stay in the shallow end

It was really refreshing to read this article where movie industry executives are finally admitting that ticket sales being down has less to do with piracy and more to do with the fact that movies these days are considerably suckier than usual.

I used to go to the movies much more frequently than I do now. Part of it happened with the move to Charlottesville, and the fact that the movie theaters here are so craptacular. I get depressed every time I go to one. It just sucks to sit through a movie on a small screen (for a movie theater), poor sound quality, and having my feet cemented to the floor by spilled soda and candy.

I thought about it more recently, and I realized a lot of my decreased movie watching has to do with the quality of television these days. IMHO, we’re in a golden age of television. Shows beyond soap operas are finally moving to more serial plot lines rather than episodic ones. Six Feet Under and 24 both play out like season long movies… if you just watch one of their episodes, you won’t get anything out of it.

It was easy for movies to compete when their budgets dwarfed television, and they got all the top actors, while television actors remained fairly anonymous. That’s all changed now, with actors like Kiefer Sutherland moving to television and doing the best work of their careers by far.

And at best (or worst), a movie can be 200 minutes long. One season of television gives nearly 1100 minutes to work with. It’s much more difficult for a movie writer to be able to develop characters to the extent that we now see in television shows.

The big question is why it took so long to happen. I’m guessing that it took awhile for a network to give a show a movie sized budget and demand corresponding production values. I think we can thank HBO with The Sopranos for that.

I guess I’ll close this post with a list of my favorite shows from the last few years: