What he says about the best movies is true about the best tv shows. I can watch some episodes of Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks or The Persuaders over and over. Also, the "personal visual style" from Breaking Bad or True Detective is exactly as good as the one you can find in the best films.
I couldn't possibly disagree any more. There is nothing in television that can ever dream of touching the best movies. Even the best TV shows don't take any mental effort to watch, which to me says everything about the format.
And the overwhelming majority of stories can be told better in 2-3 hours than 40-50.
but then most, if not all of these series have their own problems, and that mostly means they go on too long. There are mere fill episodes, and they often have a problem to find a fitting end.
But film is the director's medium, while the TV series is mostly a writer's medium, so in the end film still has a greater intensity and does things which TV series don't do.
I prefer the cinema feel to the infamous "made for TV" feel. The thing is that many TV shows nowadays have the cinema feel I love.
Agreed. That's the biggest challenge of TV nowadays. I disagree about Breaking Bad (it does need 2 seasons less, but the ending is absolutely perfect, and I mean "forget it Jack it's Chinatown" perfect).It isn't true anymore. Writers aren't happy about that, by the way.
Agreed. That's the biggest challenge of TV nowadays. I disagree about Breaking Bad (it does need 2 seasons less, but the ending is absolutely perfect, and I mean "forget it Jack it's Chinatown" perfect).
No, it's true. The director's change often from episode to episode, without that this affects the overall style. They are all very well directed, in cinema style, while in the past the TV directing was normally far simpler than in cinema, but the writers/creators are the ones which control the stuff. Mostly there are even a bunch of other writers while the creators only writes (and sometimes directs) the key episodes. That was already the case in Twin Peaks. True Detective is here so far the exception with only one writer and one director, and director Fukunaga came from cinema. True Detective is maybe a director's series, as here the style seems more important than the writing. But then Ture Detective consists only of one season with 8 episodes. It feels more like an overlong movie than a long running TV series, where you can "live" with the characters for some years, where you can watch them becoming older and changing their life.
Now, what it is with True Detective. It has a unique style and atmosphere, and pretty intensive acting. But then the story was not that great, and it was heavy on dialogues, and the incidents became repetitive, and olny the 2 leads were fleshed out characters, but they did not change much after the first 2 episodes. There was this impressive tracking shot action scene at the end of episode 4, but it was about secondary characters and had not much relevenace for the main plot.I got the impression that it could have been told easily in half of the length, or even more that a 2 hours movie would have been perfect. I enjoyed it, but it was not great. 8/10
TD is an exception. But:- Broadwalk Empire was created by Martin Scorsese and the whole show is directed just like he directed the pilot- House of Cards' direction strictly follows the steps of David Fincher (season 2 lost it a bit)- Baz Lurhman has just signed a full season for Netflix- Breaking Bad had several directors BUT a single cinematographer (actually, two cinematographers: they switched after the first season, which is when the show strengthened its visual signature) and strict rules. Furthermore, the showrunner is an INCREDIBLE director. Breaking Bad has as much of a personal style than The Tree Of Life (and features much more style/visual effects/experimentations).- The war shows produced by Spielberg have a lot to do with his own style- The Knick is 100% directed by Soderberg- the new season of Twin Peaks will be fully directed by Lynch. The two previous ones weren't, but they had his own visual signature the whole time.- Speaking of Mr Lynch: while he was shooting Mullholand Drive, he didn't even know if it was going to be a TV show or a movie. Talk about blurred lines.And the list goes on and on... Michael Mann and others:http://www.imdb.com/list/ls055041225/Please also note that even when good directors don't create a show but only work on a couple of episodes such as Rian Johnson with Breaking Bad, Steven Spielberg with Colombo and probably William Friedkin in True Detective, they usually do a piece of art that belongs to the show but their signature is super easy to spot. That opening shot from the Colombo episode by Spielberg is incredible.Also, just an example of the kind of visual experimentation that don't work in movies but do in 30-40 hours:http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130903001048/breakingbad/images/b/b4/Breakingbad-colors.jpg