If you've seen the movie Land of the Dead you probably laughed at the parts where people could distract the zombies' hunger by shooting off fireworks. The zombies would stop and stare in awe at these explosions in the sky. Well, the movie industry is shooting fireworks at you, and I feel like I'm the only one laughing.
Basically, I have a huge problem with the movie industry lately. It is becoming increasingly bland and predictable. The worst part is that the more horrible, simple minded movies are becoming, the more money they make. Avatar is the culmination of this! People praising that movie are no better than the zombies who would stare at fireworks in the movie Land of the Dead. Meanwhile, one zombie saw how utterly stupid and pointless these fireworks were, and tried to convince the idiot zombies to stop staring. This is how I feel. I'm telling everyone "but this movie has a recycled plot, horrible acting, and some of the worst character development possible," but everyone just replies "but it looks so cool!"
OK, I'm used to this, what I'm not used to is that same movie that I speak against winning during movie award season. The Golden Globes are usually pretty good (certainly not great) with choosing decent movies, but this year was just awful. I mean Sandra Bullock, Monique, and Avatar? What the hell, were they bought out by MTV? I'm pretty sure it's got something to do with fact that they do TV and movie awards in the same ceremony. Television is the worst writing of any art form, of any genre. Newspaper ads have less predictable writing than television. As far as the Golden Globes go, movies are now being rewarded for the same reason TV is rewarded: short term popularity. Hardly any judgment based on actual aesthetic, artistic criticism was used this year, that's obvious. There is nothing of real artistic value in Avatar, outside of the visuals, so give it best special effects and let the zombies masturbate over it. The only intellectual point of the movie is the environmental aspect, which isn't presented to us in a subtle manner, but beaten into us with a metaphorical sledge hammer, leaving nothing for us to actually think about (nor is anything new to the issue ever offered).
Another fear that I have with these blockbusters is that they will be pretty much our only viewing options. If production company A has X amount of budget to distribute to movies and Avatar ( over 300 million dollars) uses 3/4 of X, then that leaves very little for other movies. Most likely another blockbuster will take the rest of the 1/4 leaving nothing for an up and coming director who needs 7 million dollars to make a movie that will (gasp) challenge us to think.
That being said, I still have a little faith in the Oscars, mainly because of their largely ignoring the hype around The Dark Knight last year. I am going to try to catch up on award movies for that, anyway.
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Though you do make some good points here, I'd disagree with you when you say that "TV is the worst writing of any art form." Yes, I think the majority of TV is strictly written for entertainment purposes with sitcoms and "reality" shows (which stretch reality to provide for the need-to-be-fed public), but there's still a lot of good, educational, and interesting writing happening in the television medium. For example, I'd say a lot of the Discovery Channel shows are written well, even "The Office" has some of the best TV-style writing out there. The well written shows are definitely the minority, but I think they're a strong enough minority that they've inched TV past the mark of "worst writing of any art form."
ReplyDeleteAnd I do agree with your opinions on Avatar, and I haven't even seen it. It's one of those films that I don't want to want to see, but I guess I should. I've read reviews rate it high, but say nothing but how spectacular the visual effects are. As far as this year goes, I think the best two films I've seen are The Hurt Locker (directed by James Cameron's ex-wife!), and The Coen Brothers' A Serious Man.
I very much disagree with your point saying The Office has good writing. The first season was a complete rip off of the British version. How is completely copying an idea that was already done good writing? After that they do what TV shows always do and try to stay popular at any cost. The characters in the later seasons are doing things completely inconsistent with the characterization they were set up with. The British version did it right, and wrote the story with a beginning and an end. When writing is set up so that it attempts to stay popular as long as possible it will always kill the story.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Discovery shows, those aren't exactly written. Aren't they mostly just educational reality-type shows? You also have to admit that they have some crap shows on there, like Life After People. The 2012 and end of the world shows are rather silly as well.
However, I think I'll say that gossip magazines and pornos (is that an art form?) have worse writing than television, so I take back that stamenent, I guess.