xp tbh all I remember about you is that you like two and a half men

still all this tv renaissance stuff is like, people naming a dozen shows. 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. whereas the tv renaissance is like, people talking about *the same shows* cause really outside of those shows tv is horrible, the worst it has ever been.

― iatee, Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:02 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

maybe you don’t realize this because you don’t watch tv but tv shows come in “seasons” where they come back year after year, so the reason people talk about the same shows is because the same shows stay on tv for multiple years

oh shit I was zinged bad

seasons, gotta write that one down

y’all

2 1/2 men was not in my top 50 shows fwiw

sorry for being unnecessarily sarcastic but that was a pretty silly point. people keep talking about the same tv shows because new episodes come out with new things happening so there’s new stuff to talk about.

“new” things “new” stuff

tv turned into sweary soap opera so slowly i never even noticed

i always forget about tv show, that i watch them, i usually enjoy one episode and forget to ever watch it again. i mean there are exceptions but

movies are art but tv is more fun to argue abt on the internet

well most movies arent art really but at least a couple a year seem to manage it

movies usually only waste 2 hours of yr time

tv is incapable of beauty is really the problem, some shows tell interesting stories tho like

i like long movies i do get the appeal of #sustainednarrative, also the way that you can argue w/ppl abt w/e this weeks spinning top is, did it fall or not blah blah blah

i think movies are better at showing you worlds, like ‘margin call’, despite the reduced time is probably more ‘informative’ but tv can be better at ‘telling’, letting oyu live inside the world it creates

i liked buffy

i voted tv but i am blind to/suspicious of cinematic beauty tbh so i think i’m just missing the thing Lamp’s talking about

I think the problem w/ sustainednarrative tv is that there are usually so many writers involved that someone ends up fucking it up along the way, it’s a lot easier for a movie to be perfect than a tv series

this is like the novels v poetry debate that kept rearing its head when i was in grad school, except novels and poetry are better than tv and movies.

nah modern novels are about as bad as modern movies

or about as good

haha now i get why the movie partisans are all mad at you

i actually kind of agree that movies are theoretically better at being beautiful and perfect than tv shows but i honestly can’t remember the last time i saw a movie that was actually beautiful or perfect

xpost lol

novels are tv in this analogy anyway. movies are poetry.

what does ‘modern novels are abt as bad as modern movies’ mean

proportionally about as likely to make you feel/think something amazing

which isn’t really true, novels are better than movies in that sense. i don’t really want to drag novels/poetry into this tbh

i liked middlemarch

sorry it just seemed similar to me. the thing people say about novels is that they’re character driven but baggy and imperfect and poetry is about the pure beauty of language or whatever. that argument is annoying.

xp <3

by “people” i basically mean “this one professor”

novels are also stuff girls like/write, whereas poetry is the important stuff dudes like/write

obviously that’s not actually true it’s just the stuff that creeps into the argument

stuff

i actually kind of agree that movies are theoretically better at being beautiful and perfect than tv shows but i honestly can’t remember the last time i saw a movie that was actually beautiful or perfect

― n/a, Monday, December 12, 2011 9:49 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

yeah this is how i feel.

i also think its interesting the way both are/were (pre internet/vhs/whatever) communal experiences, but in different ways. tv shows and the water cooler and movies and everybody alone together in the dark. i mean i’m drawn more to that, the dark room, the whirring projector, the laughter or sobbing or gasps of the rest of the audience kindof piercing into the isolation of the cinemagoer. the way tv shows force you to stay with them to keep coming back, they pull on your time, whereas a movie burrows into your brain in a different way. its singular maybe because its a single thing. i think of that shot in texas chainsaw massacre where hes spinning around with his chainsaw or the red coat in don’t look now or i’m not sure, but just the way the images burn without needing to increasingly reveal themselves.

man we need to get some mcluhan in here

voted movies, if you want a long and engaging story w/ a complex plot and multidimensional characters go read a book

peace

TV would be my answer for most of the reasons already mentioned and also because I really love good comedy—most of the good stuff is on TV; there is very rarely a truly funny movie out, for whatever reason. I find a lot of incidental everyday stuff funny (Peep Show, etc) which would not suit the movie format.

the everyday world is also all around you though i mean

like right there

and also over there

eh mcluhan

also with tv you can pretend it’s going to go on forever and conquer death etc.

also ad breaks

well most movies arent art really but at least a couple a year seem to manage it

“a couple,” or 40 or 50 I saw this year

(that admittedly mostly don’t play in huge swaths of America, but u know discs/downloads etc)

u would consider 40–50 movies from this last year “art”?

it could be so. i don’t know if i’ve ever even seen that many new movies in the year. seems like a huge number tho

I’d say about 600 feature films were exhibited for a week or more in NYC this year.

for sure, but that means that something like 6% of movies are art

film as an art form exists outside of those 600 feature films

tv does not exist outside of tv

tho it can be show outside of tv

I think it can be summed up like this for me: I love my favorite movies more than I love most good TV series (w/probably the exception of, like, Larry Sanders or Kids In The Hall...which, incidentally, I remember Morbs also adoring!), but I think there might be more television that I love than movies that I love. And I daresay that the television I love has been far more impactful on a number of levels.

i stuck a noodle up my nose

tv’s got the bewbs

lol aspie rube shut-ins

for sure, but that means that something like 6% of movies are art

Do you really think TV can claim a better average?

(For the record I think of the best of both mediums as essential, w/ different strengths.)

tv = less letters so it wins

I think the problem w/ sustainednarrative tv is that there are usually so many writers involved that someone ends up fucking it up along the way, it’s a lot easier for a movie to be perfect than a tv series

not all shows work like this, not all shows have to work like this. actually can you clarify that you’re not assuming that a show’s story is tossed around from one writer to the next episode by episode without any leadership or communication, cause i’m not sure

serialized television getting better will happen as long as shows keep getting more centralized leadership from talented writers (ie louie, the semi-auteurs of HBO). but having a room filled with talented writers backing the author up and providing salient perspectives and filling in the empty spaces and writing glorious dialogue where the author might be better at story = potential greater than most glorious films. rarely reached tho

also wtf, why is television less capable of achieving moments of beauty? it has happened much less with television but it’s a young and slowly growing medium

no it’s not

and i agree that tv isn’t in a renaissance at all, ppl just have too low expectations for it. if breaking bad is the best drama on television we’re definitely not in a renaissance. i think tv has to outgrow its current format fully for that to happen

tv will not outgrow its current format it will just stop being “”tv“” and start being media that gets put on the internet in various formats

iatee can you try explaining why television is inherently incapable of cinematic-level beauty

it’s not inherently incapable it’s just even less likely due to the way it makes $

xp so why exactly will internetized tv fail to continue growing? piracy?

ya i agree, but the way it makes $ is evolving

piracy, long-term problems w/ making money through traditional tv commercials, people being increasingly unwilling to pay for cable due to the way we consume media

movies are pirated too, i don’t think it’s as damaging as you think it is. advertising doesn’t need to be a part of tv’s future — premium cable networks are still getting by fine without it. i’m an optimist but i think tv will get a successful itunes treatment before it fails and dies. and subscriber cable will still support networks.

er, cable networks i mean. ABC and them will do what they do and not necessarily have a major impact on the evolution of cable.

hollywood will have problems too but people are willing to pay for ‘the moviegoing experience’, the ‘tv experience’ can be pirated. premium cable networks still depend on having a huge base of people w/ large cable packages who ‘watch tv’, I don’t think that will exist in the same sense in 20 years.

I would love to see Louie become a more prevalent model for future shows. Made on the cheap by one central dude with complete creative control. I feel like we’ll see a lot more of this as subscription fees for various services increasingly supplant advertising dollars (there’s a pretty direct causal link explaining the disproportionately high level of quality of HBO’s original programming, f’rinstance). That day can’t come soon enough, by christ.

fwiw, i get more pleasure out of watching episodes of breaking bad and parks and recreation than i do out of watching most movies. 10 years ago, i would have said the same thing about the sopranos, 5 years before that i would’ve said the same thing about the x files and 5 years before that twin peaks and the early episodes of the simpsons. TV has gotten better over the past ten years, i agree, but even before that in the “dark ages” there were TV shows i liked way more than most movies ... so it’s a long way of saying that yeah the tv renaissance is kinda overblown.

besides, even most good tv shows lose steam after the third season. it’s cliche, but it’s true and even more true nowadays.

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

by the way i watched “outnumbered” last night—cause it was on—and it was much worse than i had imagined

ahhhhhh ha ha ha ilx! you almost fooled me into caring about this.

anyway the answer is tv because it’s more like books

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

ah okay. i mean this just reminds me of life!, though. & is maybe a negative result of the generally positive democratisation of film, the opening up of film to people who aren’t necessarily w/a studio, who can shoot digitally &c&c&c. but yeah obv this is true. but i have hope for this though. the internet has engendered a swing back to curatorial input, & to people being able to defer to experts’ choices rather than just listen to the loudest voices; there are even those communities who’ll subtitle the unsubtitled film for wider consumption. I think that there are going to be, somewhere, bbc4 programmers or Iranian film nerds doing some of the legwork is what we have to invest in, but i still think escaping the shadow of the canon is a big deal — there is that guy writing a column for film comment about lost hollywood-era “”auteurs“” (prob not his term), arguing that a lot of the basic spadework hasn’t been done in watching through & organising that stuff in postmortem

Poll Closing Date: Saturday, December 29, 2012

TV preferred by clowns who don’t know what year it is.

How many of you watch TV and movies at home while doing other things, btw? cuz none of that counts.

the answer is tv because it’s more like books

i do really like the way characters in a TV series live in your headspace for weeks or months

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

100% RONG

well karagarga won’t give me an invite

morbs i only watch tv while jacking off over dennis perrin tweets, i highly recommend

u might as well be ethan or someone just as boring

morbs i know there are a few specialist outlets that write about totally unobtanium films but i don’t read them for the most part, why because i would have to be available at 2:30pm in new york city on a particular wednesday in order to see them and you know, i work for a living so the whole exercise would just make me cry with futility

sorta otm ^

another reason i’m giving TV the edge is that even the artiest shows have to be middlebrow to an extent, they have to straddle the line between art and product; like stand-up comedy they have to at least attempt to work on a functional level as entertainment regardless of whatever other artistic ambitions they have, whereas by my lights movies have been shoved towards opposite poles, either machine-tooled product or plangent meditation on postmodern subjectivity (or whatever)

guys lets start our own TV channel

cd call it F U Tube

another reason i’m giving TV the edge is that even the artiest shows have to be middlebrow to an extent, they have to straddle the line between art and product; like stand-up comedy they have to at least attempt to work on a functional level as entertainment regardless of whatever other artistic ambitions they have, whereas by my lights movies have been shoved towards opposite poles, either machine-tooled product or plangent meditation on postmodern subjectivity (or whatever)

i would hate to be arguing for art refusing to try to engage people, but i think in a world in which there are ~a bunch of other shows~, a bunch of other films, it’s okay to have outliers & idiosyncratic shows/films. to invoke louis ck’s efforts re: making louie, he was mad at the punch-up & grooming that was done to tv to make it broadly pleasing. cinema is doing god’s work imo in plangently-meditating-on society

The majority of anti-TV peeps in this thread seem to dislike TV because they don’t know how to do it right. Because I actually agree with a lot of their points (TV sucks if you just sit and passively watch it for 8 hours at a time, it sucks to be locked into a schedule of watching shows, it’s hard to judge the quality of quality television when you haven’t actively engaged with television in 5+ years, etc.). To me, this isn’t that far off from someone saying that they hate movies because people are always getting shot in the theater they go to. Or that every time they get bored and go see some random movie they’re always disappointed. There are different and better ways to enjoy it.

An hour of programming on ABC Family, for instance, is almost enough to make me wish that Western culture didn’t exist.

Tv, by a lot. The only movies I like these day are big budget action/scifi flicks or documentaries.

The majority of anti-TV peeps in this thread seem to dislike TV because they don’t know how to do it right. Because I actually agree with a lot of their points (TV sucks if you just sit and passively watch it for 8 hours at a time, it sucks to be locked into a schedule of watching shows, it’s hard to judge the quality of quality television when you haven’t actively engaged with television in 5+ years, etc.). To me, this isn’t that far off from someone saying that they hate movies because people are always getting shot in the theater they go to. Or that every time they get bored and go see some random movie they’re always disappointed. There are different and better ways to enjoy it.

I have never had a problem w/ gun violence at the theaters I go to fwiw