Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: Video/Multimedia

  • Random Thoughts about Sitcoms

    (An ongoing list).

    You might already know that I’m a rabid fan of sitcoms. That is the reason I keep an ongoing list of favorite sitcoms. Here are some of my thoughts about the genre:

    It is always wonderful to have older characters be guest stars. Often these characters are played by immensely talented actors who at one time were famous. I just watched two episodes of the Middle which featured guest stars Norm MacDonald, Marsha Mason and Jerry Van Dyke. These actors had only small parts, but it was nice to see them again!

    Many good shows have one bona fide asshole character. Often their negative energy can bring out the best in other characters. (Besides it’s always a plot art to humanize the asshole).

    As good as three camera filmed-before-a-live-audience shows are, one camera shows have a lot of movement and energy and rapid scene changes which can make up for the silence. “Arrested Development had so many scene changes in a single episode that you were never bored.

    I’m surprised at how many shows have gotten away with doing the same plot over and over again. Keeping Up Appearances, Three’s Company, Allo Allo, Get Smart, etc.

    Most sitcoms fail because of bad ratings; it often has nothing to do with the scripts or talent.

    I think 80% of the recipe for a successful sitcom is not great writing, but finding the perfect actor for the part. I was thinking of the Middle; all the characters and especially the kids seem born to play their parts.

    Good to have a gimmick. It helps to have some narrative novelty even if it doesn’t always work. The Bernie Mac show had two brilliant things: 1)Bernie Mac breaking the fourth wall to rant about something and 2)onscreen text to comment on dialogue being spoken. Both provided endless amounts of hilarity.

    Raunch and potty humor is beginning to be a problem on sitcoms. There are fewer restrictions about subject matter on contemporary TV, but lowbrow humor rarely pays in the long run.

    One person online said that sitcoms by definition are not particularly memorable; it’s more the exception rather the rule. There is some truth in this. Plots tend to repeat themselves (even on the same sitcom), and jokes and character conflicts tend to recur throughout a show’s history. On the other hand, talented actors can inject something fresh into each iteration, and that is worth mentioning. Finally, the amnesiac quality of sitcoms may in fact be an advantage because it leads to rewatching. You may already know that George Constanza is going on a blind date set up by Elaine and Jerry, but it is still fun to watch the sequence again.

  • Author Jack Matthews on the storytelling craft (Video)

    You might already know that my Personville Press publishes various fiction titles by Jack Matthews (1925-2013). A year before he died, I went to Ohio and interviewed him about various things. I shot some video footage as well as audio footage about his books and life as an author.

    Here’s one audio slideshow I put together of excerpts where he talks about a Worker’s Writebook . I recently published a second edition of it and even included a 2019 afterward.

    In the last 4 minutes, Jack Matthews reads a chapter from his ebook titled “The Pointedness of the Tale.”

    0:00 CAN A BOOK EVER TEACH A PERSON TO WRITE WELL?
    1:38 ARCHETYPAL THEMES IN LITERATURE
    4:04 HABITS OF GOOD WRITERS
    4:44 WHAT I READ AS A COLLEGE STUDENT
    5:33 MATTHEWS READ A CHAPTER FROM “A WORKER’S WRITEBOOK,” “POINTEDNESS OF THE TALE”

    I plan to produce several different slideshows/videos to accompany Jack Matthews ebooks. Some people are not into “video trailers,” but I generally enjoy hearing the author describe a book project in his own words. (I might produce a shorter version for Amazon, haven’t decided).

    As my last post indicates, the ebook is now free on Smashwords: Here is that information again: A worker’s Writebook by Jack Matthews. Ebook. (More about the ebook).

  • CATS ON FILM by Anne Billson (BOOK REVIEW)

    CATS ON FILM by Anne Billson (2017),  300  pages with illustrations. Author’s Website and Book Blog 

    Ebook: Amazon/Smashwords  . Price: $6.99

    Print Editions: Used copies are available, but with ebooks so cheap, why bother?

    Summary: Critical  look at movies with cats in them. The book is a real hoot to read — great insights and erudite movie  snark.

    Recommended if you like:  Quirky film references, anything catty, Disney movies, horror movies.

    CATS ON FILM gives a delightful and irreverent tour through world cinema from the standpoint of the cats who appear in it. This book grew out of a blog with the same name and  does not take itself too seriously. The book introduces various cat archetypes: CATAGONIST, HEROPUSS, CAPANION, CATZILLA, PUSILLA, CATRIFICE, CATGUFFIN and many more. To be honest, I am not particularly a cat lover (they’re ok, but…), and I had  hardly given a second thought about cats in film until picking up this book.  Probably the only movie I could think of with a cat theme would be CAT PEOPLE, and this book doesn’t talk about it at all except parenthetically.  What a shock it was to see discussions of so many movies with significant cat cameos.  THIRD MAN, NYMPHOMANIAC (!), Kieslowski’s BLUE, the GODFATHER, the original POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, the original FLY, LA DOLCE VITA, STRAW DOGS,  CLOCKWORK ORANGE (!) 1900, PROOF,  TRUE GRIT, DAY FOR NIGHT, AWFUL TRUTH, GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (!), THE LEOPARD, and many, many more. My first reaction was, wow, there are cats in all these movies? Aside from HARRY AND TONTO, I had hardly noticed them!

    This is a logical and well-organized work — you can find a list of film discussed at the logical Table of Contents at the beginning (though it would have been better to have hyperlinks).   It can be fun to stumble upon the unexpected, and the book itself has  glorious color photographs and helpful labels like “Major Cat Movie.” Clearly Ms. Billson writes with an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema (she has also published several movie guides and writes about movies regularly for the “Guardian”). I found new insights about movies I thought I already knew (or at least, I thought I did!) I  now know about a lot of obscure films simply because of the odd fact that it has a cat in it.

    Because Billson already is an accomplished novelist (specifically in horror, mystery, vampires and other things), the book has unexpected bonuses. For the movie ALIEN she does a brilliant interior monologue of the same story from the cat’s point of view. (You remembered that there was a cat in that movie, right? I didn’t!) For the movie INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, the book has a nice extended piece (The Moggyssey) teasing out the Homeric aspects to the plot. (By the way, I totally did not remember the movie having a cat in it!) For STUART LITTLE, she makes a tongue-in-cheek proposal to change the title of the movie to “Snowbell” (because the cat  character is more interesting and complex). Billson writes:

    Since Hollywood is largely run by dog people, cats are often relegated to secondary characters with bad attitudes, typified by animated propaganda such as LADY AND THE TRAMP, CINDERELLA, TOM AND JERRY or MERRY MELODIES shorts featuring Tweetie Pie and Sylvester, which try to brainwash children into thinking cats are evil or stupid, while dogs, rodents and birds are virtuous and should be given carte blanche to torment the felines.

    These creative takes are fun, clever and interesting.

    The book spends a lot of time on cats in genres like horror, James Bond and kid’s movies (which is to be expected). I particularly appreciated Billson’s speculation about the cats themselves as opposed to the role they are expected to play in the movie. She guesses when more than one cat is used for the same cat character in a movie (like THIRD MAN) and provides horrifying backstory about how cats were actually mistreated during the shooting of the film (as in ADVENTURES OF MILO AND OTIS).

    This clever book is based on a conceit that cats are more than story props. It’s an intriguing (though now obvious) idea. Fake soliloquys notwithstanding, I don’t get the impression that the book is trying to anthropomorphize the cat characters; it is just suggesting an alternate and yes, a more compassionate way to read movies. The book is a celebration of cats for what they naturally are in mainstream movies; At the same time, there’s more than enough  obscure Japanese, European, animation and old genre movies described here to make the ardent film buff happy.

    RELATED: I also recommend the illustrated book of fairy tales, A Cat may look at a King

  • Movie Recommendations for 1st Year College Students

    When I was  a teenager,  I watched way too  many  mainstream  movies specifically targeted to my age group. I generally hated these things.    Thanks to a decent art-house  theatre in my city, an intellectually adventurous  high school girlfriend, a new Blockbuster video rental store   and a brilliant film lover at my college, I had no problems finding Kurosawa’s “Ran,” Ingmar Bergman, French stuff (Breathless, Last Year at Marienbad, Les Comperes, etc) and satires like Dr. Strangelove.  All great works  — and the sort of thing that English majors go crazy about. For this list, I am listing movies which I wish I’d seen in college, but didn’t learn about until later.   Most movies here  aren’t that radical or artsy-fartsy, and yet most of them are beautiful and insightful and essentially about adults doing adult things.   I have tried to stay away from R-rated movies and various escapist fare (and even well made-made escapism) in favor of underappreciated movies which non English majors could enjoy and benefit from watching. Feel free to add any recommendations of your own in the comment section.   

    1. Casablanca. Epic romantic movie that takes place in Morocco – a so-called neutral zone during World War Two. Everyone’s favorite movie.
    2. Bicycle Thief. Italian Post-war humanistic drama about a father who needs to recover his stolen bike in order to accept a job (and feed his family).
    3. Tokyo Story. Powerful and serene family drama about an elderly couple who visits their adult children who are too busy with their own lives. The director (Ozu) is very famous for his low tracking shots, and this movie was ranked as the #1 film of all time by world directors in a 2012 poll. Many things are amazing about this film; I always found amazing how it portrays the dramas of ordinary living as intrinsically interesting.
    4. Best Years of Our Lives. This beautiful film captures the lives of WW2 soldiers returning to USA as heroes who find that adjusting to life as a civilian is challenging and difficult. This film is about ordinary heroism in adapting to changed circumstances in life.
    5. AI (2001). Steven Spielberg is known for making children’s films full of wonder and adventure. This fairy tale for grownups tells the story of a robot kid who runs away from home and learns about the real world. Ignored upon release, this film’s reputation has only increased over time. It is very thought-provoking.
    6. Sixth Sense. Philosophical mystery film about a young kid who “sees dead people” and a psychologist who tries to help him. Starring the same kid from AI!
    7. Amadeus. This film which embellishes upon the life of Mozart captures the joy and heartbreak of the Viennese musical scene in the late 18th century. This movie is a feast for the eyes and ears.
    8. Pather Panchali. This simple first film by Indian director Satyajit Ray tells the story of two poor kids who try to escape poverty. This famous low-budget movie won many awards and became the first of 3 films called the Apu Trilogy.
    9. Rear Window. Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological masterpiece about an injured photographer who notices suspicious activity outside his apartment window. People watch it for the suspenseful story, but the sound design and sets are also beautiful.
    10. Downfall. (dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel). Powerful movie that tries to film the unthinkable: the last days of Hitler in his bunker as witnessed by a young female secretary. Amazing performances which reveal the delusions and closed-mindedness of the German leaders throughout the war. My pick for the best film of the last decade.
    11. Wages of Fear. Utterly harrowing movie about young men who are paid enormous money to transport explosives (and risk their lives) over the South American terrain.
    12. Frances Ha (2012). Funny and poetic film about a woman in her twenties who lives in New York City while trying to pursue a dream career as dancer.
    13. Encore (1953). British directors made short movies about the witty and sad short stories of W. Somerset Maugham. Three volumes of movies were made (and well-received), with this one being probably the best. Great characters and stories!
    14. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Tragic film about German high schoolers who were recruited to fight in World War 1 with tragic consequences. This movie has been remade many times, but the original version is still the best.
    15. Before Sunrise. Charming film about an American college student who spends a lovely day in Vienna with a French girl he meets on a train.
    16. Travelers and Magicians. Wonderful (and little-known) movie in the country Bhutan about a man who wins a visa to move to USA and befriends a Buddhist monk while waiting for the bus out of his village. This Buddhist monk tells him all kinds of amazing stories, causing the man to reconsider his dreams.
    17. Brooklyn. Wonderful story of a young Irish woman in the 1950s who moves to New York to earn a living and go to college. I like how it reveals the challenges and struggles of people traveling to new lands and having to start from scratch. This story (adapted from a novel by Colm Tóibín) is sad, funny, unlifting.
    18. Two films about the business world. You might think they are boring, but they are actually really interesting stories — and raise a lot of questions about what constitutes business success. The Big Short tries to explain the 2008 global recession by focusing on several people who spotted the financial disaster before everyone else did. It is told in a fast-paced comic style and unlike anything you’ve seen before. The Founder is a fascinating biographical portrait about how Ray Croc started the MacDonalds restaurant franchise — the dealmaking, the struggles, the disputes.
    19. Teen Movies
    • Ave. I recently saw this incredible Bulgarian movie directed by Konstantin Bojanov. It’s about two Bulgarian teenagers who hitchhike across Bulgaria together, have all sorts of crazy adventures and learn about why people lie (to others and themselves)
    • Breaking Away. Great 70s comedy about a biking fanatic (and recent high school grad) who decides to enter a biking competition where most of the contestants are college kids. They grow up fast!
    • American Graffiti. Star Wars director George Lucas made this great movie about what people do during the summer between high school and college. This movie made movie stars out of a dozen actors (and inspired a #1 TV show called “Happy Days”). I like this movie much more than his Star Wars movies.
    • Stranger Than Paradise. (Jiri Jarmusch) A teenage girl from Hungary arrives unannounced at the apartment of her American cousin (who she’s never met) and has to spend 10 days with him. She discovers how hard it is to persuade him to do anything fun. Hilarious! Also, hilariously relevant (most of adult years is figuring out how to deal with the daily boredom and how to get other people off their butts to enjoy themselves).
    1. Other classics. Here are some very famous movies which are probably on everybody’s list. Interestingly, I saw most of these after graduating from college.
    • Wizard of Oz. The first time you watch this movie as an adult is eye-opening. You realize how much was percolating underneath this movie all along, how much its themes resonate in adulthood: finding the man behind the curtain, the emptiness of some objects vested with significance, the importance of  the will in working towards goals. 
    • Night of the Living Dead. This tightly constructed horror film is both cheaply made and extremely sophisticated. Watching it as an adult, you appreciate the social dimensions and historical context. The movie doesn’t acknowledge  the fact that the hero is African-American, yet it takes place during a time of great social upheaval when this detail would have historical significance. This was probably the first time I realized that that horror movies can be a great mirror for a nation’s fears and insecurities.
    • The Graduate (with Dustin Hoffman). Besides being a silly sex romp, the running joke is that the “responsible adults” of the film are mean, selfish and short-sighted while the kids are the ones to see the hypocrisy. The remarkable thing about this movie is how everyone is trying (in their own self-serving way) to steer the two college kids on paths which are unsatisfying, messy and just plain wrong.  By the end, the film puts the burden of figuring out how to proceed squarely on the shoulders of the young adults. 

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    To clarify: these aren’t necessarily my favorite movies of all time (although several titles are on both lists), but movies which I think would be best watched when in college. Perhaps later I will prepare a “Favorite Movies” listicle, but that is a far more ambitious task.

    What movies do you wish that people could discover when they are 19 or 20?

  • Here is some news (or pre-news!)

    I have been busy publishing the first ebook story collection by Jack Matthews, the first collection he has published in 23 years. Despite the somewhat small size, I consider this to be a major work — perhaps one of his best story collections. My company will be publishing his contemporary microfiction title, Abruptions this summer.

    I have started to offer ebooks at Smashwords. Frankly I will be turning my focus more towards Smashwords; it has been on the cutting edge on ebooks; unfortunately it doesn’t get a tenth of Amazon’s traffic and it doesn’t have the Createspace infrastructure, but they are doing a lot of amazing things. Mark Coker seems to seem trends sooner than most; here’s his latest end-of-the-year prediction.

    I plan to start posting a few small things on Teleread over the next few months. If you remember, I used to contribute lots of things between 2004-2009 or so, but then I had to put it aside. Now I’ll resume posting on a smaller scale. I still would like to start some kind of literary site which is something more than a blog. Every time I get ready to do this, I get sidetracked by real life events. Right now I’m of the mind that I should just publish SOMETHING and then over time add features and specific kinds of content so it accumulates more heft.

    I’m a lot more experienced in deployments, so I’m reluctant to implement something unless I can do it right. I also want to create a method to test changes more easily; that’s the biggest problem with trying to add features to weblogs. Also, I want to create something which one person could run and maintain by himself because — guess what, collaboration is an extra not a vital feature for most literary sites.

    Last night I created a static html page based on an annotated bibliography of Civil War fiction from the Soldier Boys ebook. (Take a look at it; it’s great!). I really just wanted to steal a simple template which uses responsive web design principles (and look good on various kinds of devices). But I realized a few things: responsive web design is hard! Even the simple templates are practically content frameworks because you have to incorporate NAV elements. Having designed ebooks for different readers and devices, I know all about css media queries and breakpoints and inspecting css; even though ebooks have NAV elements, my production method just spits them out via Docbook XSL.

    Also, I know I could figure out breakpoints and screen dimensions, but I became aware of REMs which are kind of like ems, only they are not. Anyway, designing web pages only occasionally, I’m used to being behind a few years on standard practices, but I feel a lot more behind than normal. Maybe it has to do with the value I place on my time, but I’m quickly growing content with just inserting a store-bought or community-written template and hoping everything works. When inspecting these templates, I am more confident of my capability to ruin the css than to fix something….

    That said, I grow weary of current web design, even unassuming ones for blogs. Everything is so focused on social media and signing up for newsletter and shaming the surfer for using an an-blocker. Third-party ad networks are draining your bandwidth and browser memory. Frequently Facebook and sites with videos cause my browser to choke — especially on Firefox. So much content is delivered in-process, so you constantly need to scroll down to fetch more items. The very thought of having to dig up some thing I posted on Facebook 4 months ago fills me with dread. I would spend a good 10 minutes just hitting the More button and waiting for Facebook to serve me another teaspoon of content. Suddenly every listicle must become a photo gallery — not for any functional reasons, but simply to increase the number of clicks you need to make and the time you need to wait.

    Two exciting bit of news which I haven’t shared on FB or G+.

    First, BBC announced that some listeners have found lost episodes of Alistaire Cooke’s Letter from America radio series. I’ve been listening to them religiously (I’m currently at about 1993, and I have noticed that the 1970s decade was missing a lot of weekly episodes!)

    Second, I have become excited at some video essays which I have seen on youtube (usually about artistic or cultural topics). See Nerdwriter1’s playlists and Every Frame a Painting’s playlists. These are thoughtful, well-edited video essays; I’m tempted to try my hand at a few of these — although I honestly can’t imagine how much time is involved. By now, either video essayist can probably crank these things out daily, but novices might find it overwhelming and time-consuming. As good as those video essays are, writing essays is just a more efficient way to produce thoughtful ideas and a fast way to receive them. Sure, video essays can say things which videos cannot; at the same time, can you justify the extra expenditure of time?