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Marching On
From a distance, the March movie slate doesn't look as stale as leftover Christmas cookies, but neither is it brimming with promise. There are some high points, but those who would prefer to lengthen their hibernation are justified. The long-term prospects for April are brighter but with winter winds howling outside, spring doesn't seem all that near.
Two of the most intriguing March releases are already out as I write this: Black Snake Moan and Zodiac. I'm recommending both although I think David Fincher's latest suffers from a common syndrome: the director can't figure out what the movie is really about so he throws in everything he can think of, hoping some of it will stick. In an interview, Fincher claimed he knew the movie was too long but couldn't decide what to cut. This can be seen as evidence that his vision for the film isn't clear. There are a lot of ways Zodiac could have gone, all of which are subsets of what's out there. It's as if Fincher decided that instead of waiting a year for the deluxe, expanded director's cut of the movie on DVD, he'd release it in theaters instead. At two hours, this might have been one of 2007's best. At nearly three hours, it's too long.
This weekend, there are only two notable releases: 300 and The Host. Both already have groups of die-hard supporters. 300 does not disappoint - it offers precisely what would-be fans are expecting. The Host may be a harder mainstream sell. Yes, it's a monster movie, but it's also subtitled. The problem with a movie like this is that too many lazy movie-goers see a conflict between the fun of watching an old-fashioned monster movie and the "difficulty" of reading subtitles. This country's mass reluctance to see subtitled movies baffles me. It may be awkward at first but once you've seen a few of them, reading the dialogue becomes second nature. The Host this month and Black Book next month are examples of movies that could attain mainstream acceptance if they were in English.
Perhaps the March movie that most intrigues me is I Think I Love My Wife. Unlikely combinations and strange bedfellows abound in the motion picture industry, but never did I think to see a marriage between Eric Rohmer and Chris Rock. Nevertheless, I Think I Love My Wife is a remake of Chloe in the Afternoon. Admittedly, this could be a train wreck but I'm hopeful and very interested. The other two mainstream releases that weekend (March 16) are less impressive looking. There's another horror film, Dead Silence (at least this one is rated R). Then Sandra Bullock finds herself tripping time lines again with Premonition. The preview looks good at first glance but the more I see it (I studiously avoid previews, yet I've seen this one four times), the more it looks like it's a slickly made grouping of highlights for a movie that might not hold together very well.
March 23 is the day TMNT opens. (That's how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are referred to in the '00s.) As previously stated, I will not be seeing or reviewing this. I wasn't joking when I wrote that my hatred for this franchise knows no bounds. In all honesty, I would rather watch a romantic comedy with Hilary Duff and the Olsen Twins before seeing this. There are plenty of other movies opening that weekend. First Snow and The Last Mimzy look the most promising. Shooter appears generic, but it has Mark Wahlberg and is directed by Antoine Fuqua (I'm willing to forgive him King Arthur considering what went on behind the scenes). Pride is what it looks like – a generic inspirational sports movie - and that's not impressive. Reign over Me has an awful trailer - the studio should fire whatever marketing firm did it. The jury is still out about whether Adam Sandler can succeed as a serious actor. This is his next test. Finally, there's The Hills Have Eyes 2. I'm sure there won't be a press screening of that one but since I'm skipping TMNT, I may force myself to spend a Friday afternoon with bloodthirsty mutants. I used to love horror movies, but they have become so lame and unimaginative that, as a rule, I now dread them.
March ends with a weekend that offers something for everyone. Despite sounding like a war movie, Blades of Glory is the latest Will Ferrell comedy. I don't expect much from it. The guy can be hilarious at times but his misses are painful, and he whiffs more often than he hits. The trailer for this is laugh-less, and that's usually not a good sign for a comedy. The Lookout is the weekend's thriller and it represents my late March lifeline. This is one of those movies that I want to see and for which I would visit a multiplex if I wasn't writing reviews. For the family audience, there's Meet the Robinsons (an uninspired looking animated film), and horror fans have Skinwalkers, another werewolf film. (Wasn't Blood and Chocolate enough?)
April brings Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Hot Fuzz, and Paul Verhoeven - all as the world sits in wait for what could be the biggest box office May in the history of box office Mays.
Twinkle, Twinkle
Addressing this subject is nothing new. I have done it many times in e-mails and written a prior ReelThought or two devoted to the subject, but it keeps coming up. What exactly do the star ratings mean?
Every film critic who uses a rating system has a different definition of what those ratings mean. For some, it's an attempt to be objective. That would mean a perfect score (four out of four, five out of five, ten out of ten) would indicate that the movie is flawless. For me, this approach to rating is problematic because it attempts to affix objective criteria to a subjective analysis. Using a rating system like this may be the easiest to understand but it's the most difficult to justify.
I often get e-mails asking why Movie X got ***1/2 instead of ****. Why, someone asks, did it "lose" half a star? Such a question indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of my rating scale. This belief assumes there's some kind of mathematical formula involved and if the movie hits all the right notes, it should get a ****. For me, at least, it doesn't work like that. Frankly, I don't like having to assign stars to movies but the reality of the business side of film criticism is that it's a necessity. My readership would be cut in half within a couple of months if I dropped the ratings.
Any critic's rating system should be used as a general guideline. The meat of the review is the text. If you just look at the number of stars a movie gets, you're missing a lot of important information. Unless you have very similar tastes to mine, making a determination solely based on the rating may lead to some bad choices. Someone who writes to tell me I'm out of step with mainstream appeal doesn't understand the point of what I do. I'm not assigning stars based on how I think the public is going to react a film; the rating represents how I reacted to it.
For me, any "critic" who simply assigns numbers then moves on to the next title is a fraud. That's laziness. It's something anyone can do. The job of the critic is to write about (or talk about, depending on the medium) a movie, not just stamp it with "three stars" then check it off a list of titles. I'm irked by reviews that provide three sentences then assign a rating. As far as I'm concerned, those are worthless.
Having written all that, it's time for me to explain what my rating system means. Simply put, the four star scale represents how strongly I recommend a film to someone with similar tastes to my own. If you agree with me about 90% of the time, then the stars will be valuable. If you agree with me 75% of the time, they can provide a general guideline. If you agree with me 60% of the time or less, their value is limited (or worse). The more we disagree, the more important the review's text is.
As I have indicated, subjectivity plays a strong role in star ratings. Movies that I love will get very high ratings. Movies that I'm lukewarm about will fall in the middle. Movies that I hate won't fare well. But the correlation isn't perfect. There are some ***1/2 films I like better than some **** films. (See my Top 100.) How do I explain this? If you understand the rating scale, it's not difficult. I give my highest recommendation (****) to some films because they're damn impressive, but when it comes to the pure pleasure of sitting back and watching something, I may prefer a movie that's a little lighter (***1/2). Few would argue that A Clockwork Orange is not a more impressive movie than When Harry Met Sally, yet the latter is on my Top 100 list while the former is not. Why? Because while I recommend A Clockwork Orange more highly than When Harry Met Sally (in part because of its thematic depth and powerful direction), I enjoy Harry more. (My Top 100 represents my 100 favorite films, not the 100 I most strongly recommend. That's another list. It may have many of the same titles on it, but there will be differences.)
Here are what my star ratings equate to:
****: Highest recommendation. Must-see.
That's what it all means.
The Closing Window
Let's go back in time about 20 years... back to when the idea of renting movies on videotape was relatively new and the concept of a "home theater" was the province of wealthy videophiles. In the mid-1980s, the typical length of time between when a movie entered theaters and when it reached home video was about 8 months. In most cases, the initial video release was at a "rental" price - meaning that it was intended primarily for video stores to buy and rent, not for the average consumer. It was not unusual to find initial releases of many titles in the $80 to $100 range. Within four to six months (around the time the movie reached pay-movie stations like HBO), the price dropped precipitously to the "sell-through" range of $20 to $30.
This dual-tier pricing approach worked well for about a decade. Anyone impatient enough to desire a copy of a title as soon as it arrived on video paid a steep price. (I purchased a handful of movies in the $80 range because, in my twenties, I was not a patient individual.) DVDs changed the landscape in more ways than one. Not only did the rental/sell-through structure collapse but the window between the theatrical release and the home video release began to constrict. What had been about 8 months in 1987 was around six months in 1997 and is closer to four months in 2007.
How much more could/should the window close? There is no agreement about this in Hollywood. Some executives, like Disney's Robert Iger, are pushing for less time between theatrical and DVD releases. Others are taking a more cautious view, concerned about damaging multiplex box office revenue. At one point, the home video market was viewed as a secondary market, but with the combined DVD sales & rentals exploding in recent years, this is no longer the case. Hollywood is looking to maximize revenue and that means getting the most bang-for-a-buck from home video while not destroying the theatrical gravy train. Studies have shown that earlier DVD releases increase home video revenue, but at what point is that increase outweighed by the box office decrease?
The average successful motion picture title has about an eight week run. Flops and failures may come and go in as few as three weeks. Blockbusters can hang around for twelve weeks. However, in all cases, the primary revenue generating phase is less than the total time in theaters. Most major releases accrue 95% of their box office dollars within the first four weeks of release. Blockbusters double that. Consider Pirates of the Caribbean 2, last year's #1 movie. Its total theatrical take was around $420 million. Of that, about 90% ($380 million) came in the first five weeks, with the 95% mark arriving around week seven.
These figures are instructive in considering how much potential shrinkage still exists in the market. Right now, blockbusters reach video in 14-17 weeks after their theatrical debut; non-blockbusters shave two to three weeks from that total. (Independent films often take longer if they are not backed by a major studio.) Those time frames could be cut almost in half without seriously damaging theatrical revenue. It would not be unreasonable for a mid-May multiplex release to come to DVD before the end of the summer.
This sort of talk alarms theater owners, as well it should. With the window closing, it's true that more "fringe" movie-goers will wait to see films in the comfort of their homes. This wouldn't impact the core of the customer base, who will still flood multiplexes every weekend to see the biggest and newest, but it will cause some degree of erosion. Right now, there's a silent war going on with many disenchanted movie fans: they love seeing films as soon as they are available but they hate the "multiplex experience." When confronted with a four month wait, many of them bite the bullet and go to a theater. If the wait diminished to two months, how many would be patient?
To me, the solution for theaters is obvious: improve the movie-going experience. Currently, multiplexes have two advantages: showing a movie on a big screen and offering it now rather than later. As home theaters become more elaborate, the first advantage is going away. The second may not be far behind. Theater owners can stem the erosion, however, by taking pro-consumer steps: friendly and helpful employees, good sound and video, quick and effective responsiveness to technical problems, and the patrolling of auditoriums to remove disruptive audience members. Gimmicks aren't necessary, but consideration of customers is mandatory.
Implementing these steps will cost theaters, since it will require more hiring and better training. The longer they wait, however, the greater the danger of going past the point of no return. It's easier to retain customers, even disgruntled ones, than to try to win back lost ones. The window is shrinking and there's no indication the trend is going to stop. Home video is a genie that, once let out of the bottle, cannot be put back in. Multiplex owners would do well to stop whining about the inevitable and work to fix a system that is broken. Improving the movie-going experience and satisfying customer expectations should be first and foremost on their minds. Fighting gravity, after all, often leads to flattening results.
Art-Porn
The DVD release of Shortbus got me thinking about the growing body of films often referred to as "art-porn." These are "legitimate" titles featuring explicit sexual activity. For the most part, art-porn films do not star recognizable actors but there are exceptions (Chloe Sevigny in The Brown Bunny, Kerry Fox in Intimacy, Kieran O'Brien in 9 Songs). It's interesting to examine the growing popularity of art-porn and what that may say about today's culture in the United States. First, however, some background...
Back in the heyday of porn on film (pre-video: the late '70s), the so-called "Holy Grail" of many adult filmmakers was to make a XXX feature that married hot, explicit sex scenes with a great story and great acting. In essence, they were trying to create the Citizen Kane of porn. (See Boogie Nights for a fictionalized re-creation of the era and its aspirations.) It never happened, primarily because production values were low, porn screenplays were never very good, and porn actors couldn't deliver dialogue convincingly. With the advent of video, porn became mechanical. Nowadays, it's a rarity for an adult feature to have even a flimsy excuse for a plotline - it's mostly just sex.
Enter art-porn. I can't list all the titles in this expanding category because there have been a lot of them in the last six or seven years. Some are relatively tame: Intimacy and The Brown Bunny show explicit sexual content, but it isn't lengthy. Other movies, such as 9 Songs and Shortbus, have been less coy. There's not much that these films don't show, right down to the so-called "money shot." Art-porn, however, has been no more able to achieve the Citizen Kane of porn than the XXX industry of three decades ago, although for different reasons.
There are two problems associated with having graphic sex in a movie. The first is logistical. The best talent will not sign on for something that's viewed as a "sex film." Maggie Gyllenhaal has no hang-ups about on-screen nudity, but she would likely not be willing to do a Shortbus. Don't even think about asking Christina Ricci. And they are two of the more open-minded actresses working today. The minute a director decides to include actual penetration, fellatio, cunnilingus, or masturbation, he has reduced his talent pool, both in terms of who will work in front of the camera and who will work behind it.
Then there's the question of how a graphic sex scene impacts a movie. People generally watch porn for stimulation. People watch legitimate films for less primal reasons. Confusing the two can lead to frustration. The conflict is evident. There's also an issue of pacing. No movie can afford to take a several-minute "timeout" to show a sex scene, unless the movie is all about sex in the first place (in which case it's almost certainly straight porn rather than art-porn). There's another issue that Roger Ebert once raised. Graphic sex is documentary in nature. As he wrote in Roger Ebert's Book of Film, speaking about Norman Mailer: "Mailer, like so many before and since, awaits the cinematic marriage of Sex and Art. I am not convinced such a thing is possible. In traditional fiction films, art involves the filmmakers in creating a fiction about characters whose lives we care about. Sex, to the degree that it involves nudity and explicit detail, brings the whole story crashing down to the level of documentary. The actors lose not only their clothes but their characters, and stand (or recline) revealed only as themselves."
To an extent, Shortbus circumvents this problem by presenting us with actors we have likely never seen before and who are therefore largely indistinguishable from their cinematic alter-egos. It's one thing to watch a recognized actress like Chloe Sevigny giving a blowjob. It's another to watch an unknown like Sook-Yin Lee being penetrated. The problem with Shortbus (and 9 Songs and others) is that the director is so focused on putting sex into his legitimate film that he forgets about the movie. The storyline in Shortbus is trite. 9 Songs is dull. And so on... I'm not saying it's impossible for a visionary director to find the perfect way to blend explicit sex with tremendous storytelling, but I haven't seen it yet. But what does it mean that so many directors are trying?
The United States is becoming polarized. The conservative part of the country is growing more vocal and reactionary. They have more political clout than in the past. The number of people making up that movement should not be underestimated. However, mainstream society is gradually becoming more permissive. Consider, for example, the kinds of things that can be shown on network TV today - subjects that would never have been permitted 20 years ago. Teenagers have a more casual attitude toward sex and are engaging in it at earlier ages. Parents may not want to hear this, but there are plenty of sexually active 14 and 15 year-olds. (This aren't anecdotal comments; they're backed by numerous recent surveys and studies.) With sex slowly losing its taboo, it's natural that filmmakers would begin to push boundaries and explore further afield. Art houses have traditionally been a bastion for liberal films, so it's a natural fit that this is where these experimental forays would appear.
Considering that I consider human sexuality to be a natural and healthy aspect of life, I welcome these movies. I just wish they were better. So, while some will protest the depravity of art-porn, I will consider to look on in interest, watch with a critical eye, and hope that some director will discover the perfect blend of sex and story.
From the "You'd Think They'd Have Something Better to Do" File
This past Tuesday came and went with barely a whimper. But do you know what day it was? Not the Ides of March - that was last week. Not St. Patrick's Day - that was Saturday. And not the First Full Day of Spring - that was yesterday (although, to be fair, the Vernal Equinox did occur Tuesday). No, Tuesday was "Perfect Stranger Day." Don't believe me? Here's an excerpt from the press release: "Executive Director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, Sharon Pinkinson, will officially proclaim Tuesday, March 20th Perfect Stranger Day in Philadelphia, by order of Mayor John Street with presentation of proclamations to Halle [Berry] and Giovanni [Ribisi]." Okay, so maybe that's only in Philadelphia, but still...
I have seen Perfect Stranger and I can assure anyone reading this that it does not deserve its own day. In fact, it doesn't even deserve its own two hours. I'll let my review speak for itself but suffice it to say that this will not go down as one of the great thrillers of the 21st century. For the purposes of this commentary, however, the quality of the movie is irrelevant. This is less about the movie than the silliness that surrounds it in a celebrity-obsessed culture.
Philadelphia is the United States' sixth largest city, behind New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix. Over the past year, it has gotten two black eyes - one as a result of a rampant spree of murders (averaging more than one per day) and one as a result of runaway student-on-teacher violence in the schools. One would think that Mayor Street might have more pressing matters than proclaiming March 20 as "Perfect Stranger Day." What a load of rubbish. But that's what politicians of both parties do - in order to avoid making hard decisions that might upset constituents, they get behind fluff legislation and vague initiatives. And the killing and violence go on. But at least we have Perfect Stranger Day.
Some might argue that since I don't live in Philadelphia and don't pay taxes to the city, I don't have a right to complain. To a certain extent, that is true (I have plenty of things to complain about regarding the taxes I do pay, but that's another rant). However, I was domiciled in Philadelphia for five years (1985-90) and visit there an average of three times per week, dutifully paying my $8 parking fee on each occasion. It's clear that I have an affection for the city and I would prefer not to become a statistic of the current crime wave. That at least gives me a vested interest in what the mayor's plans are.
Besides, it's just embarrassing. At how many stops on Giovanni Ribisi and Halle Berry's publicity tour is there such slavish bowing and scraping? You'd think no celebrity ever came to Philadelphia. "Look! It's an A-List Star and her B-List sidekick! Let's roll out the red carpet, lick their boots, and thank them profusely for deigning to spend a few hours in our humble town!" Was it the lure of Perfect Stranger Day that brought them here? No - they would have arrived and done exactly the same number of interviews and smiled for the same number of paparazzi pictures without the proclamation. It makes the city's film office, which pushed the mayor to make the proclamation, seem bush league and whorish. One wonders what would have happened had the third star of the film, Bruce Willis, been on hand. Maybe a parade down Broad Street?
So how did I spend Perfect Stranger Day? By writing my review of Perfect Stranger - and it probably didn't capture the spirit of the occasion striven for by the clowns who decided to tarnish Tuesday's reputation. Now I'll just sit back and await "ReelViews Day."
Snapping at Turtles
I don't hate turtles. When I was a kid, I can remember wandering around my backyard or in the adjacent woods looking for them. I'd catch them, put them in a topless shoebox overnight (usually with a dish of water and a few lettuce leaves), then let them go the next day. (Back in the '70s, we didn't worry too much about the possible disease risks associated with such animals and I never caught anything.) But those were boxer turtles, not teenage mutant ninja turtles.
More than one person has e-mailed me asking for an explanation of my dislike for TMNT. (They are now known by the acronym because anything with an acronym is cooler than something without one.) Why do some people hate black jellybeans? Part of it is a matter of taste. The turtles (as well as the jellybeans) don't appeal to me. I have never found them to be cool or interesting or worth any time or effort on my part. There are those who swear by these four reptilian heroes; I swear at them. I'm a little too old to be in their target demographic - they became "big" when I was in college. I watched a few episodes of the cartoon TV series (but never read the comic book) and was unimpressed. My apathy changed to antipathy after sitting through three movies. What dreck (especially the third one)!
My feelings about the turtles are well enough established that the idea of my seeing and reviewing TMNT would have been pointless from the start. I felt an impulse of disgust when I heard about the project. While it's true that no review is objective and all reviews are impacted to one degree or another by the preconceptions of the reviewer, there's no reason for a movie critic to review something that he/she is predisposed to hate. In fact, it's fundamentally dishonest. Many times when I skip a movie, it's because my preconceptions for that film are strongly negative. It's not fair to the movie or to the readers for me to write about something when my mind is made up before seeing it.
Today, I elected to see The Hills Have Eyes II instead of TMNT. The horror sequel earned a single star, and one could argue that I was in a generous mood. It's possible (perhaps likely) that TMNT would have done better. Does that mean I made the wrong decision when selecting where to spend my $6? No. Even though The Hills Have Eyes II was not screened for critics (a dubious distinction), one look at its pedigree provided a false sense of security. Not only did Wes Craven produce the movie, but he co-wrote it. Craven's track record is spotty but there are few more respected names in horror. One takes that into consideration, and it enabled me to approach Hills II with a cautious sense of optimism. Ultimately, it wasn't well-placed but I didn't walk into the theater expecting a train wreck. There was no self fulfilling prophesy. What the review expresses is an honest reaction to what I believe to be a very bad motion picture.
As a critic, one of the most difficult things to do is to put aside preconceptions when walking into a theater. Often, the less one knows about a film, the better. But isolation in this age of media and publicity saturation is almost impossible, even for one who studiously avoids the pre-movie trailer barrage. Even at film festivals, virgin movie-going is difficult. There's buzz and hype for nearly everything, even a small independent film from the Philippines. So my approach is simple. In those few quiet seconds just before the film begins, I psych myself up for what I'm about to see. I put aside the negatives and think of what might go right. It helps that I genuinely love movies and that I want to be there. I don't go to anything when I don't think there's any hope. There's no point. Why subject myself to that?
That's why I will not be seeing TMNT, either now or on DVD. That's why I will not be reviewing it. And that's why there will be no coverage of any potential sequels on this site. Sorry, but these days the only use I can think of for turtles is as an ingredient in soup.
Stats
It fascinates me how interested some readers are in ReelViews traffic statistics. Not a week goes by when I don't get at least one friendly inquiry asking about the site's number of hits. Hopefully, this column with satisfy all with such curiosity. For those who have no interest in stats, this will be a dull read. Skip to the last paragraph.
All statistics are post-Colossus. When I moved the site from movie-reviews.colossus.net to reelviews.net in August 2006, all my old stats went away. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Colossus had done a good job tracking traffic from 1997 until about 2004. After that, things went haywire. My log became too big for them to parse effectively and everything was suspect. Since moving to my current location, I have had no difficulty with stats and, since I'm "watching" them using multiple programs, I have high confidence that they're accurate.
There are three common measures of traffic: hits, page views, and visitors. My preference is page views. Hits, which refer to any download to a browser, are too easily manipulated. (A hit, for example, can be a tiny graphic embedded in a page. To increase hits, just add downloads to a page. Traffic will appear to jump.) For ReelViews, one page view typically represents about 3.5 hits. The visitors stat is interesting but, in my opinion, not as informative as page views.
On a daily basis, ReelViews receives about 65,000 page views from 33,000 visitors. About 1100 subscribe to the RSS feed. (That number seems low, but I can't complain since I don't use RSS feeds for any of the sites I visit.) Monthly, there are approximately 1,900,000 page views and 850,000 visitors. The site is experiencing slow growth. Traffic is trending upward, but gently. My estimate is that I'm picking up about 2000 new readers per month. Long gone are the days when the site would double or triple its readership in a year. It's also worth noting that I'm at or slightly above where I was when Colossus' sudden collapse forced me to make the emergency domain change. It seems that most readers have found me, thanks in large part to help from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, and MRQE. At least in the future, if I have to change providers, the domain name will remain the same, so the switch should be transparent.
What are the top five most frequently read reviews? I can't provide the all-time list because, as noted above, I don't have anything reliable before October 2006. I think my #1 all-time review is Revenge of the Sith. If I remember correctly, that was read more than 300,000 times. On opening day, it scored something like 40,000 page views and drove my bandwidth through the roof. Spider-Man 2 was also huge, as was last year's Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Ditto for the Lord of the Rings films and the Harry Potter series.
Currently, the top five since October 2006, are: (1) The Departed: 225,000 page views, (2) Borat: 158,000 page views, (3) 300: 115,000 page views (and counting - this one's still registering 2000-3000 page views per day), (4) Babel: 105,000 page views, (5) Casino Royale: 89,000 page views. The second-most read review of 2007 thus far is Bridge to Terabithia, which finished outside of the top 10 at 64,000 page views.
Two of the top five are surprises. The Departed has been read so many more times than anything else that I suspect there must be a direct link somewhere to it. Too bad there's no advertising on that page... I'm also surprised that Babel cracked the 100,000 mark. Casino Royale is artificially low because readership re-discovery of the site was around 75% when it came out. However, the entire traffic landscape will be re-arranged during the course of the summer.
Other random notes... ReelThoughts gets about 10,000 page visits per week (although many of those represent readers who come back multiple times). Many high profile older reviews have exceeded 4000 page views since October. That number is higher than I suspected. The War Zone, for example, has been visited more than 5000 times in six months. I wonder if that many people have *seen* the movie duirng that time frame. I have visitors from nearly every country (including China, where my URL has not been blocked), but 85% of the traffic is from North America (United States & Canada). 95% is from English speaking countries (which makes sense). Demographic information (the survey that occasionally shows up in the ad areas and which about 1000 people have thoughtfully filled out) puts the male/female ratio at about 70/30.
So those are the numbers. Dry stuff, but hopefully a few readers will find them interesting...
Coming Soon to ReelThoughts: "The Fifth Cylon (and other TV Tidbits)", "A Blu-Ray of Hope", "Naked Addicts and Clothed Strippers", "The Doctor Is in", "April Showers", "A Festival Comes to Town." I like planning ahead - the hard part is actually writing these columns (and don't be surprised if the order changes).
The Fifth Cylon (and other TV tidbits)
SPOILERS for: the third season of Battlestar Galactica, the second season of Rome, and the sixth season of 24.
Now that Battlestar Galactica has shown its hand for the season finale, it's as good a time as any to look back at the past season and consider whether the show is still going strong. Along the way, I'll throw in a few comments about the also just-concluded Rome and the will-it-ever-end season of 24.
This has been a curious season for BSG. Of the limited number of TV shows I watch, it's still the best, but it's not as good as it was a year ago. Back in October 2006, the third season started with a bang. The first four or five weeks were amazing. However, once the New Caprica storyline ended, the series had trouble maintaining momentum. It languished a little between Thanksgiving and its brief end-of-the-year hiatus, then returned with a whimper in January. The problem, I think, was twofold. There was a lack of clear direction and some of the most compelling storylines (such as Sharon's integration into human society) had either been completed or had been dropped.
The final two-parter made me believe the series is again building toward something. Whether or not that's the case won't be apparent until season four starts. In terms of pacing and writing, however, "Crossroads" more closely resembled the stuff of season two than the dregs of season three. To date, it's the weakest of BSG's season cliffhangers, but its predecessors, "Kobol's Last Gleaming" and "Lay Down Your Burdens," were tough episodes to beat. This time, the question is more interpretive than speculative. We're not so much asking "What will happen next?" as "What just happened?"
It's worth examining some of the elements that fused to form the climax.
Starbuck's return: This wasn't as shocking as it was intended to be. The problem is that Starbuck's "death" never felt real. It was too weak for the exit of a major character. So her return, in whatever form she's occupying, was almost mandated. What we don't know at this point is whether this is a flesh-and-blood Starbuck, a mystical Starbuck who only appears to Lee (and maybe a few select others), or a figment of Lee's imagination. I vote for #2, but I don't think the "real" Starbuck is dead. Her astral self will guide Galactica to Earth where she'll be waiting for them.
Baltar's trial: The kind of stuff that great TV trials are made of – twists, revelations, and speeches. It will be intriguing to see how the former base star guest takes to the role of underground messiah and all around whipping boy.
The Sharon/Roslin/Caprica Six vision: I don't know what to make of this except that it feels like BSG has stumbled into David Lynch territory. The seed hasn't been properly fertilized for it to mean much at this point. My guess is that it will become a big deal next year.
Cylon attack: It's odd, but the fact that the fleet can't jump and is under attack by a massive cylon armada is easily overlooked. There's too much other stuff going on for this prosaic space battle to get much attention.
The Final Four: If SciFi had delayed airing this by one week, it would have meshed perfectly with the basketball world. We knew the identities of three of these last week when they started hearing weird music playing. The only new addition was Tyrol, and his inclusion wasn't a blockbuster. The unveiling of Tigh reminded me of the approach used by author Katherine Kurtz who loves to disguise unsuspecting Deryni as Deryni-haters. All along, Tigh and Roslin had been my top two choices for hidden cylons. With these four, there's a lot of story territory to be mined; let's hope the writers don't squander the possibilities. As for the last unknown cylon - as I see it, there are five legitimate candidates: Baltar, Starbuck, Adama, Roslin, and Bob Dylan.
Although it hasn't been confirmed, I suspect season four will be BSG's swan song. That's okay with me - better to go out on a high note than linger and turn into crap. I suspect the ultimate resolution of the series will have something to do with uniting the cylons and humans rather than having one destroy the other. When they reach Earth, they'll all be one big happy family. The question becomes: what are we like when they find us?
On the same night that BSG concluded its third season, Rome went gently into that good night. The series finale was a bit of an anticlimax for anyone with even a vague notion of history. Even though the screenwriters toyed with the facts to generate a surprise or two, they pretty much got where history demanded that they be: with Anthony and Cleopatra dead and Octavian proclaimed First Citizen. I enjoyed the series, but didn't find it to be groundbreaking. A little too much soap opera for me, even with the high production values and the superb acting. I don't bemoan the absence of a third season. Where were they going to take this, anyway - start remaking I, Claudius? (For those who want to see what happens next, rent the DVD set of the old BBC mini-series. It stands up extraordinarily well, although you'll have to get used to Brian Blessed as Augustus/Octavian - a far cry from Rome's version.)
Finally, a few words about a series that should have ended a year ago. 24 started out this year in rocky fashion; however, as mediocre as the early episodes were, they're nothing compared to what's going on now. The recycling machine is in overdrive, spitting out plot elements that the show has overused a few too many times. It's not just that 24 is unoriginal - that has always been the case - but it has become dull and repetitive. Audrey's pointless off-screen demise (which is likely a red herring) is just the latest in a line of missteps. Of course, moments after hearing the news that the love of his life is dead, Jack is back in the saddle again. The newest CTU romance, between Milo and Nadia, makes one long for the courtship of Tony and Michelle - two characters we actually cared about. In fact, that's the real problem with 24 - the show has so effectively pruned the tree that, except for Jack, there's no one left. The other surviving long-running characters, like Chloe and Boss Bill, lack personality. (Chloe had it once but it has vanished this year.) 24 has become populated by drones and is being scripted by writers with no imagination.
The only way 24 can hope to survive another season is if there's a radical change in philosophy next year. The first thing to do is fire all the writers. For season seven, there should be no terrorists, no CTU, nothing familiar. Maybe even no Jack Bauer (at least at the start). By trying constant one-upsmanship, this show has slit its own throat. I'll keep watching in the futile hope it will deliver something akin to what it was once able to provide, but I'm not optimistic. Unlike BSG, which has clear plans to bring down the curtain and a path to get there, and Rome, which has already left the building, 24 has stayed too long at the party.
©2007 James Berardinelli
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