There is certain information that the new film version of John le Carré's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" expects its viewers to already know. For instance, that the film takes place during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, when the British and Soviet intelligence agencies were pitted against each other in deadly games of cat-and-mouse. It also expects a basic understanding of agents and counter-agents, intelligence operations, and the uneasy political climate of the day. Oh, and it helps to know the British counting rhyme that the title refers to, that goes, "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief."
But even beyond that, "Tinker, Tailor," requires the viewer to really think and pay attention in order to piece together what is going on. For a film with so many twists and feints and red herrings, there isn't much exposition. Sometimes the plot hinges on small details, like being able to recognize a woman whose face is never shown onscreen, or to work out how the protagonist, George Smiley (Gary Oldman), comes to certain conclusions. There are multiple flashbacks, some that may be confused for the present day. Most of the characters also use a shorthand slang, known as Tradecraft, that takes a while to pick up on – for instance, MI6 is The Circus, and the Soviet Spymaster is nicknamed Karla. And this is not the kind of movie that stops to explain every unfamiliar term and concept.
Yet while the particulars of the plot are convoluted, the premise is not. A British agent named Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong), is sent to Hungary by Control (John Hurt), head of the Circus, to find information about a mole he suspects the KGB has planted in the upper echelons of British intelligence. Prideux is shot and the resulting scandal forces the resignations of Control and his right-hand man, George Smiley. However, a subsequent allegation by a possible rogue agent, Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), brings Smiley out of retirement to secretly investigate the mole. His suspects are four: Percy Alleline, (Toby Jones) the new Chief of the Circus, and his inner circle, comprised of Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds), and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik).
The film is deliberately a little smarter than the audience, helping it to seem that George Smiley is always several steps ahead of everyone else. However, all the complexities of who knows what, and who may be untrustworthy can easily be worked out with a few rewatches and Googling the details. Focusing too closely on the minutia may cause viewers to miss that the film is primarily concerned with examining the character of Smiley, and through him the cold, amoral, labyrinthine world he must navigate. The search for the mole encompasses the stories of several agents who have to make hard sacrifices for the sake of their work. There's the sad love affair between Ricki Tarr and a Soviet woman he tries to turn (Svetlana Khodchenkova), the conflicted maneuverings of Smiley's chief ally Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), the awful fate of Jim Prideaux, and finally the troubled personal life of Smiley himself.
Swedish director Tomas Alfredson has gone from helming a small horror tale, "Let the Right One In" to a massively more complicated espionage thriller with a star-studded British cast in "Tinker, Tailor," but it's clear immediately that he's the right man for the job. He summons up a wonderful atmosphere of isolation and loneliness, placing his characters in stark, almost monochrome environments. You can practically feel the perpetual chill through the screen. And he is exceptionally good at suggesting the psychological states of various characters with hardly a word of dialogue. It may be difficult to follow the specific logic of the spy games, but it's always clear what every character is going through emotionally, in the moment, and it's riveting to watch.
The cast is excellent, with Gary Oldman at the top of the list. His Smiley is minimalist, cerebral, and immaculate - cultivating a perfect dead-eye stare behind thick vintage glasses. He is the most closely examined character, and the most impenetrable. We see other characters let down their guard in private moments, but Smiley never slips - he's the perfect Cold Warrior. Among the supporting cast, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, and Tom Hardy get a lot of emotional fireworks to play with, and John Hurt is as invaluable as ever.
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," is a spy film after my own heart, made in the grand tradition of the 1970s conspiracy thrillers. Yet it's the more personal stories at its core, the examinations of the terrible human cost of the game, that make it distinctive. If you want to see a typical Hollywood spy film, full of action and mayhem, I hear the new "Mission: Impossible" is quite good. But if you want to delve deeper into the murk of real-world espionage, and have the patience for it, "Tinker, Tailor," is a very satisfying experience.
---
Monday, December 19, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Are We Ready for 2012?
As I'm sure you've heard, there's going to be a new "Batman" movie this summer. And an "Avengers" movie. And a new non-"Cars" PIXAR movies. And in December, a little flick called "The Hobbit" will grace our theater screens. And James Bond will return in "Skyfall." And the "Twilight" saga will finally end with "Breaking Dawn Part 2." 2012 will soon be upon us, and some long-awaited films are just around the corner. As with every year, there's bound to be plenty of bad mixed in with the good, but for now, with everything yet unseen, it's a good time to just sit back and enjoy the speculation and anticipation. Consider the possibilities, if you will.
Release slates are still very much a work in progress, but most of the big studio titles have been scheduled, and we have a pretty good idea of which in-progress projects are expected to reach theaters by the end of next December. Here's some of the upcoming titles I'm looking forward to, that haven't gotten quite as much media attention as "The Hunger Games" and "Men in Black III" and their ilk yet:
John Carter - The marketing so far has been horrific. Absolutely awful. However, if you look at the film's pedigree, there is a lot to get excited about. This is the live action debut of "Finding Nemo" director Andrew Stanton, with a script written by PIXAR alum Mark Andrews, with an assist by Michael Chabon. A crummy title and a clueless marketing might be hiding something really interesting here.
Moonrise Kingdom - The next film by Wes Anderson. We know it's set in the 60s, we know that it was shooting in New England, and we know it's about a group of townsfolk chasing a pair of eloping love-birds. And the cast includes Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, and of course, the one and only Bill Murray.
Gravity - A year ago, everyone wanted to know who would land the lead female role in Alfonso Cuaron's latest science fiction feature, and the part finally went to Sandra Bullock. George Clooney will co-star, replacing Robert Downey Jr. This is Cuaron's first directorial effort since "Children of Men," and there have been whispers and rumors that it may be the most daring thing he's attempted yet.
Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino is making another revenge movie, this time about a former slave, played by Jamie Foxx, settling the score with his former master, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, and Kurt Russell will be along for the ride. I'm a little scared of how far Tarantino is going to take this, but I wouldn't miss is for the world.
The Master - This one may not be completed before the end of the year, but after a lot of false starts and cast shuffling, I'm just glad that Paul Thomas Anderson's period film, about a man who starts a new religion played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is finally getting made. Anderson is one of the major American auteurs, and it has been far too long since his last feature, "There Will Be Blood."
Prometheus - Ridley Scott's recent films haven't been great, so I have very mixed feelings about the prospects of "Prometheus," which is not a sequel to "Alien," apparently, but a story from the same universe. Then again, Scott's never gone wrong on a science-fiction film, and with Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender as the leads, I'm certainly willing to give "Prometheus" the benefit of the doubt.
Life of Pi - I know I've talked up this film before, but I find it such an intriguing one. Based on the beloved novel by Yann Martel, "Life of Pi" will follow the adventures of a young Indian boy, stranded in a boat with a Bengal tiger and other animals after a shipwreck. Ang Lee is directing, after a parade of other directors came and went, and here's hoping that he can do the book justice.
The We and the I - Not much is known about Michel Gondry's next film, except that it involves a group of kids from the Bronx and inadvertent time travel. Anyway, here's hoping it'll be a return to form for Gondry after the disappointment of "The Green Hornet." The superhero flick was much too straight-laced an exercise for his talents, and it'll be good to see him fully unleashed again.
Seven Psychopaths - This will be the second film directed by Martin McDonagh, who is best known for "In Bruges," and writing a string of gory, violent, darkly humorous plays about murderers, hit-men, maniacs, and very, very bad people. I adore his work, and relish the thought of him working with a slew of screen badasses, including Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken and Tom Waits.
Cloud Atlas - There isn't the space to go into the complexities of the multi-universe story that Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis siblings are attempting to bring to the screen, or the incredible lengths they've gone to in order to finance and film it. For more details, see this NY Times article. But one thing is certain. I have absolutely got to see what the end result. Whether failure or triumph, it's going to be spectacular.
And a few more to look out for:
* Steven Spielberg is directing Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.
* Spike Lee will reportedly reprise the role of Mookie from "Do the Right Thing" in Red Hook Summer, which will premiere at Sundance.
* Woody Allen's European tour continues with a stop in Italy for Nero Fiddled, with Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page.
* Park Chan Wook, director of the Vengeance Trilogy, will be making his English language debut with Stoker, a thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska.
* Tim Burton is making a movie where Johnny Depp is a vampire, called Dark Shadows, and no one is the least bit surprised.
* I've been hearing about Rian Johnson's new science film Looper for ages, and I hope it turned out well.
* Finally, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis will be my first Robert Pattinson film. Hope the kid can act.
Happy watching!
---
Release slates are still very much a work in progress, but most of the big studio titles have been scheduled, and we have a pretty good idea of which in-progress projects are expected to reach theaters by the end of next December. Here's some of the upcoming titles I'm looking forward to, that haven't gotten quite as much media attention as "The Hunger Games" and "Men in Black III" and their ilk yet:
John Carter - The marketing so far has been horrific. Absolutely awful. However, if you look at the film's pedigree, there is a lot to get excited about. This is the live action debut of "Finding Nemo" director Andrew Stanton, with a script written by PIXAR alum Mark Andrews, with an assist by Michael Chabon. A crummy title and a clueless marketing might be hiding something really interesting here.
Moonrise Kingdom - The next film by Wes Anderson. We know it's set in the 60s, we know that it was shooting in New England, and we know it's about a group of townsfolk chasing a pair of eloping love-birds. And the cast includes Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, and of course, the one and only Bill Murray.
Gravity - A year ago, everyone wanted to know who would land the lead female role in Alfonso Cuaron's latest science fiction feature, and the part finally went to Sandra Bullock. George Clooney will co-star, replacing Robert Downey Jr. This is Cuaron's first directorial effort since "Children of Men," and there have been whispers and rumors that it may be the most daring thing he's attempted yet.
Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino is making another revenge movie, this time about a former slave, played by Jamie Foxx, settling the score with his former master, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, and Kurt Russell will be along for the ride. I'm a little scared of how far Tarantino is going to take this, but I wouldn't miss is for the world.
The Master - This one may not be completed before the end of the year, but after a lot of false starts and cast shuffling, I'm just glad that Paul Thomas Anderson's period film, about a man who starts a new religion played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is finally getting made. Anderson is one of the major American auteurs, and it has been far too long since his last feature, "There Will Be Blood."
Prometheus - Ridley Scott's recent films haven't been great, so I have very mixed feelings about the prospects of "Prometheus," which is not a sequel to "Alien," apparently, but a story from the same universe. Then again, Scott's never gone wrong on a science-fiction film, and with Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender as the leads, I'm certainly willing to give "Prometheus" the benefit of the doubt.
Life of Pi - I know I've talked up this film before, but I find it such an intriguing one. Based on the beloved novel by Yann Martel, "Life of Pi" will follow the adventures of a young Indian boy, stranded in a boat with a Bengal tiger and other animals after a shipwreck. Ang Lee is directing, after a parade of other directors came and went, and here's hoping that he can do the book justice.
The We and the I - Not much is known about Michel Gondry's next film, except that it involves a group of kids from the Bronx and inadvertent time travel. Anyway, here's hoping it'll be a return to form for Gondry after the disappointment of "The Green Hornet." The superhero flick was much too straight-laced an exercise for his talents, and it'll be good to see him fully unleashed again.
Seven Psychopaths - This will be the second film directed by Martin McDonagh, who is best known for "In Bruges," and writing a string of gory, violent, darkly humorous plays about murderers, hit-men, maniacs, and very, very bad people. I adore his work, and relish the thought of him working with a slew of screen badasses, including Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken and Tom Waits.
Cloud Atlas - There isn't the space to go into the complexities of the multi-universe story that Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis siblings are attempting to bring to the screen, or the incredible lengths they've gone to in order to finance and film it. For more details, see this NY Times article. But one thing is certain. I have absolutely got to see what the end result. Whether failure or triumph, it's going to be spectacular.
And a few more to look out for:
* Steven Spielberg is directing Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.
* Spike Lee will reportedly reprise the role of Mookie from "Do the Right Thing" in Red Hook Summer, which will premiere at Sundance.
* Woody Allen's European tour continues with a stop in Italy for Nero Fiddled, with Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page.
* Park Chan Wook, director of the Vengeance Trilogy, will be making his English language debut with Stoker, a thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska.
* Tim Burton is making a movie where Johnny Depp is a vampire, called Dark Shadows, and no one is the least bit surprised.
* I've been hearing about Rian Johnson's new science film Looper for ages, and I hope it turned out well.
* Finally, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis will be my first Robert Pattinson film. Hope the kid can act.
Happy watching!
---
Friday, December 16, 2011
Let's Skip That Movie
I've been mainlining indie films from the spring and summer all week, in a vain attempt to play catch-up on some of the titles that have been appearing on various Top Ten lists. Got through "Beginners," "Submarine," "Another Earth," "Everything Must Go," "Hesher," "The Devil's Double," "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," "Terri," and "Win Win" so far, and have way, way too many titles to go. (You might see reviews posted for some of these eventually, or you might not. I'm open to taking requests.) I'm at that point where every time I check another title off my "to watch" list, another two or three pop up. Demian Bichir just got a SAG nomination for Best Actor, so I'd better add Chris Weitz's "A Better Life" to the list. Oren Moverman's "Rampart" is getting buzz for Woody Harrelson's performance. Add that to the list. Foreign contenders like "A Separation" and "In Darkness" are starting to gain steam. Gotta make more room.
I posted a list of all the 2011 films I thought I still needed to see about a month ago, which had about sixty-something titles. I've seen about fifteen of them in the last month, but the list hasn't gotten any shorter. However, there are quite a few films that I'm going to be skipping, and not the most obvious ones. I may be a movie nut and a completist, but I don't actually endeavor to watch everything that gets a theatrical release and a lot of publicity. I just want to see the good stuff and the interesting stuff. Figuring out what does and doesn't make the cut, however, is a process I thought would make for a good blog post. A lot of it has to do with personal taste, but there is a method to this madness.
First, there are now more films made in any given year than it is physically possible for a single person to watch in the course of a single year. There are films being made all over the world for different audiences, most of which never get any sort of American theatrical release. I keep an eye on what's premiering at the various festivals, which act as gatekeepers for independent and world cinema of higher artistic ambitions, but the vast majority of those films never penetrate my consciousness either. It's only the awards winners, and the films snatched up for commercial distribution, and others that attract a good level of consistent buzz that, I pay any attention to. So already, that's a huge percentage of existing films that I never even consider watching.
I'm at least aware of most American studio films, since they're so accessible and intrinsically part of the current pop culture. But frankly, most of them aren't very good. With studio films, it's easy to pick and choose. I watch what I think looks good, and ignore what I know I'm not likely to enjoy. "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1," "The Hangover Part II," and "The Smurfs" are all among the top ten highest grossing blockbusters of the year. I'm not going to make any special effort to see any of them, and don't feel guilty at all about it. "New Year's Eve" topped the box office last week. No interest in that one either. Usually I try to keep an open mind and not dismiss titles too quickly though, so this still leaves me with an awful lot of films to choose from between studio and non-studio titles.
From there, I depend on the critics and awards more than I should, I think. Critical consensus is a poor measure of entertainment value, and sometimes all I want is to be entertained. But when it comes to looking at films as art and films as more potentially enriching experiences, then the critics become vital. A bad review will rarely be able to talk me out of watching a film that really catches my interest, but a good one can get me to at least consider watching something like "Warrior," which was sold as a lunkheaded sports film and had a terrible trailer. An award or nomination can vault a little-seen stealth release like "50/50" to the top of my "to watch" list. Heck, if one critic I trust is sufficiently passionate enough about a film, I'll give it a chance. I give a lot of things a chance, more than I probably should, considering the length of the current "to watch" list. But there are way too many films out there for me to give everything a chance.
So conversely, the bad reviews make me feel more comfortable about leaving off films like Angelina Jolie's "In the Land of Blood and Honey" and Madonna's "W.E.," which are both making the rounds for awards contention, but have few champions. If I'm already iffy about a certain film, I let the critics be the deciding vote. Bland-looking indies that came out earlier in the year, like "The Art of Getting By" and "One Day," aren't showing up on any year-end lists and aren't in the awards conversation at all. That means I'm less likely to spend any time tracking them down either. And after the reviews came in, "Arthur Christmas," which I was doubtful about, is now on the list, and "Happy Feet 2," which I was equally doubtful about, is off.
Reading over that last paragraph, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm picking on actresses-turned-directors, because I don't mean to. Miranda July and Jodie Foster turned out some interesting stuff this year. Vera Farmiga's "Higher Ground" is on the "to watch" list too. Wait, and there was a new Sarah Polley film that premiered at Toronto this September, wasn't there? "Take This Waltz"? Has it come out yet? Looks like that one won't actually be released in theaters anywhere until 2012. Okay, let's save it for next year.
---
I posted a list of all the 2011 films I thought I still needed to see about a month ago, which had about sixty-something titles. I've seen about fifteen of them in the last month, but the list hasn't gotten any shorter. However, there are quite a few films that I'm going to be skipping, and not the most obvious ones. I may be a movie nut and a completist, but I don't actually endeavor to watch everything that gets a theatrical release and a lot of publicity. I just want to see the good stuff and the interesting stuff. Figuring out what does and doesn't make the cut, however, is a process I thought would make for a good blog post. A lot of it has to do with personal taste, but there is a method to this madness.
First, there are now more films made in any given year than it is physically possible for a single person to watch in the course of a single year. There are films being made all over the world for different audiences, most of which never get any sort of American theatrical release. I keep an eye on what's premiering at the various festivals, which act as gatekeepers for independent and world cinema of higher artistic ambitions, but the vast majority of those films never penetrate my consciousness either. It's only the awards winners, and the films snatched up for commercial distribution, and others that attract a good level of consistent buzz that, I pay any attention to. So already, that's a huge percentage of existing films that I never even consider watching.
I'm at least aware of most American studio films, since they're so accessible and intrinsically part of the current pop culture. But frankly, most of them aren't very good. With studio films, it's easy to pick and choose. I watch what I think looks good, and ignore what I know I'm not likely to enjoy. "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1," "The Hangover Part II," and "The Smurfs" are all among the top ten highest grossing blockbusters of the year. I'm not going to make any special effort to see any of them, and don't feel guilty at all about it. "New Year's Eve" topped the box office last week. No interest in that one either. Usually I try to keep an open mind and not dismiss titles too quickly though, so this still leaves me with an awful lot of films to choose from between studio and non-studio titles.
From there, I depend on the critics and awards more than I should, I think. Critical consensus is a poor measure of entertainment value, and sometimes all I want is to be entertained. But when it comes to looking at films as art and films as more potentially enriching experiences, then the critics become vital. A bad review will rarely be able to talk me out of watching a film that really catches my interest, but a good one can get me to at least consider watching something like "Warrior," which was sold as a lunkheaded sports film and had a terrible trailer. An award or nomination can vault a little-seen stealth release like "50/50" to the top of my "to watch" list. Heck, if one critic I trust is sufficiently passionate enough about a film, I'll give it a chance. I give a lot of things a chance, more than I probably should, considering the length of the current "to watch" list. But there are way too many films out there for me to give everything a chance.
So conversely, the bad reviews make me feel more comfortable about leaving off films like Angelina Jolie's "In the Land of Blood and Honey" and Madonna's "W.E.," which are both making the rounds for awards contention, but have few champions. If I'm already iffy about a certain film, I let the critics be the deciding vote. Bland-looking indies that came out earlier in the year, like "The Art of Getting By" and "One Day," aren't showing up on any year-end lists and aren't in the awards conversation at all. That means I'm less likely to spend any time tracking them down either. And after the reviews came in, "Arthur Christmas," which I was doubtful about, is now on the list, and "Happy Feet 2," which I was equally doubtful about, is off.
Reading over that last paragraph, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm picking on actresses-turned-directors, because I don't mean to. Miranda July and Jodie Foster turned out some interesting stuff this year. Vera Farmiga's "Higher Ground" is on the "to watch" list too. Wait, and there was a new Sarah Polley film that premiered at Toronto this September, wasn't there? "Take This Waltz"? Has it come out yet? Looks like that one won't actually be released in theaters anywhere until 2012. Okay, let's save it for next year.
---
Thursday, December 15, 2011
5 Reasons "The Hobbit" Won't Be The Prequels
We have just about a year to go until Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" reaches theaters. I've been trying to keep myself away from the production news, but I have heard that there is a teaser out there, that may be attached to some sort of action-adventure spectacle that's coming out in a week or two. I have my doubts about how good "The Hobbit" will be, but then I'm the doubting sort, prone to blowing small rumors totally out of proportion. On the other hand, I think I'm right to be worried about the extensive list of rumored cameos, Jackson monkeying with the frame rates, and the fact that "The Hobbit" has been split into two films. And, um, "The Lovely Bones" happened. But there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful that "The Hobbit," won't end up being the Middle Earth equivalent of the "Star Wars" prequels. I enumerate some of them below:
1) It's Pre-Existing Material - "The Hobbit" was always the most accessible of J.R.R. Tolkein's books. The story is simpler than "Lord of the Rings," has already been adapted a few times in various media, and is an all-around much better fit for the kind of big special-effects laden spectacle that Peter Jackson and his crew are so good at. As prequels go, it's starting out from a much better place than just about every other franchise that has attempted one. Even if Jackson does expand the story and go off on original tangents, at least we can be assured that "The Hobbit" will have a rock solid narrative backbone.
2) Lots of Old Familiar Faces - It would have been fun to see what Guillermo Del Toro would have come up with, but come on. Nobody really wanted anyone but Peter Jackson to direct "The Hobbit." And now that Jackson has fully expended all the goodwill that the "Lord of the Rings" afforded him on his passion projects, he's at the point where he needs the "Hobbit" movies about as much as they need him. And though there have been lengthy delays in the project brought on by the MGM bankruptcy, it wasn't too late for Ian McKellan to return as Gandalf the Grey, and a bunch of other "Rings" alumni to line up for appearances.
3) Not Made in a Vacuum - I am grateful for Del Toro being involved in the project, because a lot of times when successful filmmakers get a hold of too much creative freedom, and there's nobody to tell them that something isn't going to work, their ambitions can get a little out of hand. You know, like the "Star Wars" prequels, the "Matrix" sequels, and so on. The collaboration with Guillermo Del Toro hopefully provided some good friction and helped to reign in some of Jackson's self-indulgences as a director, which were already becoming noticeable in "Return of the King." I wish directors did this sort of thing more often.
4) Not the First in Line - There's something to be said for the fact that "The Hobbit" is being made now, in the age of prequels and extended multi-part movies, which were relative rarities ten years ago. Jackson will be able to learn from the mistakes of the ones that have gone wrong, and hopefully pick up a few pointers from the ones that have been done right, like this summer's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and the final "Harry Potter." Tolkein fans may argue that "The Hobbit" isn't really a prequel, but in this context the new movies will be. We can certainly expect a few callbacks to the trilogy, and it has long been rumored that the second "Hobbit" will set up "The Lord of the Rings."
5) Smaug the Dragon - Smaug the dragon is my favorite character from Middle Earth, and he is a proper villain. Not some floating eyeball stuck on a tower, not some Grim Reaper equestrian club, but a freaking dragon. One who can fly, talk, breathe fire, and is a badass, and I have been waiting for too damn long to see a proper cinema version of him. He was animated once back in the 70s, but not to very good effect. Jackson's version is still under wraps, but we do know that he's going to be voiced by "Sherlock's," Benedict Cumberbatch. Now how utterly perfect is that?
I can't wait until next December. There are a lot of ways "The Hobbit," could turn out to be a disappointment, but I've got a good feeling about this one. Fingers crossed.
---
1) It's Pre-Existing Material - "The Hobbit" was always the most accessible of J.R.R. Tolkein's books. The story is simpler than "Lord of the Rings," has already been adapted a few times in various media, and is an all-around much better fit for the kind of big special-effects laden spectacle that Peter Jackson and his crew are so good at. As prequels go, it's starting out from a much better place than just about every other franchise that has attempted one. Even if Jackson does expand the story and go off on original tangents, at least we can be assured that "The Hobbit" will have a rock solid narrative backbone.
2) Lots of Old Familiar Faces - It would have been fun to see what Guillermo Del Toro would have come up with, but come on. Nobody really wanted anyone but Peter Jackson to direct "The Hobbit." And now that Jackson has fully expended all the goodwill that the "Lord of the Rings" afforded him on his passion projects, he's at the point where he needs the "Hobbit" movies about as much as they need him. And though there have been lengthy delays in the project brought on by the MGM bankruptcy, it wasn't too late for Ian McKellan to return as Gandalf the Grey, and a bunch of other "Rings" alumni to line up for appearances.
3) Not Made in a Vacuum - I am grateful for Del Toro being involved in the project, because a lot of times when successful filmmakers get a hold of too much creative freedom, and there's nobody to tell them that something isn't going to work, their ambitions can get a little out of hand. You know, like the "Star Wars" prequels, the "Matrix" sequels, and so on. The collaboration with Guillermo Del Toro hopefully provided some good friction and helped to reign in some of Jackson's self-indulgences as a director, which were already becoming noticeable in "Return of the King." I wish directors did this sort of thing more often.
4) Not the First in Line - There's something to be said for the fact that "The Hobbit" is being made now, in the age of prequels and extended multi-part movies, which were relative rarities ten years ago. Jackson will be able to learn from the mistakes of the ones that have gone wrong, and hopefully pick up a few pointers from the ones that have been done right, like this summer's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and the final "Harry Potter." Tolkein fans may argue that "The Hobbit" isn't really a prequel, but in this context the new movies will be. We can certainly expect a few callbacks to the trilogy, and it has long been rumored that the second "Hobbit" will set up "The Lord of the Rings."
5) Smaug the Dragon - Smaug the dragon is my favorite character from Middle Earth, and he is a proper villain. Not some floating eyeball stuck on a tower, not some Grim Reaper equestrian club, but a freaking dragon. One who can fly, talk, breathe fire, and is a badass, and I have been waiting for too damn long to see a proper cinema version of him. He was animated once back in the 70s, but not to very good effect. Jackson's version is still under wraps, but we do know that he's going to be voiced by "Sherlock's," Benedict Cumberbatch. Now how utterly perfect is that?
I can't wait until next December. There are a lot of ways "The Hobbit," could turn out to be a disappointment, but I've got a good feeling about this one. Fingers crossed.
---
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Turning Down the Volume
Now this is good timing. On Tuesday, the FCC passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), which tells broadcasters that television ads now have to be played at the same volume as the shows that they're running with. Say goodbye to those noticeably louder, overbearing commercials that regularly send viewers scrambling for the remote control. You can thank the representative from Menlo Park, Anna Eshoo, for writing up the bill and Senator John Wicker for shepherding it through Congress last year. The rules won't be totally implemented until next December, but I'm glad to see that one particularly obnoxious aspect of TV ads is finally being addressed. It's a bit late for me, since I killed the TV, but I'm glad for everyone else's ears. And I get to write a quick follow-up to my previous post about quashing TV ads.
The battle over the volume of TV ads has been going on for ages. I first became aware of it about ten years ago, when a little service called ReplayTV was making waves. It was a subscription DVR service similar to TiVo, which had a couple of features that many TV companies objected to. One was the ability to share recorded shows with other ReplayTV subscribers. The other, was "Commercial Advance," which allowed viewers to watch recorded shows without the commercials. ReplayTV would cut them out automatically, simply by detecting the tell-tale rise in volume whenever a show went to commercial. Turning down the ads a few decibels would have rendered the feature unusable, but instead, there were lawsuits, ReplayTV filed for bankruptcy, and soon TiVo took over the DVR market.
Since then, we've seen the introduction of several new gadgets and built-in TV features designed to mitigate the loudness of ads, using sound-leveling technology like Dolby Volume and SRS TruVolume. There has been some debate over whether these really do much good or not. But clearly there is an ongoing issue with the loud ads, that consumer electronics makers recognize and have been happy to tackle on the receiving end. The real problem, however, is with the television broadcasters who control the volume knob on the transmission end. They don't want to admit there's a problem at all, even though according to this TIME article, TV stations have been getting complaints about the excessive volume since the 60s.
The common tactic in dealing with complaints has been to deny the ads are any louder than the programs they run with, which is usually true. Technically. Commercials currently aren't supposed to be run any louder than the peak volume of a particular program - think gunshots, screams, and explosions. However, thanks to fiddling with compression levels, the range of volume in a commercial is much narrower, and concentrated toward the loud end of the audio spectrum. The new rules will require that the levels match the average of the program instead, which is much easier to monitor and enforce now.
Of course, it's no mystery why TV ads are so loud in the first place. The advertisers want them loud so that viewers will be briefly jolted out of our vegetative TV-watching states to pay attention to whatever they're trying to hawk. I wonder if this really works though. Blaring ads just seem to cause many viewers to change channels. And I expect most people have developed the same Pavlovian response that I have, and tend to tune out whenever the volume increases. Maybe turning the sound down will actually help advertisers. I used to mute commercials, which may have actually caused me to pay more attention to them, to make sure I turned the sound back on after they were over.
I've already heard some grumbling and complaints from various corners about how this regulation is a waste of time, and how the volume of our television commercials is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Surely the efforts of the FCC could be directed to more useful purposes? Well yes, but this is one of the rare wins for consumers over the media companies, and it does suggest that our legislators can be prodded to take action on similar issues. And you can't tell me that everyone hasn't been hit by one of these disruptive advertisement blasts at some point. It may be a minor annoyance, but it's a pervasive one and it's been steadily getting worse.
Besides, the TV stations can still play the commercials just as loud as they did before. They just have to play the programs we actually want to watch at the same volume, and give a little control back to the viewers.
---
The battle over the volume of TV ads has been going on for ages. I first became aware of it about ten years ago, when a little service called ReplayTV was making waves. It was a subscription DVR service similar to TiVo, which had a couple of features that many TV companies objected to. One was the ability to share recorded shows with other ReplayTV subscribers. The other, was "Commercial Advance," which allowed viewers to watch recorded shows without the commercials. ReplayTV would cut them out automatically, simply by detecting the tell-tale rise in volume whenever a show went to commercial. Turning down the ads a few decibels would have rendered the feature unusable, but instead, there were lawsuits, ReplayTV filed for bankruptcy, and soon TiVo took over the DVR market.
Since then, we've seen the introduction of several new gadgets and built-in TV features designed to mitigate the loudness of ads, using sound-leveling technology like Dolby Volume and SRS TruVolume. There has been some debate over whether these really do much good or not. But clearly there is an ongoing issue with the loud ads, that consumer electronics makers recognize and have been happy to tackle on the receiving end. The real problem, however, is with the television broadcasters who control the volume knob on the transmission end. They don't want to admit there's a problem at all, even though according to this TIME article, TV stations have been getting complaints about the excessive volume since the 60s.
The common tactic in dealing with complaints has been to deny the ads are any louder than the programs they run with, which is usually true. Technically. Commercials currently aren't supposed to be run any louder than the peak volume of a particular program - think gunshots, screams, and explosions. However, thanks to fiddling with compression levels, the range of volume in a commercial is much narrower, and concentrated toward the loud end of the audio spectrum. The new rules will require that the levels match the average of the program instead, which is much easier to monitor and enforce now.
Of course, it's no mystery why TV ads are so loud in the first place. The advertisers want them loud so that viewers will be briefly jolted out of our vegetative TV-watching states to pay attention to whatever they're trying to hawk. I wonder if this really works though. Blaring ads just seem to cause many viewers to change channels. And I expect most people have developed the same Pavlovian response that I have, and tend to tune out whenever the volume increases. Maybe turning the sound down will actually help advertisers. I used to mute commercials, which may have actually caused me to pay more attention to them, to make sure I turned the sound back on after they were over.
I've already heard some grumbling and complaints from various corners about how this regulation is a waste of time, and how the volume of our television commercials is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Surely the efforts of the FCC could be directed to more useful purposes? Well yes, but this is one of the rare wins for consumers over the media companies, and it does suggest that our legislators can be prodded to take action on similar issues. And you can't tell me that everyone hasn't been hit by one of these disruptive advertisement blasts at some point. It may be a minor annoyance, but it's a pervasive one and it's been steadily getting worse.
Besides, the TV stations can still play the commercials just as loud as they did before. They just have to play the programs we actually want to watch at the same volume, and give a little control back to the viewers.
---
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
My Favorite Steven Spielberg Film
Mr. Spielberg has two new films coming out in a few weeks, so this is as good a time as any to write up this post. I am an 80s kid, so of course Steven Spielberg's work had a major impact on my development as a movie fan. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" were the big titles, "Jaws" was too scary to watch more than parts of, but was always lurking somewhere in the nether regions of my consciousness, and "Jurassic Park" was the first real non-Disney event movie I remember getting hyped up for.
So I suppose it's ironic that I associate Spielberg so closely with my childhood, but my favorite film of his is one I didn't see until I was an adult. I'm not exactly sure when it was that I first laid eyes on "Close Encounters of the Thrid Kind," but I know it was after high school because I remember getting my hands on the novelization first. I found the book intriguing, but it was a poor substitute for the actual film, which does things with music and visual effects that are astounding to experience, and utterly transcendent of the old sci-fi B-movies that preceded it. Yes, on the surface level "Close Encounters" is about mankind encountering alien visitors from outer space, but more fundamentally, it's a film that examines the basic act of communication, through many different means.
We start with various strange occurrences around the globe: missing fighter planes and ships reappearing decades after they were lost, strange signals coming from unknown sources in the sky, and various people suddenly compelled to act in odd ways. UFOs are the cause, and everything seems to be building up to some bigger, imminent event. We follow three major characters through the film - family man Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who has a close encounter with a UFO, and becomes obsessed with them, a young mother, Jillian (Melinda Dillon), who searches for her missing son, and a French scientist, Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut), leading a group trying to determine the visitors' intentions.
Throughout the film, Spielberg examines how humans communicate with each other, as they seek to find a way to communicate with alien beings. One of the canniest decisions he made was casting Truffaut as Lacombe, a character who speaks entirely in French and requires the use of an interpreter, played by Bob Balaban. The most knowledgeable, charismatic, and intelligent man in the movie is someone who is incomprehensible to the majority of the American audience without the aid of a go-between. On the flip side we have Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, struggling with to respond to the message that the aliens left with him, which was conveyed in a manner that defies traditional language completely. Communication with aliens seems impossible at first, but then patterns emerge, signs take on meaning, and the John Williams score does the rest.
I always feel compelled to watch "Close Encounters" the whole way through every time I stumble across a broadcast on television, because I get caught up in it so quickly. The entire thing is one long build-up toward a grand finale, and finales don't get any grander. The sight of the alien mothership descending on Devil's Tower is one of the greatest images in cinema. Nothing beats it for sheer, jaw-dropping visual splendor. And it creates such a feeling of wonder - sheer wonder at witnessing the characters in their first moments of discovery. I especially love the designs of all the spaceships. Instead of something hard and solid and tactile, they're these almost intangible collections of glowing lights, the embodiment of a hundred different UFO sightings and stories. They dazzle, and yet retain their mystery. And cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, responsible for all those indelible landscapes, got the Oscar for this film and deserved it.
"Close Encounters," along with "E.T." also solidified Spielberg's reputation for making very humanist, very aspirational blockbusters. His critics write them off as fairy-tales, but I always appreciated Spielberg's optimism and faith in mankind's ability to do good. It's difficult to imagine in an age of so many violent, bloody alien invasion pictures, that we could ever have the scenario that plays out at the end of "Close Encounters," where man makes contact without aggression, fear, or paranoia. And yet having the possibility of it there, captured on film, does make a difference. I wouldn't call "Close Encounters" a feel-good film, but I always come away from it feeling a little better about the human race. Even if such collective magnanimity is beyond us today, at least it's still there in our dreams - courtesy of Mr. Spielberg.
---
What I've Seen - Spielberg
Duel (1971)
Sugarland Express (1974)
Jaws (1975)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
1941 (1979)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
The Color Purple (1985)
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Always (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Hook (1991)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Schindler's List (1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Amistad (1997)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
Minority Report (2002)
Catch Me if You Can (2002)
The Terminal (2004)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Munich (2005)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
War Horse (2011)
Lincoln (2012)
Bridge of Spies (2015)
The BFG (2016)
The Post (2017)
Ready Player One (2018)
So I suppose it's ironic that I associate Spielberg so closely with my childhood, but my favorite film of his is one I didn't see until I was an adult. I'm not exactly sure when it was that I first laid eyes on "Close Encounters of the Thrid Kind," but I know it was after high school because I remember getting my hands on the novelization first. I found the book intriguing, but it was a poor substitute for the actual film, which does things with music and visual effects that are astounding to experience, and utterly transcendent of the old sci-fi B-movies that preceded it. Yes, on the surface level "Close Encounters" is about mankind encountering alien visitors from outer space, but more fundamentally, it's a film that examines the basic act of communication, through many different means.
We start with various strange occurrences around the globe: missing fighter planes and ships reappearing decades after they were lost, strange signals coming from unknown sources in the sky, and various people suddenly compelled to act in odd ways. UFOs are the cause, and everything seems to be building up to some bigger, imminent event. We follow three major characters through the film - family man Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who has a close encounter with a UFO, and becomes obsessed with them, a young mother, Jillian (Melinda Dillon), who searches for her missing son, and a French scientist, Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut), leading a group trying to determine the visitors' intentions.
Throughout the film, Spielberg examines how humans communicate with each other, as they seek to find a way to communicate with alien beings. One of the canniest decisions he made was casting Truffaut as Lacombe, a character who speaks entirely in French and requires the use of an interpreter, played by Bob Balaban. The most knowledgeable, charismatic, and intelligent man in the movie is someone who is incomprehensible to the majority of the American audience without the aid of a go-between. On the flip side we have Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, struggling with to respond to the message that the aliens left with him, which was conveyed in a manner that defies traditional language completely. Communication with aliens seems impossible at first, but then patterns emerge, signs take on meaning, and the John Williams score does the rest.
I always feel compelled to watch "Close Encounters" the whole way through every time I stumble across a broadcast on television, because I get caught up in it so quickly. The entire thing is one long build-up toward a grand finale, and finales don't get any grander. The sight of the alien mothership descending on Devil's Tower is one of the greatest images in cinema. Nothing beats it for sheer, jaw-dropping visual splendor. And it creates such a feeling of wonder - sheer wonder at witnessing the characters in their first moments of discovery. I especially love the designs of all the spaceships. Instead of something hard and solid and tactile, they're these almost intangible collections of glowing lights, the embodiment of a hundred different UFO sightings and stories. They dazzle, and yet retain their mystery. And cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, responsible for all those indelible landscapes, got the Oscar for this film and deserved it.
"Close Encounters," along with "E.T." also solidified Spielberg's reputation for making very humanist, very aspirational blockbusters. His critics write them off as fairy-tales, but I always appreciated Spielberg's optimism and faith in mankind's ability to do good. It's difficult to imagine in an age of so many violent, bloody alien invasion pictures, that we could ever have the scenario that plays out at the end of "Close Encounters," where man makes contact without aggression, fear, or paranoia. And yet having the possibility of it there, captured on film, does make a difference. I wouldn't call "Close Encounters" a feel-good film, but I always come away from it feeling a little better about the human race. Even if such collective magnanimity is beyond us today, at least it's still there in our dreams - courtesy of Mr. Spielberg.
---
What I've Seen - Spielberg
Duel (1971)
Sugarland Express (1974)
Jaws (1975)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
1941 (1979)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
The Color Purple (1985)
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Always (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Hook (1991)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Schindler's List (1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Amistad (1997)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
Minority Report (2002)
Catch Me if You Can (2002)
The Terminal (2004)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Munich (2005)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
War Horse (2011)
Lincoln (2012)
Bridge of Spies (2015)
The BFG (2016)
The Post (2017)
Ready Player One (2018)
West Side Story (2021)
The Fabelmans (2022)
---
---
Monday, December 12, 2011
Life Without TV Ads
It's been over six months since The Day I Killed the TV, and I thought I'd follow up. I'm still mostly living without live television. I do have an antenna on the new TV, but it works so poorly that I only get reception for two of the major networks, FOX and CBS, and not in very good quality. With awards season in full swing, I'm worried about how I'm going to be able to watch the Golden Globes, which are on NBC, and the Oscars, which are on ABC this year. On the other hand, this is literally all the live television that I'm interested in watching for the foreseeable future. I watch everything else online.
I didn't realize how much television I was watching until suddenly I wasn't. I've stopped watching morning shows, most late night shows, and the programs I was following just because they happened to fit a particular open time slot that was convenient for me. I've cut down TV viewing hours by at least 60%. I'm down to a handful of regular network shows - "The Daily Show," "Community," "House," "60 Minutes," "Person of Interest," "Grimm," "Castle," and "Nikita" - and everything else I'm seeing through subscription services, rented discs, or pay-per-episode options - "Louie," "Breaking Bad," "The Walking Dead," etc.
So I'm still watching a lot of television by my own admission. The biggest difference is, I'm only watching a fraction of the advertisements, and in some cases, no ads at all. It's the same with movies. I skip through the previews unless I'm in a theater, and have been watching fewer and fewer trailers. I use the internet with ad blocker programs, so most print media is also coming to me mostly ad free. Sure, I still get those sidebar ads and Google paid links, and the occasional click-through screen, but it's very limited in comparison to the inundation of ads I used to be regularly subjected to by magazines and newspapers.
I've noticed the most dramatic difference is with the television ads, though. It's been a very bizarre couple of weeks for me, with no commercials to remind me about Black Friday deals or the fact that I only have a few more shopping days until Christmas. It's only when someone turns on a radio that I get hit with bursts of holiday marketing chatter. Lately, when people talk about particular marketing campaigns or ads, more often than not I don't know what they're talking about. Does this disconnect me from the popular media experience somewhat? Sure, but after a couple of months without all that background noise, I wouldn't give it up for anything.
Advertisements are designed to be distractions, to steal away your attention from other things, even when you're no longer looking or listening to them directly. How many times have you had some tuneless fast food jingle stuck in your head? ("$5 - $5 - $5 foot looooooong") How many times have you unconsciously found yourself associating a company or brand with their zippy slogans? ("Taste the rainbow!" "Just do it!" Or else!) I still think of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" as the United Airlines song, which is just wrong on so many levels. So it's such a relief to be able to avoid the most obnoxious ads almost completely now.
And it's not just the usual corporate advertising for products and services either. I used to dread election season, with all those awful, misleading attack ads raising political tensions to a boiling point. Now I just read the summaries of the candidates' latest hijinks on news sites, and can look ahead to next November without fear. And I'm not sure why I ever thought that the nightly American newscasts were ever as informative as print, with all those commercials disrupting the flow of information every few minutes.
Now I can just hear the old media guard wringing their hands. But media business models are primarily advertisement based! How on earth can we sustain our television operations if you're not willing to watch ads anymore? Well, as I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, I'm willing to pay for the privilege of not watching ads. I pay for Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and iTunes. Yes, I know there are ads on Hulu, even on the paysite portion. And I hit mute, minimize the window, do something else while the ads are running, and just scroll back to the start if I come back in late. Streaming video's great like that.
So NBC, ABC, I'll gladly fork over a few bucks if you guys can work out a way to stream your kudocasts live online this year. Louis CK just put up a brand new hour-long special for $5. Your awards shows aren't nearly as entertaining, but considerably longer. So, I'd be willing to pay up to, oh, $10 apiece for them - with no commercials of course. Maybe add another buck or two for the Golden Globes as a premium, if you turn off tape delay for Ricky Gervais. What do you say?
---
I didn't realize how much television I was watching until suddenly I wasn't. I've stopped watching morning shows, most late night shows, and the programs I was following just because they happened to fit a particular open time slot that was convenient for me. I've cut down TV viewing hours by at least 60%. I'm down to a handful of regular network shows - "The Daily Show," "Community," "House," "60 Minutes," "Person of Interest," "Grimm," "Castle," and "Nikita" - and everything else I'm seeing through subscription services, rented discs, or pay-per-episode options - "Louie," "Breaking Bad," "The Walking Dead," etc.
So I'm still watching a lot of television by my own admission. The biggest difference is, I'm only watching a fraction of the advertisements, and in some cases, no ads at all. It's the same with movies. I skip through the previews unless I'm in a theater, and have been watching fewer and fewer trailers. I use the internet with ad blocker programs, so most print media is also coming to me mostly ad free. Sure, I still get those sidebar ads and Google paid links, and the occasional click-through screen, but it's very limited in comparison to the inundation of ads I used to be regularly subjected to by magazines and newspapers.
I've noticed the most dramatic difference is with the television ads, though. It's been a very bizarre couple of weeks for me, with no commercials to remind me about Black Friday deals or the fact that I only have a few more shopping days until Christmas. It's only when someone turns on a radio that I get hit with bursts of holiday marketing chatter. Lately, when people talk about particular marketing campaigns or ads, more often than not I don't know what they're talking about. Does this disconnect me from the popular media experience somewhat? Sure, but after a couple of months without all that background noise, I wouldn't give it up for anything.
Advertisements are designed to be distractions, to steal away your attention from other things, even when you're no longer looking or listening to them directly. How many times have you had some tuneless fast food jingle stuck in your head? ("$5 - $5 - $5 foot looooooong") How many times have you unconsciously found yourself associating a company or brand with their zippy slogans? ("Taste the rainbow!" "Just do it!" Or else!) I still think of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" as the United Airlines song, which is just wrong on so many levels. So it's such a relief to be able to avoid the most obnoxious ads almost completely now.
And it's not just the usual corporate advertising for products and services either. I used to dread election season, with all those awful, misleading attack ads raising political tensions to a boiling point. Now I just read the summaries of the candidates' latest hijinks on news sites, and can look ahead to next November without fear. And I'm not sure why I ever thought that the nightly American newscasts were ever as informative as print, with all those commercials disrupting the flow of information every few minutes.
Now I can just hear the old media guard wringing their hands. But media business models are primarily advertisement based! How on earth can we sustain our television operations if you're not willing to watch ads anymore? Well, as I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, I'm willing to pay for the privilege of not watching ads. I pay for Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and iTunes. Yes, I know there are ads on Hulu, even on the paysite portion. And I hit mute, minimize the window, do something else while the ads are running, and just scroll back to the start if I come back in late. Streaming video's great like that.
So NBC, ABC, I'll gladly fork over a few bucks if you guys can work out a way to stream your kudocasts live online this year. Louis CK just put up a brand new hour-long special for $5. Your awards shows aren't nearly as entertaining, but considerably longer. So, I'd be willing to pay up to, oh, $10 apiece for them - with no commercials of course. Maybe add another buck or two for the Golden Globes as a premium, if you turn off tape delay for Ricky Gervais. What do you say?
---
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