Feb. 7th, 2010 10:30 pm

57 channels

muckefuck: (Default)
[personal profile] muckefuck
Lately I've been bitching to anyone who will listen about the fact that a year ago, [livejournal.com profile] monshu and I spent a tidy sum on a glorious and huge new television that we almost never use. At the time, he was in the habit of retiring immediately after dinner and out NetFlix discs were sitting around for ages, but I thought that was temporary. For a while, Ugly Betty brought us together in front of the tv, but then ABC decided to start screwing with its schedule and now he catches up with it (and his new show Glee) on the computer. And for a while I thought that I, unencumbered by considerations of [livejournal.com profile] monshu's taste in films, would watch more movies myself, but I found myself preferring to watch Mock the Week and other snippets of British stand-up on the small screen as well.

So now just about the only time we switch the set on is when [livejournal.com profile] monshu has some ironing to do. Today he had it on Logo. Now I've bitched before about what annoys me in "gay movies" (you know, as opposed to just movies which have gay characters or gay subjects). As it happens, one of the worst offenders--that one about the Native American guy falling for a visitor from New York, the very epitome of the "gay cowboys eating pudding" stereotype--was just ending. We ended up watching a diverting "hom-rom-com" about immature men with much too much money in SoHo, and then it was a "musical fantasy" set in a private all-boys school.

I got five minutes into this until I began to choke on clichés; if anything it was worse than what I was prepared for. As our sensitive loner heads home after getting a black eye in dodge ball, I found myself saying, "So let's meet his struggling single mom." And naturally we do--though not until after first meeting his wisecracky "alternative" friends (a guitar-picking dyed-hair indigo girl and an African-American who you know instantly has no identity beyond that of a mere signifier). Seven billion stories in this world--why am I watching this exact same one again?

As I flipped to some dire crap on BBCAmerica, I reviewed the cruel math of feature filmmaking and contrasted it with some of the accounts of the economics of fiction writing which I've read in the wake of the Macmillan-Amazon pissing contest. It's no wonder [livejournal.com profile] monshu and I find that prose fiction speakers to us more than cinema. Lower barriers to entry mean more choice, not to mention an environment where a creator's vision suffers less at the hands of beancounters who flatten out its distinctiveness in order to broaden its appeal. (Not that I blame them, since a novel which sells a few tens of thousands of hardcover copies is still a success, which is not true of a movie which sells a like number of theatre seats.)

So in the end it's hard to blame [livejournal.com profile] monshu for choosing the pleasures of the paperback over those of the tv set. The downside of the book, however, are that unless you've the patience to sit and listen to one being read aloud, they are a solitary entertainment. Instead of giving up on watching altogether, I've simply got to get more creative in my efforts to lure others over to share the wealth.
Tags:
Date: 2010-02-08 01:50 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] richardthinks.livejournal.com
The formula you cite - of budget being inversely proportional to creative diversity - is exactly what propelled me out of video game design. I got into the industry just as graphics was edging out design for a share of the budget and exited about 2 years after marketing slipped past production in the total cost of bringing product to market. Or, to put it another way, when I entered the industry a hundred and fifty thousand dollars was considered generous for producing a game from start to finish, and when I left about 3 million was industry standard.
Date: 2010-02-08 03:16 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] bunj.livejournal.com
It sounds like you haven't heard, and I hate to break it to you, but after May he won't have to worry about catching up with Ugly Betty on the computer - they're canceling it.

That big TV will come in handy once baseball season starts up again. I'll try to let you know when the Cardinal games are on.
Date: 2010-02-08 03:25 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
No, we knew full well that was coming when they started moving it around. Who schedules a series they want to survive for Friday nights?

Maybe I should subscribe to the Cards feed this year, or would that only be throwing good money after bad? If only I could use the lure of the tv to divert a steady stream of hot Hispanic soccer fans to my house!
Date: 2010-02-08 03:29 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] bunj.livejournal.com
Are you talking about subscribing to the Cards on the TV? I don't have that option with my cable, so I don't know how much it costs. If you're talking about subscribing on the computer, I find the cost quite reasonable for the the audio, but I don't know if I'd catch enough games to justify the video, particularly since I'd be watching it on a computer screen - and they put game highlights on their website almost immediately.
Date: 2010-02-09 05:40 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] gopower.livejournal.com
Who schedules a series they want to survive for Friday nights?

But they moved "Smallville" to Fridays...
Date: 2010-02-08 04:43 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
BTW, no love for Pimpdaddy Ustata? Не разбирам!
Date: 2010-02-08 05:02 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] bunj.livejournal.com
I thought the celebrity look-a-like fad was over. Which is too bad, because the resemblance is uncanny. Of course, that may be because we both have the same hat.
Date: 2010-02-08 05:17 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
Except his is fresh!
Date: 2010-02-08 11:57 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] tyrannio.livejournal.com
Reference works are much less solitary than novels: the Oxford Companion to Food has provided hours of sociability.
Date: 2010-02-09 06:23 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] owenthomas.livejournal.com
Excuse me, but are you hating on "Big Eden"? No. Not allowed.
Date: 2010-02-09 06:02 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
That's the one with the Mormons, right?
Date: 2010-02-09 05:41 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] gopower.livejournal.com
The boys school movie did have a few good musical numbers, the choreography not so much..
Date: 2010-02-09 06:01 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
Man, I thought the music in the audition scene was dire. It managed to make Shakespeare sound more insipid than Take That.

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