TV is where things may get interesting. There seems to have been an exodus of intelligent writing from the networks in the last few years, and it’s starting to bear fruit. First there was the Sopranos on HBO, then Battlestar Galactica on SciFi, and more currently, Dexter on Showtime and The Lost Room on SciFi (for my money, the best-written show on TV).
I’m not sure where all this intelligent writing is coming from, but I’m damned glad to see it, and I hope it continues. BtVS used to have the crown as the best written SciFi on TV, but its characters were kinda young for me … there’s a certain amount of truth in the term “The Scooby Gang.” I hope Joss Wheedon finds away to get “Firefly” going again.
Movies: movies have been overall, uninteresting of late. Goes with electing Republicans and their censorious buddies. The most interesting thing I’ve seen as far as movies is that one of my favorite hentai, “Fencer of Minerva,” is available on a pay-on-demand service called ‘Too Much for TV.’ This is the first real hentai I’ve seen avaialble on cable, premium or otherwise. It’s very, very mild by the standards for most hentai, but it’s a hentai alrighty.
Be interesting to see if hentai continue to show up on ‘Too Much for TV’ and see if they prove popular enough to be picked up by premium cable channels. I expect that what hentai we see will be mild stuff indeed, because the nasty stuff would just get the social conservatives and the feminists in a kerfuffle again, which the Pubbies would love, of course. Distracts from Iraq donchaknow.
Be interesting to see what kind of dramatizations about Iraq we see now that the electorate has give the Bush Admin. a big thumbs down on their Iraq misadventure. I’m betting it will be at least 2008 before we see any really defining works about Iraq show up on TV or movie screens. But I could be wrong. We’ll see a LOT of stuff about Iraq in 2008 though – I’m not wrong about that, at all.
So what do our other cultural Cassandras see for 2007?
Re: intelligent writing. Forgot to put a specific prediction there. In 2007 I dare to hope that there will be more quality, intelligent writing on non-network cable channels and premium channels. The networks will remain intellectually impaired.
many of the posters on this board are old enough to remember when Disco “died”. Although as a musical style it has neither the breadth or depth of Rap Music, I do see Rap Music suddenly becoming “uncool”, and old hat.
I am not posting this as anykind of statement agaisnt Rap, I just feel that as an artform it has run its limit, and actually years ago began schisming into various sub genres. Essentially Rap music has not only “jumped the shark”, it did so some while back and its only going on via momentum. Very little new ideas are being added, and it has become almost a cliche`d parody of its own orginal intensity and strength. Is this the year that its momentum dies?
It’s gotta be soon. My family seems to be timed just right so that what’s slightly irritating and innovative when we hit high school becomes the next big Popular Music Form 'til the next generation hits high school - for my mother, late sixties era rock ‘n’ roll (when she preferred folk), for me, rap (although I prefer rock), and my son enters high school next year. Unfortunately, that means it’s probably emo for the next 10-15 years.
I share EvilCaptor’s optimism for intelligent writing in television, and I think that, perhaps in a longer range view, TV is replacing movies as the predominant American media choice. Better actors, better writers, better ideas and better budgets to pull them off. Remember when there were two tiers of actors, and movie actors were definitely better than TV actors? Now there’s all kinds of flow from one to the other, and even doing ads is no longer “selling out.”
In the next year, I predict at least seven more advertisements will use Cure songs, making me feel really, really old.
To me, the key point is that “better writers” thing. It doesn’t matter how good the actor or actress is if what he or she is saying is a bunch of formulaic drivel – I think we’ve seen enough big-budget action movies to know that. But somehow TV, the very temple of formulaic drivel, has gotten hold of good writers and is actually using them to … write good stuff. How the HELL did that ever happen?