With The Lone Ranger being one of this year's biggest flops and R.I.P.D having experienced the same sort of disappointment this weekend, it just proves something that myself and many others out there have known for a while: that the sense of excitement there used to be for the movies isn't there anymore and that high quality entertainment has simply moved to the form of television. Lone Ranger and R.I.P.D. were two of the more exciting looking summer blockbusters as they were two of the only mainstream movies this year that weren't sequels or superhero movies(the latter has truly gone to the point of being tedious), the fact neither succeeded to make anywhere near their big budget proves there's no hope for mainstream cinema of going back to the 1980s when new and exciting stories were made into big hits like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Back To The Future or Who Framed Roger Rabbit as a start. Heck, even Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro's latest, which received favorable reviews, looks destined to fail earning it's $190 million budget.
Yes, when you look to independent cinema there are some gems to be found, and there will be some better films when winter comes, but when I look this past year and the titles expected to come out, the one movie I have been anticipating the entire year more than anything else isn't even a movie at all, but the final season of Breaking Bad.
Going through an entire season of Breaking Bad is the equivalent of attending a top-notch film festival, every episode is exciting and unpredictable(during the beginning of most episodes, you wonder if you've got the right show or at least the right episode). Its different in the best possible way. There's never a dull or unoriginal moment.
Visually speaking, an episode of Breaking Bad is as beautiful as any movie that's been released in the past 13 years. The New Mexico settings make the very lush cinematography that stands out. The camera angles, composition, color, lighting, reflections, editing are all topnotch, feeling more like either big-budget or avant-garde filmmaking than television. Another thing to notice(which you only will if you're in filmmaking) is the hardest thing to accomplish in filmmaking is to create a memorable or iconic shot where there isn't any people in the shot. Only the truly gifted auteurs are capable of pulling it off. Breaking Bad accomplishes this several times. And I haven't even gotten around to talking about it's story and characters!
If film is the art-form of the 20th century, than tv is without question the art-form of the 21st century if these first 13 years are indication. Yes, television had a well felt presence in the 20th century, but through-out most of it television was largely being wasted on formulaic sitcoms about middle-American families. Most shows were like Three's Company, in which after some giggles, you completed disposed of it a year after you had seen it, with the show having no real lasting impact on you. That changed in 1990, when David Lynch created Twin Peaks. For the first time, television showed potential as an art-form to be taken seriously. When The Sopranos came in 1999, it showed the world that with cable and the lack of restrictions of broadcast tv, the possibilities were endless.
Now, 13 years later, even cinephiles are admitting to anticipating episodes of a new show than they are any new movie. That's certainly my case. Rarely does a day go by where I don't think about a certain moment from Breaking Bad, even feeling like I'm one of the characters living one of the episodes(usually I'm relating to Mike). Few movies nowadays are capable of receiving that level of enthusiasm from me. Who cares what Tony Stark is up too when I have to find out what the fate is for our favorite methcook, Walter White. I have at least 3 or 4 theories about what will happen in these last 8 episodes, but I'm not confident any of them will pan out accordingly. I seriously have no idea how it'll turn out, something you can't claim for most movies these days.
Aug 11th, the season premiere now, less than a month away, and its seriously tied with my trip to CA as the anticipated event of the year for me. If you're one who still hasn't seen a single episode of Breaking Bad, you owe it to yourself to at least check out the pilot while there's new episodes left to air. As hard as it is for the David Lynch fan in me to admit, but it has passed Twin Peaks as television's finest hour. It's certainly deserves to be on any serious list of the top 5 greatest television programs in existence. Walter White will be sure to go down with television characters as Hamlet has with stage characters, Phil Marlowe has with literature characters, Michael Corleone has with film characters etc.
Instead of "seeing you in the movies" I'll be seeing you on the internet having just watched the latest episode.
