TELEVISION

SHORTER TINKER TAILOR LONGER

Robert Butler — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:47:11 +0000

~ Posted by Robert Butler, December 9th 2011

The movie version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" opens in the United States today, 22 years after the TV version of John le Carré's novel was first broadcast on the BBC and PBS. The movie runs 127 mins, the TV series runs 290 mins, but for some critics, the sprint through the story seems to pass more slowly than the leisurely jog. In this week's New Yorker, the film critic Anthony Lane says the TV series was,

bovine of pace, often ugly to behold, and content to meander along byways that petered out into open country or led inexorably to dead ends, yet I was tensed and transfixed by every minute...

The movie version, he writes, feels "purposeful, unbaffled, artfully composed." Many movie-goers might perk up at the prospect of seeing George Smiley solve the puzzle of who is the Soviet mole in the "Circus" with 163 minutes to spare. But Lane writes,

something in the drama has been dulled, and I was almost bored.

MAKING THE MONOCULTURE

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:43:15 +0000

The proliferation of media, enabled by the internet and the new consumer devices that access it, has also driven the decentralisation of media. As recently as 15 years ago, if you wanted to catch up on the news, you could look at a handful of publications or a few nightly programmes. And if you wanted to listen to music, you could turn on MTV or fiddle with your radio. People in major cities had more options, because a large population can support specialty shops, but in vast swathes of the world you had to work to get outside the mainstream. Today, as we all know, access to information has exploded. One consequence, according to Touré, a cultural critic writing in Salon, is that the ability of pop culture to unify us—he refers to the massive interest in Michael Jackson's "Thriller", or Nirvana's "Nevermind"—has been eroded, probably forever:

Back when MTV played videos, it functioned like a televised boombox. It was the central way for many people to experience music they loved and learn about new artists. Thus MTV directed and funneled the conversation. Now there’s no central authority. Fuse, where I work, plays videos and concerts and introduces people to new artists. But people also watch videos online, where there’s an endless library of everything ever made but no curation, killing its unifying potential.

Steven Hyden, also writing in Salon, counters that whatever the advantages and disadvantages of a centralised pop-culture authority, the monoculture never actually existed: read more »

UP CLOSE AND IMPERSONAL

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:05:20 +0000

In the 1991 film "L.A. Story", a local weatherman offers to show a visiting journalist around town—“You know, a kind of cultural tour of LA," he tells her. "That's the first 15 minutes," she replies. "Then what?"

Indeed. Los Angeles is a place where it is possible to find 17 tanning parlours and six frozen-yogurt shops thriving within a three-mile radius—and zero book stores. It is a city where Michael Bay, a film-maker lately known for directing the Transformers franchise, and the Kardashian sisters are held up as glowing examples of something, but no one really knows quite what (perhaps LA-ness?). Its profitable and occasionally inventive film and television industries provide a weird raison d’etre for a city Norman Mailer characterised as "a constellation of plastic".

No event crystallises the city's totem virtues of talent, showmanship, extravagance and self-regard like a big awards ceremony, of which there are several annually. As television gets better and better, the Emmy Awards have seen a corresponding rise in clout and glitz. This year's event, which took place on September 18th at the Staples Centre, was a fascinating combination of high-school prom, rock concert, insider coffee klatsch and media maelstrom. It has come a long way since the first Emmy was bestowed in 1949 on a 20-year old ventriloquist named Shirley Dinsdale for her children's show "Judy Splinters". Your correspondent, who arrived as the date of a "Saturday Night Live" writer, managed to snag a seat in the centre of the ceremony's main section, right in the middle of the action. read more »

THE Q&A: MOHAMMED SAEED HARIB, ANIMATOR

Julian Flanagan — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:22:18 +0000

Mohammed Saeed Harib is the creator of “Freej”, the first 3D animation show to come from the Middle East. Since premiering in 2006, the show has gained the region-wide, cross-generational popularity of an Arab "Simpsons". This month sees the start of series four, timed to coincide with Ramadan. read more »

"TOP GEAR" BACKFIRES

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:02:47 +0000

"Top Gear", an inexplicably popular television programme in which three paunchy Englishmen drive slender foreign sportscars, recently began a new series in Britain. The BBC, which makes "Top Gear", is short on money. How do you think they decided to generate some publicity on the cheap?

One of the oldest ruses in marketing is to create a controversy that generates more exposure through newspaper column-inches than you could hope to buy through conventional advertising. Having your album cover banned, for instance, is the surest way to get people to Google it.

In this spirit, the writers of "Top Gear" scripted a two-minute section of this week’s programme in which the braying presenters made a series of rude comments about Mexico. Richard Hammond, one of the show's presenters, observed that Mexican sports cars were like Mexicans themselves: "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat." In case the ploy wasn’t obvious enough, they ended by saying that they wouldn’t get any complaints, “because at the Mexican embassy, the ambassador’s going to be sitting there [asleep] with a remote control... They won’t complain, it’s fine.” read more »

REMEMBERING A FITNESS HERO

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 18:55:14 +0000

Can you do fingertip push-ups? Jack Lalanne was doing them until his final days. The “godfather of American fitness”, as he came to be known, died aged 96 of respiratory failure due to pneumonia on January 23rd. A wave of fond and lively obituaries followed, as has a torrent of personal dedications to the man and his work. This vintage clip captures Lalanne’s charm and exuberance, and is how many will remember him:

At age 15 Lalanne had an epiphany and decided to transform himself from a fat, spotty kid into a health and fitness fanatic. Armed with the mantra “Long live living long”, he dedicated his life to helping Americans eat well, move more and lead healthier lives. He was a pioneer of modern fitness—in the 1930s he opened one of the nation's first gyms, in Oakland, California, in an era when weight-training was thought to cause hernias or create masculine-looking women.

As his gym empire expanded he devised the first leg-extension and weight-adjustment machines, now commonplace in today’s gyms (although he never patented them). In 1951 he began a successful fitness television series, “The Jack Lalanne Show”, which ran daily for a half-hour for three decades. He also put his name to a range of juicers to promote healthy eating. read more »

"WORK OF ART": RARE REALITY

Molly Young — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:13:49 +0000

On a sweltering Wednesday night it was business as usual outside the Brooklyn Museum. There were smokers, BMX bikers, a lone juggler and someone passed out on the grass. Few seemed to care about the klatch of smartly dressed people nibbling plantain chips inside the museum's glassed-in lobby. But amid this throng, gathered for the grand finale of Bravo's reality-TV show "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist", it was hard to consider anyone else. We had come to learn who would end up with the big prize: a solo show at the museum, plus $100,000.

The show, an elimination contest in the vein of "Project Runway" or "Top Chef", pitted 14 aspiring artists against each other in a series of challenges judged by Jerry Saltz, a critic for New York magazine, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Bill Powers, both gallerists, and China Chow, the presenter. A rotating cast of guest judges included big art names such as Ryan McGinness and Andres Serrano. Sarah Jessica Parker is the executive producer. In an earlier post, we pondered how such a contest could work for such a subjective field—how, indeed, does one judge a work of art? This party, where contestants rubbed elbows with judges and buddies, seemed like a good place for More Intelligent Life to at least learn how the artists felt about it all. read more »

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS

Molly Young — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:39:40 +0000

To watch an episode of the new ABC Family show "Pretty Little Liars" is to conjure an image of the focus group that no doubt spawned the show's concept: one visualises a round-table of youth-culture experts excitedly throwing out ideas: " 'Gossip Girl' meets 'CSI'!" or " 'Sweet Valley High' plus 'Nancy Drew' multiplied by 'The Craft' and divided by 'Melrose Place'!" It's a reasonable response, because "Pretty Little Liars" presents itself as a shameless jumble of ready-made concepts. Even the show's tagline, "Never trust a pretty girl with a secret," seems designed to elicit thoughtless nods. It's not a show that asks viewers to stop and ponder a single thing. It's textbook summer entertainment.

Based on a young-adult novel series by Sara Shepard, the show revolves around the abduction and murder of one Alison DiLaurentis, the pretty ringleader of her high-school clique. In the years following Alison's death, her high-school friends receive text messages from a mysterious "A" and grapple with secrets of varying salacity: a lesbian romance, an affair with a teacher, cheating parents, a lab explosion, and plenty of intrigue surrounding the circumstances of Alison's death. The acting is hammy and the characters straight from Central Casting, with the show's four lead actresses designated the jock, the nerd, the babe and the artsy one. This is the television equivalent of canned whipped cream: cheap, sweet and easy. read more »

FIVE THINGS: ABOUT CULT TELEVISION

Molly Young — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:22:08 +0000

Calling all couch potatoes and media theorists: "The Cult TV Book", edited by Stacey Abbott, has arrived. The volume—half textbook, half reference manual—assembles more than three dozen academic essays that address the question of what constitutes cult television and how a small number of smart, genre-busting shows have influenced a vast amount of our viewing material.

What counts as cult TV? Well, like the definition of the term itself, that’s a topic for productive argument. A short list might include "Star Trek", "Battlestar Galactica", "Twin Peaks", "The X-Files", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Alias", "Firefly", "The Avengers" and "Lost". Herewith we’ve culled five things from Abbott’s book to ponder over on the subject of television.

On where it all began:

The origin of cult-TV appreciation can be placed in the period following the debut of "Star Trek" in 1966, when the show teetered on the brink of cancellation and was rescued from a premature death by ardent letter-writing campaigns organised by fans. read more »

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Molly Young — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:27:34 +0000

The main requirement of good reality television is that its cast members emanate force fields of charisma. The main requirement of a television-elimination challenge is that its competitors display visible and varying talents. When a show incorporates both of these television tropes—as Bravo's new series "Work of Art" does—its participants had better deliver on both the talent and charisma counts. There's also the matter of the judges, who must be articulate, eminent in their field, and capable of salty soundbites. Finally, the prize must be truly covetable. But just because the ingredients of a top-tier reality show are identifiable doesn't mean they're easy to amass into something watchable.

"Work of Art", which premiered on June 9th, is an interesting case study. The judges include Jerry Saltz, art critic for New York magazine, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, a curator. Simon de Pury, the former chairman of Sotheby's Europe, serves as a mentor, and Sarah Jessica Parker is executive producer. The contestants are sexy and talented, for the most part, and the winner gets a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum plus $100,000. "Work of Art", in other words, fulfils the formula. But there's a snag. read more »