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Posts tagged as “Lost”

You're leaking coolant at an alarming rate

While we’re on the Wired subject, or not, as well as Internet, here is another small article about leaked pilots on the Interweb.
What interested me in this article is that, as usual, the people behind the article like to hide behind “torrent-tracking sites” to speak of illegal file sharing, when it’s obvious that they have, like all of us, downloaded shows at least once in their lives. After all, the article is from Wired!
I mean if you go to any torrent website, you’ve known damn well for over a month now that pilots, like Fringe, have been leaked; hell, there’s even some talk that J.J. himself leaked the pilot!
“The number of leaked pilots and shows is always increasing”
Thank you mister obvious. I don’t need a torrent expert to tell me that, I’ll just open my eyes.
Let’s not pretend that we’re all good little boy scouts that have never ever illegally downloaded something and also never heard of torrent websites.
Yes, “society” (and suits) frown upon downloading but if you go download illegal stuff on the net, at least have the guts to admit it instead of pretending you don’t know pilots have been leaked for over a month.

And also, let’s be honest, if it was not for pirating and Internet, Lost and Heroes would not have been huge phenomenon.
Last year, months before TF1 premiered Heroes in France, there was something called the Heroes World Tour, where the cast travelled through several cities to promote the show.
One of those stop was Paris.
I wanted to meet Jack Coleman and I knew that Heroes was very popular here in France. Keep in mind that the HWT was months before the show even premiered for the first time ever on French TV. Despite that, hundreds (if not thousands?) of people formed a giant queue in front of where the cast was supposed to show up. Long story short, I unfortunately was not able to meet Coleman (too much people in line, despite me having arrived with friends at 8AM – the signing was during the evening).
Obviously everyone of them had downloaded and watched the show beforehand.

So yes, downloading greatly helps a show nowadays and helps build its reputation.
Let’s face the future and acknowledge that the illegal leaking of shows helps build a fanbase instead of destroying one.

The Dark Hero

The Dark Hero

I finally saw last night The Dark Knight.

I had not a lot to do yesterday actually.
I went to that American bookstore. I was disapointed by the small choice of books they had. W.H. Smith is so much better if you ever need an anglophone bookstore in Paris.
I bought a book I’ve been wanting to read for a long time now, The Road by Cormy McCarthy (you know, the guy that wrote No Country for Old Men).
I went over to the movie theatre to see when TDK was showing… I had 2 hours to kill.
Long story short I came back to the theatre over an hour before TDK was supposed to be shown. I bought my ticket (7 euros/11 dollars, ouch) and waited in front of the movie theatre. 20 minutes later, a dozen of people had already morphed into somewhat of a queue in front of the movie theatre. We were fortunately allowed to wait inside. Half an hour later, the queue had grown to over 200 people.
It should be noted that TDK just came out yesterday here in France.
I think there were even more people waiting to see a “normal” screening of TDK than there was for the premiere of Cloverfield I went to the day before it came out!

I came out of the theatre ecstatic.
It was amazing!

But why I am talking about that now?
Well for once because I might become amnesiac.
And more importantly because, yet again, it got me thinking. Yes, I think about stuff, deal with it.

It especially got me thinking about a post I read a while back about (super)heroes and their flaws.
I believe TDK correlates directly to that idea, especially for both Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent.
To make a hero believable, we need him/her to be flawed. We need him/her to have limits. We need him/her to be vincible.
Bruce Wayne is a human that becomes a vigilante at night. But he is still a human behind his (too-much-technologically-advanced) suit. This is reminded to us early on in the movie when he is bit by a rottweiler (physical failing).

What is interesting to see is that Bruce Wayne can be faillible as a human (at least to the audience) but Batman, the facade, must be invincible. The emotional failing that is Rachel towards Bruce Wayne is absent in Batman (I’m talking here in the POV of the Gotham people, not the audience), to avoid an obvious correlation between the two, and therefore Batman’s identity being revealed. The Joker quickly finds the emotional weak spot of Batman/Wayne and exploits it brilliantly when he forces Batman/Wayne to make a choice between the woman he loves (Rachel) or “a greater good” (Dent). Knowing that Batman/Wayne will choose Rachel instead of Dent, the Joker “mixes up” the address, leading Batman/Wayne to save Dent (the Joker’s “Ace”).
The hero ultimately overcomes his personal failures and realizes that the facade must become a scapegoat in order for the legacy of Dent to continue. This realisation incidently is induced by Lucius Fox’s comments (in the role of the mentor).
On the other hand, we have Harvey Dent. Unlike the “superhero”, he doesn’t overcome his flaws and therefore becomes a villain. Like Bruce Wayne, this white knight has problems of his own; after all, he is also human. He is a hero to Gotham City as well as Batman’s glimmer of hope for a normal life, but his nobleness is actually a facade as well, as he is easily manipulated towards his other flaw (besides Rachel), that is “the luck of the draw”. Like Batman, he relies on what he believes in, although when what he loves is taken away from him, unlike Batman, he goes beyond his values and is consumed by vengeance, therefore becoming what he was fighting against all along.

Examples of flawed heroes (and therefore believable heroes) can be found now everywhere in fiction:
Tony Stark must overcome his physical problems to become what he wants to be.
The next volume of Heroes, Villains, will most likely delve into the dark side of some of the heroes.
The James Bond franchise successfully reinvented itself by giving Bond real flaws that could be really exploited by his ennemies. This will be directly seen in the next Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, when Bond, for the first time impacted by the events that have transpired in the previous movie, goes in a blood-filled quest for vengeance (the trailer says it all).
Buffy “The Slayer” Summers is also a faillible hero that goes to “dark places” in seasons 5 and 6.
Willow Rosenberg can be compared to Harvey Dent, especially at the end of season 6. When they both lost their loved ones, they both went to the only refuge and haven that was left for them: magic for one, luck for the other.

In a realistic setting, the line between a hero and a villain is ultimately a small one. A flawed hero can easily be tempted to “cross the line”.
Those flaws is what helps us identify to our heroes.

Why I hate French “television”

Why I hate French “television”

As I posted previously, I love TV (mostly anglophone TV), but I loathe French TV.
The two must not be confused as they are not the same thing, although it might be confusing at times.
There are virtually millions of reasons why I hate French TV but here are a few (beware, long post ahead):

Dubbing

I hate dubbing. This is the worst invention ever made.
A few people ask me why I hate dubbing so much.
I mean, seriously?

If you know how to read, there is no reason why you shouldn’t watch everything in its original version.
Take Oldboy for instance. I do not know Korean, yet every time I watched this movie, I watched it non-dubbed (with of course subtitles). Not only that but it’s one of my favorite movies (along with Children of Men and Fight Club).

Dubbing supresses the essence of the dialogue and everything around it. You may get what the content of the dialogue is about, but you won’t get what it is about really, who it is about. Let alone all the other aspects such as the actor’s intonation, accent, etc.
The same goes for books in my opinion. If you know the language in which the book was written, no reason to read the translation. It also makes for a great exercise for people who want to hone their reading skills.

People are studying Shakespeare in French classes here. Yes, you read me right.

As for the link between dubbing and French television is simple: it’s the same thing basically, everything non-French is dubbed, you don’t have a choice.

Rip-off

A)”Adaptation”

Okay, this is technically not a rip-off as they payed for the use of the format. But in my view it is rip-off in that it litteraly rips-off the essence of the show and the result is a dumbed down, pointless version.

Let’s take Survivor for example. Yes, I like Survivor. I don’t consider myself a “reality TV buff” but I also don’t consider Survivor to be really “reality TV”. For me it’s more of a survival gameshow than anything else. This is a long debate in itself but I dislike putting shows in certain boxes when its actually more grey than this.
So, as I was saying.
Survivor (which ironically is a loose adaptation of a Swedish program -this post is a bash on French TV, I love everything else mind you-) is a game where its tagline resumes what the show is about: Outwit, outplay, outlast.

Now take the French version, Koh-Lanta. One of the main difference is an episode length, while the US version is about 40-45 minutes long, the French version is at least double that, and that is for every episode.
Yes, here in France everything is supersized. All the French “TV shows” are actually 90 minutes long, and all the prime-time shows are 2 hours (with commercial).
This also leads to channels showing 2 x 3-4 episodes of US TV Shows in a single night!

In Survivor you have twists and turns, it’s real drama that (again, in my opinion) could sometimes be compared loosely to a TV Drama.
On the other hand we have Koh-Lanta, no twists, with rules quite unclear, poor choice of candidates, and challenges that repeat themselves from season to season. The choice in scenery is also disapointing.

I could go on and on and on again about that, but let’s go to the real rip-offs.

B) Copycat

Sometimes they also just produce shows that are really rip-offs.
For instance C.S.I.
I’m not a big fan of C.S.I. but it’s successful, so what the hell.
We have our own little C.S.I., it’s called R.I.S.
It’s based on an Italian TV show of the same name and the similarities to C.S.I. are endless.
Although there’s one main difference, each season is basically comprised of 5-8 episodes of 90 minutes long.
That’s the French format for you.

Useless(ness)

Here in France, it seems no one has any original ideas. I mean seriously, our most successful “TV Show” (this is not the right term when talking about the content on French television) is probably Julie Lescaut. If you go on the IMDb you can see for yourself that this show started way back in 1992. Before Friends, E.R. and X-Files!
And it’s still alive.
Yet again, the seasons have 5-8 episodes of 90 minutes long. We have tons of shows like Julie Lescaut, and I do mean like Julie Lescaut, in every sense of the word. Same stories, same format, same concept.
Totally unoriginal. And it’s been forever.

Last but not least my personal favorite:
The remote control
The TV channels

FOX is known to be an awful network, but we got them beat: Meet TF1.
Just to give you a glimpse at the sadistically commercial nature of the channel, let’s have a look at a 2004 now-very-famous quote from the now-ex CEO of TF1 (Patrick Le Lay):
“Notre boulot, c’est de vendre à Coca-Cola du temps de cerveau humain disponible“
Which very rougly translates to:
“Our job is to sell Coca-Cola available time from the human brain.“
Yes, he said that.
My main problem is not the fact that he said that, after all it’s really every network’s job to sell advert, my problem lies with the fact that to acheive said job, TF1 (and M6, among others) use, as we saw today, programs of very poor quality, unoriginal, and redundant.
They surround crappy ads with crappy programs.

There is also the problem of how the TV channels treat shows, and that is partially linked to the CSA (the French FCC if you will).
Let’s take 24 for instance. I understand how several episodes are hard to watch, lots of violence, etc.
So it’s forbidden to people under 16 (basically TV MA).
Okay… Now what?
Not enough?
Okay, let’s put the show at 1AM (we’re talking new episodes here).
Still not enough?
Okay, let’s censure half the episode.
Yes they do that, for a TV MA show broadcasted at 1AM.
And that is 24.
They have also done that for Heroes and Lost.

Absolutely no respect for the viewer nor programs not made by them.

And that was why I hate French television.