At Patheos: TFTM: Everybody watches TV

Fred Clark published a new post, TFTM: Everybody watches TV, at Patheos.com.

This week Fred writes about part 1 Left Behind II: Tribulation Force.

Excerpt:

Now, with control of all currency,” Nicolae says, “we are finally in a position to make peace our only choice.” He calls for global unification not just of currency, but of religion, ending with this:

For ours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Buck and Bruce look appalled at this blasphemous appropriation, but everyone else — all the evil, reprobate, liberal left behind masses who deserve the coming wrath and torment — grins and claps with delight. You know how those atheists are — they love nothing better than when someone claims to be God.

[Fred Clark, TFTM: Everybody watches TV, January 2, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]


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Comments

[Firedrake]

TF the film covers about the same amount of material as TF the book, but does its best to make it more interesting. Mostly, it fails. But it does have lots of Gordon Currie as Nicolae.

Actually, I disagree with Fred on 'the sort of no-angle, nothing-new, non-breaking "news" common in movies despite having no real-world counterpart' - I realise he has a professional bias, but to my perception this is exactly what newspapers and TV do when something really huge has happened but there's no more actual information to give out. Look at an American newspaper from around four days after 9/11, or a British one after the London Underground bombings a few years ago: they knew they had to keep on pushing the Big Story, but they simply had nothing new to say.

Yes, the three Jimmy Batsers are a throwaway scene - but at least they're shown in the first place, which is more than they ever were in the book. The one world currency scene is indeed utter phlebotinum - but at least there's some slight attempt at suggesting that Nicolae didn't simply wake up one day and say "fiat argentum universalum".

Fenn Nicolae iss Diktator fe all fill spik like dis!

[chris the cynic]

I wrote a thing that I felt made more sense for an, "It's been a week," update in which there was no actual news.

The cameras came on, Cameron Williams looked into the teleprompter, and couldn't make the words in it make sense. His eyes were in focus, he could make out every letter, but he couldn't form the letters into words.

He blinked. It didn't help.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. He hung his head. Then he put it in his hands. More silence.

You can read the whole thing at Stealing Commas.

[Rodeobob]

I'm undecided if it's bad filmmaking, or just lazy filmmaking at work here.

Consider the following: we hear loud applause... in a nearly empty chamber. We hear the buzz and chatter of a bustling newsroom... in a nearly empty office space. Cam-cam rides through a neighborhood where there are small bonfires burning on the street in barrels. Someone smashes a van window with a tire iron. The security forces all carry assault rifles.

These aren't callbacks to anyone's actual, real-world experience. The sounds of typewriters and telephone bells haven't been a part of a newsroom for twenty or thirty years. Who has seen people burning trash in a garbage can in their life? (quick show of hands?) Windows get broken by rocks or bricks, or kicked in; anyone who has a tire iron probably took it out of the trunk of their own car, and wouldn't be running away. The National Guard carries assault rifles, but most security use handguns unless they're expecting heavily armed attackers.

It's Pavlovian cinematography. Newsroom scene? Play the stock newsroom foley! Bad neighborhood? Visible fire! Street crime? Use a tire iron! Security gaurd? Give him an M-16! It's like having the police comissioner show up at a crime scene in a fancy suit, smoking a cigar because he just came from a political rally; it's "movie-real", not actually real.

I'm not sure where it crosses over from "efficent" to "lazy" to "bad", but I think it's somewhat about frequency of usage. If we can't go more than ten minutes without encountering a movie-cliche', it starts to feel lazy. If we can't go more than one minute, it starts to feel bad.

How's that for a theory?

[Firedrake]

I think it's a starting point. I don't want to draw up hard rules because, like most things that involve the real world, there aren't really any sharp dividing lines; I am prepared to distinguish "good" and "bad but I enjoy it" films, but the people I most often watch with will put them in different categories.

In other words a film can be both lazy and bad, both lazy and efficient, and perhaps all three depending on the perceptions of the viewer. (Apart from anything else, a director rarely feels that he's producing cheap rubbish...)

I have often felt that incompetently-made films teach one more about filmmaking than the good stuff. Something well-made is a cohesive whole: it's hard to say that this particular thing works well. It's much easier to say that this particular thing works badly, and that (say) Brad Johnson's is a standout performance.

[Janal]

I agree with "TF the film covers about the same amount of material as TF the book, but does its best to make it more interesting. Mostly, it fails. But it does have lots of Gordon Currie as Nicolae.

Actually, I disagree with Fred on 'the sort of no-angle, nothing-new, non-breaking "news" common in movies despite having no real-world counterpart' - I realise he has a professional bias, but to my perception this is exactly what newspapers and TV do when something really huge has happened but there's no more actual information to give out. Look at an American newspaper from around four days after 9/11, or a British one after the London Underground bombings a few years ago: they knew they had to keep on pushing the Big Story, but they simply had nothing new to say.

Yes, the three Jimmy Batsers are a throwaway scene - but at least they're shown in the first place, which is more than they ever were in the book. The one world currency scene is indeed utter phlebotinum - but at least there's some slight attempt at suggesting that Nicolae didn't simply wake up one day and say "fiat argentum universalum".

Fenn Nicolae is Diktator fe all fill spik like dis!"

Regards,
Watches in Pakistan