Perhaps I complain too much. Even
film, the most extravagant combination of art and entertainment I can think of,
cannot help but stir some of the inherent juices of protest and criticism which
lay dormant inside me. But I'm not a negative person, really.
I'm not even angry.
I just have opinions, which now and
then need a dose of fresh air. And they aren't all bad. In fact, my first for
today is entirely positive.
4. A cast of good grammar
TV is the go-to place for truckloads
of pristine punctuation gushing like magical waterfalls from the mouths of
eight year olds. And since kids like to role-play, I intend to enforce five
hours, seven days a week of couch potatoing in my future family household. Six
hours and the kids get dessert.
Glee
is a prime example that proves my point. It's certainly not for the eight year-old
audience; they'd get bored. But it consists of a bunch of post-grads cast as
freshman and retains their post-grad-like language (why are they at school, again?)
to accompany the autotuner. Music to my ears, you might say.
Back
to the negatives
5. Incoming Transmission
As in Nikita, so often I see characters browse the web, open a document
from their whale-shaped flash drive (it's inconspicuous because it looks like a
whale), or play nonexistent 8-bit videogames that make you question the show's
'present day' claims; and when they click 'search' on Google, for instance
(which even trained assassin Alex does instead of hitting enter; you'd think
her cover was a university lecturer), there's this awfully primitive computer
sound which emanates from the off-camera speakers. She proceeds to click one of
the search results, and said primitive sound makes a very unwelcomed return!
Why would anyone design an operating system that insists on granting users
clicking confirmation via some bizarre "blueohgigeep", tinny, Red Alert-esque, yet slightly-cool-in-the-context-of-video-games sound effect?
Answer: they wouldn't.
6. Shopping for shopping bags
We as viewers are very often hinted at instead of having things spelled out to us. We're passively graced with snippets of plot-polishing information. It's a good
thing, no doubt: showing rather than telling and whatnot. But sometimes they
become a tad ridiculous.
In ninety-eight percent of cases,
you can tell the household mother has gone grocery shopping if she's carrying a paper bag
which houses a head of lettuce, and out of which protrudes a baguette.
Similarly, if someone's just returned from clothes shopping, their arms have
become rails for copious amounts of biodegradable plastic. Useful? Sure. Clichéd? Absolutely.
Retarded? You can bet your life on
it.
I know what you're thinking. The formula works. Viewers
get the message.
But those outlet bags are freaking empty, and it's obvious!
In
my mind I'm thinking, "Thief! You didn't buy anything. You just wanted
free bags!" which, of course, has nothing to do with the film. Alas, in my
moment of mid-movie complaint I end up missing several lines of juicy plot! Is
this what you want, mister director? Is it? Honestly...
I hope there are others out there
who see these things in the same light. If not, perhaps you will now. Starting
today, let's make a change.
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