One thing about The Wire is that it had some iffy acting here and there… largely due to the frequent use of non-actors and regular Baltimore residents. It didn’t drag on the show too much (and even added to the grit), but for me it’s the kind of thing that keeps it off the very top shelf of “prestige drama” shows, or whatever you want to call them. Not quite as crisp as some of the others.
TV Streaming series to talk about.
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I appreciate all of the input.
I've been reading a little, but I believe that you guys have years of experience in dissecting movies and shows.
I'm just working on how to identify the components. How do I know that something came more from the script, the actor, or the direction. I've read about so many great actors that in many instances ad-libbed their lines.
Plus there have been so many gains in overall movie making in the last few decades, sometimes you watch an old movie and even though it's good you can sort of see the strings holding the filming together, so to say...
I've been reading a little, but I believe that you guys have years of experience in dissecting movies and shows.
I'm just working on how to identify the components. How do I know that something came more from the script, the actor, or the direction. I've read about so many great actors that in many instances ad-libbed their lines.
Plus there have been so many gains in overall movie making in the last few decades, sometimes you watch an old movie and even though it's good you can sort of see the strings holding the filming together, so to say...
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Check out the trivia section on IMDb for a TV show or film that interests you. That's how I've learned most of the behind the scenes information. That, and I enjoy listening to director or actor commentary tracks on DVDs, but I know that's not for everybody.
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I've found some really good things on youtube but they seem to mostly point out easter eggs and some plot lines.
Also check out the extra features/behind the scenes where available, which can shed light on how things come together.
I’ve read books on various related subjects, but learned the most by devouring Criterion Collection DVD featurettes and directors’ or film scholars’ commentary tracks. Criterion’s streaming subscription doesn’t offer their entire library, but it still has a ton of great stuff if you really felt like digging in. Similar stuff is available for free through youtube, but I’ve never seen anything free that is on the level of Criterion. Maybe anomaly would know.
I watched the first episode of Task on HBO. Single episodes released weekly, looks like. Mark Ruffalo stars as a down and out FBI agent assigned to head up a local crime task force.
Quite a lot introduced in the first episode, looks somewhat promising despite many very familiar tropes.
Quite a lot introduced in the first episode, looks somewhat promising despite many very familiar tropes.
Carolina Fever
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Finished rewatching Mr Robot today. I had forgotten how it ended. Such a great series. One of my top 3 favorites of all time.
King Hippo
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Why did you cancel YTTV?
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Just don't watch enough for the cost.
I can watch basketball on my BIL account.
YTTV cost, the others for their poor choices.
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Enjoying Black Rabbit so far.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "components," but if you're interested in understanding how to describe and identify film form (camera distance, camera movement, editing techniques, etc.), my one-stop recommendation would be to pick up a copy of (the late) David Bordwell's textbook Film Art. It's probably in its 10th or 12th edition, so cheap old editions can be bought online. Bordwell's website will also give you a taste of what he means by "historical poetics" in bite-sized takes on individual films.
Can you elaborate on your last comment (re: gains in moviemaking, strings)?
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By components, I was referring to directing, writing, and acting that were being discussed. For me I often see a movie I really like but can't point out the role of each of those things in making it a great movie.
By gains I was talking about technical advances that make filming easier. Example, I read that the first star wars movies, the light from the blaster took a lot of time to create and film but the newer films computers do this in seconds.
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I watched three episodes of Black Orphan the other day, seems interesting, but it has 5 seasons, just can't see how they stretch the concept to 5 seasons. Started Black Rabbit, for to the gold up and my attention was diverted, many ill go back after I finish up a few open shows.
CeruleanBlueHeel
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Sopranos, Beaking Bad, and Better Call Saul are three of the best. The writing, acting, and production all the best as it gets.
I've only seen season 1 and 3 of The Bear on FX. Season 2 got left off FX for reasons unknown to me. It's interesting.
Alien Earth has original story, which is good, but not sure it fits well with all the movies, though has much DNA from Scott's original film.
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In films, the opportunity for actors to improvise--should they even want to--is going to follow from the director. For instance, Billy Wilder and his writing partners never allowed for ad-libbing. Actors read every fucking word in the script. You can make sense of this (perhaps draconian) insistence on the scriptedness of the film in a few ways. First, Wilder got his start as a Hollywood writer in the 1930s, an era in which writers were agitating for guild recognition, reformed procedures for screen credits, and some measure of creative control vis-a-vis directors and producers. Wilder itched to become a director because he was pissed that another director butchered his dialogue. And so he never gave up that stranglehold over production. At the same time, though, a strict adherence to the script was consistent with studio imperatives: what the script provides is an efficient blueprint for budgeting a film and filming it as quickly and as well as possible.
If you really want to know how Old Hollywood directors exerted control over filmmaking, it was through principal photography. If you want to thumb your nose at a producer (who, in those days, had final say over the cut), then you don't shoot coverage of scenes (i.e., you don't shoot the entire scene in a "master" long shot followed by individual medium close-up and/or close-up dialogue/reaction shots). Coverage is a hedge against realizing that you don't have the right material in the editing room. Instead, you "shoot it in the can," which is to say, you just shoot the exact shots that you want in the final cut. In short, you do not give the producer the extra material to significantly change how the film looks or how the story is told. What's notable about this argument is that it does not rehearse old cliches about the long take as an exercise of authorial intentionality. If anything, the long take reflected the myriad skills that the old studios could coordinate and make cooperate--the studios could marshal enormous technical skill to pull off the complexities of those shots in the days before digital editing made every show think another fucking one-er was the aesthetic be-all and end-all.
Put another way, Old Hollywood directors exerted control by limiting the producers' options. Conversely, contemporary directors often presume to exercise control by expanding the footage options available to themselves in the editing room.
Flash forward to the 1970s, when Wilder is still (somehow) working, and you can find plenty of counterexamples of directors who now encourage improvisation. In the main, I'd chalk this change up to the development of naturalist acting techniques in the 1950s (i.e. the Method, Strasberg, Meisner, Adler), which often emphasized the actor's "interpretation" of a role as integral to successful storytelling. And so directors like Altman regard spontaneity--in acting and in camerawork (where spontaneity basically means a set of specific techniques)--as the sine qua non of dramatic truthfulness. These naturalist premises are everywhere--Lumet wants improvisation in rehearsal to lock down a script (note: it's a cheaper way to work because it makes for faster shooting with full crew; Mike Leigh works the same way nowadays); Pollack wants unrehearsed actors to 'naturally' act in just a few takes (and he's got bigger budgets than Lumet because bigger stars); Cassavetes and May go full improv (no one is making any money). Notably, improvisation is another front in any undeclared war between above-the-line film workers. William Goldman calls Pollack a "writer killer" for how the director re-interprets scripts. In turn, improvisation means that actors are not the puppets of directors and screenwriters, but the originators of something artful themselves.
(As an aside, to ding The Wire for its non-professional actors is probably to misunderstand Simon's aesthetic aims and, moreover, the sense in which he imagines himself working through neo-realist premises).
Rutgers University Press has a good edited series on some of this stuff--there are individual books on directing, producing, cinematography, acting, screenwriting, editing, and art direction. Each one moves chronologically through the history of Hollywood filmmaking to clarify how the organization of the wider film industry bears on the work of these various professions. I'd say that the directing, cinematography, and acting books are the most informative bang for your buck.
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Wolfslayer
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I realy enjoyed "Muderbot". "Chief of War" has been very good as well. I have not enjoyed "American Primeval" as much as I'd hoped I would've, I was hoping it was going to rival "Deadwood" but nope. I think Taylor Kitsch has something to do with that, I don't find him genuine.
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I'm not too sure what happened in Orphan Black either, but I will watch anything with Tatiana Maslany in it.
Milk and Cookies
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Black Rabbit is good
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Yes, she's a positive.I'm not too sure what happened in Orphan Black either, but I will watch anything with Tatiana Maslany in it.
It's interesting, but lots of plot holes. I may finish the first season.