The Quick Take: Star Wars Radio Play - Just Watch It

If you haven’t watched it yet, then for the next hour and a half you’ve got something to do, kid.

At the Emerald City Comic-con on March 31^st 2012, there was a gathering of some of the greatest voice actors of our generation. Introduced one by one, they proceeded to sit in a row in front of an ecstatic crowd, each with a shortened script of the first Star Wars trilogy laid out in front of them, and they read it. Not as themselves of course, but as Zoidberg, Christopher Walken, Yakko, Raven, Batman, Bender, Brain and a whole host of other characters that these gods-among-men are able to produce in a moment’s notice.

Who are these gods, you say? They are known as Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Tara Strong, Jess Harnell, Billy West, John DiMaggio, and Kevin Conroy. My friends, these are the ingredients to one of the funniest performances I have seen in a long, long time.

The best parts aren’t even when the voices the actors perform don’t match the script characters (such as when Bubbles voices Darth Vader right out of the gate). It’s when the actors are riffing, making each other laugh, bringing back favorite phrases from childhood memories – NARF! – or just screwing up the lines. When they go beyond the script, they show the reason they’re the best in the business. It’s 80 minutes of pure, laid back hilarity.

What’s so fascinating about voice actors is their ability to transform into beloved characters instantaneously. Rob Paulsen positions his jaw differently and he becomes Pinky. Jon DiMaggio throws his head back and he is Tracy Morgan. Maurice LaMarche jerks around and physically overacts to he becomes Calculon.

There are very few live actors, and they are most often impersonators, who can change into character and have the audience really believe the transformation. Even if they can achieve it, there is something lost in the performance. They are older, or too fat, or too thin, or what have you. When Billy West voices Stimpy, his pitch and clarity is absolutely perfect. You wouldn’t know that even a day has gone by since the show ended.

But if it isn’t for the laughs, watch this reading simply for a brilliant, albeit rare demonstration of what cartoon lovers always want: actually seeing voice actors perform. Too often is the face behind the voice left in the dark. We only get short featurettes on DVDs showing actors in a sound booth, or a grainy video online of an actor doing a line or two. This video is clear, and best of all, its long.

Granted, perhaps there is a reason we shouldn’t see the actors themselves that much. If we did it would start to ruin the illusion of the cartoon. But don’t listen to that now. Watch this video and just enjoy it.

Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBzRmWeC6Ds

Immediate Sequels and the Organic Follow-Up

If you go back far enough through three (now) mega-stars of comedy, you’ll find the movie “Anchorman” on all of their resumes. It was the giant breakthrough for Will Farrell, Paul Rudd and Steve Carell. Before that, you would have only known them in indie films, off-Broadway theatre or Saturday Night Live. Then Anchorman came along, with its Apatow sense of humor, ridiculous performances, and all the while never winking at the camera. Afterwards, Farrell, Rudd and Carell all became super-stars.

Anchorman launched the Apatow-comedy film movement. So, why is it, that after almost a decade, the sequel is finally announced? You would think, with all the immediate sequels that pop-up after even semi-successful movies open in theatres, Anchorman 2 would have come out at the very latest in 2008. Yet, all we heard through the studio grapevine was “delay this” or “not enough of an audience” that.

Then about a month ago, on Conan, Ron Burgundy (Will Farrell in character) came on in a surprise appearance to announce that the studio and the creative team had finally come to terms on a sequel for Anchorman. Just this past weekend, the first teaser came out and spread like wild-fire across the internet. Everyone I know is pumped for this movie. Over the moon excited for it. And they haven’t even started shooting yet.

All this got me thinking. In an age where we constantly hear about scripts being developed for sequels of movies that haven’t even come out yet, I find myself puzzled at what took them so long at Paramount to green-light one of the biggest comedies of my generation? However, at the same time, I'm also glad they didn’t. Why? This is the perfect time for an Anchorman sequel. So, my question is, when is it exactly right for a sequel to come out?

As I said before, it seems the recent thought process for studios is to get the sequel in development before the first movie has even come out (and we thought studios were being more careful). The new Spider-Man reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man, already has a script in the works for a sequel. This is baffling to almost everyone on the planet since the buzz around this movie is not good. I don’t know many people that are looking forward to this movie. Another studio took this route with a would-be franchise: Green Lantern. We all saw how that turned out. This is a pretty glaring sign that the studios are just waiting for that opening weekend box-office number.

On the other hand, let’s say it’s smart to just go straight into another one, right away, even before you get the long lasting effects of the movie. Look at Transformers. That movie really took people by surprise at how solid it was, especially coming from Michael Bay. Yes, of course it had its detractors, but nothing on the lines of what was to come. That film series started with huge success based on a cool idea, amazing CGI and, funny enough, a well told story. It’s pure popcorn fun – maybe a bit too silly at times, but a solid summer movie. So of course people wanted a sequel. It was a no brainer. In hindsight, you can really see where it went wrong for the series. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen was victim to the writer’s strike of 2008. It’s pretty much a half-baked movie and a total mess. It was rushed. Even without the writer’s strike, the gap between the first two films was only two years. That’s a blink of an eye for a movie of this size. I’m surprised they even got it done (and some of you will argue that it isn’t a finished movie).

Michael Bay went even further and made the third entry with only a two year break between Revenge. That’s 2007, 2009, 2011 as release dates. All in the summer. That’s tough. Say he started development in 2005, that’s six years of just robots. He clearly needed more time. So did we. We were over-exposed to these films. They were just too much too fast. If they had been spread out by three years instead of two, we would instead have been waiting for Transformers 3 to come out next summer. Ample time to breathe and enjoy the movies.

If Bay had another year, maybe he would have axed these bad ideas.

Which brings me to my next observation: the filmmaker. I feel they need to break off from the franchise and should make a different type of movie in between their sequels/entries. A director, as well as the audience, needs to grow and evolve between the entries.

While it’s hard to compare Christopher Nolan and Michael Bay (maybe even sacrilegious), it’s interesting to see how Nolan as a story teller has evolved by doing The Prestige and Inception while also going back to his Batman franchise. There is clearly a more mature and developed director behind the camera each time he goes to a new film. That’s because he keeps things fresh. I wonder how different things would have turned out had Michael made his pet project Pain and Gain or another original project in between his robot films.

All the while, maybe the director or a creative team shouldn’t be the main force behind when a sequel gets made. Maybe it should be the audience. But we are just as unpredictable as the studios claim us to be. Using myself as an example, I love it when a film series takes a while in between its entries. The idea of waiting four years for The Dark Knight Rises and the new Star Trek film just feels right to me. Many disagree, especially with the former example, as they have seemed to move on to more current franchises (The Marvel movies). To their benefit, I am reminded by times when sequels waited too long to follow up its predecessor, and not only was it not worth the wait, you actually question why you liked the franchise in the first place. Look no further than Indiana Jones 4.

Perhaps the only way to be certain that a sequel will both be anticipated and accepted with excitement is by going the “Lord Of The Rings” route. If you tell the audience it’s going to be three movies, one each year for three years, we will buy into that and go on the adventure with you. We sign the contract and know what we are in for. It’s the same situation with Harry Potter. If you’re going to watch the movies, you first must accept that the story will be eight movies long, spread out over a decade.

Alas, not everything can be set out like the Lord Of The Rings or Twilight. Perhaps all you need to do is tell a good introductory story and let people know that there’s more to come. In this way, we will organically want more. However, it will always remain a somewhat mystery to when we should be given more. There’s just too many variables to really nail it down. Just ask Francis Ford Coppola. He directed two of the greatest films ever, Godfather 1 and 2, in 1972 and 1974 respectively. An amazing one-two punch of storytelling power. It had lots going for it. It’s based off a book series. They’re only two years apart, and Francis still made a movie in between, The Conversation. It won Oscars. People loved it. Then 18 years later he comes out with The Godfather Part III, which was set many years later. Not only does the film not live up to the hype, it’s a disappointment.

Looking back, is the movie that bad? Not really. But it’s nothing like the first two. Even though you can see, Coppola has something to say, it just didn’t connect with people anymore.

After all that, I really don’t have an answer to when a sequel should be made. Obviously some are too soon, and some are too late. You always hear people saying “strike while the iron is hot”. Then you look at something like Anchorman 2 and while it might not have been planned, it really served the studio and everyone involved to wait till the iron cooled, almost to point of it never happening again, before giving the Channel 5 news team another go around. While it’s clearly a result of a studio not trusting the size of its audience, they did fall into a money pit by accident.

Here you have three of the biggest comedy stars on the planet, all enthusiastic about coming back to the characters that gave them super-stardom, all willing to take pay cuts. Which is incredible since they all headline their own movies now. An audience would never want to see a sequel without the full cast or god forbid, with replacements. The director of the original, Adam Mckay, has gone off and done other comedies with Farrell and is returning. And the audience for this only continues to expand.

Now with it officially being announced and the teaser getting everyone excited to a fever pitch, you realize that this is the equivalent of a “getting the band back together” type of a reunion. It’s almost a super-comedy movie in line with The Avengers. Alright, maybe not that big, but the idea of seeing Will Farrell, Paul Rudd and Steve Carell on screen at the same time in 2004 was nothing special. Now, in 2013, it feels like the can’t miss reunion tour of the summer. Something that can only happen when given the right amount of time to grow.

They reunite, summer 2013.

The Quick Take: "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" Retreats

For a sequel to a film that really didn’t do all that well with critics and did just okay at the box office, G.I. Joe: Retaliation has a lot of buzz going for it. A slick marketing campaign, heightened sense of visuals and an almost completely new cast, things were really looking up. And they still might be, just not till March 29, 2013.

Announced today, G.I. Joe: Retaliation has been moved back nine months from its June 29 release date for a... wait for it... 3D conversion! This came by surprise, since the movie was a month away from release, had a ton of buzz and seemed not into the 3D idea.

One can only speculate why the studio (Paramount) has decided to do this, but there are a few things we can rule out. It can’t be from the quality of the finished product, since you would be able to tell the quality of your film much earlier than a month before the world sees it. A slight factor may be it’s competition (The Amazing Spider-Man opens the week after) but the studio had this release date for some time.

Actually, it may have come down to a film that just opened last weekend to poor box office results. Battleship, a non-3D movie, made slim pickings domestically and while it has been doing well overseas, Universal is looking at a $150 million loss. Now, if it was in 3D we might be looking at a much smaller number.

If you’re a Paramount executive and you see the possibility of only one big weekend for your movie before you get lost in shuffle of a stacked July, yeah, you would want that extra two dollars a ticket during a slower month.

Watch the trailer for G.I. Joe: Retaliation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ip8CgUplzk

The Quick Take: "The Master" is Revealed

Joaquin Phoenix in The Master

My brother walked into my room, telling me he needed to commandeer my computer and two minutes of my time. Being the endlessly generous man that I am, I conceded. He turned the computer away from my view and said, “don’t look yet, you need the full experience”.

So I sat down, only sure that I was about to watch a trailer of some kind, but unknowing of what movie. My brother begins the video, which he has expanded to full screen, and for the next one minute and forty seconds, I was blissfully introduced to the illustrious world of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.

The Master is the latest film from PTA since his 2007 release There Will Be Blood. With the footage present in the teaser released yesterday morning, it seems PTA might have squeezed out as good of a performance from Joaquin Phoenix as he did from Daniel Day Lewis. Phoenix is captivating, like he often is, bordering on hypnotic.

Watching the teaser, the twisted face of Phoenix peers past the camera, his gravelly voice overlays images of a beach and what appears like the inside of a navy tanker, and a Waitsian, somewhat out of tune beat drives the intensity of the scene like the rhythm of a fluttering heart. But it is with this simple construction that we see PTA has created one of the most enticing teasers in a long time. This is how you make a great trailer.

But one thing we believe here at The Alternate Take is that you should watch trailers until you’re sold on the movie. If the first one does it for me, I won’t be watching any more. So for me, I won’t be seeing any other footage of The Master until I’m sitting in the theatres. I suggest that no matter what the movie, don’t ruin the final experience for yourself by being over exposed to images or jokes you’re eventually going to see anyway. Be patient. This one will certainly be worth the wait.

Go experience The Master for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WTM8eO1Oec

The Quick Take: The Community Shake-Up

Dan Harmon

Dan Harmon, the creator, show-runner and creative force behind the NBC show Community, has been unceremoniously fired from his position. This came as a sort-of-shock to most people, as his feud with Chevy Chase (one of the stars of the show) and his intense way of running a show didn’t score him a whole lot of points with NBC. News of this broke even before Harmon himself knew. His status with the show now, as either a creative consultant or other wise, is TBD. Oh, and Community just recently got picked up for a fourth season. So firing the show-runner makes sense, right?

While you can get into the specifics of who is right and who is wrong in this situation, the main issue with this is: Networks believe that if you have a problem with viewership, talent, or any other type of issue, replace the man in charge. Even if the show is a critical hit. Community has the problem of being a very-specific type of show. It has its own sense of humor. Networks hate this because it doesn’t appeal to everyone, so it doesn’t do as well in the ratings. Networks need to understand that if one person is the driving force of a show, it is going to be a specific-type of show. Taking something that is unique and trying to make it broad just makes it like everything else on TV that is decided by committee: Boring. Just ask the people over at another NBC show, The Office. In an age where sticking to source material seems to be a perfect way of catering to your audience, firing the individual with the vision and doing something new seems like the worst possible idea.

Gosh Darnit, be quiet for a second

At this moment, I am listening to Network, one of the most powerful films of the 70’s, and, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest films ever made. As I listen to the audio I am only half-focused on my own words, the clicking and tapping of my computer keys intermingled with Robert Duvall’s heartlessness and Peter Finch’s prophecies. I have done this before, simply listening to a movie (one I’ve already seen, of course) effectively isolating the visual from the audio, but something has occurred to me this time: silence is dead.


Peter Finch wants you to stop the music and let him talk

Okay, that may be an overstatement, silence is not dead, but it certianly is being misused by contemporary directors. The use of musical silence seems to be something people fear today. The reason I say this is because I also recently watched another movie, Zodiac. This is not only a great movie, but also feels like it was inspired by the 70’s type filmmaking and storytelling present in Network and All The President’s Men and other investigative dramas. The one difference? Zodiac liberally uses musical cues to its disadvantage. The majority of the film is quiet, but the movement back and forth between music and silence creates a slight disjointing effect. I would much rather have rendered it as Network did, without any non-diegetic music.

One of the most bone chilling moments of silence in all cinema occurs at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Murphy has just bestowed the party of all parties on the men at the facility and is ready to leave out the window. He sits down, looks around him and the camera keeps still on his face. The shot lasts for nearly a minute without a word or sound. Murphy smiles, which disappears eventually, returns and disappears again. In this uncut shot, every storyteller should learn that the human face is able to convey anything an orchestra can and more.

I think Conquest of The Planet of The Apes is one of the best of the series because of its use of silence. When Caesar is running through the streets, both alone and with his ape cohorts, we only hear footsteps. The effect provokes an aesthetic similar to horror films and suspense dramas rather than just a sci-fi “what if” story. Even the ending of the first Planet of the Apes hits its emotional peak when the twist is revealed, and no music is used. The audience gets to bask in the madness of the revelation without being guided how to feel.

There is a quality to the 70’s sound work that doesn’t create an emptiness, showing a lack of something that could be, but rather an eerie focus that elicits its own full emotions. The silence is huge, filling, sometimes overbearing. But the attitude today seems to be that if a scene isn’t powerful enough, or even cool enough, all a director has to do is create an onslaught of sound to back it up.

If we’re going to talk about silence I have to mention Samurai Jack. I think more action directors need to take a class just on the choreography of this show. While many viewers have criticised it for what seems like endless repetition (which it does suffer from) the experimentation with aspect ratio, pacing, and of course sound work was often outstanding – especially considering that it’s a children’s television show. Not every episode is ground-breaking, some are downright awful, but I’ve always wanted some of the techniques of Gendy Tartakovsky to be used in mainstream cinema. Sometimes the first five to ten minutes of an episode will have no dialogue and no music. And this silence is all done to build mood. Some fight scenes (such as the battle between Aku and Jack in the graveyard) cut between an onslaught of sound to complete silence, and the effect is divine. It’s such a quiet show when it needs to be, and there’s no fear that using silence will cause the audience boredom. And yet, it is a major risk every time it’s done. Mr. Tartakovsky knows how sound can dictate the viewer’s emotion, and that includes removing it from a scene all together.

Uncle                       Cousin                        Brother

And while I’m on the animation subject, go watch Adam Elliot’s three part short film collection: Brother, Cousin, and Uncle. These are some of the most emotional and imitate stories he's told, all done without the slightest introduction of music to sway the audience. Actually, although his more recent film Mary and Max is one of my favourites, I feel the use of music removes some of the intimacy that dominated its predecessors.

Now I’m not saying that the artificiality of using non-diegetic music is worse than just using diegetic music. I love both techniques as long as they are used properly. In Battlestar Galactica, the opening sequence to “Kobol’s Last Gleaming: Part 1”, when Passacaglia by Bear McCreary is used, is for me one of the best moments in the entire show. There is a scene in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer that the music elicits such emotion in me it leaves me perfectly still every time I see it. But it does seem that mainstream directors have a tendency to go straight for the musical jugular and let the orchestral cues spill all over their work. They know that the best in sound is easier to achieve than the best in silence.

So what am I really asking by writing all this? If you’re planning on doing sound work in films, take a note from the films and shows I’ve mentioned above. Sound includes as much of what you create as what you leave out. A lot of the time, music gets in the way of achieving a real intimacy with the audience, and while a score/soundtrack has limitless possibilities within the artificial construction that is film, the power of silence should never be ignored. I really just want to see more directors with the balls to do what Mr. Tartakovsky does with a kid’s show. Children were willing to go along with the madness of that show, I think adult movie goers can do the same.

3D is Steroid Use and the Record That Matters

I always assumed I’d see the moment when a movie made over 200 million in a single weekend. I just figured I’d be well into my 30’s when this happened. But, here I am, almost 25 years old and The Avengers did it. 207 million in a single weekend. Congratulations to everyone at Marvel, Joss Whedon and everyone else involved. You not only surpassed the record, you demolished it. Yet while we salute them, we should all realize who it is they are thanking. Just a little friend we all like to call 3D.

I want to first say that The Avengers was a great movie. Just an insane amount of fun and humor, crazy shots and OMG-type action. While I didn’t love The Avengers, I was as close to it as I could have gotten. I really, really, really, really liked it.

Now, with that said lets all pull back the curtain and address the issue that seems to be passing most people by. See, I find myself talking with or reading people’s comments and notice how they seem to be throwing this number into the faces of all those fans of Harry Potter (the last film in that series was the previous record holder and in 3D) and the fans of The Dark Knight (the record holder before Potter and the main “competition” to Marvel). It easily beat both of those records by almost 40 million, (and the fans of Avengers seem to have taken the proverbial flag of the record and placed it in their camp like they did this without any special help.) I say special because The Dark Knight is often attacked for its record by using the excuse of Heath Ledger’s death before the films release as the main reason the film did so well.

So, lets just get it out there. The Avengers had help. A lot of help. The only way to truly compare what The Avengers did is to compare it to athletes using steroids. The Avengers is a record on steroids. 3D gives a movie’s release such an extra boost that it baffles me to no end people don’t realize it’s unfair to compare this to something like The Dark Knight, or Spider-Man or even the recently released Hunger Games film.

I paid 17.99 to see The Avengers. I saw this in an AVX theatre in 3D. I paid 11.95 to see The Dark Knight. I paid 8.95 to see Spider-Man. All three I contributed to the opening weekend of those record breaking films. Most of us did.

Without going into complete full detail into the math I performed on this, The Avengers record when adjusted for 2008 inflation of ticket prices actually made around 180 million. Still quite a butt-load of cash. However, this isn’t taking into account the 3D ticket prices which add on an additional $2.00 per ticket. When you take into account the amount of screenings at a theatre that are 3D to the ones that are 2D, it’s almost 2:1. As you can see, and I know you’re not dumb, this pretty much forces you to pay $15.99 to $17.99 if you want to see the film. If you do the math correctly and average out the ticket prices, The Avengers made around 162 million, give or take a few hundred thousand. That is comparable to The Dark Knight. Again this is rough math, since I did not take into account children and senior ticket prices, nor the percentage of those kinds of tickets sold. That being said, even if I’m a few million off, comparing the grosses, The Avengers didn’t beat The Dark Knight by that much.

That is how much 3D plays a part in record breaking. It’s not exactly fair to put a non-3D movie up against one that has it, since they are asking for different amounts of money from you. As well, ticket prices go up every year. More and more so, the prices have increased in higher and higher jumps for the last 10 years.

So, this brings me to my point. I feel as though, while this record is really cool and I’m glad something with as high of quality as The Avengers has this record, it’s a bit misleading to think it destroyed Harry Potter and The Dark Knight, or even Spider-Man. Yes, a lot of people went to see The Avengers. Theatres were sold out. But so were the other films opening weekends. The record that studios and the movie going public should be looking at or asking for is number of tickets sold. That is the record we should all be looking at. How many individual tickets were sold between Friday and Sunday. Since, in the end that’s what really counts. How many people saw it. How many people saw it twice in that single, three day span. That really shows the power of a film. How popular it was. With prices changing all over the place, what really counts is how many butts were in the seats.

But we will never get that kind of information released. It’s too blinding for studios to use the amount of money made, than tickets sold, to show us how many people saw the film. And it’s all one movie’s fault. A little film called Star Wars.

Star Wars was released in 1977. The average movie ticket cost a whopping $2.23. It made, just domestically, $460,988,007 in its entire run. That means somewhere around 206 million tickets were sold. If you do the same equation for The Avengers on its opening weekend, it sold 26 million tickets. That means even if every one of those tickets was a new person watching the film, no repeat watches, everyone who saw it would have to see it another 7 times to beat Star Wars. Of course I realize that not everyone that is going to see Avengers, saw it opening weekend. But you can see the vast gap that Star Wars left. The Avengers would have to make 1.4 billion domestically to equal the amount of tickets sold by Star Wars.

Now that’s something I’d like to see The Avengers do. And if it does, I’ll be the first to salute it. But its doubtful. That’s because nothing is ever going to match the ridiculous phenomenon that was Star Wars back in the late 70’s. And for that, we are stuck comparing the always misleading and mismatched opening weekend records.

When Will It End

So, how else should we start this blog other than with the first question man pondered after departing from his monkey brothers? No, not “Is there a God” or “Who started that fire”, but rather, “does length matter”. And I am here to bring light to the fact that of course length matters, but the shorter the better.

This is my formal request for television and movie producers to put a stop to the never-ending onslaught of sequels and subsequent seasons of great stories that many of us love. For the past fifteen years there has been a writing epidemic infecting the minds of the creators of great American television shows and film series. This epidemic, which I refer to as “well-somebody’s-gonna-watch-it syndrome”, has changed the way we think about series as a whole. The idea is that if we even slightly enjoyed the last episode, no matter how long the show has gone on, then it’s worth making another one. So, only once we reach a point of complete hatred with a show or film series do we finally get the satisfaction of removing it from our screens.  

Think about it. This is why we get storylines that feel like cancerous growths on the side of what was a beautiful and heartwarming face. The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is one of the best action/adventure series in the last ten years and because of that success, producers birthed On Stranger Tides, a story that clearly lacked all the charm of the earlier films. The writers of The Office, even after losing the main character of the show (let’s face it, Scott was the nucleus), are attempting to create an ensemble piece that feels more like bad improv than what used to be one of the wittiest shows on television. Two and A Half Men, much like The Office, lost its main character and yet still yearns to extend its life at the feet of out-of-place Ashton Kutcher. Futurama was a pound-for-pound better show than even The Simpsons up to the ending of the fourth season. However, after the introduction of the four films and now season six, the show is largely listless and forgettable. And while I’m on the subject, although I don’t want to enter into a discussion about the monstrosity right now, The Simpsons has probably reached (I mean passed) its expiration date at season 23.

The epitome of the never-ending series

The list I’ve just provided is very thin compared to the one in my head (which includes Big Bang Theory, Dexter, Lost, In Treatment, Heroes, 24, The Shrek Film series, Family Guy and more) but I think the point has been made. American television is obsessed with length, even to the point of ruining the quality of the show or the film.

Now the difficulty with bringing up this subject with the lovers of long-running series is the ‘occasional classic episode’ complex. If I say Futurama should have stayed off the air after it was cancelled, someone will mention the time machine episode in season 5 (a worthy addition). If I say The Office should have ended with the departure of Michael Scott, someone will claim the show wouldn’t be complete without the brash eccentricities of Mr. California. My only answer to these complaints is that ending a show will always cut short a few great episodes or moments in the show’s possible future. However, I don’t think that watching what will most likely be a lot of sloppy writing just to get to one good episode is worth the trouble. I would much rather have a short series of two to three seasons, containing all amazing episodes, rather than a long run of ten seasons whereby the majority of episodes I wouldn’t watch again.

Shows and film series must be treated in the same way that any other art form is understood: too much of a good thing ruins the good thing. And although even I have the desire to stay with characters for years on end, I appreciate the balls producers need to have in order to cut a show short, even at its height, so the quality doesn’t deteriorate, even at the expense of their wallet size (eg. Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie, The Office (British Version) – oh wait, none of these are American Shows).

The error in thinking about this subject is believing that this strange process is the natural progression of shows: they start off okay, become amazing pieces of social satire and witty banter, lose their grace and fall into a pit which balances between cancellation and outright failure. It’s as if producers treat their audiences like addicts, knowing that even if the high isn’t as good as it was with the last product, hey, at least you’re still getting high.

If any of my observations seem paltry or short-sighted, perform this test. Take one of your favourite long running shows. It doesn’t matter what it is. Watch a recent episode that’s pretty good, perhaps one of the ‘occasional classic episodes’ that I mentioned earlier. Take a moment. Now watch one from the second season, after the show has figured out what it is, and compare the quality. I won’t hold any judgement if you enjoy the newer ones more – I’m glad someone can find comfort in the change – but if you do notice a great difference, think about how the characters have changed, or the wittiness of the jokes, or the coherence of the story, because that’s usually what’s no longer the same. And it’s only when you return to when the writing was new and without any fat that you see the recent episodes from a fresh perspective.

The point I’m trying not to make is that these shows are terrible. In fact, these are some of my favourite, containing classic episodes that I quote and reminisce on lonely nights by the fire. But just because I love them so much doesn’t mean I never want to leave them behind. I don’t want a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 2 just because I loved the original so much, or four more seasons of Battlestar Galactica since its one of the best shows ever made. The reason these stories are so good is because they’re tight and every episode, every moment is needed. Once a show starts making filler episodes, that should be the sign to cut the cord. Don’t end on the bottom, end on top.

Can we just say...

Welcome to The Alternate Take, a blog born out of boredom and frustration in equal parts.

First and foremost, this is a blog about film and television. We will be discussing a variety of subjects about the visual media which we feel have rarely, if ever, been addressed online or elsewhere.

You’ll be seeing articles posted by both myself and my brother, and while we share many ideals about film and writing, disagreements are always present. Although it is not our intention to forcibly cause disagreements, we do think they allow for a varied perspective.

Nothing is posted at the moment, but within the next few days we should have an article from both of us up and fully functioning.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. Yes, we are trying to bring a fresh perspective on film in terms of analysis and subject matter, ranging anywhere from the construction of the three-part trailer, to a dissection of long running television series, to a comparison between the storytelling styles of Hunger Games and Battle Royale. However, we are NOT a review site. If all goes according to plan, you will never read that we give Tinker Tailor Solider Spy a 9/10 or Chronicle two and a half stars out of five. We’re looking at film from a creator’s perspective and not so much a viewer’s.

So, if you like the sound of this, come back, and we’ll get the discussion started.

Brandon and Justin