Which is too bad, because the most interesting storytelling right now is on tv, not movies. As a comparison: “Analyze This” was a cute little movie, mainly serving as a comedy vehicle for De Niro. But as it is with many Hollywood movies, the big budgets, the costs of releasing the film and the fact that it’s aone-shot gamble, means that “Analyze This” and most other releases have to appeal to the lowest common denominator, to be bland, unthreatening and simple enough for a brain damaged brick to follow the plot.
Compare that to “Sopranos” which used the same plot device toget the action rolling.
When was the last time you saw something as gritty as “Deadwood” in a theatre? And compare the sanitized version of Rome in “Gladiator” with the one we see in “Rome”. I realize that these are HBO shows and that they play with different rules and means, as compared to UPN or the WB. So I’ll throw in “Veronica Mars” which certainly meassures up to the smartest teen dramas in theatres in the last ten years. And it’s on the crappy network UPN.
There’s a lot of crap on tv. For those who bother to wade through that, searching for the good stuff, there are a lot more hours of good quality, compelling storytelling, entertainment in a month, than Hollywood releases in a whole year.
I mostly agree with you here. The reason I’m not “into” TV shows is primarily due to time. What with work, reading, doing editing on a DVD website, and watching DVDs, I don’t have the time for TV (except for sports–I do watch a lot of football on the weekends). I know there are a lot of things I would find interesting, especially stuff like A&E Biography or National Geographic type shows.
I also agree with your opinion of much of what comes out out Hollywood. About 80% of the films I watch come form Korea, Hong Kong, and, too a lesser extent, Japan. Not all are great films to be sure, but at least they are different from the Hollywood formula.
So, I’ve got Netflix rentals coming in; R3 rentals from another service, as well as a bunch of DVDs that I’ve bought that I have yet to watch. With over 130 DVDs in the queues, I’ll just have to be content knowing that, yes, there may be a few good TV shows in the vast wasteland that I’ll just have to be content to miss.
(I do have The Sopranos season 1 in my Netflix queue, and it is quite possible that I may enjoy it enough to divert me from films to see the series through on DVD.)