Thank you, HBO

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The urge to change

Why, I ask you, is it so necessary for TV and movie makers to make radical changes to the plots and characters of so many books they transform to their own medium?

I have two recent examples to illustrate this: The Vampire Diaries and FlashForward. I'll cover FlashForward first, because I've finished the book and am all caught up with the series.

The only similarities between FlashForward, the book by Robert J. Sawyer, and FlashForward the television series, are the facts that they both revolve around the aftermath of a global blackout (physical unconsciousness, not an electrical blackout) caused by some kind of physics experiment, and they both share several main characters -- in name, at least, if not in the role they play in the story. Also in both, the experiment is amplified by an outside force, though this force is different between the book and the show.

And that's it. The plots differ wildly. The characters, of necessity, do also. In the book the main characters are the physicists who conducted the experiment, and the plot follows their investigation into what went so crazy and caused the blackout. In the TV show, the main characters are FBI agents trying to find out who caused the blackout and whether it will happen again. There are so many critical differences between the plots that it's not even worth going into.

So now to The Vampire Diaries. Admittedly, I just started reading this, but already some key elements are wildly different. First thing I noted was the rather unsettling realization that the physical appearance of Elena Gilbert, the female protagonist, is wildly different from book to TV show. In the book, she's a stunningly beautiful and popular blonde with eyes the colour of lapis lazuli. In the TV show, she's pretty, but not remarkably so, she's a brunette, and while she has a close circle of friends, she's not universally popular. Normally a character's appearance change wouldn't trouble me...it's not usually that important to the plot. But the writer mentions the blonde/blue-eyed thing several times in just the first few chapters, and I sense it may be significant...the character Stefan wears a lapis ring, for instance. The other, even bigger difference between the book and TV show is the very significant fact that the brother vampires are five hundred years old in the book, rather than the hundred and fifty some-odd that they are in the show. In the book, they lived during the Renaissance. In the TV show, they lived around the time of the civil war or so. That would have a major impact on the scope of the story.

So, back to my question: why do the TV and movie people make these vast changes to an author's work? Is it vanity? Do they like the main premise of a story, but want to put their own twist on it so it will belong to them? Is it technical? Maybe it's much more difficult to film certain things, so the plot changes to accommodate physical and budgetary restrictions. Is it cultural? In FlashForward the book, the main action takes place almost entirely in Europe. North American television viewers wouldn't like that (or, at least, that's what most North American television producers think). I suppose it could be any one of these, or a combination, or some other reason I haven't thought of.

Whatever the reason, I find it rather annoying and disturbing. I think of the writers who spent so much energy and devotion in the writing of their books. It must be marvelously exciting and rewarding to have someone offer you a bunch of money to turn your story into a television show or a movie or a stage play. But then to see whoever bought the rights to your story trashing it by throwing away almost every significant detail and replacing them with what I call Hollywood Pap...that must be heartbreaking!

I follow Robert J. Sawyer on Twitter. Now and then he comments on FlashForward the TV show, and he seems pleased and excited about the whole thing. I don't think I've ever seen him say anything negative about the plot changes and having his book basically hijacked and replaced by a silly Hollywood templated cutout that almost completely disregards the original storyline. I may just bring this blog post to his attention to see if he might have some comments about that...though I have no illusions that he'll express unhappiness about it, even if that's what he feels. He's a professional, after all. It's just business.

Right?

TV: it's not ALL bad, and an ode to the bad boys

A year or so ago, a guy I knew from facebook disparaged me for writing in this blog a review of a favourite TV show. I forget which show it was; Man From Mars, maybe. He said something about wasting my intelligent brain on watching and reviewing TV. I felt a little ashamed. Sure, the common attitude among so-called smart people is that TV is garbage, junk-food for brains and all that negative stuff. I automatically felt chastised and embarrassed by his words.

There's a lot of crap TV out there. A LOT. Probably 95 per cent of TV is worse than swill. But now and then you find a show that really strikes a chord, that you look forward to watching all week and kick yourself when you forget to set the DVR for it.

There have been a good number of shows like that for me. Twin Peaks was probably the first big one. I was 28 or 29 when that came on and I was obsessed with it, even though I didn't always "get" it. But who did? I mean, come on, that dancing dwarf? I bet David Lynch didn't even get that one.

I adored Boston Legal. Laughed and cried many times with that one. James Spader blew me away as Alan Shore, and the chemistry between him and William Shatner made them probably the best TV "couple" ever. If real men could relate to one another like those two TV characters did, the world would be a much better place.

Deadwood was, in my opinion, the best TV series of all time. The writing is brilliant. Beyond brilliant. It's truly inspired. The actors were all perfectly cast, but especially Ian McShane as Al Swearingen, who was probably the most complex and interesting character ever on TV. The sets and costumes and everything about it were pitch perfect. The only thing I didn't like was how the series was cancelled so suddenly, with no resolution to so many of the storylines. They had originally promised two full-length feature films to come after the series ended, but that never happened and now all the actors are busy with other things and the idea has been abandoned. Such a shame. (Hey! Maybe David Milch - my literary hero - could write the conclusion as a novel! David? Are you listening??)

Lost is a huge one for me too, although I confess that the storylines are so complicated and the characters' intricate interrelations and all the time-jumping sometimes confuses me. I'm a simple kinda gal and I don't like having to keep track of so much random stuff in order to really get the full value of a show. But I'm looking forward to the final season. Really anxious to find out how they'll tie it all up in the end.

For a while there I was obsessed with "Man From Mars." Watched the American version first, but then got hooked on the British original which was worlds better. Comparing the two, you really see how America's approach to entertainment is almost more about packaging and appearance than it is about what it should be: character and story. The British series was full of plain and even unattractive people, but somehow that made the show better and much more approachable. You felt like the characters were people you might meet in your daily life, not some impossibly beautiful actors plunked into worlds they'd never really see. And the writing and characterization, the acting and the grittiness were infinitely more appealing in the British original too.

House is another favourite. A bitter, pain-riddled, drug-addled (and now psychotic) genius whose character is so well-written that we love him even though someone like that in real life would probably not live much past his twenties, due to some act of violence against his nasty, misanthropic self.

Gregory House, Al Swearengen (Deadwood), Alan Shore (Boston Legal), Sawyer (Lost), Gene Hunt (Man From Mars). I seem to have a fascination with nasty complex male characters who have some wee redeeming quality that keeps me wondering, week to week, what they're going to do next. (Don't worry...this doesn't hold true in my real life!)

And that brings me to my most recent obsession: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yes...you read that correctly. I find myself gritting my teeth and clenching my gut muscles in order to admit that, over the last several weeks, I've watched all seven seasons of the Buffy series from start to finish. And. I. LOVED. It. A hurricane might have wiped out the entire east coast and I don't know about it because I haven't had the TV on in all that time.

And if any of you reading this were fans of the show, or even casual viewers, I bet it will be a no-brainer for you to figure out who the complex nasty male character in that show is that appealed to me so much. Of course, it was Spike. Couldn't get enough of him. I was glad when Angel left the show and Spike took over as the Head Vamp In Charge. Compared to Spike's robust Guinness, Angel was watered-down Bud Lite. Angel's dark broodiness was boring next to Spike's invigorating, joyous, evil energy. Other than that, I loved all the other characters equally, but Spike made the screen crackle when he was on. Nasty, lovely boy.

Now, I was reluctant to admit my admiration for this show that, on the surface, sounds like some light teenage fluff crap with a low budget, bad acting, worse writing and very little to say for itself. I mean... "Buffy??" At least, that's what I'd always thought about it, because I never watched it when it was being aired. Not a single episode. All I ever caught was the last ten minutes or so of the series finale, and all I could remember of that was a school bus and a big hole in the ground.

But lately, here and there, I kept coming across comments by people online who referenced the show in surprisingly positive tones. Again and again I read these almost reverential comments, so of course, being the curious sort that I am, I started to wonder what all the fuss was about.

So one day I figured I'd see if I could get hold of the first season and check it out. Can you say "hooked" boys and girls? From the very first episode I couldn't get enough.

Buffy was really good TV. I mean REALLY good. I'm no TV critic, so I can't comment on what exactly it was that made it so good. Websites I browsed on the subject said stuff about metaphors and lofty things like homages to other tv shows, movies and literature. Of course, those guys are getting paid to write stuff like that. I'm just a simple consumer of goods, in this case the goods being a TV show.

What I can say is that, in my opinion, it was far and away the characters that made the show such a huge success and such a favourite of my own. You just can't fake that. There's got to be such an incredible rush when you know you have great writing, you've got an incredible director and then, like manna from heaven, you happen to find just exactly the right actors to play each role so that the whole thing becomes like a symphony, with every note played just exactly the way it should be. I cannot possibly imagine other actors playing any of those roles.

Well, except for Angel and, huge irony, Buffy herself. I never really "bought" Sarah Michelle Geller as Buffy or David Boreanaz as Angel (although he's much better in his own series). I'm not sure why I didn't like SMG as Buffy. Possibly it was as simple as the fact that whoever they hired to do her wardrobe in the first two seasons made her look more like a thirty-year-old real estate agent than a high-school student. It really was bizarre. Other than that, it's hard to put a finger on it. Maybe it was that she never really seemed to disappear into her role like all the other actors on the show did. She always seemed to be just an actor playing a role.

But getting back to the topic... If so many smart people think television is an intellectual black hole with no redeeming value, why is it so popular? Surely television is just an extension of the storytelling tradition that stretches all the way back to antiquity, probably back further than language itself. People like to be told stories. People like to be presented with interesting, exciting, sympathetic characters and situations that let them escape their dull lives or even find some bit of inspiration or insight.

When done well, television can be art. No less than movies or novels or music. It can entertain and educate and move. No one who ever watched Alan Shore give a final summation on Boston Legal could have gone to bed without a few deep thoughts in their heads. Hugh Laurie's House has said some Big Important Things too...things that need to be said, even though we're all gagged by (and choking on) Political Correctness. We let a fictional TV character say those difficult and sometimes painful things, because they really, really need to be said. And even when it's simply entertainment, no Big Topics, surely the tears I shed so many times throughout the Buffy series were signs that some kind of chemistry was taking place. Something was reaching me, the critical human part of me, not just the couch potato wasting time in the dark.

Or maybe it was just hormones.

TV Prediction

I've been following the TV show "Life on Mars." You've probably heard about it...it's about a present-day cop who gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. It's a good show. Some great characters, good writing, and Harvey Keitel as the sergeant and "Christoper" from the Sopranos as a fellow detective really elevate the show a few notches.

Along with the crime-of-the-week stories, there's the running story about how and why Sam Tyler went back in time...and how will he get back where he belongs?

Anyway...the show has been cancelled. So I have a prediction about how they're going to wrap things up and explain the time-travel mystery....

Sam is taking part (probably without his knowledge, cuz he's in a coma) in a high-tech investigation using groundbreaking new technology that allows people in certain states to "time-travel." He's gone back in time to gather information about a major unsolved crime. And when his handlers decide to bring him back to the present day and out of his coma, he'll give them information that will allow them to solve the crime (and maybe avert a huge disaster of some kind).

There you go. Place your bets people...we'll see how close - or not - I end up being.

TV: New Seriesgasm

Ok. Whoa.

I just happened across a webpage that has a link to a high-res torrent (instructions below) of the premier episode of a new series called Fringe, which is supposed to debut on TV in late August - Wikipedia says Tuesday, Aug. 26, but doesn't say which network. Uh oh...Tuesday...hope it doesn't conflict with Boston Legal!!!

But, about the episode: I was blown away, to say the least. It's a solid 1 hour and 20 minutes of TV deliciousness and I was riveted from the first moment to the last. Excellent writing, feature-film-quality cinematography and special effects, really likable (or hateful) characters and a grab-you-by the-balls-and-squeeze storyline. And not only that, but the producers are saying there will be half as many advertising minutes during the episodes (probably at twice the price to advertisers), so viewers will be getting a lot more bang for our buck... for a change.

Fringe is co-created by J.J. Abrams, our beloved Lost god, may he write forever, who also created Felicity and Alias. The show is so similar to X-Files in its premise that at first I thought it would simply be a rip-off of that sadly missed show and I almost dismissed it. But being a big fan of X-Files, I couldn't resist, and I'm glad I didn't.

Fringe follows the adventures of a female FBI agent named Olivia Dunham, a cute guy with a 190 IQ and the cute guy's even more brilliant, psycho (but lovable) dad as they chase down the nasty people who are doing all kinds of strange and terrible things to unsuspecting folks. Where X-Files dealt with the paranormal, Fringe deals with technology run rampant...with essentially the same results. And like Lost and X-Files, Fringe promises to have its own mythology, meaning it will have a cultish following in no time flat (Cigarette Smoking Man is now a redhead with a bionic arm). It'll probably have one even before the series premiers if enough people get hold of that torrent.

In the premier, Olivia is sent to investigate the deaths of an entire planeload of people from some mysterious toxin that melted the skin off their bodies faster than they could say "hey, what the...??" WARNING: At minute 2:36 turn away from the screen if you don't want to witness perhaps the most hideous, gross, realistic and disturbing moment ever on film. It had me shuddering and cringing for five minutes -- and I'm not the squeamish type! Just for you, I had to watch it three more times to figure out exactly where it was so I could warn you! Yeah...I love ya that much. brrrrr

Olivia's partner in the investigation is her secret boyfriend -- another FBI agent played by Mark Valley, from Boston Legal. Something about him just yelled "red shirt!" at me as soon as I saw him, and sure enough, buddy-boy gets creamed in an explosion, resulting in a truly horrific - but fascinating - skin condition which will kill him in 24 hours if Olivia doesn't figure out the mystery and help psycho-dad find the cure.

After tricking us with about six false endings, the show finally ends for real with a truly X-Filesesque teaser that will surely have new fans flocking to their TVs for the second episode and beyond.

There's some truly great TV on these days and this one may well turn out to be one of the best. That is, if it doesn't turn into a predictable, repetitive bore like some initially promising shows do. We'll hope for the best for this one.

So...as promised:

How to use torrents:
--First, download BitComet here (or another torrent client of your choice) and follow the installation instructions.

-- Once BitComet is installed you can find torrents all over the place. My favourite site is mininova.org, but in this case, the torrent is on the site linked to at the top of this entry. Click the link to download the torrent. Your browser will open a dialogue box asking if you want to open the file or save it to disk. Select Open, and choose BitComet as the default application to use with this filetype.

-- When you click OK, BitTorrent will boot up and present you with a list of files to be downloaded. I always just select them all (that's the default anyway) and then let BitComet do its thing. How long it takes to download a file will depend on how big it is (feature length movies are typically between 700-800 megs), how fast your Internet connection is, and how many people are "seeding" it...in other words, how many people out there are sharing the file. The more seeders there are, the faster you can expect your download to go. The "Fringe" episode above is 699 megabytes and took between 90 minutes and two hours to download...that was a very fast download for a movie. I've had movies take three days to download. You just have to be patient.

-- Once BitComet has finished downloading the file, find it on your computer (my copy placed a "Downloads" folder in my My Computer inside Local Disk (:C) where it places all the files I download...but there may be a preference setting in BitComet where you can specify your own download location.) Then you can just open it up with your whichever program you prefer for the filetype. For movies, I use VLC Media Player. I've never had it choke on a movie, like Windows Media Player does all the time.

-- Note: Occasionally a torrent will download as many different pieces (like, a couple dozen) inside a single folder, even though it's only one movie you've downloaded. I've found that if I open the first piece that's similar to many of the other pieces in the folder, that will usually play the whole movie (that may sound arcane, but you'll understand what I mean when you see it). Also, some Torrents will download as archived files...you'll need a program called WinRar to unarchive that file to get at the movie or music you want.

-- If you want to try downloading torrents but need a little hand-holding, let me know. I'll walk you through it via Yahoo Messenger or some-such.

Now...go download that torrent and watch it! You'll love it! Just turn away at 2:36!

The frog in the pan

You've probably heard the old saw... put a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will jump out and hop away. Put a frog in a pot of cold water and gradually bring it to a boil and the frog will stay in the pot until it dies.

When it comes to Reality TV, I think we've become the frog in the pot of cold water.

I don't make a secret of the fact that I enjoy certain reality shows on TV. Not all of them, but the ones I like, I really like. Kinda like Alexander Keith's (that's a Canadian beer slogan for readers outside Canada). I love love love Big Brother. It's my favourite. I had given up on Survivor for a few years, but now I'm into it again (well, I was last season anyway...I missed the premier of the new season and will pick it up in episode two). I like The Apprentice, I've enjoyed what I've seen of The Week The Women Went.

But I've just come across a reality/game show that I think can only be described as deplorable. Loathsome. Inhumane. And the only reason anyone thinks it should be on TV, or that anyone could possibly want to watch it, is because we've been conditioned over the last eight years since the first Survivor, to tolerate increasing levels of inhumane and ridiculous behavior from both producers and contestants.

The show I'm referring to is called The Moment of Truth.

Essentially, before they go on the show, contestants take a lie detector test, answering several dozen questions about their personal lives. Then they go on the TV show and are asked a selection of the same questions...with their wives, children, parents etc. in the audience watching the whole thing. The point is to see how far people will go to win money by telling the truth, even if it hurts their loved ones, or even puts their livelihoods at risk.

The host...a no-name I've never seen before...seems to delight in rubbing salt in the wounds during the hard moments. He asks the contestant if he's ever resented his mother for how she's treated his wife. He answered - truthfully - that yes, he had. So the host turns to the mom and notes that she's crying and asks her if she's crying because of things her son has said or things he might say. It's about things he's said, she admits, wiping the tears away.

I mean...is that not cruel? Is it not bad enough that the poor idiot is willing to go on national TV and expose his shit-streaked underwear to the whole world? Does the host really need to turn to the family and poke his filthy little dagger into the wounds the contestant has just opened. Does he have to create that festering infection on top of the nastiness of the answers themselves?

This is sick. This is wrong. But, just like the American people who have swallowed the pestilential prick of the Patriot Act like it was a day-long lollipop, TV viewers seem to relish this show and are slurping at it like good little consumers.

And the final indignity of it is that, no matter what the true answer is, no matter how horrible, there comes a point where the contestant is either exposed as a liar or declines to answer, and is exposed anyway (for why would he decline if he was going to say something harmless?). It's the public torture of willing victims and it's sick.

I think we've just hit rock bottom as far as reality shows go. But the scary thing is... someone is probably, at this very moment, digging us an even deeper bottom.