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Whoever says TV is better than going to the movies is RIGHT! (1 Viewer)

TravisR

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I love movies but you get two hours or so for your story and that's it. What's great about TV is that you have years to watch the characters and become more invested in their 'adventures'. The viewer can feel like they've been on a journey if they watch the show over the course of its run.
 

Jason Seaver

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Of course, the flip side is that television necessitates splitting that story into 40-minute chunks, those chunks must be grouped into 22-episode seasons, and the producers must be much more reactive, rather than filming what they wrote at the beginning. That is, in no way, a bad thing; it just goes to how feature films and television have different strengths.

And two hours is plenty of time if you've got writers/directors/editors who know how to use it -- especially if you're telling one single, focused story.
 

Hanson

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Welcome to the club Ron.

I have been telling people that TV is better than movies since 2000. I always bring up the Wings test – is that new comedy movie funnier than 4 episodes of Wings? Typically not. And this is Wings, we’re talking about, not Curb Your Enthusiasm. I see so many movies that just pale in entertainment and artistic value to what’s on TV right now, and I have argued for many years now that TV has supplanted Movies as the storytelling medium. I used to get bewildered looks and arguments, but not so much anymore. If you had started this thread 2 years ago, you would have been flamed and ridden out of town. Well, maybe not you, per se.

Couple that with HDTV broadcasts, and I get more out of my home theater watching CSI than I do watching whatever CGI crap that comes out from the studios.

It’s gotten to this point – I went to the cinema about 4 times last year. I routinely walk into rental stores and end up leaving and watching something from the library. Many times, when I do rent something, it’s an older movie that just got released on DVD. All the water cooler talk these days is about TV shows – Hollywood has so fractured the movie audience that there’s hardly anything that everyone either has or wants to see.

The bottom line is that I have trouble picking which shows are in my Top Ten TV shows of the year but I can barely name 10 movies I’ve seen. Off the top of my head, Sin City is the only one movie this year that I got as excited and wanted to talk about. On TV? Earl, The Office, Arrested Development, House, Scrubs, CSI just off the top of my head, and the movies can’t touch the immediacy and suspense generated by Survivor and American Idol (no spoilers weeks before release).

Yes, there a lot of crap on TV. But there's alot of TV -- it's bound to happen. But as far as absolute numbers go, there were more good TV series much less episodes than there were good movies last year.
 

teapot2001

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Box office gross tallies of 2005 are far from being near the all-time lows; it's just that it dropped after several years of all-time high grosses. And the answer isn't so obvious. Many of the shows you've mentioned were around before 2005 when record crowds were going to the movies.

~T
 

Ray Chuang

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What I find interesting is that TV often WAY outdoes the movies in terms of good storytelling.

Take for example strong female lead characters. I haven't seen any decent ones in the movies lately, yet we've had the success of Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer on TV.

Or the fact that the two-part play Angels in America came on HBO as a highly-acclaimed TV miniseries, not as a theatrical movie.

Not to mention all those great TV series on HBO: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Rome, etc.

Remember The Early Frost, the acclaimed TV movie that directly dealt with the AIDS crisis some ten years before the theatrical movie Philadelphia?

And science fiction has definitely thrived on TV. Three Star Trek series--Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager--at their best were definitely worth watching. :emoji_thumbsup: The revived Battlestar Galactica series is probably one of the best TV series out there right now. :cool:

And of course, today over-air network TV dramas have experienced a major comeback, thanks to shows like 24, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, and several others.

You're right, Ronald. TV has suddenly interesting again.
 

Amy Mormino

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I generally agree with this post. In particular, I feel that comedy is a genre that plays much better on TV the majority of the time, as the half hour format really suits it well. And I'd have a hard time finding a dramatic film that had as much impact as some of the top TV dramas, even among a lot of the Oscar contenders.

However, for big epic productions and stories that depend on special effects, TV cannot yet compete with movies. That was clear to me when I saw an episode of Rome that featured a big battle. As expensive as that show was,the battle was pathetic in scale compared to what even a mid-level budgeted war movie could manage. As delightful as well-scripted but somewhat unimpressive effects-driven shows like Buffy and Battlestar G. have been, until they can really match the scale and budget of a major Hollywood blockbuster, there will still be a place for movies.
 

Hanson

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And that in a nutshell is exactly what's wrong with movies today. Instead of relying on plot, characters, dialog, and acting, movies rely too much on CGI and "production values". But Rome shits all over Alexander or whatever big scale epic that has been produced in the last 5 years. When you blow your budget on special effects and actors, there's not much going on under the hood.
 

Holadem

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My TV adventures:

I've become a TV fan in the last 2 years as well, thanks to the Whedon shows. After experiencing them on DVD, I became addicted to the TV on DVD format and went on to explore other series. Shows I am currently following (not always up to date), or whose new seasons I am waiting for are:

24
The Wire
Six Feet Under
Deadwood
Sopranos
Lost
The Shield

I enjoyed 2 seasons of Alias but quit as all the signs were pointing to a dramatic reduction in quality in S3. I quit the West Wing after a lackluster 3rd season. I gave Farscape 2.5 seasons before I bailed. I quit Smallville out of frustration for bad writing, but will tune in at the occasional dramatic turning point (like last season finale and this season premiere).

My latest find is Veronica Mars, which has got to be the best series you're not watching (cliche I know).

I will be getting into Galactica soon as well.

As for "older" series, I am in the begining of Season 2 of X-files. While it's an enjoyable series, it's missing that hook which makes you tear through a season in a matter of days.

That said, my first love is and always will be film. There is nothing in this hobby that can match the pleasure of a good theatrical presentation of a good movie. When I walk into a theater, long before the actual movie starts, I am thrilled just sitting there. And perhaps I live in some alternate universe, but bad theatrical experiences are the rare exception for me, not the rule.

And this is the absolute best time of the year to be at the movies, as most Oscar contenders have gone wide.

Film, first and always :).

--
H
 

Zack Gibbs

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Film and television will never be close enough a medium to compare realistically (at least for the foreseeable future). The rules are too different and alter the key factor of expectations. For example, I look forward all week to a new episode of Battlestar Galactica and am excited every Friday night just before it starts. I have high expectations from the show based on what it has given me so far, but I never know what it will deliver that night. It might be something big, or a smaller, less dramatic episode. When it doesn't deliver something huge I know it's okay because there will be another episode next week. That's the mentality of TV, and it affects every aspect of the medium. We don't scrutinize the cinematography, direction, special effects nearly as much as film. Even when it comes to acting and writing, we are far more forgiving of the occasional bad guest star or the dull B plot in TV land. Movies don't work that way, if I held the same expectations for next weeks' BSG, Lost, Earl, Office, 24, etc., as I do for say, Superman Returns(only 5 more MONTHS), the shows wouldn't meet them. They wouldn't stand a chance.
 

Inspector Hammer!

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I don't really get into the harder-edged shows on tv like 24 and all of the countless crime scene shows, IMO they are pushing the boundries of violence and disturbing images beyond what I need to see on a weekly basis, that's why I bailed on Prison Break.

No, I tend to watch comedies like My Name is Earl, Everybody Hates Chris, Family Guy and The King of Queens and television's lighter fare like Smallville, Monk, Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural.

Desperate Housewives lost me because it was getting too much press and I frankly got sick of hearing about it and seeing it's cast everywhere I went on magazine covers.

As for television being better than the theater, I really don't know about that, nothing will replace the thrill I get from watching a film like King Kong at the theater. At the Regal near my house they did a complete overhaul on their theaters and every presentation i've seen there last year has been stellar, so I can't speak for eveyone else but I get what I pay for when I see a film there.

Television might be great right now, but it's a separate medium than seeing films at the theater, if a great film is playing at the theater, it isn't on television, it's at the theater and so I will go there to see it.

Having said that, though, I do happen to find Smallville to be better than the film because it has more time to flesh out it's story and characters, something a film just cannot accomplish sufficiantly for a story like this.

The television medium serves shows like Smallville well because it plays out like a weekily live-action comic book issue furthering the story.
 

TheLongshot

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Those who have seen the extended version of "Kingdom Of Heaven" may disagree with you. ;)

Movies are good places to show short stories. TV is a good place to show novels.

Jason
 

Amy Mormino

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Taking the short story/novel comparison a bit literally, I wish that TV could be the medium for the adaptation of most novels, but the budget just isn't there for a lot of them because they're just too expensive. A number of folks have mentioned that they'd like to see "Watchmen" as an HBO miniseries and the creators would also, but it would cost about $100 million, so a movie is the only option. Until special effects get a lot cheaper (and there's no sign they are), movies will be the only place to see certain types of stories.
 

Ken Chan

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Too much time. I stopped this season. In the past, there were like five good episodes a year. The rest were filler, freak-of-the-week stuff, and people's alliances and knowledge were being reset over and over: "I forget: this week, does Lex know Clark's secret, and is Clark mad at Lex?"

People complain about how slow Lost is, but at least it pretty much constantly inches forward, and the episodes are interesting by themselves.
 

Kevin Grey

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I disagree, IMO CGI has made it much, much more affordable to do things on a scale which television never could before. It's a big part of why I'm starting to agree with Ron. I'm able to get all of the benefits of long form storytelling without sacrificing a lot of the action and spectacle that I used to only be able to find in the theater.

A little over a decade ago the creatures of Jurassic Park could only be a achieved with $60 million dollars and the talents of ILM. Now we can get computer generated creatures every week in an episode of Surface.

Sure there are still experiences that can only be done with a full scale motion picture (and that will probably never change) but the range of those experiences is much smaller now than ten or twenty years ago.

And a $100 million isn't even completely out of the question- that's what 'Band of Brothers' cost. But, yeah, I wouldn't expect that kind of outlay for 'Watchmen'. But in another decade 'Watchmen' might be achieveable for less than half of that.
 

Holadem

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I have to say that in the past year, I got most of my action/suspense fix from the 4 seasons of 24 that I pretty much marathoned thru.

While I can't agree that TV is better than movies in general, 24 certainly holds my interest better than most action movies.

--
H
 

Zack Gibbs

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A little off topic, but I actually think there would be a huge market for modern day movie serials like those of the 40's. I know television was essentially its replacement, but when you consider two factors; A)Digital effects have reached an affordability level to SFX never before possible, and B) "Blockbusters" are reaching all time budgets, 200-250 million, and they're only going up, It seems clear there is a market in between TV and Major Motion Picture. Couple that with the new comicbook movie surge and you've got a license to print money. I'd love to see 2 Batman/x-men/sin city movies a year, that cost 50 million or so a piece, than the 150 million 3 year waits we have now. They would still be movies, and much more than a tv movie could ever deliver. And that 50 million would stretch much, much further than a traditional film as they would be in constant production--giving them the economy of TV. Eventually original serials would enter production, and we'd have a reborn format. With recent btb productions like LOTR and Harry Potter I don't think this is a far out theory, but maybe I'm the only one who'd be interested in this.
 

Ravi K

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Most of my TV viewing has been comedy as well, though once a friend of mine lent me season 1 of 24 and told me to watch it, I was hooked. Not long after I finished it season 4 started, so I watched that, and after that was done I watched seasons 2 and 3.

A few weeks ago I finished season 1 of Lost on DVD. Lost and 24 were more riveting than most movies I saw in 2005.

I'm currently watching Six Feet Under season 1 (found it for incredibly cheap).

I'd like to see more miniseries, where a story is told in only as many episodes as it needs. This should be extended to comedies too.
 

Walter C

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I wonder if the box office slumps is the main reason why we're seeing movie stars in TV.

And people think I'm weird, because I rent DVDs of TV shows, and rarely rent movies.
 

DaveF

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But what sort of beast is the "extended version"? It was never shown in theaters. It can only be seen on TV -- that is, at home on the small screen. It seems even many of the best movies are in some way also a TV show -- these extended versions -- made specifically for home viewing. :)
 

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