The A.V. Club - Crosstalk

DVD: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Is The Golden Age Of DVD Over?

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:04:14 -0500

Noel: Scott, you and I have been writing about home video for The A.V. Club since back when the section was called "Video," not "DVD." When we changed the heading, I don't think we realized we were heading into something of a golden age for movie fanatics, with some of the greatest films popping up on discs packed with commentary tracks, documentaries and all kind of other contextual material. And it wasn't just the classics—studios also started emptying the vaults of good-to-great older films that had never been released on home video before. A hefty-sized chunk ...

TV: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: The Fall TV Season Check-Up

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:01:33 -0500

Noel: Gentlemen, we're getting to that time of the TV season where new series have aired two or three installments, and we can start making some hard decisions about what we're going to keep watching and what we're going to bypass so that we can get back to spending more time with our DVDs of The Wire. Judging by the early ratings, there don't seem to be too many on-their-way-to-the-scrap-heap "bombs," but there also don't seem to be that many hits. Fox has already cancelled Nashville, and I imagine ABC won't be giving Cavemen ...

TV: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: The Pros And Cons Of Reality TV

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:20:40 -0500

Noel: Keith, when I wrapped up my weekly blog series about summer reality series a few weeks ago, I tried to sum up why I don't hate reality TV. In slightly truncated form, this is what I wrote: "By and large, reality TV is phonier than documentaries in its human manipulation and editing tricks, but both forms are inherently phony, and as long as you're hip to the deception going in, there's no reason you can't enjoy the few moments of truth that each genre ekes out. I'll grant that there's something insidious about ...

Books: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Are Superhero Comics Played Out?

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:01:57 -0500

Noel: Keith, when it comes to comics, my main passion is for the undergrounds. (If that term's even relevant anymore, now that cartoonists like Chris Ware, Dan Clowes and Marjane Satrapi routinely outsell the so-called "mainstream.") But I'll always have a soft spot for superheroes. I just have too many fond childhood memories of watching Batman cartoons on late '70s Saturday mornings, and buying Justice League Of America and Fantastic Four comics with my allowance. I read The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans and Daredevil during their early '80s heyday, then I quit comics altogether once ...

TV: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Is It Time For The Simpsons To Call It A Day?

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:01:00 -0500

Steven Hyden: I hate to be that guy, Nathan. I feel like the Dr. Kevorkian of A.V. Club Crosstalks when it comes to classic television shows about loveably dysfunctional families. First I sparred with Scott over The Sopranos, now I'm picking a fight with you over whether The Simpsons—bedrock of my adolescence—has overstayed its welcome and should be put out to pasture. Before I say anything else, let me state some important facts for the record—The Simpsons is one of the best sitcoms ever, if not the best. Its impact on pop culture has been ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Are Band Reunions A Waste Of Time?

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:48:30 -0500

Kyle: Noel, if the past few years have proven anything, it's that band break-ups are rarely permanent. Bands whose dissolutions were bitter, hate-filled denouements—Dinosaur Jr., The Police, Pixies, to name the most recent examples—have looked past the copious amounts of shit they talked about each other to reunite. The cynics among us—myself included—typically see these as attempts to finally get the payday that eluded many of them during their salad days. That doesn't mean I oppose them; hell, I understand. Get paid! You busted your ass for long enough. Still, there's a dignity ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Does The MPAA Ratings Board Get A Bad Rap?

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:01:58 -0500

Noel: With the hue and cry over the extreme violence in Hostel: Part II, some pundits—like Mark Harris in a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly—have dredged back up the old complaint that the MPAA punishes honest expressions of human sexuality with an NC-17, while allowing graphic violence and torture through with an R rating. I'm sympathetic to that position. Back in 2000, I co-authored a long article about the inequities in the MPAA, particularly in regard to sex vs. violence, as well as sex vs. smutty PG-13 innuendo. And I still feel that American movies are far ...

Film: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Is Improvisation Ruining Film Comedy?

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:01:49 -0500

Nathan: I'd like to start off with a big concession. I watched Knocked Up this weekend, and it was fucking awesome. I came in with almost prohibitively high expectations, and it more than met them. I have little doubt that smart, funny improvisation was a big part of the film's shaggy, ramshackle charm. I wish every studio comedy was even half as sweet, funny, or humane as Knocked Up, or 2005's similarly winning, similarly improv-heavy Judd Apatow sleeper, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But I feel like those are the exceptions rather than the rule. When employed correctly, improvisation ...

TV: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: The Sopranos and The Shield: What's in store for TV's greatest anti-heroes?

Fri, 18 May 2007 00:01:19 -0500

(Note: The following exchange contains major spoilers for current and past seasons of The Sopranos and The Shield. Proceed with caution.) Scott: By happy coincidence—made possible by the looong gestation period between Sopranos installments—the sixth seasons of The Sopranos and The Shield have been unfolding simultaneously, and it's been hard to keep them from bleeding together in my mind. Here, we have two of the greatest anti-heroes in television history, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), finally approaching their day of reckoning, when all their past sins are coming back to haunt them. Granted ...

Film: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Is The Blockbuster Movie Model Becoming Obsolete?

Fri, 11 May 2007 00:01:48 -0500

Noel: Scott, last week you scrambled out onto a shaky limb, suggesting in a blog post that Spider-Man 3 might have trouble recouping its exorbitant cost. Then the movie went on to have the biggest opening in history, and while that still just only half-covers the production and marketing budgets, I think it's fair to say that with the big numbers it's putting up overseas—and DVD revenue still to come—nobody's going to lose their jobs or their savings because of Spider-Man 3. So you probably picked a bad example. But I still think you may ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Is The American TV "Season" Outmoded?

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:47:01 -0500

Noel: So Scott, we're about a week away from the re-starts of The Shield and The Sopranos, and once they première, fans can count on seeing new episodes every week until the respective season finales. Not only that, but if fans miss the initial airing of those episodes, they'll have other chances to catch up throughout the week. Meanwhile, fans of Heroes are drumming their fingers, waiting for a show that was hotter than Arkansas asphalt a couple of weeks ago to come back and tell us how this year's story ends. And those who enjoy The ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Defining the Definitive 200

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:03:13 -0500

Keith: Last week, The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame museum, in conjunction with—this is important—the National Association Of Record Merchandisers, released its list of the "Definitive 200" albums. The music blog Idolator has a pretty good breakdown of what it's all about. We've made discussion-starting lists a cornerstone of our site here, so we know there's no way to keep everybody happy. But we also know when something stinks, too. These are, per the Rock Hall's site, "200 ranked albums that every music lover should own," and by any standard, it's a ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Are Guitar Solos Lame?

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:01:10 -0600

Noel: Kyle, we recently got a follow-up "Ask The A.V. Club" question prompted by something you wrote in an earlier column—the one about whether music critics should be musicians and whether music critics underrate musicianship. You wrote, "Fine musicianship needn't stand out and scream 'Notice me!' Sometimes the best stuff is the subtlest. Elaborate solos and that kind of thing are masturbatory, especially in the rock world (not so much in jazz)." This prompted reader Andy Oberhausen to write: Is improvisation in rock always bad? I would expect that Kyle would probably change his statement in hindsight ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Is Hip-hop Relevant To Middle-Aged White Guys?

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:01:24 -0600

Noel: So Nathan, last year, in your blog post "Hip-Hop And Generation X: A Love Story In Reverse?", you wrote that music buffs who came of age in the '80s still try to keep up with rap, but, "The very qualities that made hip-hop seem so transgressive and illicitly exciting when they were in high school or college—the misogyny, the anti-authoritarianism, the glamorization of drug dealing, drug usage, and pimping—began to seem obnoxious and irresponsible. Mainstream rap seemed mired in self-parody, obsessed with increasingly inane forms of conspicuous consumption To keep in touch with the music and stave ...

Film: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Do Movies Need To Be Seen On The Big Screen?

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 10:26:30 -0600

Scott: A year ago, a cinephile friend of ours remarked, upon hearing that Michael Haneke's Caché was shot on high-definition video: "Oh well, celluloid had a good run." It was clear to him—as it's clear to me—that film as we used to know it has changed, thanks to the prevalence of movies shot on a format that we generally associate with home viewing. I'm not convinced yet that digital cinema has reached the high photographic standards set by conventional celluloid. In fact, the onslaught of cruddy-looking DV projects has, in my view, crippled more than ...

TV: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: The Best TV Of 2006

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:11:02 -0600

Noel: Now that we've wrapped up the year in books, DVDs, movies, and music, we should probably take a moment to acknowledge the medium we actually spent the most time enjoying in 2006: the glass teat itself, television. The big news story of the year in TV is the way new serialized dramas have almost completely failed to catch on with audiences, with the major exception—the one that proves the rule, perhaps—of Heroes. Heroes definitely qualifies as one of those shows that I jump to watch once it's safely recorded on my TiVo, and while it ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Does Christmas Music Suck?

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:01:03 -0600

Noel: When I was about 16, I made a mix tape called "Joyeux Noel"—clever, huh?—drawn from my brother's copy of A Very Special Christmas, my mom's handful of promotional Christmas CDs, and my late grandfather's stack of vintage Christmas albums. I burned that cassette onto a CD years ago, and later dumped it into iTunes, and the songs from that tape still form the core of my Christmas-music listening, year after year. I typically dial up that playlist during the first weekend of December, which is when we start decorating around our house, and listen ...

Film: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Are Oscar Prognosticators Evil?

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:01:58 -0600

Noel: At the end of last year, I wrote a long blog post about how much I used to love the end-of-the-year list-making/list-reading process, and how I thought it had started to go sour. Well, now we're moving into another list season, and I'm determined to keep a more positive attitude about why we critics go on list benders at the end of the year. It isn't about consensus, it isn't about "being right," and no matter what some of our readers think, it's not about showing off how obscure our tastes can be ...

Film: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Do screenwriters really matter?

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 10:10:43 -0600

Scott Tobias: The conflict between director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga—who ended their collaboration after the acclaimed triptych of Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and the new Babel—is good jumping-off point for a subject that's been simmering in Hollywood and critical circles lately. Namely, are screenwriters getting enough credit for their work? Critics generally talk about films in terms of the director, which of course denies any contribution the writer could have made, as does the "a film by" credit, which basically posits the director as the author of the film. I'm going to argue ...

Music: Crosstalk:Crosstalk: Does rock and roll ever forget?

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:02:33 -0600

Kyle Ryan: To begin with, a scene from Trainspotting: Sick Boy:Well, at one time, you've got it, and then you lose it, and it's gone forever. All walks of life: George Best, for example, had it and lost it. Or David Bowie, or Lou Reed— Renton:Some of his solo stuff's not bad. Sick Boy:No, it's not bad, but it's not great either, is it? And in your heart, you kind of know that although it sounds all right, it's actually just shite. Renton:So who else? Sick Boy:Charlie Nicholas, David ...