Archive for January 2010
Since everybody seems to be starting to count at zero instead of one the first decade of this century and millennium is now over. So it’s time to recap these past ten years and take a look at the TV Shows it has given us.
Let me give my résumé at the beginning: Of the four decades I know TV Shows from (70s – 00s) this was without question the best decade for us TV junkies. When you read my review you might say in the end “Hey what about <insert your favourite here>?” (e.g. The Sopranos, Dexter, The Wire, Six Feet Under, …) but that’s exactly my point. This decade has given us so many outstanding shows that it was impossible to watch them all. Also, everybody has a different set of favourite genres but I’d say that every genre got their fair share of excellent series in the last years.
But let’s face it: There’s rarely any series (if there’s one at all) that could keep up the quality and its appeal for its entire run. Some had a bad year in between, some fell short at the end. But even in these “bad years” they had more quality episodes in it than entire shows from previous decades. So all the shows I am going to name have of course aspects that can be criticized and I invite you to do so.
For me the most outstanding characteristic of this past decade’s shows is that they are more often than not more about the “journey” of the character(s) than the actual events. It’s not the character who shines a light upon the unfolding events but it’s the events that shine a light upon the character and his development. I have to say that shows (hereby excluding comedy shows that work with stereo- and archetypes) that don’t have a real character development don’t interest me at all. But if the character development is interesting I might even watch shows from genres that usually don’t interest me at all.
If the character development is interesting enough I might even set the fact aside that my second favourite characteristic is missing: A real story-arc. The first TV Show in my TV universe that had a real story-arc, was Babylon 5. Later Star Trek: DS9 did the same albeit not in that quality and complexity. But these shows were two of the rare exception in the 90s (another famous exception would be Twin Peaks, but I never watched it). It seemed that viewers weren’t interested in either developing characters or story-arcs.
Categories: Short Review, Thought Storm
Tags: 24 · Alias · Angel · Babylon 5 · Battlestar Galactica · Being Human · Bones · Buffy the Vampire Slayer · Burn Notice · Chuck · Dexter · Doctor Who · Farscape · Firefly · Friends · Heroes · House M.D. · How I Met Your Mother · James Bond · Knight Rider · LOST · MacGyver · Six Feet Under · Smallville · Star Trek DS9 · Superman · Supernatural · The A-Team · The Big Bang Theory · The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy · The Sopranos · The Wire · Thursday Next · True Blood · Twin Peaks · Two and a Half Men · Veronica Mars
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When I look upon my 2009 Movie Marathon blog entries it confirms something I felt for quite some time now.
Whenever I think about what I am going to watch next, it’s getting ever rarer that I decide to watch a movie of mine. I am still interested in them, I buy them at the stores … but then they land on the shelves and often stay there. Even if I’ve never even seen the movie I can’t bring myself to put it into the player when I just have to turn around and pick one of the season boxes.
When I have to decide if I’m going to watch a 90-120 minutes movie or a 170 minutes season disc with 4 episodes on it I often decide for the latter. Due to its very design I have a much deeper emotional connection to TV Show characters and I have the possibility to follow their “lives” for years instead of hours. Even if the story of one episode wasn’t good at all, there’s often something that brings the character forward and I’d hate to miss that just because this one particular story wasn’t as good as the others.
And so I watched six entire seasons of Smallville between December 6th and today and I watched these characters becoming young adults, making decisions and mistakes and having to live with them. So here I have an experience that lasted over 90 hours in comparison to the 90 minutes of a movie.
I even have a list named “Movies you could watch again sometime soon” but I nearly have to force myself to actually do it instead of grabbing another season box from any of my favourite TV Shows.
And so I watched 352 season discs in the past year and only 88 movies and I am seriously starting to wonder if it still makes sense for me to actually still buying movies – even though I tell myself at that moment that I am surely going to watch it.
Categories: DVD / Blu-ray, Thought Storm
Tags: Smallville
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1
Movie Watchings 2009 – December
Deutsche Version | November | January 2010
December, 15th
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
William Shatner … Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Captain Spock
DeForest Kelley … Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy
James Doohan … Captain Montgomery “Scotty” Scott
Walter Koenig … Commander Pavel Chekov
Nichelle Nichols … Cmdr. Uhura
George Takei … Captain Hikaru Sulu
Kim Cattrall … Lieutenant Valeris
Mark Lenard … Ambassador Sarek
Grace Lee Whitney … Commander Janice Rand
Brock Peters … Admiral Cartwright
Leon Russom … Starfleet Commander in Chief
Kurtwood Smith … Federation President
Christopher Plummer … General Chang
Rosanna DeSoto … Azetbur
David Warner … Chancellor Gorkon
John Schuck … Klingon ambassador
Michael Dorn … Colonel Worf
Synopsis: Three months until Captain Kirk and most of his senior staff go into retirement. Sulu has got his own ship now, the Excelsior. But then the klingon moon Praxis explodes. This polutes the atmosphere of the klingon homeworld Qo’noS (Kronos). The Klingons have no choice but to negotiate a peace treaty with the Federation. But there are forces in motion that want to prevent that this happens.
My Opinion: “There will be no peace as long as Kirk lives” (Star Trek IV). This time one had to fear that they mean it. VI is my favourite movie of the old Star Trek series. There is a great final battle but that’s not the end but is marking a new beginning.
Nicholas Meyer is directing a Star Trek movie for the second time after II and he did again an excellent job. Besides being the director he also worked on the screenplay for II, IV and VI and thus for three of the five best Star Trek movies.
Categories: DVD / Blu-ray, DVD Marathon, Movie Watchings 2009
Tags: Star Trek
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