Logging

TV: Treme, final episode of the season. Friday Night Lights.

The final season of FNL has finally become what the show could have been all along. Pretty much as good as one can expect from a network drama these days. Impressive how the show started off great, then stumbled, then recovered. Almost like the arc of one of the characters in the show. Any episode without Julie is a good show - maybe even great.

Treme finale was a disappointment. Some very strange stuff. I suppose it is tough to wrap these things up. At least the Davis storyline is interesting.

Re-watched some episodes of Game of Thrones. Really a fantastic show. The more I think about it, I now put it into the same category as Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire. The only other drama I can think of putting up there is Breaking Bad. I'm just not a big enough fan of any network dramas to include them, much as I would like to because I feel way too HBO-biased. In some of the interviews with Benioff and Weiss about Game of Thrones they suggest the show is about power. I actually disagree. Initially, it seemed like it was about power and the quest for it, but it became a show about duty and obligation and nobility. The best characters pursue their duties or their lusts and use power as a tool. There is very little naked quests for power.

Film: Iron Man 2 (fell asleep within 10 minutes), City Hall (turned off within 10 minutes to watch Iron Man 2)

Something occurred in the last year, but I swear to God, I can tell if a movie is good or bad within almost 5 minutes. I knew Bad Teacher was bad 5 minutes into the film. The same goes for Iron Man 2 and City Hall. Netflix instant makes it easier to turn bad movies off - which is maybe a good thing.

That said, some bad movies are worth watching all the way through. Things to Do In Denver was a bad movie, but worth watching for what it was trying to do and to see how a group of relatively smart and talented people make a poor movie. You can learn from such bad movies. There are lessons in there to avoid. Season 2 of Friday Night Lights is bad. But worth watching to see how one plot element can almost single handedly destroy an entire show. "He Walked By Night" is bad storytelling by contemporary standards, because it was a cheap B-movie, but still worth watching for the influence on later films and to be literate about noir movies of the time and to see how a director like Anthony Mann got started. The Treme season finale is bad, but worth watching as a reminder that even great writers can screw up and it likely has to do with a combination of age, over-confidence, and being surrounded by people who will only sing your praises.

Other bad movies are not worth seeing. Bad Teacher is pointless. It is merely a marketing concept - actually a pretty good marketing concept, but a movie devoid of any urgency or value or attempt to say anything new. It is transparently by the book storytelling - and bad by-the-book at that. I imagine the screenwriters and producers used Blake Synder's checklist and tried to reverse engineer the script to put it into shape. I imagine they rushed to shoot the thing to fit Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake's schedule. I imagine the director was smoking pot during production a lot to try and make things funnier and got stupid ideas like - what if this scene took place in the bathroom while the principal was taking a shit?

It would be interesting to have seen the development of this movie. I wonder if along the line, someone in the brain trust knew the idea was good and the script wasn't. I fear they didn't. I fear the truth of the situation is that a lot of the brain trust behind movies today cannot tell whether a script is good or if it isn't. They can't tell if a scene is working or if it isn't. They put all their trust in the "elements," ie the talent and the talent's past history of some success. They hide behind the numbers, ie tracking and box office, and measure success by those standards because they don't really have the ability to otherwise evaluate. They haven't watched enough movies. Haven't read enough books. Haven't seen enough plays. Or, they just don't have confidence.

Or, more hopefully, they know things are working, but they are on a schedule. They need to make SOMETHING. They promised. And sometimes in creative endeavors, things just don't work out and they do the best they can with the circumstances. This is possible. This is what I hope. But there is something about HOW these movies suck that makes me suspect it isn't. It is incompetence. It is the result of a system that rewards making deals and not making movies and looks to marketing to help them reach the bottom line. What not of these people realize or care about is that one day the audience will leave if you make enough shit. It will happen suddenly and without warning. It'll be a tipping point and then it will be over. Movies have such a long tradition in America and goodwill, but so did music and so did GM. The lesson in the post-9/11 world is that the most unexpected of things can - and will - happen. Believe it is possible the audience will leave and not come back. And it will be the result of pissing them off with shitty movies and not offering up something original and fun and exciting and inspiring.