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alexsarllWhy must reality spoil my fun? Right, you know that berk in the ads saying "with free texts for life, I'd start a superband?" - even aside from how few texts it really takes to start a band, he looks so slappable that you're pretty damn sure any band he starts would suck, aren't you? Last night I finally formulated exactly what manner of suck - I thought it would be Coldplay meets the Chilli Peppers, and they'd do at least one Bob Marley cover. Except once I got home I saw that he's now a TV ad as well as a poster, so now you can hear his 'superband' and they're not even that interesting, just ditchwater-dull indie. Bah humbug.
Whatever David Simon made after The Wire was probably always destined to be a disappointment because frankly, where do you go from there? Usain Bolt's one thing, but in the arts it's pretty hard to beat your own world record. Generation Kill is, by any sane standards, very good. But The Wire means David Simon is now judged by insane standards. Clearly I am going to keep watching GK, and I have every expectation that it will grow on me. But on some level I can't help feeling that I've seen it before. The invasion of Iraq is not an unexamined, forgotten story in the way the decline of America's inner cities is, and a lot of the analyses of the US Marines (the system's inefficiencies mean that even those with the best intentions find themselves frustrated) seem familiar from Baltimore PD. So far, the closest thing to a McNulty seems to be Ziggy from Season 2, and against The Wire's studied impenetrability, having a reporter embedded with the unit seems a little easy, even if he is played by Tobias Beecher from Oz.
True Blood, on the other hand, is better than its creator's last work, Six Feet Under, because True Blood isn't under the misapprehension that it's smart. Honest trash I can handle, it's middlebrow self-satisfaction that gets my back up. The basic concept - with a blood substitute synthesized, vampires can come out of hiding - is not terribly original, some of the characters are pretty annoying, and so far Anna Paquin's psychic powers seem to vary more in accord with plot demands than any internal logic. It could all easily go a bit Heroes if the bad bits start to outweigh the good. But, so far, I'm inclined to keep watching. Just so long as it doesn't go all hugging'n'learning like 6FU.
What Darwin Didn't Know has now, alas, fallen off iPlayer, but if it comes round again as BBC4 documentaries tend to, it's well worth a look. I've been a fan of Armand Marie Leroi since his book and series on mutants, but even aside from his spookily charismatic presenting this is quite a powerful show. That title is a cunning bait for creationists, even more so for the people who maybe haven't fallen for the whole lie but who (as with global warming) have been misled by the airtime the morons and liars still get into believing that maybe there remain doubts. And Leroi goes into unsparing detail about everything Darwin didn't know, guessed, got wrong. Except - Darwin admitted as much himself. And then we go through the history of the theory of evolution up to the present day, drawing in figures familiar (Mendel, Crick & Watson) and less so who filled in the gaps, revised the details, pushed the theory forward. Exactly as Darwin hoped would happen. Because The Origin of Species is not an alternative to the Bible, because the scientific method (done right, at least) is not about clinging to a different, slightly less old book as an equally infallible account of life. The argument between creationism and evolution is not simply a choice of two prophets, two books - it's about totally different approaches, a truth which claims to be definitive versus one which knows it's always provisional and is forever, yes, evolving.
Whatever David Simon made after The Wire was probably always destined to be a disappointment because frankly, where do you go from there? Usain Bolt's one thing, but in the arts it's pretty hard to beat your own world record. Generation Kill is, by any sane standards, very good. But The Wire means David Simon is now judged by insane standards. Clearly I am going to keep watching GK, and I have every expectation that it will grow on me. But on some level I can't help feeling that I've seen it before. The invasion of Iraq is not an unexamined, forgotten story in the way the decline of America's inner cities is, and a lot of the analyses of the US Marines (the system's inefficiencies mean that even those with the best intentions find themselves frustrated) seem familiar from Baltimore PD. So far, the closest thing to a McNulty seems to be Ziggy from Season 2, and against The Wire's studied impenetrability, having a reporter embedded with the unit seems a little easy, even if he is played by Tobias Beecher from Oz.
True Blood, on the other hand, is better than its creator's last work, Six Feet Under, because True Blood isn't under the misapprehension that it's smart. Honest trash I can handle, it's middlebrow self-satisfaction that gets my back up. The basic concept - with a blood substitute synthesized, vampires can come out of hiding - is not terribly original, some of the characters are pretty annoying, and so far Anna Paquin's psychic powers seem to vary more in accord with plot demands than any internal logic. It could all easily go a bit Heroes if the bad bits start to outweigh the good. But, so far, I'm inclined to keep watching. Just so long as it doesn't go all hugging'n'learning like 6FU.
What Darwin Didn't Know has now, alas, fallen off iPlayer, but if it comes round again as BBC4 documentaries tend to, it's well worth a look. I've been a fan of Armand Marie Leroi since his book and series on mutants, but even aside from his spookily charismatic presenting this is quite a powerful show. That title is a cunning bait for creationists, even more so for the people who maybe haven't fallen for the whole lie but who (as with global warming) have been misled by the airtime the morons and liars still get into believing that maybe there remain doubts. And Leroi goes into unsparing detail about everything Darwin didn't know, guessed, got wrong. Except - Darwin admitted as much himself. And then we go through the history of the theory of evolution up to the present day, drawing in figures familiar (Mendel, Crick & Watson) and less so who filled in the gaps, revised the details, pushed the theory forward. Exactly as Darwin hoped would happen. Because The Origin of Species is not an alternative to the Bible, because the scientific method (done right, at least) is not about clinging to a different, slightly less old book as an equally infallible account of life. The argument between creationism and evolution is not simply a choice of two prophets, two books - it's about totally different approaches, a truth which claims to be definitive versus one which knows it's always provisional and is forever, yes, evolving.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 01:09 pm (UTC)This is well put, but I think it something that too many Dawkinsian atheists are as guilty of missing as their religious counterparts.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 02:23 pm (UTC)FREE TEXTS!
Date: 2009-10-08 02:44 pm (UTC)Re: FREE TEXTS!
Date: 2009-10-09 09:21 am (UTC)Re: FREE TEXTS!
Date: 2009-10-09 09:31 am (UTC)...so lucky escape in some ways, but he would totally have SOLD OUT TO THE MAN in about half a nanosecond given the option ;)
Re: FREE TEXTS!
Date: 2009-10-09 09:39 am (UTC)It's a good deal *unless* the ad becomes iconically bad - think "Accrington Stanley?"
Still, quite a diss to be passed over in favour of the current twerp!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 12:17 am (UTC)Don't expect any Wire type characters to emerge. There isn't time for that, for a start. But GK is almost entirely plotless and characterless. We learn next to nothing about the individual marines. As far as I can make out, this is David Simon attempting to see if it's possible to make a film out of a piece of journalism, without resorting to dramatic devices that might manipulate the way you feel about the people and events.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 09:23 am (UTC)And in a sense, he'd already made a film out of journalism - there are whole scenes in The Wire taken verbatim from his own Homicide book (including the very first scene, iirc). But I take your point that he seems to be pushing it further here.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 09:39 am (UTC)Yes, The Wire was meant to be journalistic but now seems like conventional telly drama compared to GK. From the Q&A I went to, I got the impression he's so damaged by having to write happy endings for Homicide that he's determined to break every convention. Possibly until an entire series is just one unnamed man vomiting into the camera for 60 minutes every week.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 10:08 am (UTC)Wasn't that Nil by Mouth?