the list of now

For many reasons that I am way too tired tonight to get into, this news does not make me happy:

A new incarnation of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” could be coming to the big screen.
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“Buffy” creator Joss Whedon isn’t involved and it’s not set up at a studio, but Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are working with original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, on what is being labeled a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel.
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While Whedon is the person most associated with “Buffy,” Kuzui and her Kuzui Enterprises have held onto the rights since the beginning, when she discovered the “Buffy” script from then-unknown Whedon. She developed the script while her husband put together the financing to make the 1992 movie, which was released by Fox.

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The new “Buffy” film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon, putting the parties in a similar situation faced by Paramount, J.J. Abrams and his crew when relaunching “Star Trek.”
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One of the underlying ideas of “Buffy” allows Vertigo and Kuzui to do just that: that each generation has its own vampire slayer to protect it. The goal would be to make a darker, event-sized movie that would, of course, have franchise potential.
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The parties are meeting with writers and hearing takes, and later will look for a home for the project. The producers do not rule out Whedon’s involvement but have not yet reached out to him.Speaking from Tokyo, Fran Kuzui said the company is constantly approached not only about sequels but theater, video games and foreign remakes for “Buffy.” When Vertigo’s Lee contacted them, they were intrigued.

To sum up my general gut reaction and feelings on the matter:  I don’t know how it could possibly turn out well.  AND I don’t see any reason to do this besides a potential quick dollar on the heels of many recent reboots and the success of Twilight with a ‘tween audience.   Not cool.

Outlook: Grumpy and pessimistic, with a slight chance of passing anger and pre-emptive judgment.

h/t:  Whedonesque

I promise I didn’t plan this.  Two days ago, I posted a top five list of my most memorable tv moments. (Just off the top of my head, I swear!  I make random lists for fun, it’s what I do.)   Just now, I found out that on the website for The 60th Primetime Emmy Awards, you can view clips and vote to pick the most memorable TV moments in history.  Quelle coincidence.

In their Comedy section:

• The Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan
• The Potato/Potatoes Episode of Murphy Brown,
  
• “The One Where Ross Finds Out” on Friends,
  
• The anniversary Cosby Show episode where they dance and lip-sync to Night Time is the Right Time. You can watch this whole scene here on you tube, if you’ve never seen it.  It’s so wonderful.
• The moment when Ellen came out on Ellen
• When Tom Cruise wouldn’t come out of the closet on the brilliant Scientology episode of South Park

… and several other gems from I Love Lucy, SNL, Sex and the City, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Seinfeld. I don’t know what I am going to vote for yet.  There are too many greats on there, including the unbelievable series finale to Newhart - and I wasn’t even a real fan of either of his shows, I was too young really to get it.   Nevertheless, that ending was seriously one of the most clever twists in television history.

I shall summarize for anyone who has no idea what I’m talking about, skip this part if you don’t care:

Bob Newhart had two very successful and completely unrelated television shows, one in the late 70′s set in Chicago and the following in the early 80′s set in an Inn in Vermont.  In the series finale to the latter, he woke up at the very end in bed with his wife from the first show, having had dreamt the ENTIRE second television show.  It ended with the themesong, set and credit-roll made to look like the first show.  It was a moment of comic genius and it doesn’t get anymore META than that  – especially not in sitcoms from the 80′s.  And we know how I appreciate the meta.   Well executed, Bob Newhart, well done there.

Oh! And he also gets points for Larry, Darryl and Darryl, whose silliness I adored as a child.

But I digress… where was I?  Oh yes.  And in Drama, these are some of the Emmy Most Memorable picks:

• When Buffy dies at the end of Season 5.
• The end of the Season 2 finale of LOST when Desmond turns the key.  (I actually think LOST has LOADS more memorable scenes then this one and I frankly don’t know why they picked this one.
• THE kiss on X-Files.   (The one that all us fankids waited and waited for)
• The Grey’s Anatomy moment from that amazing two-parter, with the guy who has explosives in his chest, when Meredith has to take her hands off of the bomb.

…and others from ER, The Sopranos, Star Trek and a bunch of others that – to be honest – I’m not so interested in.  I feel a little let down by their picks.  Dynasty? Really?

I find it strange that in my list, I selected nothing but drama.  But on the Emmy lists, I think their comedy picks provided a much better range.

My vote will either go to X-Files or Buffy. Technically, I would judge that kiss more deserving, but secretly, I really want to see the clip of Buffy get played at the damn Emmy awards.

Go watch and vote.

Side rant:  TV quality was such total crap in the 80′s.  What happened there?  The clips from the 60′s look better than the late 70′s and 80′s.

I often think about being a teenager in the 90′s and am grateful for getting to experience the pop culture of that decade at that time in my life.   When I think about the television programming at that time, I remember three networks most distinctly:

1. A bold, original and culturally reflective voice in MTV (Back when there were music videos playing almost all the time, and the Real World had principles... oops I mean a real mix of interesting intelligent sober people who weren’t all in college! Remember that?)

2.  The new face of cable vs networks with the amazingly fresh (and sometimes just addictive) Fox shows leading the way (The X-Files, The Simpsons, Party of Five, Beverly Hills 90210, In Living Color)

And last, but certainly not least:

3.  The WB.   Seriously, say the words “The New Tuesday on the WB” and I get a little misty eyed.  Home of Buffy and Gilmore Girls back in the day, the fangirl nostalgia and undying love I have for this network makes me able to forgive it, in retrospect, for putting shit like 7th Heaven on the air.   Because seriously, this was a network designed for demographics, almost exclusively.  Which yes, meant they wanted to make a lot of money off of teenage audiences, but it ALSO meant that they provided a home for shows that spoke to youth niches.  Not only teen programming, but well-written, smart television shows unlike the severely watered-down drivel that passes for teen programming on the Disney Channel these days.  Love it or hate it, melodramatic soap opera, Dawson’s Creek had a big vocabulary and featured some real issues.  Gilmore Girls was secretly a masterpiece of character-study, with amazing, relatable characters and extremely sharp dialogue masquerading as family drama.  Even 7th Heaven, which I severely struggle to say anything nice about, was well executed to meet the needs of a very specific target demographic.  Even if I don’t relate to that demographic, it did well with what it was attempting to do.  And I don’t need to tell you how I feel about Buffy. (I don’t have space to go there in this blog post).

This is not a mere trip down memory lane.  We are discussing this today, because today the new all-streaming online television website goes live!

The WB

(Yay!)  It has games.  It has a blog.  It has options for personalizing your experience, like creating your own channel (a la youtube), playlists and remixes of clips.  And most importantly, it has the shows! Buffy, Gilmore Girls, Angel, Veronica Mars -and bonus- Firefly (!!?!?!?) are available for streaming full episodes.

Right now it is in beta and the amount of shows from each series are limited.  The blog says that each show will have updates every Monday and I don’t know if that means that the episodes will continue to be available or cycle through the seasons.  Regardless, I will be watching.

I am a big fan of how the internet is being utilized to offer free access and exposure in more and more mediums.  There is such quality out there in film and television streaming, alternative news, public radio,  downloadable podcasts, albums, and books.   I love that the internet increasingly provides alternatives to the many things consumers get overcharged for, like excessive cable packages or overdue rental fees for movies at Blockbuster.

Now I know that Warner Brothers is a massive media conglomerate.  I’m not naive enough to think they are doing this as part of some open-source cultural revolution.  I also know some of these shows were already available on Hulu.com.  What is notable about this (other than my 90′s nostalgia love fest), is that it is another tv network going online and I believe this is very important in the future of media.

What they (and all the other networks offering free streaming of past and current shows) are doing, in effect is empowering the consumer with more options.  It is allowing us to be more choosy with our money, our time and our entertainment.

I am the only person I know with basic cable.  I don’t need 300 extra channels.  Soon, I may not even need the 70 or so that I have, because everything I will want to watch will be on my computer and able to hookup and stream from computer to tv.   That is money saved, tv watching on my schedule and not supporting the monopoly that is the ONE cable company in my region to offer me service (and charge whatever damn prices they please).  And that is without having to buy more “stuff”: no tivo, no dvd set, just the shows I enjoy watching available for free.  Fantastic!

Introduction:  I was going to make a list of my favorite episodes of television ever, but that is too long a list and I find myself stuck between what I think are the best episodes and what are my favorites.  That isn’t always the same thing and I’m aware of that.  So instead, here are my top “moments” ranked… these are the moments that stick out for me.

This does not speak for other fans, or my generation or any kind of demographic.  Everyone should have their own list here of those connecting moments, the kind that remind us, even years later, why we would choose to follow a television show, week after week.  These matter to us and become a part of our bank of cultural reference.  Personally, it’s how (and why) I engage… even though at times, I haven’t felt like TV is something worth engaging in.   Here are my (very personal) top five and why they are memorable to me.

5.  My So-Called Life – “Self-Esteem”

The moment: The end of the episode, when Jordan Catalano takes Angela’s hand and walks down the hallway.

This is the ultimate teenage romance moment.  Trapped in the angst bubble that is her narrative, Angela is getting to make out with Jordan but can’t enjoy it because he’s hiding their relationship from his friends.  She finally has him… kinda… and doesn’t realize yet that he doesn’t really have the mystery, he’s just a pretty pothead with not a lot going on. The characters are flawed and their relationship is full of deliciously realistic hits and misses.  Does this moment change everything?  By all the rules of teenage melodrama, it should.  But it doesn’t and that makes it all the more wonderful.  An isolated simple moment of validation and chemistry and hope.

4. Firefly – “Safe”

The moment: When Simon finds River dancing.

The perfectly joyful, worryless moment of River dancing and the reassured look on Simon’s face when he finds that she is ok.  In that moment, the viewer realizes that we are truly getting to see RIVER, free of the entire world of mental illness and danger that she had been given.  Then we get to see Simon watch her, knowing that he hasn’t really seen his sister in a long long time… and suddenly there she is, dancing and happy.  He gets that moment and we, as viewers, do too.  It’s a transformative moment, an interruption into the panic of Firefly’s capers and bleakness of River’s condition.  It’s perfectly filmed, directed and acted by Summer Glau and Sean Maher (the latter of which I generally find unremarkable).   This moment makes me cry, every time.

3.  Carnivale – “Pick a Number”

The moment: When Samson goes back to Babylon and shoots the bartender.

Carnivale was a series defined by gut-churning reveal moments.  To be honest, I had a difficult time picking just one from this series (and a close follow-up would be the big Sophie reveal moment close to the end of the second season – if you’ve watched the show, you know what I’m talking about).  So why did I pick this one?  Well… the most memorable episode in this series and one of the most perfect, was the heartbreaking “Babylon” – what I always fail to remember, is that the emotional “gotcha” from this episode is actually in the follow-up, “Pick a Number”.

After one of their own is kidnapped and murdered by the men from the mysterious town of Babylon, they hold a trial for their own kind of justice.  When that fails to punish anyone for the crime, Samson goes back to Babylon and shoots the only man he can hold accountable.  It is a moment with a strange sense of perfect justice, on a show where there is a disorienting sense of chaos and fatalism, battling it out around these characters’ lives.  And then, on his way out of the town, he sees the murdered girl staring out of a window… the new “whore of Babylon”, trapped there forever.  It doesn’t really get more horrifyingly bleak than that.

2.  LOST – “A Tale of Two Cities”

The moment – The first few minutes of the episode (and the season) when it is revealed where “the Others” live.

By this point in the series, we already knew that “the others” definitely did not live in muddy huts and wear rags.  There was something else going on, to be sure, but nothing had really prepared me the perfect little suburbia that was revealed in these first few minutes.  This is quite possibly the most brilliant series-arc-changing “reveal” that I’ve ever seen in a television show.  In the first three seconds we are introduced to Juliet, and then her conflict with Ben and THEN the moment expanded to further reveal that we were not seeing them presently, but in the minutes preceeding the plane crash?  The best plot moments are when “No-fucking-way!” is followed by “Oh my god, of COURSE…” and this was a doozy.

1.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer – “Becoming: Part Two”

The moment: Angel’s soul is restored, just before Buffy needs to kill him and send him through a portal to hell… and she does it anyway to save the world.

It’s the end of a truly spectacular season of television.  Many people disagree, but I think the second season of Buffy might have the best single-season arc ever.  It’s just so tight, on ALL levels.  From a stellar ensemble of characters, David Boreanz emerges as a considerable scene-stealer (in my opinion playing “evil Angelus” so much more compellingly than he does “tortured Angel”).   Buffy’s new love turns into an incredibly frightening, sociopathic enemy and their ongoing face-off rattles through the entire season like a fucking freight train, straight up until their last battle – a swordfight.  It’s both epic and strangely civilized, while Buffy tries to delay the moment where she needs to let go of her love, to let go of her hope for his soul.  And she does… she pushes through his insults and his evil and her own doubts to do what she needs to do.   I am not exaggerating when I say that when I watched this scene for the first time, a total emotional “loss of breath” occurred in the moment when I saw his soul restored (and I know I’m not the only one).  The next few minutes were so deeply sorrowful, I can’t really even talk or think about this scene without feeling it.  Not remembering it – feeling it, as engaged and distraught as my 17 year old self was then.

This is number one, because this was first time, watching television, that my snide inner-critic failed in convincing me that it was “just a tv show” and it stopped feeling silly to care so much.  The first time when  television had the same connective power for me, as my beloved books and art and other “higher” mediums.

There really isn’t anything more to say about the kind of gift that is, in any written or visual form of storytelling.   Even TV.

Note: I’m always fascinated to know what would be on other people’s lists.  So please leave one if you comment.  Thank you!

Hey, do you know what I love?  Buffy.  Firefly. and also LOST.

You know what’s great?

Joss Whedon (who’s responsible for so many favorite-favorites, it’s not worth listing)

AND

Drew Goddard (who I credit with saving a lot of face for Buffy in the 7th season, AND is responsible for writing an awful lot of the brilliance that was LOST in the 3rd and 4th seasons)

together wrote a new thriller called A Cabin in the Woods. It just got the green light from MGM, with Whedon producing and Goddard directing.

The good word via We Are Movie Geeks.   Go read more details there, because I’m sleepy and don’t feel like writing more.  (and they do such a killer job there)

I am going to be all over this.  If anyone sneezes the word Cabin between now and it’s release, I will post about it.  As soon as I catch up on some sleep.