching up and then when i finally get round to it the programme's been taken off iplayer the day before. EVERY TIME.

bear in mind i genuinely struggle with, like, turning the tv on and changing the channel

the absence of time constraint for TV means even the best shows just blather along until they stop being profitable, plot - not that i'm a big fan of plot but still - is just a structuralist sausage machine now designed to keep the show junkies strung along as long as poss

Twin Peaks kinda foresaw, satirised, then invented this method

and if that's yr bag fine, whatever, but i have other time-murdering habits to sustain like video games kthx

goddamn threads are long these days

i got up to this part:

I am sure there were at least 20 movies I didn't see this year that I would have enjoyed very much, it's hard to figure out which 20 those would be, but still

this is a big problem with great, say, iranian movies, or indie budget flicks - they are just not available, even on the pirate bay, much less reviewed or written about; there is a huge failure to push these things up into anyone's consciousness even though the internet is supposed to make distribution and associated "conversation" smooth as butter

speaking of video games, i love video games, but i have this weird feeling that i'm "wasting time" when i play them - even the very best games - which i almost never feel with TV or movies, even when they are terrible

i feel more or less the opposite re: tv

but then i feel like most drama series are written by fanboys and slash authors now and again i just can't be bothered to engage - season-long plot arcs and never-solved "mysteries" that are made up as they go along, whole thing really designed for DVD buyers rather than an audience that might wanna casually watch the odd ep of something if they happen to be in that evening

shdn't be on this ting hungover i'm just gonna go full mental about the evil that is 21st century tv

i hear that. to bring it back to videogames again there is maybe a need for the "pick up and play" model to have a renaissance, for us casual viewers

re: time-wasting, even if it's some horrible shit on TV like "i'm a celebrity get me out of here" i feel like i'm connecting up with the unseen millions out there who have also seen it, or are seeing it; particularly if some of those unseen millions actually LIKE IT (which some of them must) i feel like i'm getting some purchase on their mentality, which feels socially useful - and curiously i don't have this feeling of socially useful communion with videogames, even online multiplayer games

i get no sense of social usefulness from video games really but a deep brain-tickling pleasure, whereas i don't get much sense of social engagement from tv either but i feel like i'm slaughtering hecatombs of precious time. i'm purely talking from my own perspective here tho, i've got no judgement on people who love their tv, if i was of a mind to smoke weed nowadays i'd probly suck up a lot more tv than i do

live sport is the most tv i watch, tbph, i'm taking 'tv' as dvd boxsets and d/l series, i'm assuming everyone is too?

this is a big problem with great, say, iranian movies, or indie budget flicks - they are just not available, even on the pirate bay, much less reviewed or written about; there is a huge failure to push these things up into anyone's consciousness even though the internet is supposed to make distribution and associated "conversation" smooth as butter

― his venerable escutcheon, Tuesday, 13 December 2011 11:05 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

this is interesting - do you mean there's no canon for arcane stuff, outside of individuals enthusiasm? bc i think that's kinda true. i think it is harder to embrace things that are imperfect in a climate where there's such a voluble conversation about the 'best' things, so repping for some kind of idiosyncratic if nobly failing personal work is hard to get traction for.

i think there might come a point where seasons of television are released all at once rather than week-by-week, which would make tv dramas more novelistic in scope and cinematic in presentation.

― zachylon, Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:11 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

why would this business model ever make sense

boxsets

schlump no i mean that there are an unbelievable number of great movies that get made every year that we will NEVER know about (to take just one of many reasons: the producer doesn't have enough money to subtitle it) whereas there is very little great TV that passes unnoticed

actually maybe that last bit's not true; there have been approximately one (1) metric fvckton of interesting-looking docs on BBC4 that i haven't watched, not to mention an incredible miniseries like "the promise" that i only saw because i randomly happened upon someone's tweet about it