Posts of the Week
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New Media vs. Old Erik Bloom - 08:37am Jan 15, 1997 PST (#14 of 37)
No one but an Insider would contest the fact that the "old media", or at least the news media, was and is in need of a major shake up. The question is whether the cure is fatal. Interactivity despite its obvious benefits has a dark side that few have even acknowledged let alone come to terms with. (If a non-interactive Picasso lies passively on the wall for you then you have no business looking at art.) Perhaps as a "sensible person" you have been spared the experience of credibility flattening which the Net has excellerated in ways it is almost impossible to keep up with. (Who am I for that matter? I sure as hell don't want the word 'consumer' flashed beneath my name when the camera rolls.) ... Needless to say, the very highly informed and intrepid soul can still get down to the 'real' stuff. But the very fact that most will always put "real" in quotes should make you uneasy. The experts, and this of course applies to news sources, are simulataneously incantated as prophet-priests and held in the deepest suspicion. This is the case because, on the one hand, inundated by an ever more incomprehensible world experts provide many with the only ground on which to stand. Yet at the same time that one's opinion about anything and everything is not *as valid* as anyone else's, based on the fact that they convert oxygen to carbon dioxide on a regular basis, is a heresy for which our toleration is zero. "Sensible people" sigh at such "melodramatic exaggerations." (I don't even want to know what would emerge from the mouths of the drooling digerati.) But, exaggeration, properly used, is only the heighlighting of the vital and significant. And I am not a journalist. I also would add that news reporting probably benefits most from interactivity, where perspective (and vested interest) is everything. I joked to a friend that the only reason the media, in theory, couldn't lie about the final score of the Packers-Panthers game is that there were too many witnesses. ... You Don't "Like" the Main Characters. Lee G Hill - 12:01pm Jan 19, 1997 PST (#25 of 29) Complex and unsympathetic characters are inherently dramatic. I am bored to tears by many of the recent blockbusters that try to force you to like characters by smoothing out any ambiguities and tacking on the proverbial 'happy ending' at the conclusion. Whenever I see a trailer for a new movie where they have cast a pretty face as the guy with a secret or the girl just trying to make it today's complex world, my mind shouts out "wait for the video". The preview for the Harrison Ford vehicle, Devil's Own, is a particular egregious example. Brad Pitt plays an Irishman with IRA connections hiding out with the family of a New York cop. You just know that any atrocities the character has committed will be excused or smoothed over because, well, he's Brad Pitt. Hollywood casting usually has one wide open eye on the box office. Casting Tom Hanks, Ford, Pitt, etc. in controversial roles rarely means that they are going to stretch, but that the character will be rewritten to make the star look better. Another example is Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day, which looks like a big budget episode of the kind of sit-com no one watches anymore. It is sad when talented actors become stars because their choices become increasingly predicatable and safe. Who wants to lose the home in Malibu to play unsympathetic? To end on a positive note, Julianne Moore in [SAFE] gave one of the great film performances of the nineties. She should have been nominated for an Oscar last year. Guilty Pleasure TV John Mistretta - 06:56pm Jan 17, 1997 PST (#21 of 22) My face burns with shame as I write this, but my former guilty pleasure was Dallas. I never got into until it went into syndication when I could come home from work and watch it Monday throught Friday. Seeing everyone trying to screw each other over on a daily basis appealed to me as did Cliff and JR's dislike for each other. I watched every show from start to finish and have even seen the several reunion sequels. I'm now watching Oleans to get my "JR" fix. I'm now embarrased to admit to watching "Married...With Childred" A truly execrable sit-com. (That's a real word, I looked it up The blond chick's not hard to look at either...
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