"If you have not seen "Deadwood" you are missing the greatest grown up TV ever made."

Yeah, but the fuckers didn't wrap up even one of the 9 dangling plotlines. I know, they got screwed by HBO, but what, Milch couldn't give the fans a _little_ something.

As far as it went, it ranks among the best TV dramas ever produced.

Blah, blah, blah--unions are evil--blah blah blah.

Actually, wait. The union rules of the Hollywood industry _are_ stupid. Uh oh. I'm showing the ability to avoid painting all groups with the broadest brush possible.

Though the nice part there, Null, was that you put blame not only on unions but on management, i.e., the corporations. I knowed you wuz smart.

"Unions suck and they will suck the businesses out of this country! Dummies in this country think that they can get 20 bucks an hour for making toilet brushes. Sorry American dummies,developing countries work harder, cheaper and are not totaly urealistic about wages."

Wow. There's someone who wants us all to share in the American way of life. You're right; in certain jobs, you shouldn't expect high pay. But do you really think that Americans can or should get paid what folks in Malaysia do? No, that's not me turning a corner into "Americans are better" land--it's about how we live.

Basically, I think it's this: Anyone who wants to work in America should be able to do so. What they get paid is another story. And unions should protect employees from the whims of employers. Everyone, not just in my field, should have Just Cause for dismissal (which is not the same as "just 'cause").

"I've lived in several Right to Work states and the non-union plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc., usually made more than college graduates.

But, they had to work for their money, like the rest of us did."

I don't follow. I'm union, and I work very hard for my money.

My point was not that you have to use unions to get good wages; it was a riposte to the crazy guy's comparison to countries other than ours.

Anyway, back to work. : )

Oh, wait, I wanna smack the people who are insulting comic books on this list. Comic books are not all empty violence fests with no character development or important themes.

I'll try to offer some suggested reading at a later time. But go to ALA or other reading/literacy sites and look for their graphic-novel suggestions. There's some great stuff out there (and if you like movies, well, it makes sense...).

They're gonna kill your grandMAAAAA! Jesus, can a single thread here exist without a loony reference to Obama and his evils? Ye gods. And the speech hadn't even aired yet. I don't think I'll have time to read the speech thread tonight--still have work to do!--and by tomorrow it'll have seven thousand ranting posts and I won't even want to go there.

But Spokane, do you KNOW the it's the union's fault, the prices of movies and DVDs, I mean. Major Hollywood productions are union productions, but DVD manufacture and distribution? I dunno. And I liked it when an earlier poster (Null?) had the decency to acknowledge that management/corporations are also at fault. Takes two to tango. I wonder if people realize that in many places, the unions' power is nominal. Really, in teaching, even in a state where we can strike, the board can still impose their "last best offer," a term subject to some interpretation, usually not in favor of the teachers.

Someone here once accused me of dancing around the issues, or contributing nothing but questions. Maybe that's because I try not to pretend to knowledge I don't have.

Some interesting stuff there, Loh, Do you really think TV and movies have zero value for us as thinking humans?

MOTD=Motto of the Day?

Message of the Day. Got it. Thanks.

As for the rest, hey, ranting is why we come here. As a consumer and media educator, I gotta say there's lots of shit in movies and TV, and there's a smaller percentage of really good stuff. Kinda like books. : )

There are movies out there that are not just FX-driven crap or ridiculously convoluted. Really there are. And there are TV shows that are not just retreads and formula--they're mostly on cable, though (Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica...).

I hold that movies and even television shows can be art, in the sense of uncovering something in human nature, leading us to examine ourselves and our beliefs. Note the operative phrase "can be." Best movie I've seen in a few months: Adventureland. Great? No. But well-done mostly, a worthy coming-of-age tale, though I can't show it in class: too much drug and alcohol abuse...

The problem is not (only) in what is offered to us, but in how we take it in. Most of the time, most of us merely absorb. We are passive. Click. Click. Click. We are not critically engaged in our media. We watch; we don't view. (Read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Bill McKibben's The Age of Missing Information. Great stuff.)

I have to catch cable shows on DVD, but I'll check those you listed.

Funny line about previews--and yeah, that's what they're best at. Most comedies, it seems, blow their proverbial wad in the trailer. (Boy, somebody's gonna have fun with that line.)