A few thoughts on film and television (and one on music)

These are some ranted ramblings opinions I couldn't keep in my head.


1) You cannot replace the word 'boring' with 'mature', 'clever' or 'artistic'

Something I griped about in my Harry Potter review is that it seems common that people define the term mature as dark colours, scowling expressions and slow plodding plot lines. Whilst there's no doubt there is some element of truth in this transition from childhood to adulthood this isn't so much mature as it is acting mature, like a teenager calling their parents by their first names because the words "mum" and "dad" don't seem grown up enough. This kind of design in Harry Potter is essentially trying to make you overlook the overall ridiculousness of the story, which is still extremely childish, but the characters are just as limp as they've always been. 'Lord of The Rings' had the good sense that whilst it left the fate of the world in the hands of the least mature characters, the hobbits, it allowed them to grow and get fucked up by the situation, essentially mimicking an audiences transition into the intense nature of the world (be they reading or watching - I'm going to assume more people have seen than the films than read the books, sign of the times I guess), so I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just the lives of the Harry Potter trio are too boring to pull it off for as long as they have been.

This is a character issue rather than a story one, I like plenty of artistically slow paced films, films whose stories don't really go anywhere but who always have interesting characters or visual style and more often than not only exist to show you a turning point in the characters lives rather than a beginning-middle-end that the character just happens to be caught in. These can be great, but making a slow paced film where very little of anything happens doesn't automatically make it an artistic masterpiece, it's just as likely to be a boring piece of crap.

2) You can't replace the word 'old' with 'classic'

There's a reason "we don't make them like that any more" and it's because mostly they were shit. Don't misunderstand I'm not some popcorn inhaling adrenaline junkie who can't focus unless something explodes every five minutes, I love the haunting atmosphere of old classic as much as most film geeks, but just because films are old doesn't mean they are somehow superior to the modern form. Film is an evolving process and regardless of what anyone says it's better now than it's ever been. The true old masters were masters because they experimented and pushed the boundaries, but when you break away from that it took quite a while for cinema to find it's feet and really understand what it could do. For quite some time all a lot of film makers knew how to do was produce plays and film them so they're pretty visually dull but that's just because they didn't know any better. Film is genuinely better now, there was no golden age of cinema and for every good idea produced back then ten crappy ideas were produced as well, just like today, the difference is out ideas look prettier.

Now this point is particularly bizarre though considering how 98% of all remakes are fucking terrible. It's ridiculous how bad remakes are. I mean for crying out loud all you have to do is make the same film again but with better equipment, better techniques and more money, how can you fuck that up? Logically a remake should be a better version of the original. Fair enough some people hate remakes simply because they're remakes, but I hate them because they're largely crap. The few good remakes, let's say 'Miracle of 34th Street' (it's nearly Christmas after all) people tend to forget are remakes, and that's because it's a version of the film made on better equipment with better techniques and more money, and it made basically the same film but better looking.

Isn't that the point? Isn't the reason to remake an old film because actually whilst the story of the film was really good it wasn't made particularly well simply because it's old and they didn't have the resources and techniques we have now. Tron is a good example, not technically a remake, but I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that whilst the original's a great film having a version of 'Tron' that doesn't look like it was designed by pointing a camera through a kaleidoscope is a brilliant idea. It's technology finally catching up with ideas and that's what should be happening, so maybe modern sequels are a good idea, or at least a better idea than remakes. 'The Thing' is one of my favourite movies and I for one am going to switch of my remake hating brain and look forward to the upcoming prequel.

3) I don't understand why I'm supposed to care about the poor little rich girl

This seems to be a predominantly American television thing to feel the need to make dramas out of how difficult it is to be rich and successful and never have any real problems, and I don't get it. I especially don't get it when the more raw dramas like 'The Wire' blow everything else out of the water anyway, and the Oscars love a bit of grit so why is American television so afraid of it?

This is the only real reason I would consider British drama superior to American drama, because when you have an unwed teenage mother crying her eyes out because her step father won't stop molesting her in 'Eastenders' or some other soap and you change the channel to see an American teen who is too beautiful to possibly be a real person crying her eyes out because daddy bought her a porsche instead of showing up at her birthday party on 'The OC' or some nonsense I just think "FUCK YOU AMERICA!". Every time an American show tries to create drama by having the parents of some spoilt brat try to teach her a life lesson by cutting her off from the family fortune and she's all distraught because basically now she has to live like a normal person, slumming it down here with the rest of us, it makes me want to reach into the television and beat them to death.

4) Musically there's a difference between having a distinctive style and making the same song over and over and over again

Not much more I can say about that last point. Even bands I like sometimes only have a few good songs and everything else just feels like filler which creates maybe one albums worth of songs when they've actually produced three or four. This is a bigger gripe of mine in regards to current pop music, as Caley listens to radio one and I genuinely can't distinguish one song from the next and that's only if I manage to tell the difference between the singers themselves.