Just yesterday we ran across this fascinating article. It contains a number of interesting and provocative and perceptive observations, and although it seems to be based on a basic assumption we don’t share (that film is inherently more artful than TV) it gave us a lot to think about that we’d like to share.
by Mike S. Ryan
As much as I love Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men and Twin Peaks, as great and as groundbreaking as those shows were, they still are not cinema.
The recent explosion of quality long-form cable series has taken the TV form to a new level of artistry and craftsmanship. A show like Mad Men is not only thrilling because of its commentary on its era, but because of the zeitgeist energy created by everyone watching the show, talking about it and sharing opinions on social media. Today, perhaps more than ever, a new season of a quality show becomes a cultural event. Combine that with journalism‘s “recap culture,” in which newspapers, magazines and websites devote pages to summaries of the prior night‘s shows — all the while shrinking or even eliminating film reviews — and it’s pretty easy to understand why cinema feels somewhat inadequate in comparison.