The Vineyards

It bothers me tremendously that TV series nowadays have more prestige and are held in higher regards than movies. Series require continued watching at regular times each week, series have long hiatus, and so often missing one episode means losing track of the story. I often hear, in favor of series, that they require less attention and time to watch than a movie. Granted, a one hour episode (forty-two minutes if recorded) is easier to watch than a two hours movie (three if it is Magnolia and a number of others); but you are forced to watch one hour today and one hour next week and one hour three months from now and another hour the week after that. At the end, you watched about twenty hours in little pieces - that assuming the series is not canceled a few episodes into it, of course, and has an actual ending; more likely, it has a season finale that will make you watch the next season to see how it ends, and on it goes until audience falls too low and writers have to come up with a rushed ending. Two, three years of weekly slavery, months of wait during mid-season hiatus, and you are still left without an ending.

The only advantage I see in series is the ease of giving new stories to good characters. Naturally, these are the series where each episode is a closed story, perhaps with bigger arcs wrapping them up. Such is the formula of everything from the 60s to the 90s. Then someone made the background story more important than the individual story of each episode. One scene I remember quite well from Seinfeld, of which I watched little, is his comment on the "To be continued..." message that used to appear in series years ago. "The episode is almost done but still has lots of loose ends, you know they will never wrap it up in these final five minutes, you start to dread the coming of the message and then bam, 'To be continued'. Sorry, folks, you have to wait one week to see how it ends." I am sure it went nothing like that, but the idea is the same. Some five or ten years ago, everyone dreaded and hated "To be continued" messages, which only appeared in the very rare double-episodes, because we would have to wait an entire week to know how things got solved - and we knew it would be solved next week. Now people will gladly wait one week, then another, then a month, a season to see all things wrapped up - if they are at all! Producers should put some "To be continued" messages at the end of each episode of newer series to see how people would react nowadays - would they still hate it as much, knowing that they already are going to wait for any conclusion? Japanese tokusatsu (live-action series such as Kamen Rider) had "tsuzuku" ("continues") at the end of each episode - until the final episode would bring "owari" ("end"), and all the kids knew it was the end because the "two waves symbol" was changed. This was a bit unrelated.

I watched five episodes of "Lost" and gave up. It was completely pointless. I did it when the series was already near the end of its second season, and by then I knew no matter how good the story seemed, nothing would be solved for another forty episodes, then the gods know how many more. "Ah, Lost is different, other series don't just keep adding more mysteries and characters, they get somewhere." No matter. Watching Bruce Willis deal with some major peril in two hours still beats watching Jack Bauer deal with some major peril in eight months.

Last time I was in a movie theater was to see "The Queen" ("but she wasn't there", haha, ha... ha). Best seat in the whole room, except for the guy right behind (over 30 years-old, no teenager excuse) who failed to realize he was not in his living room and kept on commenting on each and every scene with his girlfriend (not wife, I am sure, but they probably style themselves as "engaged", warp factor three, straight into the Neutral Zone). The girl responded in a low voice, if at all, probably (hopefully) ashamed of the scene the ape by her side was making. "The stag is an allegory of her government" was his most memorable comment - you could see the brilliance pouring from it at the same rate as blood poured from the dead stag - but less inspired comments - such as, during the scene of Princess Diana's funeral, "Look, it's Elton John... and Spielberg... and..." all other celebrities he recognized - won him well deserved reminders that we paid as much as him and we like to get our movie comments from select newspapers and websites, not random movie-goers of questionable knowledge. The couple disappeared from the theater the moment the first line of the credits rolled up; I like to think in his mind was "let's get out of here or I'll have to punch these people who were nagging at me, bastards" and in the girls was "let's get out of here before any of these people sees or even talks to us and I'm even more ashamed than I already am".

"Casino Royale" was the movie I watched before that. I found it interesting that the main character happened to have the same name as the famous fictional spy James Bond, but it was obviously a coincidence. The room was packed. On the row in front a family of twin girls (mp3 players, if I recall), late teenage boy (cellphone set to highest brightness), father (RAZR) and mother (cellphone and smartphone). All the gadgets were used extensively until right before the movie started; none was turned off during the movie; of note: the boy wrote multiple SMS, answered a call, made a call and spent a good five minutes changing phone settings with a bright spotlight in my direction; the father made a call; the mother answered a call. Correction: all devices were used extensively until, 15 minutes before the movie's third consecutive ending, I decided kicking their chairs heartily and blatantly was the only way to spread a bit of our ten thousand years of civilization to that small horde of techno-primates. They looked at me quite puzzled, as if I was a giant black monolith that made a high pitch sound and had just landed behind them, but finally they stopped. They looked at me angry as the credits rolled, but being of the class "Civilized Human" I have Immunity to Ugly Faces +2.

Rewind to five minutes into the movie (post trailers, ads, warnings and bad music), a couple walked into the theater and sat right by my side (it was packed, remember), carrying multiple plastic and paper bags. A distinct smell followed right behind them and was amplified when the pseudo-lady opened her first paper bag and retrieved from it a sandwich with more calories than I ever ate in a day. She used the bag as wrapping to hold it in her hands, resulting in long minutes of a surreal orchestration of munching, paper crunching, and what seemed like the pseudo-man using a fork and knife to cut something on his plate (yes: fork, knife, plate). The bottle of soda they shared during this first dish lasted into the second, where they enjoyed their respective salads, but was empty before the dessert. About half an hour after this madness began they were finally done, with no more food to eat and, consequently, no more comments to make about it (the chicken was good, by the way, or so I heard); from then until the credits they were silent, except for the very heavy breathing that clearly denotes one's terminal lung disease or, more frequently, that one ate way too much. Both seemed to weight more than me and my identical evil twin combined, and they were still prostrated into their chairs, helpless, unable to move as I walked out of the theater, still deciding if I was more revolted or puzzled.

"GoldenEye" is my favorite Bond movie. The only good thing in all other Pierce Brosnan Bond movies is Miranda Frost, but Catwoman kills her. "Catwoman" is probably the worst movie I ever saw, followed by a tie between "The Forgotten" (of which I fittingly remember next to nothing) and "The Bottom End of the Sea".

I went to see "Charlotte's Web" before that. Only available dubbed, but no matter, I doubt the pig and spider and other animals spoke their own lines in the original, and Dakota Fanning is completely unimportant. Another packed movie, but for each adult in the theater there were two children. Other than a baby that cried and was quickly removed by her mother, there was not a single sound or any other distraction during the entire movie.

Children are more civilized than adults. Probably because they are not yet used to watching TV series at home, where the can comment and eat during it. I know the two subjects are unrelated but I wanted to mention the first issue again before the end.