The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2/5 Stars)

Uninspired is probably the best word for this movie. It was directed by Don Scardino a name you probably do not recognize. This is his first movie although according to IMDB he has done quite a lot of work directing all sorts of Television series, 30 Rock most notably.  His style is barely noticeable and I won’t mention him anymore in this review. The movie has four writers. They include Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chad Kultgen, Tyler Mitchell. I would not be surprised if there were even more writers than that as the movie has the feel of something put together by committee and by that it is overly broad story within a fill-in-the-blank structure and devoid of uniqueness or creativity. Here, I am going to describe the story very briefly: It is about the redemption of a once successful traditional Vegas magician, Steve Carell, who has fallen on hard times because of his egomania and the appearance of a new type of stuntman magician, a la David Blaine. The magician with the help of his beautiful assistant reconnects with his childhood inspiration and stages a comeback. There is a contest at the end where he out-magics the competition. The End.

Does that sound familiar to you? Well, it should. It is a marketing pitch for a movie you have already seen before, perhaps something starring Will Ferrell and concerning sports. I bet this movie was green-lit for production before it was even written.  The studio got a room of writers together, gave them that paragraph pitch, and ordered a PG-13 script written. The result is a movie that very much feels like it did not need to be made and in a way wasn’t made by anybody in particular. It’s nobody’s movie.

I think the telling clue here is the lack of any decent magic in the movie. None. The best tricks we see are some sleight of hand that barely conceal the fact that Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, his childhood inspiration and now ex-magician, did not even bother to learn sleight of hand in preparation for their roles. There are easy cuts that allow one to recognize it is not their hands much like the way one can tell people in movies hardly ever really play the piano. The movie has a cop out reason for this and that has to do with Burt Wonderstone, Carell, and his partner Anton Marvelton, played by Steve Buscemi, being worn out has been magicians that have not changed their act in ten years. Yeah, but even ten years ago they must have had a decent trick in order to get famous in the first place. You would think we would see something of interest at some point. It never happens.

Now consider the character of Burt Wonderstone himself. His main personality trait is being bored. He takes very little joy in his work, has lost all feelings of brotherhood for his long-time partner, and goes through the routine of seducing groupies as if it is something he feels his status requires even if he does not particularly enjoy it. Truly this is Steve Carell’s least inspired character so far. I would like to draw your attention to one particular failed joke. Burt Wonderstone has been fired from his big Vegas job because his act is terrible and has been informed by his agent that he has no money because he has made nothing but terrible choices. So he is now broke and living in a motel. His assistant, played by Olivia Wilde, comes over to check up on him out of the niceness of her heart. As they are talking, she mentions her own aspirations of becoming a magician in her own right. Burt thinks this notion is silly. Why she asks. “Because,” he states, “you are a woman.” Now true this is misogynistic, but it is also lazy and stupid and those qualities are what I really want to talk about. There is no particular reason for Burt Wonderstone to be misogynistic. I have never heard of a glass ceiling in the world of magic. This isn’t like Will Ferrell’s “Anchorman” where the story was about a news team boy’s club being invaded by a female news anchor. In this movie, it just seems to be there because this movie’s story structure is based off other casually misogynistic movies and so a casually misogynistic main character was just another box on the checklist. Nobody bothered to ask whether the character or plot required Burt Wonderstone to not respect women or put in any sort of effort to make the joke anything more than simply a demeaning comment about women in general. You can, I argue, make fun of a woman. I’m not saying you should not do that, but the joke should have some logical connection to the woman who is the object of ridicule. That brings us to another inexplicable problem.

This is a comedy and like so many other comedies has not hired a comedian for the main female role. The assistant is played by Olivia Wilde, who is not funny. At all. Does not even try. What is she doing in this movie? All she does is look like Olivia Wilde, sit there passively as Burt Wonderstone insults her, and make out with him at the end. Would it kill the makers to cast a comedian who could adlib a couple funny lines where the all male writers were limited in their imagination as to what a woman character could say? It would have been really easy. For instance they hired the very funny Gillian Jacobs from the TV show “Community” for a bit part in this movie. In that bit part she got more laughs than Wilde did in the entire movie. Let’s say 1 to 0. Why on earth couldn’t she be cast as the assistant? I mean she isn’t a supermodel like Olivia Wilde, but she sure isn’t ugly either. Did nobody think about this possibility?

To be fair, there is one thing that transcends the rote nature of this movie and that is the performance of Jim Carrey as the David Blaine-ish magician named Steve Gray. Steve Gray is not really a magician as much as he is a performer of ridiculous acts of self-immolation. In one particular trick he doesn’t go to the bathroom for a straight week. That was pretty funny. Jim Carrey, now 50 years old, and no longer a box office draw (i.e. without studios developing entire movies devoted to his unique brand of comedy) has done the smart thing and started showing up in digital shorts, hosting Saturday Night Live, and taking supporting roles that allow him to still put in superior work. I mean he could be doing the Eddie Murphy thing and keep insisting on being the lead role in inferior movies, each one worse than the one before. This movie isn’t that good but Jim does turn his fifteen minutes of screen time into consistent laughs. I think what we really need is a movie based on or just with the cast of “In Living Color.” That would be something else. 

Oz: The Great and Powerful (3/5 Stars)

Darth Vader, check. Wicked Witch of the West, check. All we need now is a movie that explores the past psychological trauma of Lord Sauron of Mordor.

James Franco stars as the titular Oz in Director Sam Raimi’s newest film, “Oz: The Great and Powerful” a prequel of sorts to “The Wizard of Oz” that focuses on how Oz got to Oz and became the Wizard of Oz. Like Dorothy he makes the trip via a black and white Kansas twister and lands in a country complete with color. This time though it’s a world of 3D digital construction and this leads to one of the more concurrent flaws in this type of movie. The characters don’t seem to be looking at what they are looking at. Someday I hope to see a character look upon a glorious digital landscape such as Oz and just be incredibly amazed by it. Like struck deaf and dumb for at least a moment or two. This doesn’t really happen to Oz, who acts more like he is a kind of bored James Franco walking around in a green screen room.

The “Wizard of Oz” is one of our odder modern fables. We know all the characters: the witches, good and wicked, the wizard, a charlatan all smoke and mirrors, the land inhabited by munchkins, yellow brick roads and emerald cities. But does anyone remember what all this is there for or why it exists at all? What’s the point of this magical land?

The most satisfying explanation I have heard is that the tale is meant to be not only a children’s story but also a work of political symbolism concerning the late 19^th century Populist movement. That would explain why Dorothy is from Kansas a bastion of populists and why the magical slippers are made of silver (not ruby red!) the free coinage of silver being a major platform of Populism. There are a multitude of other theoretical political symbols. The yellow brick road represents the gold standard. The scarecrow without a brain represents western farmers, the tin man with no heart represents the eastern factory worker, and the cowardly lion is none other than William Jennings Bryan three-time presidential candidate. Some symbols are kind of really obvious. The poppy fields that put all travelers under sleeping spells represent the scourge of opium and the inhabitants of the town of China are the actual Chinese. So when one of the wicked witches destroys the town of China (and this happens in this movie) it can and probably does represent the mistreatment of the Chinese immigrant labor force (at least in the book). And then there is perhaps the best wickedly satirical symbol of all, The Wizard. He represents the Gilded Age Presidents of the latter 19^th century, a series of forgettable not very influential or powerful men of seemingly great influence and power. Everybody thinks the president has power and can solve all their problems, but in reality it is all smoke and mirrors and the best he can do is hand out clever gifts like instead of a brain, a university degree.

It is a credit to the original author, L. Frank Baum, that adaptations can ignore the politics behind the book and still work on a basic though rather arbitrary level. But complete ignorance of the original politics, as the recent adaptations (Both Broadway “Wicked” and “Oz: The Great and Powerful”) illustrate, prevent these artworks from achieving greatness. This modern desire we have to humanize the Wicked Witch of the West is a huge mistake. The Witch in political symbolism is not human at all. It is a symbol of huge monopolistic corporations that terrorize the various constituents symbolically represented in the Land of Oz. The Populist movement put a lot of stock in the idea that the free coinage of silver (i.e. the magic silver slippers) would save them from these interests. More likely though, the end of a very long drought that swept the Midwest in the 1890s would actually be the key. There is a reason why water is the magical ingredient that melts the witch. But who cares about all this right? Who cares! Who cares! Okay I will get to my point. The Wicked Witch needs to be evil incarnate. Her character does not really work any other way. After all she will go on to enslave flying monkey minions and bomb the countryside with fireballs. To say the motivation for that type of behavior comes from a misunderstanding in a love triangle doesn’t quite fit. One recalls how Darth Vader decided to murder millions of people after Natalie Portman died. A tragedy for sure but I think it's fair to say that Darth overreacted. Some characters motivations are best left unexplained. After all, that is one of things that made Margaret Hamilton’s performance in the 1939 movie so memorable. The witch is absolutely wicked for no apparent reason at all other than that it is in her nature as a wicked witch.

I cannot imagine why someone thought Mila Kunis would be correct for this role. First of all, she does not look anything like the Wicked Witch. The Wicked Witch has an infamously angular profile. Mila’s face is way too round. Second, she fails to lend any acting bite to her performance. As a result she doesn’t sound or act evil in a convincing fashion. Weirdly, Rachel Weisz is capable of both of these qualities. Why didn’t anyone think to switch the roles around?

This movie needed to be more creative and ingenious than it is. I wasn’t too impressed with the Wizard who spends more time explaining to people that he doesn’t have powers than tricking them into thinking that he does. But hey it is probably the best movie out there right now so what else are you going to see. 

The Abysmal State of Movie Ratings

The first R Rated movie I ever saw was “Schindler’s List.” It wasn’t even my idea and I surely didn’t watch it alone. Not only was my immediate family there but also my extended family: aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was 1994. I was all of eight years old. Now I think that there is a very good discussion to be had as to whether I was mature enough to watch that particular film. After all, I don’t recall really understanding what was going on. I’m not sure I even really understood death at that point. I certainly had never heard of the Holocaust before watching the film. To say I wasn’t mature enough though can lead to circular reasoning. What would make me mature enough after all? Would knowing about the Holocaust, its horrors, and all its deep moral implications, make me mature enough to watch “Schindler’s List”? In that case, could I become mature enough to watch “Schindler’s List” simply by watching “Schindler’s List” a masterful movie that teaches its viewers about the Holocaust, its horrors, and all its deep moral implications. In any case, what I really took away from watching that movie in complete ignorance at the tender and innocent age of eight was boobs. It would take me almost another decade after watching “Schindler’s List” again in high school to fully appreciate the movie and all it means, but the boobs I was immediately interested in. I spent most of the time thinking about that movie thinking about the boobs. It was after all, the first time I ever saw them. Yes, the first boobs I ever saw were in “Schindler’s List.”

That probably wasn’t what my parents wanted to teach me when they sat me down to watch that movie. That doesn’t mean that they did anything wrong because that would imply that they should have known what exactly was right. Surely they were not the first parents to try to educate their kid about something and have their kid go away with a completely unpredictable impression. This brings up an enormously important and controversial question: How should we educate our kids? And it is a question the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) supposedly is trying to help parents with by rating movies G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17 under objective standards. It’s official statement is this:

Movie ratings provide parents with advance information about the content of films, so they can determine what movies are appropriate for their young children to see. Movie ratings do not determine whether a film is “good” or “bad.” They simply provide basic information to parents about the level of various elements in the film, such as sex, violence and language so that parents can decide what their children can and cannot see. By providing clear, concise information, movie ratings provide timely, relevant information to parents, and they help protect the freedom of expression of filmmakers and this dynamic American art form.

It is this author’s opinion that explicitly ignoring the question of whether a film is “good” or “bad” flings down and dances upon the whole point of the ratings system: to help parents determine whether the movie is appropriate for their children to see. An objective standard is both over-inclusive (it rates arguably good and healthy movies as PG-13 or R) and under-inclusive (it allows bad and unhealthy movies to be rated PG or PG-13).  I will demonstrate how it does this, but first back to Schindler’s List and the boobs.

In 1997 the movie went into TV syndication and Director Steven Spielberg insisted that it air unedited and uncensored. That meant among other things that we would all see boobs on TV. A Senator by the name of Tom Coburn from Oklahoma thought that this was just a terrible thing saying that NBC had brought television “to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity”, adding that the film was an insult to “decent-minded individuals everywhere.” He later would rewind his statement under the pressure from fellow Republicans to state that although he still did not want the movie aired, he would have preferred that it was shown later at night when not so many kids would be watching. Perhaps he was thinking of me. There was one edit in the TV version. A sex scene was cut down to remove all the “thrusting.” Two Things. One, what Coburn did was a good thing. He had an opinion about the showing of this movie to kids based on his system of morality and he took ownership of his opinion publicly. To his credit, that is a much more courageous and constructive action than what the anonymous and amoral MPAA does. People could have a debate and did have a debate with Coburn. The MPAA inexplicably does not engage the public in debates on what is appropriate for children to watch. Second, why is “Schindler’s List” rated R in the first place if the vast majority of society considers it to be a noble and honorable work of art, it has won numerous Academy Awards including Best Picture, and has been included on numerous list of the best movies ever made. My parents and high school surely were not in the minority in deciding it was worth showing to underage kids.

Violence and the MPAA

The answer is that the MPAA does not consider the context of the violence on the screen, something my parents and probably parents in general would consider the most important factor. Instead, the MPAA takes measurements on the amount of blood onscreen. A person gets shot. Do they bleed? Yes, an R rating. No, a PG-13 rating. The idiocy of this should be immediately apparent but I will give two examples that should drive home the point. 

A couple of years back a movie named “127 Hours” came out. It was directed by Danny Boyle and starred James Franco. It told the true story of a man who was hiking alone in a canyon when a boulder fell on his arm pinning him with no help of escape in a cavern. After 127 hours of doing everything he possibly could to escape and not being able to, he was faced with a harrowing decision: Cut off his arm and leave without it or stay there and die with it. So he cuts off his own arm. There is blood and it looks painful. Should this be Rated R? Of course, if all we were considering was the appearance of blood. But let’s consider the context for a moment. The scene is moral. No sins are committed as he is committing violence upon himself to save his life not end it. The scene is truthful. It happened just the way it did in real life. The scene is educational. If you were ever in the same situation, god forbid, you would be glad you saw this movie and could look to it for advice and dwell on it for strength.

Contrast this with your average PG-13 comic book blockbuster. There are countless of them but I will just go ahead and pick on Michael Bay, specifically any of the “Transformers” movies.  These movies generally contain intergalactic battles on and above very populated urban areas. Buildings are blown up and knocked over. Missiles, Bombs, machine guns, and rocket launchers, are only some of the fetishistic amount of violent machinery being bandied about. How many civilian casualties could you expect from the battle outside. Would the answer of zero surprise you? Because that is the number of people that get hurt during any Transformers movie. These movies are a marvel of camera angles and cutaways. We see people in office buildings and in the streets running away. Somehow they always seem to just make it to safety. Now we all know that if you knock down a skyscraper thousands of people will die and thousands of more will be hurt. It has happened before. So how is it okay to knock down skyscrapers in a PG-13 movie? Why is it okay if you simply don’t show all the dead and dying people? Why is it okay to show machine guns fire on large crowds if you simply don’t show all the necessarily dead and dying people? Why is it okay to show large explosions that don’t kill anyone but insist on putting an R rating on a Best Picture winner like “The Hurt Locker,” which has got to be the first movie ever made to insist on the reality of a bomb’s shockwave, not simply the flames, being able to kill a human being.

In essence, the MPAA is insisting that parents do not have to worry about showing their kids all kinds of violence if its effects are not portrayed realistically. When they are portrayed realistically for whatever reason, good or bad, parents should think twice about taking their kids to see the movie.

Here’s a good question to take with you: Should watching violence feel painful? If you were considering the impact of a movie on kids would you want them to enjoy the violence on the screen or would you rather have them cringe out of empathy for the characters that were hurting? Because enjoyment is all that would happen if they watched “Transformers” or any other G, PG, or PG-13 movie that contained violence. If the violence were painful to watch (i.e. people actually got hurt or bled) the movie would probably be Rated R.

But let’s lighten the mood now with a subject that is considerably more absurd thanks in no small part to the inclusion of comedians.

Language and the MPAA

Essentially the rules for language are such. It is confined to certain words. These words are confined only to the sound and spelling of the words themselves. What the words actually mean is not considered. For instance, the word Fuck and all its derivatives are bad even though that word has probably more meanings, surely not all of them immoral, than any other word in the English dictionary. 

In this way it is over-inclusive. Sometimes such a practice can be ignoble. For instance, if the movie takes place in an area of the country where certain curse words have slipped into the commonplace vernacular of everyday speak any movie that portrays how people who live there actually talk will always be a Rated R movie no matter how moral the movie. Great movies such as “Boyz N’ the Hood” and “The Big Lebowski” are good examples. These movies take place in certain parts of Los Angeles where people use the word ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ in almost every single sentence. I have been to Los Angeles. There are people that speak just like those characters do. What they are doing isn’t really cursing, at least not in the sense that what they are saying means what curse words ought to mean. Most of the time they just happen to be people who use these words to supplement a limited vocabulary (i.e. they happen to be poor people). To relegate all honest stories of such people to the R rating I would suggest is not a moral use of movie ratings.

Or what if there was a really good reason for a character to curse. In the 2010 Best Picture winner, “The King’s Speech,” the King of England, played by an Oscar Winning Colin Firth, is cursed with a stammer. He goes to a speech therapist to help him with his predicament. The speech therapist encourages the King to curse whenever he feels a stammer coming on because the exclamation of an epithet is one of the only things that does not trip up the royal tongue. So in this particular scene within private confines, towards nobody in particular, and under doctor’s orders the king curses: “Fuck, fuck, bugger, shit, shit!”  And this is what makes a true-life award-winning inspirational tale of courage and duty with absolutely no sex, violence, or other cursing, a Rated R movie. I think you would be hard pressed to find many people who have actually seen the movie who would not conclude it should be required viewing of any and every single child with a speaking disability.

At the same time a rule such as this, divorced from any consideration of morality or even the meaning of the word, is also way under-inclusive. For example if you used the Olde English phrase that the word Fuck originates from, “Fornication under Consent of the King,” it would not be a curse even though the word FUCK is literally an acronym of that phrase. Or you could say a word that almost sounds exactly like it. A good example of this is contained in the Ben Stiller movie, “Meet the Parents.” The main character’s name is Greg Focker. As the character is not very popular amongst his fiancé’s family, then take to calling him by his last name, Focker, and generally in a tone that sounds like they mean to curse at him. Coincidentally this movie had several sequels one of which came out within a week of “The King’s Speech.” That movie was titled “Little Fockers” and was rated PG-13. All of these movies were rated PG-13. It wouldn’t have been the first time a comedian very transparently changed the pronunciation or spelling of a curse word or more likely used a clever euphemism to convey the same meaning, gained a PG-13 rating, took all of the box office cash coming from a market that now included parents looking for movies they can take their kids to, and laughed all the way to the bank. I wonder how many parents looked at the ratings of these two movies and decided it was a better idea to show their kids “Little Fockers” instead of “The King’s Speech.” If only one parent did so, it shows how MPAA ratings can be, if taken seriously, less than helpful in pursuit of its stated purpose.

I’m going to include here a completely PG scene, according to MPAA standards that is, which is all about…well, see if you can’t figure it out.

That should put us in the mood for sex.

Obscenity and the MPAA

At least in this subject the MPAA has a guiding light to help it make its decisions on some sort of relevant basis: the Supreme Court of the United States. Upon the other subjects, the Supreme Court has generally given free reign to speech in artworks (as opposed to say inciting a riot on a city street) but there are limitations imposed on obscenity. Roth v. United States says this: Material utterly without socially redeeming value that deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interests.  Prurient material means material with a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. A good example of that is child pornography. No socially redeeming value? check. Prurient material? check. There is very little to debate there. But when you get into the realm of consenting adults everything gets a little hazy. A very enjoyable definition can be found in Jacobellis v. Ohio in which Justice Potter Stewart remarked:

““I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

What is Justice Stewart getting at? In essence, he is promoting the idea that whether the obscenity has socially redeeming value heavily depends on a consideration of the artwork as an entirety.  What a wise thing to say. Let’s speculate on how the MPAA could make rulings based on the wisdom of the US Supreme Court. They could watch a movie that contained nudity or sex. They could then take an honest vote as to whether any of them were aroused during the movie. If a majority raised their hands, then check, the movie has prurient material. Then they could have a frank discussion as to whether the context of the obscenity was socially redeeming or whether the movie taken as a whole was of such socially redeeming value that it outweighed the obscenity contained within. It might be an awkward conversation but that would be the honest sane way of going about it. I probably do not have to tell you that the MPAA does no such thing. Instead they take mathematical measurements of how much genitalia is shown and for how many seconds it is visible on the screen. Now surely the absolute tips of breasts on a large screen are not a magical boner maker and surely one does not need to see the absolute tips of breasts in order to get a boner. So in what is becoming a regular refrain in this article, the MPAA rules gives R and NC-17 ratings to movies that everybody should see and PG-13 ratings to movies with no socially redeeming value.

Here are a few examples of inexplicable R ratings given for obscenity. The 2002 movie Amelie is a romantic comedy about a painfully shy yet highly imaginative waitress in Paris. Inspired by a freak happenstance she starts going on covert missions of good will, helping unknowing people in the neighborhood. It is probably one of the most moral movies I have ever seen. It does however contain a character that works in a sex shop. And for about 30 seconds as he is talking to his boss about something totally innocent, you can see dildos in the frame. Or how about the movie Love, Actually, which like Amelie is about good people doing nice things and falling in love. One of the scenes shows bare breasts so it got an R rating even though it is considered the number one movie to watch with a new girlfriend/boyfriend as the pick shows good taste, a sense of humor, and a healthy and respectable attitude towards sex and relationships. I have heard more than a few people express about how these ratings are a shame and why couldn’t the movies simply cover those breasts in that one scene in order to get a PG-13 rating. Here’s a better idea: How about the MPAA does its goddamn job and starts helping parents? Because here is a scene their ratings system, in all its infinite wisdom, defines as PG-13. Oh Behave!

What should be done?

It is rather simple. The MPAA should do what Tom Coburn did. Take ownership of the opinion publicly and explain it. In an ideal world, they would write a reviews that are not anonymous much like a Supreme Court ruling authored by one particular judge that cites the reasons why they are ruling the way they rule. There can even be dissenting opinions if the entire MPAA board does not agree. I don’t particularly care what is their stance. As a private organization and not a government entity they have no authority to impose censorship upon artwork anyway. Everything they say is merely an opinion. But as it is a respected opinion, it does no help to anyone if it is not an opinion at all which I have argued an objective rating system cannot.

In essence, the MPAA is that parent which scorns a child, “You can’t watch that!” and when the child asks why, exclaims once again “Because I said so!” This behavior limits conversation on a subject that sorely needs it, why something is moral or immoral. When an authority acts in an unexplained and easily refutable manner it can put into the mind of an individual the sense that perhaps they do not know what they are talking about. And if that authority is discredited on one particular topic then why can’t they be discredited on all topics, especially if each and all topics have the same non-explanation. This would result in the exact opposite of purposes: the existence within the individual of no moral direction at all based on a distrust of an obviously hypocritical authority.  

I will end with a couple of quotes. One is from Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California. 

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to aver the evil by education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

And here is another from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

            “Children will learn. The only question is where?” 

NETFLIX Presents....

The Future is Now. Welcome fellow viewers and voyeurs. On February 1, 2013, the online streaming website Netflix made available the first season of “House of Cards” directed by the acclaimed director David Fincher (Social Network, Fight Club) and starring two time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects, American Beauty). The profundity of the moment has less to do with the fact that this is Netflix first stab at original content and more to do with how it was made available, all thirteen episodes on the same day for the express purpose of giving subscribers the ability to consume the product when, where, and how they wished. It is the next victory in that triumph of capitalism and democracy known as the Internet. The winners: The People (i.e. audiences and movie-makers). The losers: the Man (i.e. corporation and politicians etc.)

You think I am being overly dramatic perhaps. Let me explain. First, I pose this question to you: What is the difference between a movie and a television show? The obvious answers are length, content restrictions, and quality. Movies have always generally had more of all of these. But these are merely the symptoms of the main fundamental difference: who pays for the program. Movies are sold directly to an audience. Television however does not sell programs to audiences. Television sells audiences to advertisers. And these advertisers influence the programming. They interrupt with advertisements, they influence its availability, and they censor and influence the content. This is why the great subversive 1976 movie about television Network is a movie and not a television show. It is great entertainment but no advertiser in its right mind would pay for it.

There will always be movies shown at movie theaters. A movie theater focuses the viewer’s imagination and attention for drama. The size of the screen provides the opportunity for action spectacle. The crowd engagement via laughs or cheers makes the most out of comedy. But you can’t show long form narrative in a theater for the same reason you would not bring out a novel at a poetry reading. We like each other’s company but let’s not push it. We’ve all got shit to do.

Long form narrative has always been the domain of television but since it was the audience being sold and not the movie, it has always been done in an inferior manner. The most obvious is the need for networks to drag out a good show till the point where nobody wants to watch it anymore. As long as there is an audience to sell, it won’t be going anywhere. This is very much apparent in series that have romances introduced in the first episode that do not get resolved until the last minute of the finale of the actual series years later after the couple has split up and got back together for ratings reasons many times over. Think Ross and Rachel from Friends. And just when the hell is he finally going to meet the mother? It has been eight seasons already. This may not be a big deal as the seasons are progressing but who in their right mind would go back and watch all 11 seasons of MASH or 10 seasons of Cheers. I’m sure there were some good episodes in there but I’m not wallowing through the muck to get to them. Also TV episodes need to be in uniform lengths. In some cases this calls for some scenes or jokes to be cut (especially in syndication), but more likely it means that an episode with a half hour of plot is told in an hour format needlessly. Think of all those episodes of The Walking Dead where nothing happens until the last ten minutes and then it ends with a cliffhanger. Yeah I said it. That television show is crammed with filler, most of it annoying crying. In House of Cards, the length and number of episodes is set according to plot requirements not network schedules. The result is a series that is exceedingly and enjoyably dense. By dense I mean that every scene and episode matters whether it is to further the plot, to provide comic relief, or to exploit dramatic suspense. You are never waiting around for things to happen. It is invigorating. 

The second difference is the quality of content and I do not simply mean lack of ordinary censorship, although yes that is absent in House of Cards, which contains all sorts of swearing and some sex. I mean the entertainment value of the shows themselves. In television, the main product being the audience and not the show, it does not matter whether the show is any good as long as the ratings brought in bring in enough advertisers to make the show profitable. This can have a sort of race to the bottom effect. For if just enough people like watching cheap trash than there is no reason not to make it. Have you ever had the sensation while flipping through hundreds of channels that absolutely nothing is on? This helps to explain the proliferation of game shows and reality TV on networks and cable. Some of these shows have very good ratings yes, but that is not the only reason they are made. They also happen to be very cheap to make. You aren’t paying writers or directors or even actors. You only need one built set for a game show and depending on the program might not need any for reality TV. So why keep producing a great niche show like Arrested Development with its great cast, director, and writers, when you can put on American Idol as much as possible. Why produce a niche show at all when the purpose of television is not to entertain but to bring in the biggest possible audience? Arrested Development by the way is coming back for thirteen more episodes via Netflix this May. Why? Because the audience is paying to see it and main purpose for them is to be entertained not to be apart of the biggest possible crowd. 

No, audiences are not stupid and they enjoy and will pay for quality programming. This year saw six out of nine Best Picture nominees breaking the 100 million dollar box office mark. The democratization made possible by digital movie-making (see fantastic documentary Side by Side) is allowing more people to get more skin in the game, making it possible for movies to be made for, by, and about even the poorest amongst us. (Think Slumdog Millionaire and Beasts of the Southern Wild.) And the explosion of Internet streaming allows the rest of us to see these movies. The proliferation of blogs and websites and apps spreads the word about which movies and shows are worth watching. Brave New World.

And there is such a wealth of material waiting to be adapted into long-from narrative: all those comic-book serials and thousand page novels that were routinely savaged to fit into three hour movies. George R.R. Martin, the author of Game of Thrones, repeatedly turned down offers to adapt his books into movies. It would have destroyed the book. He felt only the long form narrative structure provided by HBO whose subscriber model allows it to be unrestricted by censorship and uninterrupted by advertisers could do the story justice. So far he has been proved completely right. 

Combine all of this with the fact that long-form is necessarily more expensive and intensive than the average summer tent-pole blockbuster and you have the perfect storm of elements. After all what is the easiest way to get viewers to pay to watch 13 hours of television (as I happily this past weekend with House of Cards): provide quality characters and story. You can’t bluff a huge opening weekend box office number of an inferior product with huge special effects and an expensive marketing campaign with streaming long form narrative because there is no opening weekend box office and the risks inherent in making such an expensive product with no concern for quality are unnecessarily large. In Conclusion: Quality entertainment on purpose not by happy accident as it has too often been during the course of cinematic history. You know, the way HBO, the first subscription based channel, has done it and thrived. 

This brings us to the next question: how do you critique long form narrative like House of Cards?

Not the way we usually critique television shows, in episode recaps. That ignores the most fundamental attraction of long form narrative: a series whose sum is greater than its parts. Let’s take the best example possible, The Wire. Here is a show that moves along very methodically. The creators, led by David Simon, were putting together their version of Baltimore very carefully with purposes in mind that were not completely clear until the last episode of the last season. At that moment the viewer could take a step back, survey the entire work, and be struck by its sheer perfection. If the show had been judged by episodically or made anywhere but HBO it would have never survived production. On the other side is the ABC show, Lost, which was totally worth watching while it was on TV, but once the final season reared its ugly head, an impending sense of disillusionment crept in as the bullshit piled up and kept piling. Having seen the entire thing I can’t recommend it to anyone and wish the whole thing could have been made available all at the same time like House of Cards so someone could have written a review telling me not to bother.

I won’t advise you to watch House of Cards right now. The first thirteen merely set up, dare I say a “House of Cards,” (nyuk) and it will be up to the second season to knock them or keep them up in a satisfying way. It might be a good idea to wait until it’s all over, read a review then, and make a decision whether it is worth 26 hours of your life at that time. From what I’ve seen, it probably is, but you will hear a definite answer when the second season shows up. You won’t be missing anything. Every single episode will still be at Netflix should you exercise you’re newly found TV show consumer’s right to choose exactly when and where to watch your shows at that time. How convenient!