Come Monday, AT&T will begin restricting more than 16 million broadband users based on the amount of data they use in a month. The No. 2 carrier’s entry into the broadband-cap club means that a majority of U.S. broadband users will now be subject to limits on how much they can do online or risk extra charges as ugly as video store late fees.
AT&T’s new limits — 150 GB for DSL subscribers and 250 GB for UVerse users (a mix of fiber and DSL) — come as users are increasingly turning to online video such as Hulu and Netflix on-demand streaming service instead of paying for cable.
With the change, AT&T joins Comcast and numerous small ISPs in putting a price on a fixed amount of internet usage. It’s a complete abandonment of the unlimited plans which turned the internet into a global behemoth after the slow-growth dial-up days, when customers were charged by the minute and thus accessed the internet as sparingly as possible.
Comcast’s limit, put into place after it got caught secretly throttling peer-to-peer traffic, is 250 GB — which the company says less than 99 percent of users hit. AT&T plans to charge users an extra $10 per month if they cross the cap, a fee that recurs for each 50 GBs a user goes over the cap. And while 150 GB and 250 GB per month might seem like a lot, if you have a household with kids or roommates, it’s not too difficult to approach those limits using today’s services, even without heavy BitTorrent usage.
(For those not accustomed to calculating their bandwidth usage, video streaming and online gaming use much more bandwidth than web browsing or e-mailing. For instance, Netflix ranges from .3 GB per hour to 1.0 for normal resolution movies and up to 2.3 GB per hour for HD content.)
And it should noted that U.S. limits are far from the world’s worst: Canada’s recently imposed restrictions prompted Netflix to give customers there a choice of lower-quality streams to keep their usage down, because users are charged up to $5 per GB that they exceed their cap. Caps are also worse in Australia.
But for the nation which has been key to a wildly expanding internet, the changing tide is both a practical and cultural letdown.
The drive to cap usage is ostensibly a way to reduce costs. But in reality, it’s not about the cost of data – bandwidth costs are extremely low and keep falling. Time Warner Cable brought in $1.13 billion in revenue from broadband customers in the first three months of 2011, while spending only $36 million for bandwidth — a mere 3 percent of the revenue. Time Warner Cable doesn’t currently impose bandwidth caps or metering on its customers — though they have reserved the right to do so — after the company’s disastrous trial of absurdly low limits in 2009 sparked an immediate backlash from customers and from D.C. politicians.
The real problem ISPs want to fix is congestion due to limited infrastructure. Cable customers share what are known as local loops, and the more that your neighbors use their connection, the less bandwidth is available to you — a situation that becomes painfully clear in the evening, when cable users see their throughput fall.
The blunt-force approach of a bandwidth cap does have the advantage of making users think twice about streaming HD movies from Netflix. That is, perhaps not coincidentally, doubly to the advantage of most big ISPs, because they’d rather have you spending money on their video services than paying a third party. Bandwidth-intense services threaten to turn the likes of Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner Cable into utilities — a dependable business, but not one that has the huge profit margins these companies have come to enjoy.
Indeed, the question of who gets to write the rules about the internet’s pipes is the major bone of contention in the net neutrality debate, both for terrestrial and mobile data networks. When the new net neutrality rules go into effect, ISPs won’t be able to block their online video competition, but there’s no rule against doing that with bandwidth caps or tiered usage pricing.
Moreover, as we all move towards more and more cloud services, whether that’s for backups, music or movies, it’s worrisome that ISPs are more concerned about reining in their most dedicated customers in service of meeting Wall Street’s expectations. Instead, they should be taking the opportunity to dig up the streets to create fiber networks that will make us a nation that’s top in the world’s broadband-ranking chart, rather than a laggard.
The real solution is adding infrastructure at the local level, though an interim solution could entail metering data only during peak times, much as mobile-phone calling-minutes plans apply only during peak hours.
But, that just goes to show, yet again, that what’s good for the Street often doesn’t translate into what’s good for the country.
Illustration: What a broadband meter might look like. (Todd Barnard)
See Also:
- Consumer Group Asks Congress to Investigate Bandwidth Caps
- Time Warner Cable Earnings Refute Bandwidth Cap Economics
- AT&T Puts Broadband Users on Monthly Allowance
- Satellite Net Service Sued for Caps, Paltry Bandwidth
- Netflix Profit Up 88 Percent With Nearly as Many Users As Comcast
- Comcast Discloses Throttling Practices — BitTorrent Targeted
- Comcast Is Trying To Whack Netflix: Sen. Al Franken
- FCC Passes Compromise Net Neutrality Rules
Saturday, April 30, 2011
This Sucks. Shed a Tear: The Age of Broadband Caps Begins Monday | Epicenter
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Reviews are In: 'The Voice' is a Hit! | Extra
The Reviews are In: 'The Voice' is a Hit!
April 27, 2011 | TelevisionNBC's latest reality competition, "The Voice," seems to have struck a note with viewers.
The premiere was viewed by more than 11 million -- the highest ratings on NBC since the premiere of "Undercover Boss" after the 2010 Super Bowl, reports Billboard.com.
Reviews for the show, in which judges Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton must listen to auditioners before seeing them, have been mostly positive.
Zap2It.com says, "We're a bit spooked not only because we liked NBC's new reality singing competition, 'The Voice' so much, but because so many people we know also did."
People.com gushed, "It's hard to say what was more entertaining on the premiere of NBC's new singing competition, 'The Voice' -- the antics deployed by celebrity coaches Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton, or the singers with the dramatic back stories."
TVLine.com said, "'The Voice's' central conceit -- that its judges must turn their backs to auditioners, and decide based on singing ability alone whether to press a button and throw their hat in the ring as a potential mentor to said singer -- may be the truest way to find the next great radio sensation."
Watch "Extra's" interview with Aguilera on the set of the show!
"The Voice" airs Tuesdays at 9:00 PM on NBC.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
‘The Avengers’ assemble: Filming gets underway in New Mexico | Hero Complex – Los Angeles Times
Photo from the set of "The Avengers" (Zade Rosenthal/Marvel)
It’s a big day in the Marvel Universe — principal photography is now underway in Albuquerque, N.M., on “The Avengers,” the film that will bring together the super-heroes from four separate film franchises and, perhaps, launch a few new ones.
Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and the Hulk (Oscar-winner Mark Ruffalo, stepping in for the banished Edward Norton) will be joined by Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, reprising her slinky S.H.I.E.L.D. spy role from “Iron Man 2“) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner, who makes a cameo with his bows and arrows in “Thor,” which opens May 6) as well as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), the representatives of S.H.I.E.L.D., the secret-ops government agency that appears to be the glue holding much of the upcoming mythology in place. As expected, Tom Hiddleston from “Thor” will be the bad-guy Loki, which fits with the classic 1963 tale from the first issue of the Avengers comic book. The line-up of heroes here is different than theroster from that vintage first issue; Widow and Hawkeye weren’t on the scene yet, and two of the printed-page founding members, Wasp and Ant-Man, are (so far, at least) nowhere to be seen.
- Iron Man, Thor and Steve Rogers from “Avengers Prime” (Marvel Comics)
So director Joss Whedon, the man behind “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the woefully mistreated “Firefly,” is now at work with a large cast that will challenge even his signature affinity for group dynamic and dialogue. The biggest star on the set is the Downey, who took upstart Marvel Studios to dizzy heights with their first feature-film, “Iron Man” in 2008, and even higher with the 2010 sequel — the two films collectively brought home $1.2 billion in worldwide box office. It was that success, primarily, that has propelled Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige’s dream of delivering this unprecedented team-up film, and all eyes will be on the summer releaseses of “Thor” and “Captain America: the First Avenger” — if those characters don’t bring in heroic numbers on their own, the mood (and the story emphasis) on this new venture will be affected in interesting ways.
– Geoff Boucher
Here’s the Marvel press release:
Production has commenced today in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Marvel Studios’ highly anticipated movie “Marvel’s The Avengers,” directed by Joss Whedon (“Serenity”) from a screenplay by Whedon. The film will continue principal photography in Cleveland, Ohio and New York City. Robert Downey Jr. (“Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2”) returns as the iconic Tony Stark/Iron Man along with Chris Hemsworth (“Thor”) as Thor, Chris Evans (“Captain America: The First Avenger”) as Captain America, Jeremy Renner (“Thor,” “The Hurt Locker”) as Hawkeye, Mark Ruffalo (“The Kids Are Alright”) as Hulk, Scarlett Johansson (“Iron Man 2”) as Black Widow, Clark Gregg (“Iron Man,” “Thor”) as Agent Phil Coulson, and Samuel L. Jackson (“Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2”) as Nick Fury. Set for release in the US on May 4, 2012, “Marvel’s The Avengers” is the first feature to be fully owned, marketed and distributed by Disney, which acquired Marvel in 2009.Continuing the epic big-screen adventures started in “Iron Man,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” and “Captain America: The First Avenger,” “Marvel’s The Avengers” is the Super Hero team up of a lifetime. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as SHIELD, finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster.
Based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series, first published in 1963, “Marvel’s The Avengers” brings together the mightiest Super Hero characters as they all assemble together on screen for the first time. The star studded cast of Super Heroes will be joined by Cobie Smulders (“How I Met Your Mother) as Agent Maria Hill of SHIELD, as well as Tom Hiddleston (“Wallander”) and Stellan Skarsgård (“Angels & Demons,” “Mamma Mia!”) who will both reprise their respective roles as Loki and Professor Erik Selvig from the upcoming Marvel Studios’ feature “Thor.”
“Marvel’s The Avengers” is being produced by Marvel Studios’ President, Kevin Feige, and executive produced by Alan Fine, Stan Lee, Louis D’Esposito, Patty Whitcher, and Jon Favreau. Marvel Studios’ Jeremy Latcham and Victoria Alonso will co-produce.The creative production team also includes Oscar® nominated director of photography Seamus McGarvey (“Atonement”), production designer James Chinlund (“25th Hour”), Oscar winning costume designer Alexandra Byrne (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age”), Oscar winning visual effects supervisor Janek Sirrs (“Iron Man 2,” “The Matrix”), visual effects producer Susan Pickett (“Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2”), stunt coordinator R.A. Rondell (“Superman Returns”), and four-time Oscar nominated special effects supervisor Dan Sudick (“Iron Man,” “War of the Worlds”). The editors include Oscar nominated Paul Rubell (“Collateral”) and Jeffrey Ford (“Crazy Heart”).Marvel Studios most recently produced “Iron Man 2” which was released in theatres on May 7, 2010. The sequel to “Iron Man,” starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow as well as Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke, took the number one spot its first weekend with a domestic box office gross of $128.1 million. To date the film has earned over $620 million in worldwide box office receipts.In the summer of 2008, Marvel produced the summer blockbuster movies, “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk.” “Iron Man,” in which Robert Downey Jr. originally dons the Super Hero’s powerful armor alongside co-stars Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow, was released May 2, 2008 and was an immediate box office success. Garnering the number one position for two weeks in a row, the film brought in over $100 million its opening weekend and grossed over $571 million worldwide. On June 13, 2008, Marvel released “The Incredible Hulk” marking its second number one opener of that summer. The spectacular revival of the iconic green goliath grossed over $250 million in worldwide box office receipts.RECENT AND RELATED
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Saturday, April 23, 2011
Jeremy Renner is your new un-Bourne in The Bourne Legacy | Film | Newswire | The A.V. Club
After months of testing seemingly every hot young actor in Hollywood, Jeremy Renner has finally snagged the lead in the new, Matt Damon-less, Bourne-less The Bourne Legacy, taking the lead in the Tony Gilroy-directed spin-off. It’s the second major franchise that’s been handed down to Renner, as speculation persists that his upcoming role in the still-titled-that Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol means he’s being groomed to eventually replace Tom Cruise, once the latter’s ascension into a being of pure light and energy is complete.
While that’s officially still just a rumor, it definitely seems as though Renner is being set up to carry a whole new batch of Bourne films, even if they should probably be called something else eventually: He’ll play “an operative from a covert government program that is even more dangerous than the Treadstone brainwashing program that hatched Bourne”—and why would we ever return to following Bourne around knowing there’s someone out there doing stuff that’s even more dangerous? Anyway, between this, M:I4, and playing Hawkeye in The Avengers, it seems like nary a blockbuster action franchise will go forth in the next few years without some ration of Renner.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Foreign Box Office: 'Fast Five' Races Into the U.K., New Zealand and South Korea - The Hollywood Reporter
Universal’s Fast Five and Paramount/Marvel Studios’ Thor continued to draw stellar numbers in Australia on Friday, while Fast Five raced into the U.K., South Korea and New Zealand in high gear.
Fast Five has grossed north of $7 million in its first three days overseas in big win Universal. So far, it’s winning over Thor in Australia, pointing to the endearing appeal of the action franchise and a well-crafted worldwide marketing campaign.
Yet Thor also has good results to boast about for a new superhero entry, grossing $3 million on Thursday and Friday in Australia, substantially ahead—or 30%--of the $2.3 million grossed by Paramount and Marvel’s Iron Man in its first two days in Aussie.
Fast Five opens in the U.S. on April 29, along with a number of other key foreign markets.
Thor only plays in Australia this weekend, before making a major international push next weekend, followed by its North American launch on May 6.
Opening in previews in the U.K. on Thursday, and benefiting from a bank holiday, Fast Five grossed an estimated $2.1 million from 416 locations, coming in No. 1 for the day and claiming a 46% marketshare. It’s the best preview number ever for a Universal, and among the top eight of all time (beating out titles including The Bourne Ultimatum).
Fast Five opened in Korea No. 1, grossing $570,000, double the number of Fast & Furious.
Likewise, the pic opened No. 1 in New Zealand, grossing $260,000 from 55 locations for 40% marketshare.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Hulu is popular, but that wasn't the goal
Pioneering Internet television service Hulu recently celebrated its third anniversary in a fitting locale: under the roller coaster at the Santa Monica Pier.
Hulu has reached a dizzying level of popularity among users by offering easy and free online access to episodes of hit TV programs. But the site's soaring success has induced stomach-churning paroxysms for its owners, Walt Disney Co., News Corp. and NBCUniversal.
Now the website faces changes that could curtail its trove of offerings or require users to pay for episodes they currently watch for free. Once hailed as the networks' solution in taming the Internet, Hulu's stunning success is now undermining the very system it was designed to protect, forcing the site's owners to reconsider what Hulu should be.
"Technology is changing so fast, and, as a direct result, so is consumers' behavior," said Jordan Levin, chief executive of the TV and Internet studio Generate. "One of Hulu's problems was that it accelerated changes in behavior faster than the companies were prepared for."
As a result, Hulu's media owners — the corporate parents of ABC, Fox and NBC — are tussling with the site's entrepreneurial managers over opposing visions for the venture. The companies originally crafted the service as a way to control online distribution of their content. But by offering popular shows such as "Glee" and "Modern Family" online at no charge, the media companies fear they may be encouraging consumers to drop cable and satellite TV services, one of their chief sources of revenue.
Hulu's management, on the other hand, contends that the current strategy of reaching the widest possible audience on the free site will ultimately generate higher advertising revenue. They say revenue is expected to top $500 million this year, proof that its current emphasis is paying off.
In a short time, Hulu has exploded into one of the top Internet video destinations, defying skeptics who predicted that a service backed by such an unwieldy joint venture would never work. It now attracts some 27 million users every month, according to ComScore Video Metrix.
Jason Kilar, a former top executive at Amazon.com Inc. who was recruited to be CEO of Hulu because of his Internet know-how, has been chafing under the old-media company owners. He has proposed a restructuring that would give him greater autonomy, according to people familiar with the situation, who were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
According to these people, Kilar has been resisting efforts by Hulu's owners to institute fundamental changes, such as squeezing in additional commercials. A large part of Hulu's appeal has been its modest reliance upon commercials — only 3 1/2 minutes in a half-hour prime-time show, compared with eight minutes on TV. Advertisers like the lighter load because it makes their messages stand out. In the first quarter, Hulu attracted 289 advertisers, up about 50% from a year earlier.
The crux of the problem is that Hulu's ad sales are still dwarfed by some $30 billion annually in programming fees that pours into the media giants from cable, satellite and telecom providers. Those fees support the cost of producing content, and undercutting them by steering viewers away from TV and to the Internet would jeopardize the sturdiest financial leg of the TV industry.
Despite Hulu's ad surge, it's not enough to satisfy its media owners. The three entertainment companies each received less than $100 million in revenue from the service last year.
The issue, said Chris Allen, director of video innovation for ad agency Starcom, is whether Hulu is "generating enough revenue to make it a sustainable model."
To boost revenue and in a bid to capture the iPad and portable device market, Hulu began encouraging people last year to sign up for the $7.99-a-month subscription service Hulu Plus. The company recently said it was "on pace" to reach 1 million subscribers by the end of the year.
The media company owners, in another move to keep viewers choosing TV over the Internet for watching shows, have proposed delaying the availability of free episodes. At present, users can go to Hulu to watch episodes that aired the previous night on TV. But viewers may eventually have to wait weeks after the network airing to see the episode on Hulu.
Another decision looms. This summer, Hulu's exclusive rights to distribute ABC, Fox and NBC programming online begin to expire. The media companies have been dragging their feet on renewals until they resolve the questions surrounding the next iteration of Hulu.
Tensions between Kilar and key Hulu board members spilled over in February when Kilar laid out his vision for the future in a lengthy blog post. One entertainment industry veteran dubbed the missive Kilar's "Jerry Maguire letter," referring to the fictional sports agent played by Tom Cruise whose memo called on colleagues to stop being greedy and consider the welfare of clients.
"History has shown that incumbents tend to fight trends that challenge established ways and, in the process, lose focus on what matters most: customers," Kilar wrote. "Hulu is not burdened by that legacy."
The memo blindsided Hulu's directors, including Disney CEO Robert Iger and News Corp. President Chase Carey. People close to the executives said they were displeased about being taken to task so publicly.
Kilar, Iger and Carey declined to comment.
Much has changed since Hulu launched in 2008. The two executives who hired Kilar — former News Corp. President Peter Chernin and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Zucker — have exited their companies, leaving Kilar without his influential advocates. NBCUniversal has also been sidelined, forced to give up its voting rights in Hulu as a condition imposed by the government when it approved cable giant Comcast's takeover of NBC.
The recession also intervened by forcing advertisers to pull back, sending the networks scurrying to find new sources of revenue. The networks didn't have to go far: They began demanding that cable and satellite TV operators pay fees to carry the broadcast programming they previously were getting for free. Giving away those same shows for free on Hulu created a double standard.
Currently, ABC, Fox and NBC provide their shows to Hulu in exchange for 70% of the advertising, forgoing a cash fee for carriage. The media companies have discussed levying a programming fee on Hulu just as they do with cable operators.
"The rights given to Hulu were intended to be a head start, to get them on their feet," said one executive with knowledge of the situation, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "Now, the content owners feel that it's time to take the training wheels off and start to compete on another level."
The Hulu board has considered raising money to pay for more content, including original productions. But plans for an initial public offering were scuttled last fall because none of the owners were ready to cede control.
The disagreements suggest the site is in limbo.
"Jason Kilar has been trying to telegraph to the investment community that this pause in their business is not going to sink their business," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said. "But the delays could become fatal if the owners let things stall for another year or so. You can only keep people motivated for so long. Talented people will find another pasture to graze in."
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Women as partners in crime dramas
Veena Sud was tired of watching female cops in Louboutins chase down bad guys.
"In cop dramas, there's a preponderance of female cops who wear stilettos, and it drives me nuts," says the television writer and showrunner, a veteran of CBS' procedural "Cold Case." "I mean, I'm not showing up to work in a poodle skirt." So when Sud adapted the AMC series "The Killing," which is based on the Danish hit "Forbrydelsen" and was also a smash hit in the U.K., she decided that the heroine should wear sneakers. "It was like, let's take every cliché of female detectives and ground them in reality, right down to their shoes."
Fittingly, the first glimpse viewers get of Sarah Linden, the soft-spoken detective played by Mireille Enos, is a shot of her Asics as she goes for a morning jog along a tree-lined lake where, she'll soon discover, 17-year-old Rosie Larsen was murdered. Her footwear not only underscores the horror of this crime — that a teenager was tortured to death in a town so safe, the cops take time off to go running — it also says a lot about her character. A single mom who wears sensible shoes, Sarah seems like an ordinary woman, maybe because she was created by one.
Once viewed as an escapist fantasy for men, crime dramas are now attracting more women, as showrunners, characters and fans. Many of these shows are now written or executive produced by women, including Carol Mendelsohn, Ann Donahue and Pam Veasey of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "CSI: Miami" and "CSI: NY," Janet Tamaro and Tess Gerrittsen of "Rizzoli & Isles," and others joining Sud. Meanwhile, the clichés of the tough-talking, just-one-of-the-boys sidekick and the token hot lady cop trying to make it in a man's world have given way to more complex female leads, like Sarah Linden, Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson of "The Closer," and Jane Tennison of "Prime Suspect," the British procedural starring Helen Mirren that NBC plans to reboot in the fall. The audiences for these programs skew female too, partly because women generally watch more television than men.
Policewomen are taking over films and books too, with actress Kangana Ranaut playing a private investigator in the action movie "Game" and Detective D.D. Warren, the heroine of Lisa Gardner's "Love You More," inching up the bestseller list. But just because crime stories are getting more female-friendly doesn't mean crime dramas are getting any softer. You can still find a good old-fashioned grisly mutilation on television most nights of the week. "There's no feeling of 'Hey, we've got this female audience, so let's put a pot of flowers on the desk,'" says Sud. "Female audiences are capable of watching really tough, dark dramas as much as anybody else."
As the showrunner of "Criminal Minds," a series with a core audience of 35- to 40-year-old women, Ed Bernero believes that procedurals have started to appeal more to women as they've shifted away from lone-wolf protagonists. "When I was growing up, it was stuff like 'Mannix' and 'Rockford Files' where you had one man against the world," he says. "There was always this boy fantasy of 'I'm gonna be the hero.'"
Over the past few decades, with the rise of crime dramas such as "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "The Wire," ensemble casts have slowly replaced star vehicles. Even "The Killing" focuses less on Sarah Linden than on her interactions with the town and the effect of the murder on Rosie Larsen's family, her school, the local government and the police precinct. Bernero believes that to accommodate this ensemble model, TV police now tend to work in teams.
"That's more of a female way of problem-solving," he says. "Everyone's working together. Those shows are really about families. If they're done well, you can easily identify who the father is, who the mother is, who the sibling rivalries are between, and who's the younger sibling that everyone takes care of."
Mendelsohn has a different theory. Like Sud, she's one of many female showrunners hired by Jerry Bruckheimer's production team to work on "CSI" and other procedurals, but like Bruckheimer's production chief Jonathan Littman, she's also a veteran of "Melrose Place." When she first started on "CSI," she wondered whether female viewers were drawn to crime dramas for the same reason they were drawn to the soaps she'd worked on.
"I think there's a great romance to crime procedurals," she says. "They're all these good-looking guys, and a character like ['CSI' investigator] Gil Grissom, he'll protect you and put his arms around you if he has to deliver bad news. How heroic!" There's a reason, she says, that during the early days of "CSI," T-shirts sold in New York said "Feel safe at night, sleep with a cop."
More than a decade later, Mendelsohn thinks women don't feel that same need for protection — they can protect themselves. She believes that watching "CSI" has inspired many women to go into the forensics field and notes that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's forensics lab, the real-life inspiration behind the "CSI" franchise, boasts more female than male employees. (Indeed, a representative at the department confirmed that 32 out of 47 scientists in the forensics lab and 27 out of 55 crime-scene analysts are women.) And the wealth of strong-willed female characters on crime dramas reflects that change. "Now when you say, 'Feel safe at night, sleep with a cop,' you're talking about ['CSI' protagonists] Catherine Willows or Sara Sidle," says Mendelsohn.
You could also be talking about Sarah Linden. According to Sud, "The Killing's" strong, silent detective has already reached icon status overseas. "The woman who plays the lead detective in the Danish series has become this role model for Danish girls," she says, referring to the actress Sophie Gråbøl. "She's just this regular woman who is very driven and wears jeans and a sweater." In fact, Gråbøl recently told the Guardian that she chose to wear her own sweater in the series to show that her character didn't need to use her sexuality to get what she wanted; she was so sure of herself, she didn't even have to wear a suit.
Viewers picked up on that message: When the series aired in Europe, the Faroe Islands company that made the sweater couldn't keep up with demand from fans who wanted one of their own. "In today's Paris Hilton world," says Sud, "it's good to know that you can put a real woman out there and young girls will emulate her."
As traditional plot-oriented, action-driven procedurals give way to richer character studies such as "The Killing," there's room for more real women out there too. "There's more female characters who aren't cops in the traditional sense that they will shoot you," says Mendelsohn. "They have magnifying glasses and tweezers. As a woman, I find that empowering, because you don't have to be bigger than the suspect, you just have to be smarter than him." She laughs. "And don't we always think, as women, that we're smarter than men?"
Sunday, April 10, 2011
4 ways we're still fighting the Civil War - CNN.com
4 ways we're still fighting the Civil War
April 10, 2011 8:30 p.m. EDTSTORY HIGHLIGHTS
- The United States marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War
- Americans still argue over many issues that led to war, scholars say
- Scholar: "There are all of these weird parallels"
- Southern historian: Confederate leaders are American heroes
CNN -- He stood 5-foot-8 and weighed 145 pounds. His face was gaunt and sunburned. Ticks, fleas and lice covered his body.
Before battle, his lips would quiver and his body went numb. When the shooting started, some of his comrades burst into maniacal laughter. Others bit the throat and ears of their enemy. And some were shattered by shells so powerful that tufts of their hair stuck to rocks and trees.
Take a tour of a Civil War battlefield today, and it's difficult to connect the terrifying experience of an average Civil War soldier -- described above from various historical accounts -- with the tranquil historic sites where we now snap pictures today.
But you don't have to tour a battlefield to understand the Civil War. Look at today's headlines. As the nation commemorates the 150th anniversary of its deadliest war this week, some historians say we're still fighting over some of the same issues that fueled the Civil War.
"There are all of these weird parallels," says Stephanie McCurry, author of "Confederate Reckoning," a new book that examines why Southerners seceded and its effect on Southern women and slaves.
"When you hear charges today that the federal government is overreaching, and the idea that the Constitution recognized us as a league of sovereign states -- these were all part of the secessionist charges in 1860," she says.
"Living history" on Civil War battlefields
These "weird parallels" go beyond the familiar debates over what caused the war, slavery or states' rights. They extend to issues that seem to have nothing to do with the Civil War.
The shutdown of the federal government, war in Libya, the furor over the new health care law and Guantanamo Bay -- all have tentacles that reach back to the Civil War, historians say.
They point to four parallels:
The disappearance of the political center
If you think the culture wars are heated now, check out mid-19th century America. The Civil War took place during a period of pervasive piety when both North and South demonized one another with self-righteous, biblical language, one historian says.
One of the biggest debates during the Civil War was how far should governments go in dictating our lives. We still debate those politics.
--William Blair, Civil War historianThe war erupted not long after the "Second Great Awakening" sparked a national religious revival. Reform movements spread across the country. Thousands of Americans repented of their sins at frontier campfire meetings and readied themselves for the Second Coming.
They got war instead. Their moral certitude helped make it happen, says David Goldfield, author of "America Aflame," a new book that examines evangelical Christianity's impact on the war.
Goldfield says evangelical Christianity "poisoned the political process" because the American system of government depends on compromise and moderation, and evangelical religion abhors both because "how do you compromise with sin."
"By transforming political issues into moral causes, you raise the stakes of the conflict and you tend to demonize your opponents," Goldfield says.
Contemporary political rhetoric is filled with similar rhetoric. Opponents aren't just wrong -- they're sinners, Goldfield says.
"The erosion of the center in contemporary American politics is the most striking parallel between today and the time just before the Civil War," Goldfield says.
In the lead-up to the war, political campaigns were filled with religious fervor. Political parties paraded their piety and labeled opponents infidels.
"Today's government gridlock results, in part, from this religious mind set that many issues can be divided into good and evil and sin and salvation," he says.
A Union artillery crew poses before battle. Each side underestimated the opposing army, historians say.How much power should the federal government have?
Nullification, state's rights and secession. Those terms might sound like they're lifted from a Civil War history book, but they're actually making a comeback on the national stage today.
Since the rise of the Tea Party and debate over the new health care law, more Republican lawmakers have brandished those terms. Republican lawmakers in at least 11 states invoked nullification to thwart the new health care law, according to a recent USA Today article.
It was the kind of talk that led to the Civil War, historians say.
"One of the biggest debates during the Civil War was how far should governments go in dictating our lives. We still debate those politics," says William Blair, director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Pennsylvania State University.
The Southern answer to that question ignited the war. When they seceded, their leaders said that they were protecting the inherent rights of sovereign states. They invoked the 13 Colonies' fight for independence.
We wanted to be left alone. What actually caused the war was Lincoln's insistence that, no, we can't let these people go.
--H.W. Crocker III, Southern historianH.W. Crocker III, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War," says Southern secessionists were patriots reaffirming the Founding Father's belief that the Colonies were free and independent states.
"If the Southern states pulled out of the union today after, say, the election of Barack Obama, or some other big political issue like abortion, how many of us would think the appropriate reaction from the federal government would be to blockade Southern ports and send armies into Virginia?" Crocker asks.
He says men such as Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confederacy, are American heroes.
"Jefferson Davis was not trying to force anything on the people in the North," he says. "We wanted to be left alone. What actually caused the war is Lincoln's insistence that no, we can't let these people go."
Slavery caused the war, says McCurry, author of "Confederate Reckoning," and most historians.
Southern slaveholders invoked the Revolution while trying to build an antidemocratic slave state "dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal," McCurry says.
They also didn't want to lose the tremendous wealth generated by slave labor, she says.
"They felt confident because they were the biggest producers of cotton in the Western world at the height of the Industrial Revolution."
Unleashing the dogs of war
During the run-up to the Iraq War, former Vice President Dick Cheney famously declared that American troops would be welcomed as "liberators" in Iraq.
Cheney made the mistake that political leaders have been making for ages -- he didn't know the enemy, says Emory Thomas, author of "The Dogs of War," which examines how ignorance on both sides led to the Civil War.
"Cheney thought it was going to be France in 1944, but it ended up Georgia in 1864," Thomas says.
Civil War leaders made the same mistake, Thomas says. Northern leaders like Lincoln didn't really think ordinary Southerners who had no slaves would fight in defense of slavery. Southerners didn't think Northerners were willing to go to war to preserve the Union, he says.
And few on both sides expected the war to be so bloody and long.
"America in 1861 didn't realize what the hell they were doing," he says. "They just weren't willing to think of unpleasant possibilities."
We risk the same mistakes when we commit to "limited" military campaigns in places such as Iraq and, most recently, Libya, Thomas says.
When President Obama announced a limited air bombing campaign in Libya, Thomas thought about the political leaders before the Civil War.
Each incrementally committed to various military provocations, thinking events wouldn't spiral out of control. They were wrong.
"Once you commit to war, you don't have any control over how it ends," Thomas says. "It's amazing how that sounds like Libya now. We may blunder into success, but we don't know who these guys (Libyan rebels) are."
The battlefields are quiet and even tranquil today, but the average Civil War soldier faced horror and exhaustion.The president as dictator
Barack Obama isn't the first black president, according to some Southern secessionists. That would be Abraham Lincoln. He was called a "black Republican" and the "Great Dictator."
There a reason a large number of Americans despised Lincoln during the war. Think of the nation's recent "War on Terror." Some Americans thought Lincoln used the war to ignore the Constitution and expand the powers of the presidency.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus (it gives a person who is jailed the right to challenge their detention in court) during the war and used military courts to arrests thousands of civilians.
Those legal decisions loom over post-9/11 America, historians say.
How do we treat American citizens caught attempting to bomb U.S. cities? How do we clamp down on American citizens who preach overthrowing the government? What rights do Guantanamo Bay prisoners possess?
"It's not just what does a president do against an enemy," says Blair, the Civil War historian. "It's what do you do against your own citizens to determine loyalty. That's a big debate today."
Lincoln skillfully addressed that debate, says Brian McGinty, author of "Lincoln & the Court."
He says Lincoln confronted unprecedented problems: The South was in rebellion, the nation's capital was in real danger from rebels in Virginia and their sympathizers in Maryland.
At one point, a mob blocked passage of Northern troops through Maryland to defend Washington.
"His oath of office required him to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution' and he believed that the best way to do that was to preserve the Union," McGinty says. "What good would the Constitution be if the country itself was lost?"
McGinty doesn't think Lincoln became a dictator. He says he allowed the presidential election to take place in 1864. He worked with Congress. He asked military officers to arrest disloyal persons sparingly, and he never tolerated abuse of prisoners.
Lincoln said his actions would ultimately be subject to the review of the American people, not the courts, McGinty says.
"He called the people 'The Great Tribunal' and said that they would have the final word on constitutional issues. In the end, The Great Tribunal approved of what he had done. So, for the most part, has history."
The Great Tribunal, however, has yet to render a unanimous verdict on the Civil War.
A century-and-a-half after the war ended, people still clash over the causes and meaning.
Blair says they still clash because the war doesn't fit many Americans' image of themselves or their past.
"The American story of our past has been a hopeful, helpful narrative," he says. "But it's hard for us to understand that there was a time in this country when the Constitution protected slavery, and it was actually legal.
"How do you insert the story of slavery into that?"
Friday, April 8, 2011
Source: Budget deadline may be pushed back
| Washington (CNN) -- Budget negotiators are working on a proposal to keep the federal government open for another three days while Democratic and Republican leaders try to put together a broader deal this weekend, a senior Democratic source told CNN late Friday. The measure would not include any language on controversial topics like abortion, which has been an apparent sticking point, according to Democrats. But it is not clear, the source cautioned, that the plan could pass the House of Representatives and the Senate by midnight -- the deadline for keeping the government running and preventing a partial shutdown. The White House indicated earlier in the week that President Barack Obama could sign another short-term funding measure if negotiations on a broader package covering the rest of the fiscal year were making progress. Administration officials said Friday afternoon they were increasingly optimistic about the possibility of reaching an 11th-hour budget deal with the Republicans. There is a "good chance" that Obama will speak publicly about the crisis Friday night, a White House source said. The sudden burst of optimism came as top negotiators raced against the clock to cobble together a deal. The current spending authorization measure expires at the end of Friday. A shutdown would lead to furloughs for 800,000 government workers. A range of government services would halt, though essential services such as law enforcement would continue to function. Obama discussed the issue over the phone during the day with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, according to aides to both the president and the speaker. Anticipating a shutdown, Obama also canceled a planned weekend trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, with his family. As the talks moved ahead, however, leading politicians from both sides of the aisle continued to trade accusations about the cause of the standoff. Democrats said Republicans were hung up on abortion and other issues related to women's health. Republicans insisted that the size of spending reductions was still the main cause of the dispute. "This all deals with women's health. Everything (else) has been resolved. Everything," Reid said Friday morning. "It's an ideological battle. It has nothing to do with fiscal integrity in this country." "If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is ridiculous," he later added. Republicans have been pushing to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood during the budget talks. They are also trying to get federal dollars now set aside for family planning and women's health turned into block grants for states, according to a Democratic source. Such a move -- opposed by Democrats -- would give governors and state legislatures more ability to cut funding for services opposed by conservatives. "It's an opportunity for the right wing in the House (of Representatives) to really sock it to women," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. For his part, Boehner repeatedly disputed Reid's assertion that abortion is the key sticking point. "There's only one reason that we do not have an agreement as yet, and that issue is spending," the speaker said. "We're close to a resolution on policy issues, but I think the American people deserve to know: When will the White House and when will Senate Democrats get serious about cutting spending?" "Most of the policy issues have been dealt with," he later added. But "when (Republicans) say we're serious about cutting spending, we're damn serious about it." Boehner was surrounded by Republican women when he met with reporters -- an apparent reaction to Democratic claims. "We're facing an economic disaster," said Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Illinois. "We have to cut the spending. (It's) not about some other issue that those ... on the other side keep talking about." Reid insisted that negotiators have already agreed on a $38 billion cut from current spending levels for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends September 30. "The speaker is the one who came up with the number," Reid insisted. "We didn't invent it." GOP sources familiar with the talks confirmed Reid's assertion that the two sides had settled on a total of $38 billion, but sources in both parties cautioned that the total could still be raised or lowered a bit. The three-day extension being considered Friday night would be less controversial than the one passed by the GOP-controlled House on Thursday. That one-week measure, which passed 247-181 in a largely party-line vote, would fund the Pentagon for the remainder of the current fiscal year. But it also would slash federal spending by another $12 billion and included so-called "policy riders" that stipulate political and ideological restrictions related to abortion and other issues. Reid declared the short-term extension a "nonstarter," and the White House promised a veto if it reached Obama's desk. As a result, pressure continued to ratchet up on negotiators. Repeated meetings between Obama and congressional leaders over the past two days have failed to break the impasse. Publicly, the president said the mechanism of shutting down government operations had started in case a deal proves elusive, which he said would hurt federal workers, people who rely on government services and the nation's economic recovery. "For us to go backwards because Washington couldn't get its act together is unacceptable," Obama said. Top aides on both sides of the aisle have seemed increasingly resigned to the prospect of a shutdown. Congressional staffers began receiving their furlough notices Thursday afternoon. Employees deemed "essential" during a shutdown would still be able to work; those considered "nonessential" would not. Congressmen would continue to be paid in the event of a shutdown. Earlier this year, the House passed a bill that included $61 billion in cuts from current spending levels, but the measure was rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate. Two previous extensions of the government spending resolution have included $10 billion in cuts. Republicans, under pressure from the conservative Tea Party movement to reduce the size of government, blame Democrats for failing to pass a fiscal year 2011 budget last year when they controlled both congressional chambers. They also say Obama and his party are ignoring the peril of rising federal deficits and the national debt. Democrats say the $61 billion in spending cuts in the House bill would harm the nation's economic recovery and slash education and innovation programs essential for continued growth. The budget brinkmanship showed the political stakes of the situation, with both parties trying to depict the other as unwilling to do what's right for the country. Obama and Reid insist that Democrats have agreed to more than 50% of the spending cuts sought by Republicans, which they said should be sufficient for a compromise on a measure that has little overall effect on the deficit and debt issues. One of biggest obstacles to a deal involves whether reductions in mandatory spending programs, known in appropriations parlance as "changes in mandatory spending" or CHIMPS, should be part of spending cuts. Examples of mandatory spending programs include Pell Grants, the Children's Health Insurance Program and some types of highway funding. Such programs are funded for multiple years at a time, with the spending set for the time period covered, exempt from congressional authorization each year. Democratic sources have said they want about half the overall cuts in this spending bill to come from mandatory spending programs, and they have proposed the necessary reductions in programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Justice Department and the Treasury Department, and in Pell Grants. Republicans say that reducing the spending in a mandatory program for one year doesn't prevent the amount from returning to its original level the following year. CNN's Dana Bash, Deirdre Walsh, Ted Barrett, Kate Bolduan, Brianna Keilar, Terry Frieden, Ed Henry and Dan Lothian contributed to this report. |
Ellen Sterling: Going to the Movies: The Times They Are A-Changin'. Rapidly.
Movies are a business. Yes there are very famous, very attractive people involved in that business (more about them tomorrow) but, in the end, it's about producing movies, getting them in theaters and getting people into the theaters to see them. And, even though there are all sorts of stars at CinemaCon, as the annual meeting of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), the overriding concern is filling the theaters. Toward that end, there was a great deal of talk about the future, a future in which digital technology plays a huge role.
Former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd who nine days previously -- a fact he repeated often -- had assumed the role of Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) spoke about the state of the industry. His message was loud and clear: piracy is the biggest threat to the film industry in general and theater owners in particular.
He said, in part,
"Let me begin with the obvious: The production and exhibition industries cannot succeed -- cannot survive -- without each other. If you fail, we fail. And it's just as true that if we fail so will you."We've come a long way together in the century since the first screening of a feature length motion picture in Jacob Stern's horse barn in Hollywood, California on February 14, 1914. Cecil B. DeMille invited 45 people (all of whom had worked on the film) to view The Squaw Man, which he made for $15,000. This premiere, if you want to call it that, was a total disaster.
"In order to save some money, Mr. DeMille had purchased second-hand British equipment with ill-fitting sprockets, causing a technical malfunction that allowed the audience to only see the characters' hats, foreheads, boots and feet, and not much else. The economics of our industry have changed, of course, since that day in 1914. And, fortunately, so, too has the technology."
Dodd noted that, in 2009, the number of digital and 3D screens more than doubled and that one in five dollars spent at the box office now comes from 3D.
"I can't help but wonder what Cecile B. DeMille, Sam Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zucker and the rest of these [movie] pioneers would say if they could have been among the millions of moviegoers who marvel at the experience of seeing Avatar in a 3D theater."He spoke of movie theft, piracy, as the biggest threat to the industry, noting that people tend to see it as a victimless crime. He pledged to ask Congress for tighter intellectual property protection.
CinemaCon featured a panel with directors James Cameron and George Lucas, and DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Their discussion was called "Frankly Speaking; The Digital World of Filmmaking Today, Tomorrow and Beyond."Their message was simple: Digital filmmaking is in its infancy and what is coming in that field will make us all see movies in a different light. Lucas said, "Where we are in digital is like 1900. We're just scratching the surface."
Of the three panelists, it was Lucas who made the subject clearest to an audience of people not working daily with the technology. He said sound was the biggest technical advance in movies until digital technology came along and compared it to the difference in technology found in painting frescoes and oil painting, as the latter gave the artist much more freedom of expression and allowed the creation of art to evolve.
Lucas did say that the digital conversion of the Star Wars films cost more to achieve than the original cost to make.
Cameron talked about his long history of working in digital and 3D photography. He said that Titanic "played so long in theaters our prints fell apart. We learned that 16 weeks" is the lifespan for a print. Digital photography, with faster frame rates -- 48 or 60 frames per second as opposed to today's standard of 24 per second -- will help movies last longer. "I fully intend to make the rest of my movies at a higher frame rate."
"And," he added, "3D was the catalytic agent that precipitated the change to 3D."
Katzenberg said the change to digital "transformed the [movie going] experience and transformed the art. That innovative spirit is in the DNA of filmmakers."
All three spoke of the impact seeing movies in a theater has on them; of the communal, social nature of people that seeks out such experiences.
They urged the theater owners in attendance to switch to all digital. But, after the panel, several owners spoke of the cost -- approximately $100,000 per screen -- as daunting, if not prohibitive. One said, "I have 18 screens. I will get some of the money back and will ultimately save money when satellite distribution eliminates some fees, but that's a lot of money to put up front."
The satellite distribution system is on in which the films are sent via satellite to a mainframe computer in the theater and the computer is programmed to play the film at a set time. It will eliminate the projectionist and the transport of films.
The other big issue for theater owners is the plan announced by Sony, Universal, Warner Brothers and Fox to distribute product through a DirectTV video on-demand (VOD) service called Home Premiere. The service will make movies that have been in theaters for 60 days available for home viewing at a cost of $30 each.
Todd Phillips, director of The Hangover 2, at CinemaCon to promote the film said, "If I wanted to make movies for TV, I'd be a TV director." His remark was greeted with great applause.
Photo of (from left) James Cameron, George Lucas and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Getty Images.
Follow Ellen Sterling on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EllenSays
I want to see this, but I will wait for the DVD. Hanna!
Thursday, Apr. 07, 2011Home-Schooling an Assassin: A Hit-or-Miss Hanna
By Mary Pols
Hanna, Joe Wright's action thriller about a teenager trained from childhood to be an assassin, is the movie you'd most want to see projected on monitors the next time you're 23 and getting drunk at a nightclub. The pounding Chemical Brothers soundtrack would drown out the sillier parts of the screenplay, and you'd catch dazzling glimpses of apprentice killer Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) racing through Morocco's dry heat or an abandoned East German amusement park. Her karate chops and kicks would inform your dancing. The movie would travel through your veins like a drug, doubling your good time.
But when viewed in more mundane circumstances — namely, a movie theater — Hanna's buzz isn't as pure. Over-eager in almost every way, the movie keeps pressing scenes of deliberate weirdness on us. Some of these oddball moments do work to illustrate our heroine's sense of disorientation. Educated but socially almost feral, Hanna has never been out of the landscape near the Arctic Circle where she was raised — until suddenly she's in the middle of a desert, face to face with a pushy English girl holding a parasol. (It's like a passage out of Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout.) Other scenes feel more like something imagined by an over-caffeinated, under-confident David Lynch, as when Hanna's target, the CIA agent Marissa (Cate Blanchett), stops for reinforcements at a sex club featuring hermaphrodites. The only constant is Ronan (who also starred in Wright's Atonement), who pours a dreamy concentration into her portrayal of Hanna. Her pale, almost pinched little face and steady, cornflower-blue eyes bewitch us even when the movie doesn't. She's ethereal, yet we never question her strength. (See pictures of movie costumes.)
Once upon a time Hanna had a mother who looked like Kate Moss and gave her a big book of Grimm's fairy tales. Then Hanna's mother was murdered, and her heartbroken and obsessive father, Erik (Eric Bana), whisked her off to the frigid wilderness to prepare for revenge. For example, he wakes her up in the night by putting a gun to her head and seeing how fast she reacts. (Their father-daughter training is lot more somber than that of Kick-Ass.)
The lonely father and his lonely daughter keep discussing whether Hanna is "ready." (Given Wright's embrace of the theme and mood of Brothers Grimm tales, which are ripe with sexual subtext, this is vaguely creepy.) When Hanna is "ready," she'll lose the purity of her sheltered world and summon her target by pushing a lever on a creaky old machine that looks like something out of Lost's '70s segments. When that blood-red light flashes, somewhere across the world, Marissa goes on high alert. Marissa isn't scared so much as she is tantalized; she feels some sense of ownership toward the girl. (See the 100 best movies of all time.)
As Hanna attempts to complete her mission, Wright whirls through scenes with a wild energy — and then, unexpectedly, turns the movie into a fish-out-of-water story. Erik has taught Hanna to speak every language from German to Arabic, but not what function a passport serves, how to turn on an electric switch or what normal kids are like. Being trapped in an underground bunker the size of the Pentagon doesn't faze her, but when she first encounters that English girl, Sophie (Jessica Barden of Tamara Drewe), and her little brother, Miles (Aldo Maland), Hanna stares at them as if they were Martians.
The interlude that follows — Hanna's travels with Sophie and her hippie parents (Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng) — may strike some as a distraction from the important business of being a possibly-superhuman sylph kicking the stuffing out of grown men like Marissa's No. 1 henchman (Tom Hollander, who wears yellow tracksuits and appears to have carefully studied Dennis Hopper's Blue Velvet performance). But of all the surreal elements in Hanna, none pleased me more than this family, particularly Sophie's habit of popping out of nowhere or her mosquito-like whining ("My fungal nail infection is back!"). Imagine Jason Bourne pausing in his race to Berlin for some Judy Blume-style coming-of-age time. These Brits are loons, but they also provide our first chance to empathize with the rather robotic Hanna. When she spies on them sharing laughs over dinner, we see real longing on her freckled face for regular family life.
That yearning is the emotional priority of Hanna, but the central conflict — Marissa and Hanna's cat-and-mouse game — lacks urgency. Marissa is demonized as the childless career bitch who cares nothing for family; her brand of villainy is so cliched that it's hard to scrape up a visceral desire to see her die. (See the best movies of the decade.)
Moreover, the Grimm echoes feel contrived. It is bad luck for Wright to be opening his fairytale flick right after the abysmal Red Riding Hood, but the problem is bigger than timing. It's all so broad — on multiple occasions, he has Blanchett do some brushing and flossing, as if she's the Big Bad Wolf preparing for her succulent supper of girl. The interminable, climactic fight scene itself is engineered to give us time to admire the work of the location scout who found just the right setting to maximize the Grimm business. All this arch obviousness comes at a cost. It's a feast for the eyes, but we're still hungry.
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Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
‘Buffy’: Season 9 writer hails from another vampire camp | Hero Complex – Los Angeles Times
Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s gift was death. Fans never exactly found out if that was because of her avoidance of it, her resurrection(s) or her propensity to dole it out to evildoers. Whatever the definition, we’ll get to see, and read, more about it after the announcement over the weekend that the Dark Horse comic book will continue with a Season 9 in September.
Along with creator Joss Whedon, and whatever writers come along during the book’s run, Andrew Chambliss will have a guiding hand in continuing the saga of the slayer, her pals Willow and Xander, and other denizens of the Buffy-verse. Chambliss is currently keeping his writing fangs sharpened as a scribe on “Vampire Diaries.” (Gasp! Vampire crossover!) We won’t get any Season 9 spoilers out of anyone, but Jevon Phillips caught up with Chambliss to shed a little sunlight on who he is.
Jevon Phillips: So how’s “Vampire Diaries” going?
Andrew Chambliss: We’re just wrapping up the writing for the season … in terms of airing, maybe six more to go. This season we told a huge story where we found out that Elena was part of this ancient curse. Kevin [Williamson] and Julie [Plec] are so good at finding ways to ground stories that could be really big and find really human moments in it. … It’s such a bigger story where we’ve opened up the supernatural world.
JP: Is there any friction between the crowd that follows “Vampire Diaries” and the crowd that follows “Buffy”?
AC: Not that I know of. I have not come across any fans who take one camp or the other. In terms of approach, “Buffy,” with the demons and magic, goes places where “Vampire Diaries” doesn’t necessarily go. “Vampire Diaries” is a much more grounded show, but I do think there are fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Vampire Diaries” and that there’s a huge amount of crossover. Because at the end of the day, the similarity that Joss [Whedon] has with Kevin and Julie is that it’s always about the characters and their emotions and those real human moments.
JP: How did the Season 9 writing gig come about?
AC: I kept in touch with Joss since “Dollhouse” ended, and I ended up working with Jed [Whedon] and Maurissa [Tancharoen] on the “Dollhouse” comic book. They’d been talking to Joss about how much fun we were having and said nice things about the work I was doing on it. … I got an email from Joss, and he asked me if I wanted to be on ["Buffy"], and how can you say no to that? “Buffy” is such a huge part of what made me want to become a writer, especially in television. It’s just sort of surreal that I’m going to get an opportunity to participate in that world.
JP: How far into the development of the season are you?
AC: In terms of the broad strokes and the way we’re breaking down the season — it’s going to be 25 issues — we’re looking at five-issue arcs with some stand-alones thrown in there. We have those arcs figured out, and we’ll soon be going in there to make sure that all of the character journeys are there. We’re still early on in the scriptwriting process.
JP: So, any particular characters, beside the main ones, that we can expect to see? Any favorites for you?
AC: There are a couple that I can’t mention cause I don’t want to give away any big reveals that are coming down the line. At the end of the day, I’m just excited to write Buffy and where she is in her journey as a character coming off Season 8 where she was running this huge army and it literally was “the world’s going to end.” She ends the season potentially saving the world but destroying magic. She always thought she was going to die, but now she has to answer all of these questions that hit when you normally enter your 20s. Who am I? What am I going to do? Will I be a slayer all of my life?
At the same time, you have Willow facing similar questions. She’s been cut off from magic, so how much of her identity was wrapped up in being a witch? It’s interesting. … I’m discovering Buffy as a writer while she is on this path of trying to figure out who she is.
Also excited to be writing Spike. He’s definitely a character that I’ve enjoyed.
JP: Just curious … how was your experience on “Dollhouse?”
AC: “Dollhouse” was kind of like a dream come true. I’d worked on “Bionic Woman,” but there was a lot of turnover. … For me, the great thing about ["Dollhouse"] was being able to watch all of these really great writers break story and write scripts and rewrite scripts. It was kind of like the perfect training ground to develop great habits.
JP: So with your first comics gig, how has it been working with artist Georges Jeanty? And do you want to continue to write in this medium?
AC: Working with Georges is great. He’s just doing covers right now, and I am constantly impressed. He will send 80 different concepts for a cover, each one well thought out. I can just imagine how it’s going to be to get pages coming in. I can’t tell you how excited I am to work with him.
And to the second part of that question — I would love to get more into comics. It’s something I’ve been interested in since I was a kid. I’m excited to have my entrance into that world with Joss.
(WARNING: Spoiler for those who haven’t read Season 8!)
JP: Do you think that if the show had still been on the air, events that happened in Season 8 like killing Giles and making Angel the temporary bad guy again, and things that you’re planning for Season 9, would have played well on screen?
AC: I think, obviously with a television budget and all, you wouldn’t have been able to do a season as big as Season 8 was, but they mostly would’ve been able to go through all of the same journeys for the characters. And what we’re planning on Season 9, which is mostly about Buffy growing up, is definitely a place that Joss would’ve wanted to take the show — with Buffy questioning what the rest of her life is going to be like and realizing that it might not end with her dying trying to save the world.
– Jevon Phillips
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