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erformance and began to surpass that via overdubbing compression effects etc i believe the balance shifted suddenly records were no longer the enticement to a live performance the live performance was now the enticement to go out and buy the record that must have seemed odd to those bands that realised what was going on they just wanted to at this point in the century rock and roll but their wings were being fitted to a different flight path playing music sure sure as long as the lp sells as the recording process and the resulting lps continued to be refined i imagine that bands began to tailor their aims more and more toward the physical record and less toward what the record was supposed to document the band s own performance after all most bands at first aspired to a song on the radio ie one side of a 45 rmp record the other side could be and usually was anything two to three minutes at most just enough for radio play the rest was the party when the lp became the standard suddenly more was required of bands they had more minutes to fill pete townsend tells how he wrote a quick one a ten minute song cycle because his producer told him he had ten minutes to fill to complete the album townsend was a consumate professional though and very talented so that ten minutes wasn t just band noodling that wasn t always the case of course insert your favorite meaningless jam band here but respect me and my kind if we say but wait about our favorite prog rock outfit to say nothing of tangerine dream since this is getting too long let me wrap up here the era of the lp gave way to the era of the cd and bands were under even more pressure to fill those minutes which leads us to coldplay and an excellent ep turned into an okay cd there may be hope on the horizon the advent of the ipod and downloadable mp3s have made a conceptual leap in what is expected of music these days it s still tied to recordings rather than live performance but it seems to know that there s a need out there that bands can only sporadically fulfill suppose coldplay decided that what they wanted to go back to was the era of the 45 rmp record the song on the radio or in this case the song on the ipod they could put all their resources into making that one song really really great and not bother with the attendant cd it s still a matter of terminal nostalgia which our species seem can t seem to shake since the advent of the recorder but at least it s a step forward for the consumer at least he or she doesn t have to listen to hours of drivel to get to the good stuff which of course varies from consumer to consumer one man s drivel etc this might mean a whole new era of composer consumer relations one actually based on music and not product or it might not never underestimate the ability of marketing to undercut everything still i should do something with that ipod shouldn t i before it does something with me standard posted by beckoningchasm posted on march 14 2005 posted under entertainment and culture thoughts and theories following up too closely unbelievable as it may seem i actually left out a bit in my several million word post about millennium not sure how that happened but here s the thrilling conclusion ironically the very success the show s creators have had with creating the perfect hopeless atmosphere has cost them what they most wanted carter and others have said they wanted the show to be scary well you can t have fear unless you have some hope you have to have something to lose your life your family your freedom etc in order to feel fear if you have nothing to lose it s not fear it s fate consequently while the show is grim depressing and grotesque it is never frightening at the end of season one frank s wife catherine is abducted i m sure the producers were hoping i was saying oh my god i have to find out what happens to her but i wasn t i was saying oh well catherine nice to have known you pity you re dead can that be the reaction they wanted probably not but that s what the show managed to get from me you have to have some hope for audience sympathy and when you abandon all hope ye who tune in here what are you left with you re watching bodies going through motions like chess pieces sometimes a piece is removed from the board does anyone care standard posted by beckoningchasm posted on march 11 2005 posted under entertainment and culture thoughts and theories been down so long it looks like up to me do you like depressing art the background to this question is simple i recently had the opportunity to buy the first season of millennium and i went ahead and did so i hate to shatter your illusions but i buy a number of dvds sight unseen based usually on the reputation of the creative forces behind them sometimes i buy them because i think oh a giant monster story that d be cool other times because the cover is shiny and attractive so millennium i only knew two things going in 1 it starred lance henriksen who is pretty much always worth watching as some kind of psychic cop and 2 that it was created by chris carter the creator of the x files i ve always liked the x files even in the later years when everyone on the show seemed to stop giving a damn i always watched hoping they d pull themselves up more fool me eh millennium was produced during the years when x files mania was at its peak since carter had created a big success for fox it seemed logical that they would open the vaults for him and allow him a free hand to create the show of his dreams well i sure hope his dreams aren t anything like millennium because this is the most depressing show i ve ever seen it s pretty much the most depressing thing i ve seen in my life now don t get me wrong the production is very well done the acting is superb and there are some interesting stories and ideas overall it s the very model of a high class television series but there s absolutely no hope at all in it the whole world has been drained of life and people are basically just shambling corpses waiting until someone comes along and tells them to lie down and be buried of course the x files could certainly be dark and some of their episodes were pretty grim but the overall foundation of that series was that of a basically good world being invaded by evil all that was necessary was for good people to fight the good fight and evil would be vanquished perhaps not permanently and perhaps with high losses on the side of good but the world was not yet lost good was something that people were willing to fight for and the fight proved that the bonds between human beings are shared by us all the soul of the show s world was a human soul the invading forces were just that an invasion an encroaching alien shadow in a world still in the light the world may be teetering close to tumbling into hell but it isn t there yet there s time to right the balance millennium s world is a much darker place here it is quite apparent that the world is lost that it is a planet of crawling evil now that we are all already dead and in hell the sunlight and smiles are just fading masks on a party that has long ago turned into a wake the world is hewn from darkness and terror and blood and any struggle against these forces is going against the natural order ie it s a futile fight against forces that cannot be defeated so fighting for good is something that people do simply because there s nothing better for them to do even then they don t believe in what they do the rot is set in the tide cannot be stemmed all we can do is watch as things fall apart and the center cannot hold and mere anarchy reigns from his high throne and laughs the only thing we can do is hold ourselves back from becoming involved allow our souls to die and perform the only remaining sign of corporeal animation laugh along with chaos surrender to the death of life and meaning we re not even doomed we long ago passed that point this attitude infects everything in millennium even the overly enthusiastic neighbor in the early episodes seems way way suspicious evil forces rule the world and good is powerless and futile people are simply going from birth to death no pause along the way for any meaning to it all any indication that we are more than fodder for the flames in the x files there were deaths as well but you were pretty sure that agents mulder and scully would save as many folks as they could and bring the evil to justice and that evil would then be vanquished whether killed or jailed or simply exposed in the light while comical at times and overbearing many times mulder s passion that truth would stand in the light and banish the dark was what drove the series the idea that evil was everywhere and undefeatable was not the foundation of the show had mulder walked into the world of millennium it would have chewed him up and spat him out he would have been one of the first victims his body left as a warning to fools pretty much no one lives in millennium once a person is abducted or otherwise goes missing it s a fair bet they re already dead in the worst possible way too and frank black henriksen is simply around trying to find the body the one episode where frank s sister in law actually turned up alive was pretty astonishing for this show it was so astonishing in fact that the impact simply wasn t there i had long before assumed she was dead needless to say this episode was followed by one in which an entire family was killed before the opening credits we didn t even get to build one sand castle before the next wave drowned us this isn t intended to be one long millennium bash my point is this what is it about these dark depressing visions that is so attractive to creative people why is it that a show like the x files or any version of star trek is considered mere light entertainment monsters and spaceships for the kiddies while millennium is believed to be making a profound statement about life the universe and everything why is it when offered the opportunity to create anything he wanted i imagine chris carter chose to create this show with its weary hero and pervasive darkness and the impossibility of triumph why is it that to be considered serious a person s vision has to be nihilistic that s really what millennium comes down to nihilism from the latin word for nothing a belief not so much in anything as the belief that there is ultimately no other reality aside from an all consuming nothing that rotates at the center of space it s not just millennium that has this belief many other movies books popular songs etc all seem to think that an ending where everyone dies is a much more profound mature and artistically valid ending than one where someone overcomes difficulties bruce springsteen singing that the working man is going to be inevitably crushed is always touted as deep and thoughtful whereas no one s ever going to be anything other than dismissive of polka music which one gets people up and dancing though or is that an irrelevant question should pop music make us feel everything is worthless including ourselves how does one get pleasure from this kind of art except the pleasure that comes from saying you see i was right all along is that what it is i am wiser than you are where does this attitude come from perhaps it comes on the road to what we call maturity when we are children at least children in north america childhood consists largely of happy events one after the other christmas birthdays trips to fun places saturday morning cartoons when one reaches adolescence one can begin to contrast the experience of life with one s expectations of that experience and life suddenly becomes an ever cascading series of disappointments and disillusionings one could say that this change is indicative of an ability to judge and consider but the negative spin is one of the chief characteristics of this ability ie nothing is ever good enough everything is worse than it should be this seems to sum up millennium nicely i think if i can use the word nicely when talking about the show the change also shows up in the way people use dialogue in the x files as in childhood the dialogue consists of questions and attempts to explain either oneself or others whereas in millennium like adolescence people talk in clipped deliberately obtuse phrases and half questions that don t really create dialogue at all it mostly seems to be the actors saying words rather than conversing the impression given is of someone who is so smart we cannot follow what he says because we don t have his intellectual tools in reality it s just intended to give a profound air to one s utterings i think it s possible some of this stems from the difference between believing there are answers just waiting to be found childhood and the belief that those answers are meaningless and the search for them pointless adolescence but shouldn t maturity come with the realization that life is neither total happiness or complete unfairness but a mixture of events that happen to us how we react to these things determines our character and our sense of the character of our lives we can take what happens and do what needs to be done or we can despair that we are helpless both within the same sets of circumstances i am reminded of what i consider the money quote from david fincher s seven that bleak and depressing film of endless rain dark holdings and dealings with the devil in one scene brad pitt and morgan freeman are talking in a bar mr freeman who is just about to retire from the police force offers as has been his wont throughout the film his view that life is a terrible thing of unending pain with no reward brad pitt disagrees and responds i don t think you re quitting because you believe these things you say i don t i think you want to believe them because you re quitting gruesome ending beside i think that is the key passage in the entire movie and it s the one scene that keeps seven from being an unrelenting depression fest and instead relegates it to the ranks of films that do in fact affirm life as a contrast mr potter s continued malevolence keeps it s a wonderful life from becoming overly sappy can you imagine how awful that film would be if potter showed up at jimmy stewart s house all reformed and nice it s important to keep the mixture balanced back to seven if you ve seen the film and you know the ending while it seems appropriate to what has gone before doesn t it seem kind of rushed it s as if they want to push it at you with no chance to think about it so let s think about it despite freeman s protestations and john doe s exhortations i think no jury in the world would convict pitt s character of anything other than a crime of passion other than the contrivance of the ending in the world of seven john doe would in fact end up as a t shirt or a movie of the week in my opinion the ending of seven where there is this desperate insistence on procedure and order is the weakest part of the film concep...
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