I have been saying the exact same thing for awhile! and even reality TV is better than Rush Hour 3

I say this just because I love it whenever I get to cite this movie. You asked, "When was the last time a sci-fi movie was able to explore serious issues?"

Children of Men.

But would I have liked Children of Men even more if it had unfolded over thirteen one-hour episodes? I don't know. Maybe.

Enjoyed the article but I think I'm going to have to disagree and come down on the side of the movies as well.

To take issue with a few of your points - I don't think that movies have become formulaic while TV has become original. The vast majority of movies and the vast majority of television have almost always been formulaic, while only a slim percentage of movies and television are original. It's the same way now.

The tv landscape, just like the box office, is littered with bland, forgettable fare, top to bottom: Two and Half Men, various CSIs, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, etc. True, there are some gems out there like the ones you cite, but (limiting myself to this summer) there has been some creatively fresh, compelling films too: Away from Her, Superbad, King of Kong, Once to name a few. While some of those are not so much the visual extravaganza one tends to associate with going to the movies, I have always been of the opinion that, even with the occasional hassles, there is something inherently and intangibly special about the theatrical experience of seeing a great film.

And to be honest, I think some of the tv programs you mention may run contrary to your point. Heroes, Lost, 24, The Office: these shows have become successful and distinguished themselves because they feel 'cinematic'. A lot of this is, I think, due to the HBO effect; to compete with breakaway hits like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, it became necessary for both single camera dramas and comedies to have a distinct, specific style - every episode had to look like a movie. In addition, the point of view shifted to emphasize the idea of extensive creator/Show Runner vision in the manner of filmic 'auteur' theory.

The interesting thing is that with more tv being shot on 35mm and more film being shot on HD, I don't think the result is that tv is BETTER than the movies - I think it's that tv and the movies have come to resemble each other more and more.

Well, if the next several things on my Netflix que (Carnivale, Dexter, Weeds, et al...) seem suggest anything, it would be that you hit the nail on the head. At least for me anyway. While I still love a good film, one episode of The Office is about a trillion times more enjoyable than just about anything I've seen in the theater for a long while. Great article.

I'm kind of torn. On one hand, I would agree, because theaters suck ass nowadays. When I went with some friends to see "Superman Returns", some 50-year old talked from beginning to end, describing the plot. Afterwards, I asked the employees if my friend, who paid for everyone in my group, could get his money back (since they did nothing to shut up the 50-year old). They told me it was OUR job to get up, walk out of the theater, and tell them there was a problem. Customer service: not a priority in movie theaters.

On the other hand: I can't stand to watch television, save for a few shows, for one reason: commercials. Granted, movie theaters are playing the same awful crap, and worse, as 'pre-show entertainment', but at least when the show starts, there's no breaking away to Chuck Norris telling us about the Bo-Flex.

I believe the term here is "catch-22."

Ah. Sometimes I forget that I live in the Middle of Nowhere, New England with an abundance of parking and cheap stores that sell more then enough hideable refreshments if needed, so that saves me dramatically on cost.

On the other hand, you live in Los Angeles. In Cleveland, two tickets plus refreshments is less than $30. The only theater in Cleveland you'd have to pay to park at validates yr parking. Don't forget, Chris, there's this wide swath of land between New York and Los Angeles that we call "most of the country". You people seem to forget.

DVR. It'll change yr life.

Shut up, just shut up, okay?

It's going to be awesome.

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.