I gave Season 1 of Prison Break a shot this weekend since a bunch of my friends have been raving about it. Watched 3 episodes and I'm just not feeling it at all. I think I'm done with it.
Your friend's a jackass. The acting is very good, and the directing is flat intentionally.
but I was recently trying to convert a friend who has a good eye for such things, and she said that the acting and directing is actually pretty bad. While remaining heroically steadfast in my opinion of the show, I tried looking at it with fresh eyes, and...damn, the acting (I'm not much qualified to judge the directing) is pretty bad, pretty often.
Cripes, I hope you were trying to seduce this woman, because if you didn't notice the bad acting or bad directing until someone pointed it out to you, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't bad acting or bad directing. Or is there some other, richer, experience of the show that you were supposed to have, one that took you well beyond BEST SHOW EVAR? Pathetic.
(No, I have no idea why am furious about this.)
That's probably the dirtiest thing slol's ever written.
if you didn't notice the bad acting...maybe...it wasn't bad acting
No, when I'm favorably disposed to a movie or TV show, I tend to overlook, as in literally not notice, its flaws. I only recently watched a few of the episodes with other people, which made me think about how they were likely to see them, which is why there was that previous post of Wire nitpicks, and now this one.
Ogged, what could it possibly mean for the acting to bad, but you didn't notice it the first time around? All I can think is that you could have enjoyed it more, you couldn't put your finger on what was wrong, and your friend did it for you. Except it's hard to believe you could have enjoyed it more. Yeah, Sonja sucks, but that's about it.
See? Keillor makes people turn on one another. I'm telling you, the man is evil.
This isn't complicated: there was a lot I liked about the show: the feel, the writing, the setting, the plot, and I didn't pay attention to the clunkiness of the acting. The quality of the acting isn't high on my list of things to assess about a show.
Cross-posted. This is one of those areas where I have a hard time distinguishing between legitimate, useful criticism and fraud.
Seriously dude, the acting is often bad. Go watch it again. I still love the show, quit acting betrayed.
I already admitted that Sonja sucked. My recollection is that D'Angelo wasn't great, and Omar comes off a bit over the top. But other than that, really pretty good. Bunk, as you mention is excellent. So's Daniels. Love the DA, who can look so secretly injured. The Captain who created Hamsterdam--great performance. Stringer's a bit off, occassionally, but it's a really tough character to sell. Avon is played beautifully, especially at the end--just a marvelous, growing sense of who he is.
Daniels is a great presence, but the guy only has about three expressions. The scenes with his wife could be much more affecting. And you have to think about all the non-pro actors they use. X minutes out of every show just aren't sharply acted.
I gave Season 1 of Prison Break a shot this weekend since a bunch of my friends have been raving about it. Watched 3 episodes and I'm just not feeling it at all. I think I'm done with it.
Go with that instinct. Prison Break blows.
Daniels is a great presence, but the guy only has about three expressions.
I believe this is known as "staying in character."
I don't think I am a fan of o-acting. If Meryl Streep was a better actor, I wouldn't be thinking what a good actor she is all the time.
My least favorite part of the wire is the sex scenes. It just seems weird watching the characters have sex.
I'm a huge Wire fan, but there are little things in it that I feel aren't perfect. Namely, when it verges on the cartoonish -- I'm thinking about Omar/Brother Mazzone, or Omar playing to the jury in court, or McNulty doing his thing half the time. But that's also what makes the series great. A lot of the Wire hype is based on it being a very "serious" show and it is but it's not just "The Corner," it has a lot of great fantasy characters.
Oy vey. You think Bunk is overacting? That kind of performance is what I'd like to see from everyone on the show.
19 to 17.
Barbar, we talked about some of that stuff here.
20: I haven't read the comments to that thread, and I'm sure it was hashed out, but in many ways Stringer Bell is a very "street" character, all the book learning aside; he's the most ruthless character on the show. I would view his failings as being parallel to Bunny Colvin's.
I shouldn't get into this conversation, because I haven't seen the show (oh, when did I let total ignorance of the subject under discussion stop me before), but if ogged and his friend are right, it just goes to show what good writing will do.
I've almost given up on movies, because it seems as if all the ones I go to I walk out of thinking the acting was great, the visuals were flawless, and the movie sucked because there was no script.
Bitch, we're all sorry about that time Keillor raped you, but you need to let go of it. You knew about his reputation before you let him he corner you and drag you into the broom closet. We don't see why you're making such a big deal about this.
Our evaluation of a work of art should not be influenced by our opinions about the author as a person.
Agree with Weiner. Emerson, you psycho, what's with the craziness in the last couple of days?
I wonder if, just as Emerson was fake Al for a while at the WM, someone else is now fake Emerson here.
Emerson was one of the fake Als? There were/have been many of them, right?
I think the answer is yes to both questions.
, someone else is now fake Emerson here.
Seriously? Is the fakeness of unfogged-Emerson constant?
I was the first fake Al. I can't understand why political sites don't clean up their comment lines.
Have I been more untastefull than usual recently? I was just developing Sarah Silverman's joke about Joe Franklin.
Um, given that Kiefer Fucking Sutherland won the best actor [sic] Emmy, I think we can rule out the aesthetic explanation for the Wire's exclusion...
Also, 22 is right. I never understand wanting to see a movie because there's a good actor in it; good writing is a much scarcer commodity than good acting.
People get edgy about rape jokes unless they've got a lot of context. FWIW, that didn't strike me as out of line, (well, in poor taste, but so many things here are. Not significantly more so than the standard, and we certainly aren't planning to raise that), and while I don't know if B. saw it, she hasn't complained.
I can't understand why political sites don't clean up their comment lines.
I think it's a combination of laziness and a commitment to free-speech ideals -- that the answer to speech is more speech. It's taking seriously the criticism that "You're just afraid to listen to anyone who disagrees with you."
I really believe that the major sites have paid trolls. I've been on many very fruitful political thread, with people who agree about most but not all things and are working out their ideas together. Trolls prevent this from happening.
Ignoring them doesn't work. It just doesn't.
Drum also seems very willing to let his own site function as the perfect exemplar of Drum's "nutpicking" Law: I'm reasonable, all lot of commenters are handle-swiping lunatics, and so what?
It's strange that people don't do shows in the Uncle Harold Zoid method of acting: show all emotions at once at all times.
Even that kid who played Wallace in Season One should have gotten an award.
I think that the casting on the show is so good that the acting per se doesn't really matter. Almost every character has a look, voice and demeanor that is so right that it almost doesn't matter how the lines are delivered. Take Wallace. I have no idea whether the kid who played him can act at all. But there was something so vulnerable and haunting about his face and voice that the performance turned out to be absolutely devastating. Same thing with Denis "Cutty" Wise. Great look, voice and presence.
Also, Omar is the greatest character in the history of the moving image.
pjs gets it exactly right. The only caveat is that you have to stick with the show for at least a few episodes to get it.