Films vs Tv?

[Alex]

For years it was considered that films were better than tv (especially in the industry where actors would work there way through from theatre to tv to hopefully making it in film) - but is that the case anymore? Now obviously in the past there's always been brilliant tv and brilliant cinema, but do you think there's any real distinction between them anymore? Or infact that tv is often far far better than the cinema?

When I was a kid going to the cinema was a really exciting event, and you knew you were going to see something that would look amazing and it just generally had a higher quality to it than 99% of tv shows.

But nowadays I think tv's caught up with cinema, and in most cases is better than it. Tv allows for longer, more detailed and interesting storylines, and I just find myself becoming more involved in them than I do most films which are over and done with in 90 minutes. Over the last couple of years I'd say the new Who, Battlestar Galactica, Family Guy, Wonder Showzen, Carnivale, The Sopranos, South Park, Six Feet Under, Buffy & Angel, Curb Your Enthusiasm, 24, Deadwood, Nip / Tuck, Firefly, and Arrested Development have been far far more outstanding than anything I've seen at the cinema, and are shows that I just really love.

Again, there's always exceptions (I don't think any tv company would have budgetted the Lord of the Rings films), and some films work perfectly in the (around) 90 minutes format (Napoleon Dynamite, Shortbus, Shaun of the Dead) and there's always going to be a great deal of rubbish tv, but overall I think the best tv is nowadays just much much better than the cinema. Do you agree? And if you had to do without one of them, what would it be?

[WhiteCrow]

What I like best about movies is when there is a complete story in a 2 hours package.

I love TV 2-parters.

However I'm really getting to hate shows like Lost and 24, which you have to watch every episode, season after season with only tiny bits given each episode. It gets so frustrating after a while. But I know I'm in a minority of 1 on that.

[Alex]

Well it's 1 all at the mo!

I was thinking last night that the only genre cinema really succeeds in is horror, where tv doesn't seem to compete at all, at least these days. There's a few exceptions I can think of (Lars Von Trier's The Kingdom, some moments from Twin Peaks, the BBC tv film Threads), but that's about all I can think of, whereas there are of course countless brilliant horror films...

[Captain Tancredi]

What seems to have happened over the last decade or so is that a generation of would-be auteurs who might otherwise have been making films have been making television instead- the likes of Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams to name but two. If you're looking to develop a vision over a period of time and focus on character and relationships, you can do that so much better over a 22-episode season than in a 90-minute or two-hour film. It's become more acceptable in the acting world to do a television series and make a film in your break (if you want to) as well- look at the likes of Martin Sheen giving seven years to 'The West Wing' or Jennifer Garner sticking with 'Alias' for five years when she could have gone into films after two or three.

It also has to be said that Hollywood films seem to have lost their focus a little in recent years- there doesn't seem to be [I]that[I] much real inspiration and creativity going into major films, and the escalating costs of making them mean that the studios want more control over the content- hence less satisfaction and control for the creatives involved.

[Alex]

It also has to be said that Hollywood films seem to have lost their focus a little in recent years- there doesn't seem to be [i]that[i] much real inspiration and creativity going into major films, and the escalating costs of making them mean that the studios want more control over the content- hence less satisfaction and control for the creatives involved.

I completely agree, Hollywood blockbusters have always been a mixed bag (and some I enjoy very much, but a lot I find fairly boring), but there's an over-riding sense of laziness in the industry at the mo - or probably fear of producing anything too original incase it puts audiences off. There seems to be so many sequels (or prequels) around, most of which are never as good as the first, or rebooting of a series (Batman, Superman), and super hero movies in general at the moment as they're popular, but none have impressed me in the way that Burton's Batman did way back in 1990.

Infact pretty much the only director who really impresses me who works in the genre is Tim Burton, who obviously flits between more personal projects and the bigger budget ones with aplomb (ahem...ignoring Planet of the Apes of course!), it's a shame there aren't more artistic directors out there who are given the chance to direct something with a large budget.

Of course there's a lot of superb more independent films out there, and I do love a fair few of them, but it just doesn't seem the same as it was in the early to mid nineties when there were a lot of directors I was really excited about.

Back on the tv side of things, last night I thought of another one of the things that makes tv so great - the cliffhanger! Bar the odd film trilogy, there's never a cliffhanger in films these days, and I love them - the feeling that you're going to have to wait a week to find out what happens, and really looking forward to the next episode because of them just can't be beat.