Musings on Cinema

[oscar jubis]

A number of made-for-television features and series over the past decades have matched the quality of the best cinema. Many filmmakers have done excellent work for the small screen, particularly in Europe and North America. It is typically, at least for me, more difficult to figure out what to seek out on TV than at the movies, perhaps because there is more interest in writing about cinema online than television. I write this tentatively since perhaps I don't know where to find good commentary about TV programs whereas I am very familiar with film criticism in all its facets and outlets. Anyway, I need to get to the point because this thread is intended to include posts that are fairly brief; random thoughts on various subjects related to cinema's past and present which I hope elicits some response, at least some of the time.

The most recent made-for-TV that made my list of favorites was Todd Haynes' awesome Mildred Pierce, the HBO mini-series starring Kate Winslet. Perhaps my highest hope of something of that level of excellence released on TV since then was Jane Campion's Top of the Lake with Elisabeth Moss, Peter Mullan, and Holly Hunt. Campion (The Piano) is responsible for one of the best made-for-TV series ever: An Angel at My Table (1990), which was released as a theatrical feature after being shown on Australian television and is now available in a great Criterion package. So I had my hopes up for Top of the Lake (set in New Zealand like "angel") and found myself engaged and entertained by this tale of evil in the countryside but ultimately underwhelmed by the results, especially in relation to the almost six hours I invested watching it. Below you'll find the more favorable capsule review from Variety's Justin Chang.

"The disappearance of a pregnant preteen exposes the raw wounds at the heart of an isolated southern New Zealand community in the absorbing and richly atmospheric “Top of the Lake.” Centered around Elisabeth Moss’ excellent performance as a detective for whom the case uncovers disturbing echoes of her own troubled history, this multistranded crime saga from writer-director Jane Campion and co-creator Gerard Lee is satisfyingly novelistic in scope and dense in detail. Yet it also boasts something more, a singular and provocative strangeness that lingers like a chill after the questions of who-dun-what have been laid to rest."

[Johann]

Looking forward to more "musings" Oscar!
I'm not the best judge of television like you. Nor do I like you know where to find good writing about TV series or made-for-tv movies.
The first made-for-tv movie I remember was THE BURNING BED. My mother raved about that one to everyone she knew. I still haven't seen it.
Personally, some TV shows that impressed me greatly over the years are Oz, Rome, Deadwood and Twin Peaks.

In relation: my sister and her husband are TV fans, they watched the entire Sopranos on DVD (no commercials) over a 2 month period and loved it.
They also saw every episode of Breaking Bad and my sister says it's the best show she's ever seen and that Bryan Cranston was the best actor on television. I've only seen one episode and I didn't really know what the context was. But I take her at her word.

Game of Thrones has a rabid fanbase too these days, but that doesn't mean it's good. But I haven't heard too much vile criticism of it.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks, more to come.
I watched most of Twin Peaks and The Sopranos, and three seasons of Mad Men. You're so right re:Game of Thrones. Talk about a rabid fan base for this well-reviewed series! I have also heard great things about Breaking Bad, and a series titled Justified which is based on Elmore Leonard's novels.

[Chris Knipp]

It makes little sense to talk about THE SOPRANOS in the same breath with TWIN PEAKS or MAD MEN with BREAKING BAD. All they have in common is they're TV series. If they were movies we wouldn't do this. Everyone has their favorites and they come and go. I'm glad to see OZ mentioned but have people forgotten THE WIRE? If so, it's a relief to me. I couldn't follow it and found it depressing as hell, especially since it was set in my home town, Baltimore. (I might have chosen another home town if I could, but I did mostly grow up there.) TV shows are great. The only trouble with them, especially the American ones (I'm thinking of the US QUEER AS FOLK vs. the lighter faster shorter UK original), is that they go on and on and on and on and on. They don't know when to stop.

And that's also what is great about them, because if you like the characters and the setups you don't want them to end. Dickens was published serially, and others; it dragged out the pleasure. But TV shows become shapeless and wear out their welcome. And then there are the reruns. They become like a nightmare from which one can never escape. An unhealthy obsession. The Netlix-collection TV show orgies are a worse result. Movies end -- and therefore have a shape and a structure that is artistic. Long miniseries adaptations of novels or novel-series are, however, obviously a potentially very good thing, if they're well done, because they can present the books in more detail. The miniseries is now an essential art form. The British ones have been sometimes superb. A friend just told me a lot of Masterpiece Theatre ones are assembled together now on Netflix. A lot of them still hold up from decades ago, the old UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS perhaps. Definitely the original UK TRAFFIK and the original 11-hour 1981 BRIDESHEAD REVISITED were and remain two of the best things ever done for TV. Also, the spy trilogy written by Alan Bennett with A QUESTION OF ATTRIBUTION, directed by John Schlesinger. That ain't no made-for-TV movie: it's a classic film. Unfortunately it and some others are not readily available in this country. The John Le Carré series with Alec Guinness as Smiley is another. The Brits have provided a great wealth of mysteries made for TV. They already did, when there was only print.

I often read Emily Nussbaum's TV column in THE NEW YORKER. Well, not often; sometimes. But the number of her columns I've read is beginning to mount up. I still wonder why anyone as smart as she is would bother to write about TV (doesn't she have a better way to spend her time?) but of course NEW YORKER writers are well paid. Her pieces are well informed and informative. I'd rather read about TV shows than watch them. It's faster. Besides which, I don't have TV. I did once, but it stopped working, and I don't want to pay for cable. I only watch TV series via Netflix (there are other non-tube ways too).

As for made-for-TV movies, I don't pay much attention to them. What difference does it make for what purpose they were made? Just like any other movies, they may be lousy, but they are often quite good, especially some of the French ones. It's sometimes surprising to learn a certain French film was made for television.

But I'd rather follow the Cannes 2014 festival second hand than talk about TV.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks Chris. I think the long duration, the serial nature, and the smaller size of screens on which the TV programs discussed above are intended to be watched are important considerations and the basis for comparisons despite differences in content or genre. It's sometimes difficult to gauge to what extent TV series are worth the time invested in watching them. Indeed, the fact that "they go on and on" can be a blessing or a curse. It is different than comedies, in which each episode is intended to stand alone and work well without familiarity with previous ones. I'm glad you're writing about Cannes instead of TV. Forthcoming posts on this thread will be all about cinema (unless I watch something on TV as great as Mildred Pierce and the series you mentioned.

[oscar jubis]

Writing about the silent era can be difficult because of several reasons, especially the high percentage of films that have been lost forever and the variable state of prints available (it's practically impossible to say anything conclusive about Asian and Latin American cinema before sound because almost all the films are extinct). There is a great deal of misinformation about the silent era in books, essays, and DVD liner notes. There are still film studies instructors who teach, for instance, that Griffith "invented the grammar of cinema" or that Soviet directors like Pudovkin and Eisenstein came up with "rhythmic cutting" (cutting shots in a sequence according to rhythmic patterns of various kinds, especially musical ones). The history of silent cinema requires constant revision based on films (and segments of films) that are being discovered, restored, and made available for viewing. I am not keen on being critical of writings on film that become obsolete or rendered inaccurate as new "evidence" emerges. However, there is a lot of misinformation out there as a result of sheer laziness and carelessness.

Case in point: according to the liner notes of Avant-Garde 3: Experimental Cinema 1922-1954 (the third of four invaluable sets released by Kino International), Laurel and Hardy’s two-reeler Wrong Again (1929, directed by Leo McCarey) is a spoof of Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou, which actually premiered in Paris four months after the release of Wrong Again. The scribe made this flippant statement as a major example to support the claim that avant garde/experimental cinema influenced commercial/mainstream films. I get the distinct impression that he did not bother to even watch the widely available comedic short but instead simply borrowed this piece of misinformation from IMdb.