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EDtv 93

Posted by JonKatz from the Movie-Review dept.
In "EDtv",the much-hyped movie about media hype, Director Ron Howard blinks. He gives us a mellow sit-com instead of a biting film about the dread and eerily relevant convergency of media, technology and voyeurism. "The Truman Show" never looked braver or better. "EDtv" is too creepy to be funny.

In "Edtv," the much hyped film about media hype, Director Ron Howard chickens out, ducking the chance to say something powerful and biting about the horrific convergence of media, technology, voyeurism and privacy to make a fluffy comedy instead.

As much braver movies like "the Truman Show" suggest, technology and media increasingly are fusing to create a nightmare tabloid and journalistic culture - Princess Di, Monica and Bill, OJ, the Boston Nanny case -- that obliterates the privacy and dignity of the hapless people unlucky enough to get swept up, even when they're innocent by-standers.

Glued to their screens, the world watches in fascination, seeing the train-wrecks of other people's lives as just another TV show. There's no detail of anybody's life off limits when the cameras converge. Even as it gives us the creeps, we participate.

So here we have Monica Lewinsky. She spills the most intimate details of her and other people's lives to Barbara Walters, apologizes to Chelsea and Hilary for helping to shatter their lives even as she proceeds to make them even more miserable for two more hours in exchange for the cash from foreign TV rights. And tens of millions of Americans send ratings through the roof to watch it.

Techno-driven media like TV is truly becoming a shameless culture. >Anything goes that works, and anybody's life goes right into the maw if enough people want to watch it. That was the point of "The Truman Show," and was the theme of "Edtv."

The ED of "Edtv" (Matthew McConaughey) is a beer-swigging, pool-playing, 31-year-old video store clerk in San Francisco. He agrees to have his entire life broadcast 24/7 on a struggling TV show. The show becomes a smash, of course, especially as Ed slips into crisis, and as Elizabeth Hurley tries to seduce him live on TV. The greedy network moguls rush in to squeeze every last Nielsen rating out of Ed and his problems. In the process, the oblivious Ed very nearly ruins his own life and the lives of the people closest to him, including his brother, mother and stepfather.

There's a lot of potential in this idea, and you get the sense that Howard considered whether or not to go for a real movie about the subject, perhaps one in which there are real and painful consequences. But he blinked, going for a few laughs, a warm fuzzy feeling and a cheesy ending. The movie sets up a fascinating and disturbing premise, then peters out as it fails to deal with it. "The Truman Show" looks brave and powerful in comparison.

Unlike Truman, the affable Ed knows exactly what's happening to him, and agrees to put his live before the rest of the world. Despite all of the trouble this causes, and damage this does to the people around him, he>never shows much remorse or comprehension. When push comes to shove, he and the forces exploiting him slide cheaply off the hook.

"Edtv" is disturbing almost in spite of itself. It makes the point that the very idea of privacy is vanishing in the tabloid, techno-driven world - satellites, talk shows, breathless interviews, book and movie rights. It shows Americans as an increasingly voyeuristic, morally vapid people who will happily watch the disintegration of anybody's lives if it happens on TV live and is produced skillfully enough.

"Edtv" is at its best showing how the country gets increasingly obsessed with the details of Ed's >disintegrating life, and spoofing the TV and talk show culture so quick to >debate and analyze anybody's misery, usually under one hypocritical >pretense >( it isn't about sex but perjury) or another. >

Even though the phenomenon is horrifying, "Edtv" goes for the witty >dialogue over the powerful statement. Ellen DeGeneres, Woody Harrelson, >Jenna Elfman and Rob Reiner all provide strong and funny support for >McConaughey, who seems to be getting his footing back after disasters like >"Amistad" and "Contact." >

The problem is that the issue it takes on is anything but laughable, especially these days. This movie is really too timely, relevant -- and creepy -- to be funny.

You can e-mail me at jonkatz@Slashdot.org
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  • Pendulum scene (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There was no pendulum scene. She /talked/ about holding the pendulum up to her face, and asked if the Reverend Billy Jo Rankin would stand in the path of the pendulum and put his faith in God, but it never actually happened.

    Actaully, the movie doesn't really follow the plot of the book that closely. In the movie, she never knew her mother. In the ook, her mother was alive and well. In the movie, she was into ham radio as a kid. In the book, she didn't become interested in radio teloscopy until grad school. In the movie she fell in love with Palmer Joss. In the book, Joss makes very few appearences until much later on, and she falls in love with the president's science advisor (and Palmer Joss is an ex-circus side show performer with a map of the world tatooed on his torso). The movie version of Hammond was far more spacey and Howard Hughes like than he is in the book. In the movie, only one person went in he machine. In the book, five did.

    The science, however, did follow the book (though some details were left out because of time constraints). All in all, I think the movie was ver faithful to the origional ideas of the book. Personally, I think Contact was one of the most wonderfully constructed films of the decade, right up there with The Truman Show and Showgirls (well, maybe not Showgirls). For that matter, I loved Amistad as well. Maybe Katz just doesn't like Matt's rugged good looks.

    Oh, and Mr. Katz? I'm friends of a former employee of yours (you gave her a mac laptop a many seasons ago). Anyway, she says hello.

  • Logical Conclusion (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As a alien living in America I am continually amazed at the "pitch-level" of the mainstream media. Who are these morons that watch this stuff? Unfortunately the valid voices of Americans are being smashed aside just like the open spaces being turned in parking space for another McDonalds. Very sad. Its also sooo interesting the "mass-accepted" moral outlook being portrayed, like we buy in or we're some fringe element.

    I take solace in the view that nothing remains top dog, and this institutionalized morality will be covered with dirt just like the Roman morality before. Lets hope there will be a world left after the Pentagon and their stooges have bombed everyone who dissents.
  • this movie was bought from Québec film maker for 1,1 million $, i bet this is the case with at least 60% of hollywood movie, this is ridiculous.. :(

    ---
  • The movie is a remake of "Louis IXX", and what I found very stupid, is that the producers of EdTV refuse to give the proper credit to the original authors..

    Anyways, the original was really funny, and EdTV was "americanised", so I guess it must be also a pretty good laugh. But did they take out the sex scene at the end of the movie? :]
  • Of what I saw on the news, they had to create a big judicial problem so that they'd get their credits properly shown. A real artist cares not of money, but of respect.

    [FlameSuit: On]

    Also, I don't quite get it about you're frustrations on canadian culture. Louis 19 is not "canadian culture", it's from Québec, which is a french province, totally different from the rest of Canada, and I believe it does stand out as a unique culture. We don't have many multi-million dollar productions, but all proportions kept, I believe there is more discovered talent up here then down in the United-States.

    I said "Discovered talent" because I also some really great movies from the States who had very low budgets, and not much publicity. But small independant movies are often swept aside by the major-productions.

    Hey, after all, the United-States brought us:
    - Universal studios, Tristar and etc..
    - and Blockbuster (pro-censureship)
    - a lot of lobbying companies

    Yes, I see a brilliant future, were are new ideas are strangled under censorship. Now, that's what I call a fubared culture. Drowned in cash.

    I'm happy I live in Québec, we benefit of the national security of the United-States, so we have smaller military budget, and a _much_ better social environnement (education, hospitals, etc..).
  • I shouldn't have read this review. Now I'm going to have to go into it with a pretty good idea that it sucks.

    (I have no other option than to see it; my girlfriend is a big Mathew Maconowhatever fan...)

    ----

  • Okay, I didn't state what I meant as clearly as I could have. If you look at what I wrote, you'll see that I was trying to communicate that people I have a high opinion of (those who I consider to be pretty bright) and who I talked to about the film seemed to like it.

    That is, the only people I spoke with who didn't like it were a group who, in my opinion, don't have the collective IQ to tie their shoes. Their complaint: they didn't get it. Oddly, they all bought Titanic the first day it was out on video.

    Personally, what I really loved about the film was the subtle use of effects in certain places, like when the camera seems to seamlessly pass through a pane of glass or the scene with the mirror. Flashy effects are great and everything, but the ones that most people didn't notice fascinated me.

    Again, I'm not trying to speak for or even define "intelligent people".

    ----

  • Yeah, I thought they wussed out a bit on some of the religious commentary, but I think that the contoversy it would have caused would have overshadowed the rest of the movie.

    It's too bad you don't see too many films that honestly question the whole judeo-christian thing without either ending up with a "Touched by an Angel" ending or with "God is dead. Nya nya." I guess the studio execs worry about being boycotted by more than just the Southern Baptists (who at last count are now boycotting Disneyland, all major film companies, TV, sex, and all sources of information other than Rush Limbaugh).

    ----

  • We have to remake good foreign films. Otherwise, we might have to invite your psycho directors to the award shows and break out of our comfortable "I'd like to thank my pet parakeet, Tiffy..." speeches.

    ----

  • Would you really want to watch a film where all of the people on that 25 foot screen in front of you were terribly ugly? Not I.

    Besides, they did a good job with some of the geeks at the lab -- I'm thinking specifically of the slightly pudgy guy who was always wearing the loud t-shirts at Arecibo(sp?). Any movie where they have buttons that say "UNIX Party" pasted onto their monitors onscreen must have had some geek guidance.

    ----

  • Hey Katz, what's this about Contact being a disaster?

    Among those enlightened people (aka, those who go to college or who could if they wanted to) I've talked to about the film, all seemed pretty unanimous in their support for the idea that Contact has to be one of the best movies we've ever seen. In an age where movies insist on dumbing down the plots to the point where any AOL user can understand them, I can't say enough how much I loved a film that had the gonads to be a bit confusing in order to be really, really cool.

    Jon, if you mean that Contact was a flop at the box office, I might buy it (I don't have any idea what the numbers were -- I saw it about 5 times, but I could be the only one). I doubt it did very well; the average stupid person in the audience probably didn't get it; I was in a theatre opening night where a guy yelled "WEAK!" at the end, then asked his date "Carl who?".

    If you meant that it was a bad film, I think it's time for you to write another "I am a geek! Really!" article. Most of the folks here on /. are bright enough that they got the significance of that really keen opening shot (the "universal pullback" with the radio sliding back in time). I imagine that a majority of geeks liked Contact.

    ----

  • There was a pendulum scene, a few chapters after she makes the original challenge. Joss calls her on it and she does test her faith with the Focault in the Smithsonian. He never does test his, though, oddly. ;)

    It's in Chapter 14, "Harmonic Oscillator". Page 284, in my paperback copy of the book.

    Having just reread the book, I've come to the conclusion (or reaffirmed my original conclusion, rather) that it was never a story about making contact with aliens. It was a story about faith. That scene with the pendulum, along with a few others, was the key to the entire theme of the book. The movie took that out, which made it into a story about religion, which is something subtlely different, and, IMAO, much less involving, especially when treated with typical Hollywood shallowness. And they didn't even enhance the making contact with aliens bit (which Sagan really only skimmed over) to compensate.
  • That opening shot was pretty awesome, with the perspective pulling back through Earth's RF bubble until it reached the edge, and total silence... then they did the cliched "oh, it's all in the pupil of her eye" bit and ruined it. The movie went pretty quickly downhill after that. The people I was watching it with and I were calling out next lines and next scenes before they happened because it was all so predictable. I always thought the ending of the book was a bit weak, and the movie gutted the book and only put up the shell.

    And they left out my favorite scene, where Arroway and the priest are in the museum, and she pulls the Focault pendulum up to her face, lets it go, and lets it swing back, trusting in physics to stop it before it hits her, then challenges him to do the same, trusting in his god to stop it. That would've been too controversial for mainstream America, I suppose...
  • No, America gave us UNIX. Europe just reworked it and called it Linux.
  • Posted by stodge:

    America gave us Windows, Europe gave us Linux. I'm English.... nuff said :P
  • carl sagan sucks.

    Try reading some of his nonfiction works. You may like them better.
    Pale Blue Dot is inspiring (at least to me).
  • God, I can't get over this: we truly live in depressing times. The sad thing about Amistad and Contact wasn't the moviews but McConaughey, who's performance was poor and stood out against those of his outstanding costars. That's how Katz can feel he's redeeming himself in a poor movie: his performance is better.

    Believe it or not some people still judge actors based on how well they act, rather than how much liked the movie. ;-)

  • This is the first time I've ever responded to a JonKatz article. I've always thought his work has just been really really week, although, until now, I've thought his stuff has been getting better. I guess I've been content to read his lame articles laugh at them with my friends.

    But this just made me want to kick JonKatz in the JonNutz. Saying Contact was a disaster, except maybe in a financial sense (which he obviously didn't mean) is just pathetic. It's one of the best movies I've seen. For someone who likes the word 'geek' and 'geek cinema' so much, I really think Katz needs to get himself bonked until he understands what he's talking about if he thinks Contact sucked.

    Yeah, yeah, I'm sure the book was better, but the movie was long enough as it was without making it more true to the book.

    I haven't seen Amistad, but after reading Katz's review I think I'll have to rent it.

  • I've only seen it twice, but Contact is easily my favorite movie of all time. I don't know if I'm all that smart or not, but the movie made me FEEL smart... it wasn't catering to the lowest common denominator, like most movies seem to do these days..

  • Hey, maybe he can't write, maybe he can, I don't know, I haven't read his work. But Carl Sagan was an amazingly important person for science. He almost single-handedly popularized astronomy, making it at least somewhat available to the common person, and not just science geeks. If you ask me, that's just as important, if not MORE important, than those people doing the research.

    I think he was a great man!

  • I was actually a bit saddened that they chose not to make the President of the US a woman as in the book. Although it did allow for a little real-life footage to be thrown in.

    That was a little literary trick that really impressed me. There I was, well into the story, and Carl suddenly reveals the fact that the president is a woman! I had just been assuming "his" gender all along. I was quite taken aback by that revelation.

    Then there was the whole 5 travellers vs. 1 traveller thing, but that's another beef altogether.

  • Three weeks? Three weeks is a hit! Where have you been?

    But I for one think that this review is right on the money! This looks lame. This looks like HYPE in the movie and in real life.

    Oh Boy EVERYBOY LOVES ED lets all jump on the bandwagon!

    BTW Contact was great


  • I don't think it was a horriable movie, but it could have been a bit better. My favorite part was when the video store clerk tells everyone to act normal, and then when Ed walks in, he goes "Welcome to work, Ed". I also keep thinking of the Truman show during the movie, espically at times when I felt that it was directly like the Truman show. If someone wanted my opinion on if they should go see it or not, I would recommand yes, if and only if they really think it's good, and don't want to see other lesser-quality flicks.
    --
    Scott Miga
  • I recall an article about Ron Howard, in which he was quoted as championing the virtue of the mainstream, of slackless normalcy and nose-to-the-grindstone conventionality. He seems to be a sort of cinematic Norman Rockwell, a champion of the mundane and workaday. As such, I'm not surprised that EDtv is uninspired.

    -- acb, who almost fell asleep when he saw Backdraft.
  • I thought contact was weak. It tried so hard to be intellectual that it ended up being irritating. The ending made me puke. ahhhh, god im getting waking nightmares. Its probably one of the better scifi movies compared to the likes of wing commander but still. Im sorry but no one can speek for all geeks.
  • But how are you supposed to fit the truth between commercials?

    I think I'll stick with the Indies, anyway. Ron Howard hasn't done anything worthwhile since he lisped his way through "The Music Man." Not that that was meaningful or anything, but it serves as a pretty high point in his career.

  • Contact was a beautiful, thoughtful film, well-acted and risky. I didn't need the Hollywood love story running through it, but I didn't much mind it either. Everything else was wonderful.

    It helps if you have some kind of understanding of just how damn good an actress Jodie Foster is. The role was difficult but she made it look effortless and totally believable. I don't think anyone else could have filled her shoes.

    Like I say, it's a thoughtful movie, and it's for thoughtful people. If the subject interests you, if you find the question of humanity's place in the universe to be interesting, then rent it. Watch it on a big-screen TV with the sound up loud, the phone unplugged and with people who won't talk through all the best scenes. A friend of mine called it "the 2001 for our generation," the highest compliment I can imagine for a film.

    Jamie McCarthy

  • Jon calls Truman Show "brave" no fewer than three times.

    If there exists a film that can make that hackneyed, phony, predictable, uninspiring, scripted star vehicle look "brave," then Jon has made his point and I will stay as far away as possible.

    But then, if there exists a reviewer that can call Truman Show "brave" in a serious comparison, I don't think that reviewer and I are likely to agree on anything so I should feel free to ignore whatever he says.

    Sort of a Liar's Paradox...

    Jamie McCarthy

  • I would have to disagree loudly here. Amistad is just one of those great movies that just strike me. It was one of the few movies I walked away from really feeling like "God, that was a good movie."
    --
  • Don't forget two ant movies:

    Antz and A Bug's Life.

    I liked 'em both, though.


    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • >Linus Torvalds just copied the idea of Unix from
    >Ken Thompson, an AMERICAN! Can't people in Europe
    >EVER write ORIGINAL software?

    Yeah, but Americans are just whiny capitalists. Europeans are true artistes, cultured in all ways, intellectually superior.

    Or something like that. That's the attitude I get from some people.

    I like Europeans, personally. But there seems to be a lot of nationalism from BOTH sides. Blah.


    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • This movie lost Carl Sagan's balls somewhere. Sagan was a rational freethinking person in the tradition of Ingersol and Asimov as more his contemporary. The young atheist played by Foster did a great job of defending rationalism against the rabidly religious Matthew McConaughey--until her loins start burning for him.


    She then decides to take her experience on faith, never thinking that maybe the 16 or how ever many hours of recorded static could mean something or that maybe, as a scientist, she could push for a repeat of the experiment with another person?


    Maybe they could have produced a movie without falling back into the "you've got to have faith" mentality, but they sure didn't. Contact had so much promise, but finally undermined Carl's strong belief in rationalism and the betterment of humanity with a stupid religious message about faith.


    Contact was crap. It makes me sick when I see "For Carl" on the screen of the moview.

  • Poor Ending? (Score:4)

    by Kha0S ( 5753 ) on Saturday March 27, 1999 @12:08PM (#1960280) Homepage
    I was honestly expecting EDtv to suck when I attended a sneak preview here in Ann Arbor, Michigan with my girlfriend. Having seen "The Truman Show," with which EDtv shares a great deal of basic plot ideas, I worried that the comedic nature might trivialize the ideas.

    However, after leaving EDtv, I was disturbed by just how much more tragic the whole thing was than "The Truman Show." In Truman, the movie ended in a more or less happy manner when Truman discovered the world beyond his dome. Instead, in EDtv, it pointed out that people will naturally attempt to utilize the fortune and misfortune of others as personal gain (epitomized by Ed's brother).

    Also, even more tragic was the fact that Ed got caught between all of the problems in his life and the threat of being financially destroyed for the rest of his natural life because of a heinous contract.

    Basically, "The Truman Show" took place in a sterile world, where the audience was merely a reflection of Truman and had virtually no role in the show, and it had the whole ship-in-a-bottle feel to it. "This could never happen." EDtv, on the other hand, left the impression that this *could* easily happen in today's media-driven entertainment industry.

    I think that's the scariest lesson of all, and EDtv did a good job of conveying it, regardless of its few shortcomings.
  • I'm in agreement. I certainly didn't see Contact as a disaster but rather one of the more intellectual films I've ever seen. It was quite refreshing. Most people I know agree with me. (not that it makes my argument any stronger :) However, because Robert Zemeckis directed it and his last film prior to "Contact" was "Forrest Gump", it could be looked at as a box office failure (although I don't know how much it made).

    As for "EDtv", I haven't seen it yet, but I had my doubts simply from the ads. "The Truman Show" caught my interest because it looked like it had something to think about in it. "EDtv" looks interesting because Elizabeth Hurley is in it. I'll still probably watch "EDtv" at some point though. At $8.50 a ticket, it will have to wait for a cheap Tuesday...
  • yes. and like always, hollywood change the story with his own recipe.. i just saw the preview, but i can say that the actor is completely different from martin drainville. it's not a surprise, just remember the remake from french movies like la totale, 3 hommes et un couffin, etc.. etc..

    i wonder how the americans would do an elvis gratton remake. i think falardeau would shot himself.

    cob2k25
  • Contact is about as subtle as a sledgehammer and too interested in sending a "message" to the viewer instead of telling an interesting story.

    How could you not wince when Foster's character left the inquiry at the end of the movie to find a new group of zealots screaming at her? Wow, that's like, really deep, dude. Like, she was with that priest dude? And like she didn't believe in God and stuff? And now nobody belives in her alien story. Like wow, man... that's like sooooo ironic, dude.

    This movie had potential but it was FAR too heavyhanded. Too long, too self-indulgent... as an example, it included Zemeckis using a speech of Clinton's because he could, not because it served the movie. Zemeckis must have been so happy when Clinton gave his "life on Mars" speech. "Wow! I can use this!"

    It was also funny how they got a Tyrell (from Blade Runner) lookalike to play the multi-billionaire with access to Mir. The only original character in this movie was Foster's and she wasn't very interesting.

    Okay, time to end the disjointed rant. I hated Contact. Sure, the opening shot was great. But if the other 150 minutes of the movie suck, I think the movie as a whole sucks. Call me crazy.
  • You know, I am no Katz fan (read my comments from yesterday), but I find your post infuriating. I thought that Contact was superficial, annoyingly new agey, and could only pretend to any real depth at all. But you liked it. And that's fine.

    What irks me is your audacity to speak for "enlightened people" and equating them to be "those who go to college." Now, I've been to college. I even got one of those Ph.D. thingies. But having a college education is completely orthogonal to being "enlightened". And generalizing things to the point were you start equating "likes Contact" to "is smart" is pretty naive.


  • Actually, EdTV went into production before the Truman Show - it was a race to get them out. Apparently Truman snagged one of EdTV's backers at the last minute which put production months behind.
  • Actually, You're wrong. I met the editor of EdTV and the script for it was written well before the Truman Show was released.
  • Give a group of people the same problem, and you're guaranteed to get similar solutions.

    EOF
  • Financially the movie was a disaster, I would be very supprised if anything came out of hollywood now a days that had even a passing introduction to the thoughful introspection that Contact embraces. Just take a look a Lost In Space, in a movie with so many options, so many opprotunities to examine life, we end up with eye candy. In my opinion it shows more about people than anything else. Seems that the vast majority of people, don't really want to think and complain when they are introduce to something that would expand thier horizions. This is what happend to EDtv. If R.H. had made the movie that J.K. suggested it would have been a terminal flop and been gone in a week. Just my 0.2 cents Christian
  • My apologies for a screwed up href tag. I didn't find the page until I'd cut-n-pasted over to the submission form and previewed once already.

    If anyone cares, it's:

    The Baffler [wisc.edu].
    ----------
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • But we're still buying the product. (Score:4)

    by Pudding Yeti ( 9773 ) on Saturday March 27, 1999 @03:16PM (#1960290)

    In "EDtv",the much-hyped movie about media hype, Director Ron Howard blinks. He gives us a mellow sit-com instead of a biting film about the dread and eerily relevant convergency of media, technology and voyeurism. "The Truman Show" never looked braver or better. "EDtv" is too creepy to be funny.

    Just a metacomment here, because I haven't been to see EDtv and doubt I will.

    I don't think there's much "brave" to be found in even The Truman Show. At first blush, entertainment of this sort might satisfy the person who wants to feel good about their entertainment choice for the evening, but there's something cynical to be read into productions that aim to "sock it to the entertainment industry" while playing at the local googleplex.

    There is no risk being taken in making productions like this, or any production that takes advantage of our culture's ever-growing commodification of dissent, (to steal a phrase from A HREF="http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/reviews /commodify -your-dissent/"> The Baffler .

    "Dissent" sells. Hell. How many of us have complained about all the idiots who walk around striking poses with their Linux books at the local Barnes & Noble because, as Boot magazine put it a couple of years back, when they included Debian on a CD, Linux was "a rebel OS" that would "impress your friends."

    "Dissent" is marketable. "Dissent" makes about as much of a splash in the collective conscience as a minivan commercial. "Dissent" is used to market contra minivans, to convince you to pony up for an SUV so you can show you're not a "minivan driver," for whatever the problem with that is.

    I don't think movies of this sort are anymore subversive than a Rambo flick, because in the end, no matter how subtle/strident, vitriolic/sweet the subversion, we're all still sitting in the same corporate-owned theater, with the same Twizzlers hanging from our slack jaws, and we'll be back at the same time next week for another installment. And we're the ones who pride ourselves on "getting it."

    If you can show me that films like The Truman Show made people walk out and say "damn, we do live in an over-mediated world of objects and passive consumption, I'll happily shut up. I don't think you can though, because at least one poster on this topic to this point has identified how derivative of The Truman Show this movie seems to be. Someone in charge of making decisions decided more entertainment about how bad the entertainment industry is would make the entertainment industry some more money. Hmm.


    ----------
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • -> America gave us Windows

    In my country we have a saying, "SurVEY Says!"

    X [loud buzzer]

    No a guy named bill gave us windows.

    -> Europe gave us Linux

    X [loud buzzer]

    No a guy named linus gave us linux.

    Please, trying to say that a whole continent is responsible for an operating system is ridiculous.

    Of course, at this point, I get a

    X [loud buzzer]

    because Europe is responsible for Linux, oh but so are Americans, probably some Russians, Japanese. Aha, we're all a part of Linux, wow! JHC!

    I'm thru bitching now.
  • Why do we have movie reviews here? I'm not saying that the movie review is bad, and I'm not saying that the opinion is right or wrong...but why here?
    In a world where the internet provides access to 50 million other reviews and commentaries on a movie, why is it coming up in a place that I come to for valuable information that I can't find anywhere else? Comments and opinions on subjects that are fully justified and can change my opinion on the subject if well founded. not movie reviews!
    I can understand the idea of something like Episode 1 having some universal appeal, every geek or nerd or sentient being over the age of 15 is talking about it...but EDtv? ugh.

    Maybe we should have another domain name...screendot.org or something...but please don't turn /. into another Siskel & Ebert knock off...:(
  • touché, but slashdot has this nifty ability to bring together all the things that I care about (Okay...so I don't care about ALL of them...but at least they can all somehow sit under the relevance-banner of "technology").

    Somehow, I just don't see EDtv doing that...
  • As far as novel adaptations, Contact was one of the better big-budget films of late. That only serves to show how bad all the others were.

    I was sorely disappointed that they left out the pendulum scene. That, above all else, was a defining moment of the book.

    -tak
  • "...why is it coming up in a place that I come to for valuable information that I can't find anywhere else?"

    Actually--if I may be a bit of a smartass--pretty much all of the information at /. can be found elsewhere.

    -tak
  • A god whose actions are indistinguishable from physical laws or scientifically proven phenomena is indistinguishable from science itself. The Christian God, by definition, performs actions above and beyond--often in contradiction to--physical laws.

    But the scene has nothing to do with God. It's about faith.

    The person with faith in the scientific assertion that the pendulum will never return to a point beyond its starting position can stand in the face of the onrushing pendulum. The person with faith in a God who performs miracles can stand in the face of the onrushing pendulum and take a step forward. In both cases, from the perspective of personal faith, the outcome is irrelevant. Either one's belief is strong enough to act on or it isn't.

    -tak
  • Calm down, sheesh! Perhaps Jon meant that the "disaster" in Contact was McConaughey, not the movie overall, and I gotta agree with him there. He could have said it clearer, okay, fine. Give the guy a break, he's on a book tour, they're stressful. :) And even if he meant that Contact sucked...so the fuck what? We all have to agree about movies now, too, in addition to operating systems, and political viewpoints, and...?


    --doing her part to waste diskspace

  • I tend to agree. Could the reviewers please stick to the "for nerd" movies? This is news for nerds, stuff that matters. Not "movies that sucked, so everyone can hate 'em with us."

    Wing Commander was made from a computer game. It qualifies. Star Wars, Episode 1 is .. well .. if the plot doesn't qualify, the special effects do.

    Either way, they certainly don't deserve their own "headline" space for. Throw them somewhere else, and give us a little list of the current reviews in a slashbox. :)


    Fork
  • Point taken. I just meant that if we're going to have movie reviews, then the movies reviewed should probably be nerd-oriented, that's all.

    ..unless there's a way available to filter out the non-nerd stuff.. ;)

    Fork
  • What I've noticed more and more lately, is that movie reviews all sound the same. Maybe one reviewer likes a given movie and another doesn't, but the rest of the review -- what movie does this resemble? what are the themes? who is this character like? -- all that stuff seems to be the same. It's as if the reviewer is incapable of any critical thinking beyond "thumbs up" and "thumbs down", and someone (the producers?) are supplying the meat of the review.

    Maybe edtv producers didn't want to stress the relationship to Truman?
  • Could it just be that maybe it was _meant_ to be a humorous movie? That Ron Howard didn't want to make a serious study of the "convergence" of media, technology, and whatever else Katz mentioned, that he just wanted something that people would find intriguing?

    I, for one, saw the movie Friday night and found it quite funny. A documentary or serious analysis of the issues isn't something I'd pay $7.75 for - I'd much rather watch it free of charge on A&E or The Learning Channel.
  • I was reading a review of Edtv by a competent* movie critic, and he said that it is similar to The Truman Show in that both are about guys on television a lot. Aside from that, they're worlds apart.

    * As if any critic were really competent.
    --
  • I thought that the movie was pretty heaavy-handed with its messages especially with Foster's character giving that little scene at the end. The dialog was a little trite in general. A lot of the friends I saw it with also agreed. And although it doesn't really mean much most of them are astrophysics research of some type. Plus they got some details wrong.
  • If you'd have read the book, you would realize that the "you've got to have faith" mentality was what the whole damned thing was about. Faith in yourself, faith in a 'supreme being', faith in SOMETHING.

    You also missed the point that they NEVER TOLD HER that there were 18 hours of static on the recorder. They only showed her 2 seconds.

    Carl Sagan was working with the cast and crew of Contact during it's production and died before he could see it in finished form. Regardless of how poor the movie was in bringing the story of the book to life (and what movie based on the book has?), it was dedicated to him because A) it was his book and B) he died while they were making it.

  • Look around your apartment/house/office right now, how many brand name products do you see?
    Unless you're Omish, you probably have quite a few commercial products lying around.
    I don't think EDTv has an unusual amount of recognizable products. At one point in the movie, they even make fun of product placement -- where this guy asks Ed what kind of soda he wants, and in the next scene they're moving a Pepsi machine into his apartment. The dinner scene you mention isn't an unlikely or odd situation in the average American household -- How often do you eat fastfood? I personally enjoyed EDTv quite a bit. To say that the product placements kept you from enjoying the movie implies that mayhaps you were paying enough attention to the wrong parts of the movie.

    And to fault the film on not taking a hard enough stance on American voyeurism is ridiculous. It's a comedy. It's there to make you laugh. Laugh, go home. Eat EZCheese.
  • In one shot we see the proudly displayed logos of at least half a dozen buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken (hungry rascals), several liters of Mountain Dew, a box of Ritz crackers, a cannister of Easy Cheese, and beyond that I simply lost count as the items proceeded straight past my mental defenses into my subconscious.

    If I was making movies, I think that I would try to avoid making any social statements by avoiding any visible mention of anything real.

    Ok, sarcasm aside, get real! The dinner scene and the long shots of the advertising was a statement of our society. As you said yourself (A gimmick is that, as his show becomes more popular, the advertisers increase in stature from local pizza parlors and the like, to multinational corporations like Pepsi, Maytag, and Nokia. ), the interesting thing here is the social collective conscience. I believe the statement here is that the major advertisers, who *want* to be the bearers of the lowest common denominator, have been dumbed down enough by their own hype that they don't even have the foresight to see what will be popular with the masses.

    Anyway, I'm not criticizing your analysis here. There is a lot of advertisement on EDTV. Let's go with the paranoid conspiracy theory, though. Let's say that the products in the movie were paid placement by the real companies. If I could get a company to pay for me to make fun of them in front of millions of viewers, I'd be laughing my butt off. Sure, they would get real advertising, if the common person can't separate the irony. But it would just go to show that the corporations don't even care if they are made fun of, as long as they get their message out.


    I know I wasn't looking desperately for easy cheese or KFC after the movie. (ooops. . . I just mentioned the two products. I guess that means they are paying me for this comment. I wish!)
  • While I submit that movie pairs such as Volcano and Dante's Peak were the basically the same movie with different actors, I find it frustrating that reviews and critics continue to judge EdTV in comparison to The Truman Show. They are very different movies, from the genre on down, and the simple fact that media is involved does not link them.

    EdTV was conceived and implemented as a _comedy_. Ron Howard wanted to take a film that would reflect current trends in media (think MTV Real World) from a different perspective. He didn't set out to make a daring, hard issued movie. He wasn't trying to make The Truman Show. I don't find many similarities between the two. Sure, the very surface seems the same -- guy get's his life filmed and broadcast. But beyond that they are worlds apart. If we judged at all movies, with such a topical glance, Free Willy and Jaws would be the same film: large sea animal interacts with people. Similarly, The Thin Red Line would just be a rip off of Saving Private Ryan -- they were both WWII films, right?

    Come on, approach a film with a little more reason. Not everything wants to be a remake, and true enough, not everything is original or interesting or well done. But before judging something, perhaps you should look into the intentions of the director and where they were coming from. I'm not endorsing EdTV, but I'm tired of hearing it called a Truman Show rip.

    my $.02,
    cec
  • I believe the statement here is that the major advertisers, who *want* to be the bearers of the lowest common denominator, have been dumbed down enough by their own hype that they don't even have the foresight to see what will be popular with the masses.

    I guess I would disagree with you here in that I don't think it was Richie's intention to make any statement at all, or more accurately, that any "statement" he was making was only an afterthought brought on by the act of product placement itself.

    That's part of what I resent about the the intrusion of commerciality into the actual scenery of movies -- it erodes control of the movie's thematic space. Advertising constantly struggles to supplant content. That is its very nature -- to mimic content in order to trick you into receiving its message. To be more blunt, advertising sucks. It sucks meaning out of symbols.

    Lemme ask you... after Darth Vader did the Energizer Bunny ads, how did you feel? Was he a cooler character because of it, or less? Did you feel cheated? Maybe not. I did. Not at first, though. It was later, when I watched ESB Special Edition that I realized Darth had sold out some part of himself... that his final scenes with Luke no longer had the same dramatic power because I was looking around for the Energizer Bunny. Such is the power of the Dark Side.

    Let's go with the paranoid conspiracy theory, though. Let's say that the products in the movie were paid placement by the real companies. If I could get a company to pay for me to make fun of them in front of millions of viewers, I'd be laughing my butt off. Sure, they would get real advertising, if the common person can't separate the irony. But it would just go to show that the corporations don't even care if they are made fun of, as long as they get their message out.

    There's no paranoia here. Advertising will supplant content anywhere it can because advertising pays and content doesn't. The question of who's scamming who when you sell advertising to "make fun" of the advertisers seems like a pretty easy one to me. You're absolutely right in that corporations don't care if they're made fun of as long as they get their message out. Why should they? Advertising simply works. Funny or not.

    I know I wasn't looking desperately for easy cheese or KFC after the movie. (ooops. . . I just mentioned the two products. I guess that means they are paying me for this comment. I wish!)

    Actually, that's the really funny thing about advertising. They aren't paying you to make that comment. But word of mouth is one of the primary aims of advertising. When advertising increases awareness of a product, it has done its job. Even as we sit here writing about KFC and Easy Cheese, advertising is quietly, neatly using us to take over the world. .

    Don't get me wrong. Advertising isn't evil. I even like Easy Cheese and get the occasional Crispy Strip meal from KFC myself. It's the scale and pervasiveness of advertising that gets to me.

    I wasn't kidding when I said that books will have advertisements in them soon. Why not? There's lots of space in the inside cover. What if it brought you a cheaper book? From there, it's only short hop to the future, where Holden Caulfield will be drinking Surge and Huck Finn will bemoan the use of his last Stridex pad as he floats down the river with Jim.

    And whatever could be wrong with that?

  • Should be called ADtv! (Score:4)

    by Dan Crash ( 22904 ) on Saturday March 27, 1999 @12:03PM (#1960309) Journal
    Katz didn't mention what I found the most disturbing aspect of EDtv -- the blinding barrage of product placements and advertising.

    Most of it is supposed to be diegetic to the film. EDtv is ostensibly supported by a bar of advertising that takes up the bottom fifth of the screen. A gimmick is that, as his show becomes more popular, the advertisers increase in stature from local pizza parlors and the like, to multinational corporations like Pepsi, Maytag, and Nokia.

    But here's the thing: These are all real advertisements. (Duh.) There is more advertising in this 2 hour film than in, jesus, perhaps 48 hours of regular TV! Every time they cut to EDtv, there is another advertiser, and they cut to it long and often. I can't determine what the director expects me to feel when he does this -- am I supposed to not notice that I'm being advertised to? Supposed to enjoy it as part of the story? I think it all comes down to the fact that he knows he's got a captive audience, and doesn't give a shit what I think.

    Ron Howard has also taken product placement to new heights. In one particularly loathsome and egregious sequence, the ED family is shown eating dinner. In one shot we see the proudly displayed logos of at least half a dozen buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken (hungry rascals), several liters of Mountain Dew, a box of Ritz crackers, a cannister of Easy Cheese, and beyond that I simply lost count as the items proceeded straight past my mental defenses into my subconscious.

    It's a strange, sad thing to realize that I'm part of the last generation who grew up with the movie theater as an advertising-free zone.

    It ain't getting any better. It's fine if directors want to use products and diegetic advertising in films to increase their budgets . . . but I shouldn't have to pay the same amount to see a film loaded with ads as I would to see one without. Hell, they should have paid me, and the rest of the audience, for the privilege of advertising to us.

    So here's your warning: EDtv is bland and weak. It does make the Truman Show seem bold and brave, and if you've seen the Truman Show, that's saying a lot. Let Opie rot in hell.

    Read a book, instead.

    It's probably your last chance to do so before they have advertisements.
  • Thats the point of a reviewm dude...
  • I though contact was absolutely terrible... Its got that rosy-hollywood glow riding on xfiles frige-geek popularity. Sickening. I don't work in a SETI lab, but are all the employees there nice looking?
  • If you don't want to read the movie review, don't. I think you can actually have slashdot exclude them from your list of articles. So I don't exactly know what you're bitching about.
  • Katz, perhaps you were referring to his roles in theses movies, as apposed to how the movies actually did? I don't think either did very well at the box office. Having seen Contact, though, I thought his character was very weak, in a very well done movie.

    Mikeel
  • Ok. One thing that pretencious people with too much free time will always be able to do is find boxes to stand on and yell loudly "The Book Was Better!"
    So... Learn something. If you wanna think and learn something, pick up another book. If you wanna waist a couple hours, go to a movie. Personally, I'm sick of people expecting a perfect translation from a 400 page book to a two hour movie. Adjust your expectations, please!
    If you really loved a book, see the movie to enjoy someone elses take on it. You've already read the book, right?
    Otherwise, do what I do. I have refused to see movies because I didn't want to see the book butchered.

    Here's an idea: Lets dig up a few dead authors, tape them to long stakes attached to generators, and make bad movies of their books.
    Then just let them rotate away! Free power!

    FireMage
  • I'd much rather watch it free of charge on A&E or The Learning Channel.

    You get free cable?

    --


  • I think the underlying reason that the "bubble" life was bad was that it was knowingly faked. The only sincere person was Truman. The rest were all just doing it to make a buck, at the expense of Truman's privacy.

    Most people value sincerity and privacy. That's what makes Truman's bubble such a bad thing. Even though the real world isn't completely sincere and you don't have complete privacy, it has to be better than the 100% insincerity and 100% lack of privacy that existed in the bubble.

    --

  • I liked the movie as well. While it may have been slightly "camp", at least it had the balls to raise some philosophical questions that probably went over the head of most viewers. That doesn't mean you have to like the movie to be smart, you could have been turned off for other reasons.

    I liked the movie because I saw it as unique. Never before had I seen a movie that presented such deep questions in a powerfull and simple way. I came out of the theatre in awe, almost like a "religios experience".

    If other things about the movie turned people off, I guess it's their loss. If you can't appreciate at least SOMETHING about this movie, then it either went over your head or you just don't care.

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