Posted 3:49 PM by Blah blah

Should We Have a Two-Tier System to Preserve Quality TV? The Hours

Reality Is Harsh on TV's Creative Teams (NY Times).
Forget the Sex and Violence; Shame Is the Ratings Leader (NY Times).

Note to myself. There's gotta be a way for quality scripted TV to survive and co-exist healthily with reality TV. I like the best of both. It shouldn't be either-or. And I know TV programming executives like NBC's Jeff Zucker try to balance the highbrow with lowbrow, as he has said in interviews.

Oscar nominations are coming out tomorrow, and the NY Times film critic wrote something that resonates with me about this topic:

[S]ome of these commentators have noticed something else: a disjunction between what the critics, individually or in prize-giving packs, celebrate and what the public seems to like (or at least to pay for). For the most part, the top-grossing movies have been left off the Top 10 lists and snubbed by the various critics' circles, societies, boards and associations. Where were the prizes for Spider-Man, for Austin Powers, for My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

The answer is taken as evidence that the critics are hopelessly out of touch with the public. It seems to me more likely — and I suspect that Tuesday's nominations will bear me out — that the gap between movies that make a lot of money and movies that win awards reflects the current state of the film industry itself. Two enormously successful, enthusiastically reviewed pictures — Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Catch Me If You Can — are apt to come up short with the Academy, which has historically been cool both to science fiction and (Schindler's List notwithstanding) Steven Spielberg.

So here I am, in spite of myself, making predictions. Whatever the nominations turn out to be, Tuesday will almost certainly provide the latest evidence that a two-tier system has emerged in Hollywood. The studios continue to spend (and profit) lavishly on critic- and audience-proof franchise pictures, but they also appear increasingly committed to producing and distributing more ambitious and prestigious fare, often through their "art" or "independent" divisions. This strikes me as a pretty good arrangement. Will the Academy, so committed to the ideal that the movies should be all things to all people, be able to acknowledge it? Will it last?

I wish the TV biz would do the same. But how?

I just saw the art film The Hours yesterday. It's a very serious, exquisitely well-acted, intelligent, and depressing film. It's not something you "enjoy" watching. But for anyone who has suffered mental illness, depression, thoughts of suicide, or who had a sense that he has led a superficial life or has not taken enough risks to do what he really wanted to do, this film resonates. It expertly weaves together thematically the lives of three women, in three time periods, who suffer greatly inside. They try to appear controlled and placid at the surface, but they boil over with dissatisfaction and feel lonely and imprisoned in their daily lives.

Nicole Kidman, who plays the writer Virginia Woolf, finally bursts to her loving husband, in a climactic moment, how she cannot bear the quiet and conformity of the suburbs any more and would rather die than stay there. She longs to return to the bustle of London. At that intense moment, I could totally relate to her. It's how I feel sometimes living here in the suburbs of San Jose. Mira has kept telling me to get out of here, that with my personality and interests, I am a city boy. I heartily agree. I am a college town boy, someone who prefers used bookstores and walkable cities and seeing musicians play for change on the street. And it's one reason I plan to move to Los Angeles.

The Hours, again, is not "fun" or "enjoyable" to experience. You may leave the theater feeling hopeless and wretched. It's a slow downer of a movie. BUT it draws you into the minds and hearts of real women, real people out there who every day DO feel that sense of Thoreau's "quiet desperation." I especially liked Julianne Moore, who plays a 1950s housewife trapped in a conformist domestic life that she cannot bear. Whose cheerful husband is completely clueless and who drives her nuts the more he tells her that THIS...this life of her baking cakes and staying home all day...this was his dream of their future happiness that sustained him before they were married. She is an incredible actress.

As are Meryl Streep and Ed Harris, who just swept me away. BRAVO is all I can say.

Oh, a warning: this film overloads on tears. There is more (unexplained) crying per minute in this movie than in The Joy Luck Club, and that's a record! Mushy as sweet potatoes. Yet the editing is superb. The film has a very tight structure that relates the three women's stories extremely well and unlocks a very complex novel.