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November 20, 2005

On "Coming Attractions," "Best Week Ever," "Ebert and Roeper," and the Death of Cultural Criticism on TV

The oddest show among my Tivo Season Passes is undoubtedly "Coming Attractions," The E! Channel's weekly collection of new movie trailers.

The best part of the show is the beginning, where they tell you what's coming up - it's the trailer for the trailers. The worst part of the show is the current host, Michelle Merkin, who may be the most leaden speaker ever to be paid to present information on TV. Her intros always sound like she's reading them phonetically, and doesn't actually speak English. At least that would spare her from knowing that she's named after the hairpiece that lets the carpet match the drapes.

I didn't mean to be so bitchy - I just find the clunkiness of the show mystifying. Who else would watch (or Tivo) this show - tracking it through multiple rotating timeslots - other than Hollywood-savvy obsessives like myself? If that's the case, what's the point of dumbing it down? Why not at least give us Entertainment Weekly level commentary?

I guess this is a symptom of the more general dearth of intelligent movie coverage on television. For all its flaws, Ebert & Roeper remains just about the only game in town - honest judgements (though buzz-heavy summer flicks and Oscar wannabes sometimes seem to get the benefit of the doubt) and the occasiona artyl foreign film (though they often sound like they were homework assignments for Roeper - which at least makes his petulance more appealing than Ebert's credulous Europhilia). I must not be the only freak who still watches Ebert & Roeper every week, but there can't be too many of us - in just about every market I've lived in for the last ten years or so, Ebert's show has always been broadcast around 2 AM Sunday night. There is that Bart & Guber coffe klatsch on AMC - if it isn't cancelled yet - but every time I've tuned in it's been painfully smug, justs like their book. And the Sundance Channel's promo shows, like At the Angelica, are no better than an indie Access Hollywood, complete with the 5-minute junket interviews.

This is clearly the same reason there's so little good TV journalism - networks sucking up to maintain access. But just like there's a market for The Daily Show, you think there'd be a market for smart entertainment commentary on TV, if not original reporting. I guess that's what David Spade's new show thinks it's doing, although it's more like a nasty sibling to the Access Hollywood family, snickering over the same stories with just as little perspective.

Much better is VH1's Best Week Ever, of which I'm a big fan, and which is just about the most consistently funny 1/2 hour on TV these days. (The only competition I can think of are TDS and My Name Is Earl.) But is there room for anything between the snark of "The Sizzler" and the fawning of Merkin? Ebert was the watered-down-but-worthwhile TV version of Pauline Kael, and both emerged out of the cinephelia of the 60s and 70s. I don't think cinephelia is dead. I don't think film criticism is dead - check out David Edelstein, Lisa Schwarzbaum, or the crew of The Onion, for starters, for reviews that still pulse with passion and insight. But the last ten years haven't seen the emergence of the next Ebert to replace the late Gene Siskel. Maybe Ebert blew it when he picked the amiable guy's guy Roeper rather than make an edgier call. But more to the point is that no show emerged to replace Ebert and Roeper.

I don't get it. As a film teacher, I see students every day who love to talk about, read about, and write about film. I know they've got plenty of like-minded peers. There's money to be made in not talking down to them. But I guess there's more money to be made in keeping the studios happy by avoiding anything that smacks too much of insight.

Posted by tedf at November 20, 2005 10:36 PM

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