NEWS: Chris Gore's Footage Fetishes: Why TV is Better than the Movies

Cigarette said:

I never forget.

I grew up in Michigan.

And I know that every group that goes to the movies does not consist of two people. A family might be made of 3, 4, 5, 6 people, etc... You can accuse me of fuzzy math in coming up with an average for an evening at the movies, but I live in LA, or what I like to think of as the highest concentration of assholes in the U.S. I hear what you're saying, but don't go all knee jerk on me before you know.

Thanks.

I'm not trying to be a dick or anything, but if you were making the Roman society reference I think you were, it's "Plebeian." By any chance do you wear red shoes? (500 points for anyone who understands that)

I feel somewhat split on this. On the one hand I have a pretty extensive DVD collection dominated by movies but with a growing and very respectable amount of TV on DVD. Other than Doctor Who Series Two, it's pretty much exclusively animation from Invader Zim to Batman The Animated Series (without factoring in the anime). I will be buying Heroes this week.

But I've also been practically living in the theater over the summer seeing everything from Live Free or Die Hard to Ratattouie. The fact of the matter is that television cannot deliver the kind of escapism that movies can. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was barely more than cliffs notes of the original novel, but the breathtaking interpretation of that world- especially the climactic fight sequences in the Ministry of Magic- were well worth the price of admission. It sounds stupid I'm sure, but I took a friend of mine who had a shitty drama filled summer out to alot of movies, which was just what we both needed; time to just sit down and escape into some fantasy world for a couple hours and just laugh or cry or whatever at something that's going to grab your full attention and suck you in for a couple hours.

Movies are an essential medium I think. One major strength is their ability to pack a thesis into a tight narrative package and hit the viewer with it using the kind of force that would just unravel too slowly otherwise. The meditations on violence and retribution in movies like (Japan's) Samurai Fiction, Munich, or A History of Violence would be utterly lost in a long format TV series. Hell they'd never be able to push the content to the required levels without walling the series off to premium channels and DVD releases.

Then there's Joss Whedon's Firefly. It got fucked backwards and forwards by Fox, had an incredibly weak pilot that turned alot of viewers off (including myself), and only survived thanks to tenacious Whedonites who opened their wallets for the DVDs. However Serenity was brilliantly produced and executed and managed to succeed in being more meaningful and profound than the series that spawned it. It was also incredibly self contained and didn't require any previous knowledge of the characters or series to enjoy.

Television is in the middle of a Renaissance, that's practically undeniable. It's refreshing to see the rise of Heroes, Doctor Who, and Battlestar Galactica in the face of the cheap thrills of reality television, but I'll never schedule my life around any TV show, even if I love the hell out of it. I'll just shell out for DVD later, while movies are malleable enough in their showings that I can just whip out and see one when the urge arises.

I am a man with one red shoe.

personally, i'd rather watch the original fantastic four movie with jason "the boy who could fly" underwood.

This is probably accurate.

Wow. I completely forgot about that. Thanks.

personally I prefer movies at home on my 52 inch HD tv there the only ones you have to deal with are your kids which you can tell to shut up. unlike the theater. The movie experience has been ruined. Something to be said for the drive in movie theaters of old.

I swear to Bob, a year ago the SG zeitgeist was saying "Movie-watching in a communal experience! Just like going to the record store!"

"Movies are made by committee. While television remains a writers' medium which leads to better storytelling."

That's a great point. A while back I was watching the commentary track on the Sopranos DVD. David Chase was making your same point, talking about how in the film world, the writer, with very few exceptions, is treated as a non-entity once his or her script is sold, and all the power lies with the director and producers. In TV the writer/series creator is in charge to a much larger degree. Chase also told this old joke about Hollywood movies:

Did you hear about the Polish actress? She fucked the writer.

I am one of those crazies who can be absorbed by watching a movie or tv show on my Ipod, look up an hour later and realize I'd been sucked into a screen smaller than the palm of my hand...sure, I'd love to see BSG's Upcoming "Razor" on the big screen, tha'd be sweet as hell, but the current direction of lost makes me wonder if I'm willing to waste space on the DVR for it.

It's not just with TV either, you look at music you can see that many artists are moving more in the direction of creating tracks that are good rather than entire albums, which has been a recording industry standard for years, but for an entirely different reason. Record Companies were trying to sell albums with a few good songs, artists are trying to just sell a few good songs, so instead of 18 bucks for an album with one or two great tracks and three decent ones while the rest make you want to fling the CD against the wall in exasperation, you pay 99 cents or 79 cents a track or 15 bucks a month to download whatever you want and get just what you want.

Meh. I can see a movie for 5 bucks in the theater with an enormous screen, speakers that literally rattle my bones, and a very low percentage of idiots. It's called going to matinee shows.

And yes, of course seasons of TV shows are going to outsell movies on DVD - you're getting a lot more entertainment for your dollar on most of them. Not necessarily because the TV show is *better*, but because there's a lot more of it. I also find myself desirous of rewatching television much more often than movies because there's more to keep in my brain with TV shows (at least, the ones with ongoing plots). With a movie, I see it once or twice and I quite probably know it well enough I don't need to see it again for five or six years at a minimum. Kinda like how I'm a lot more likely to reread the first books in the big long epic series (or series at all, for that matter) than I am to reread completely standalone novels. It doesn't really have much to do with the overall quality, it's just that I need to refresh myself on critical plot points for later books in series.

I do agree that movies have been making a fairly weak showing lately, though. And HBO alone is responsible for a staggering amount of television that blows almost anything I'd previously seen on TV away. Pity the major networks have lost touch and are playing almost nothing but crap. I might actually turn on my TV for something other than videogames.

I would definitely have to agree -- I think that movies have taken a turn for the worse, and that the price of going has become exorbitant. Personally, I think I prefer TV (even the broadcast, commercial-laden TV I get -- so there, TiVo snobs). Rarely anymore do I see a preview for a movie that cause me to think, "I have to go see that!" This is excluding, of course, the only recent movie which I got excited about and insisted on going to see in the theatre, which was Ratattouille, and that only because I am obsessed with rats and was happy to finally see them portrayed favorably on the big screen!

As to whether or not I would spend $10 to go to see the season finale of a TV show I loved in the theatre, I would say probably not. This is because I, for one, do not particularly care whether I see something "before everyone else," and generally only insist on seeing a movie in the theatre if (a) it is something I'm so excited about I have to see it immediately (see above comment on Ratattouille) or (b) I feel that the big-screen theatrical experience is essential for a particular film (like when they re-released Star Wars).

P.S. Am I the special lady friend to whom you refer, Chris?

Plus that movie was fucking outstanding.