Re: The Newsroom
Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2012 2:07 am
Michael Ian Black has been tweeting "#possiblenewsroomdialogue" and I recommend going through it, because it's hilarious.
If that doesn't pass muster, I suggest "S.E. Cuppism"Mr Sausage wrote: Can we call misusing big words in a printed column an Armondism?
Having actually read that interview now- it seems as though she is using 'modernist' in the sense of believe that there is exactly one, findable truth, as opposed to the postmodern belief that truths are myriad and opposed to one another, and as far as that dichotomy goes I think she is correct. Also, Sorkin comes off as a tremendous jackass.wattsup32 wrote:I finally got the time to watch the pilot. I'm on the fence, but I'll stick with it for a season at least (very easy to do on HBO). It has all the hallmarks of what I like about Sorkin: directness excused only by the quickness of the situation, intelligence bolstered by arrogance trumped by intelligence grounded in humility, and the a conviction that if you present yourself to the public as though you have faith in their intelligence they will come.
At the same time, it felt mostly flat for most of the time. LIkely due to how unlikable almost every character was. In Sorkin's past efforts even the detestable characters had their charms for the most part. That didn't happen here. And, the underdog characters I normally root for simply because of their station (the assistant) grated in ways that made it tough to get through.
But, in the end, I'm pretty much a sucker for Sorkin. So, I'll keep at it.
Did anyone who read the interview with "Internet Girl" think she was taking a shot at another HBO show with this paragraph:
"Sorkin doesn't see this. He denies being either an ideologue or a modernist, agreeing only that the show is written in his voice, and that said voice is “authorial” (both my word and his). I’d posit that creating an authorial drama in a time of mumbling, precarious, voice-of-a-generation comedy almost absolutely constitutes an ideology, one both modernist and masculinist."?
Except the belief in stable, universal truths isn't modernist, either. That's nineteenth century and earlier. Modernism is chiefly famous for giving precedence to subjective experience and mutable phenomena. This was the era in which Virginia Woolf was writing novels in which three different people could look at a banner dragged behind an airplane in the sky and each think it says something different; where T.S. Eliot was composing poems out of fragments of different voices and the detritus of culture; where James Joyce was having the language of his novel playfully alter the novel's reality wherever he saw fit, so that now a character is a random Dubliner, now the Irish hero Cuchulain, now some parody of the two, all at the whims of his language and all equally true.matrixschmatrix wrote:Having actually read that interview now- it seems as though she is using 'modernist' in the sense of believe that there is exactly one, findable truth, as opposed to the postmodern belief that truths are myriad and opposed to one another, and as far as that dichotomy goes I think she is correct. Also, Sorkin comes off as a tremendous jackass.
I'm sure most of the chatter is due to its novelty and its being the only thing on right now.domino harvey wrote:Look forward to another year of internet arguments: The show's already been renewed for a second season
As soon as they introduced that whole asterisk-email thing (which, I agree with Matt, is kind of unnecessarily complicated when almost everyone has experienced the "Reply All" mistake), I immediately groaned at how obviously it was going to be used, but I guess it was basically like placing/mentioning a gun in act 1.Matt wrote:She couldn't just have accidentally hit "reply all" to an all-staff email instead of accidentally typing an asterisk? You know how hard it is to accidentally type an asterisk? Twice?
Perhaps it's because she's possible one of the worst offenders when it comes to humblebrag on twitter, but I'm just exhausted by how often Munn's contribution to various creative projects boils down to the idea that she's attractive, but still very capable. Just once, I'd like her to accept a role where she just shows off that she's capable, instead of taking some time to mention how hot she is.wattsup32 wrote:I fundamentally reject the notion that Olivia Munn has the chops to get a Ph.D. in economics and be an adjunct professor at Columbia.
A part of me was kind of disappointed and astounded that Sorkin grabbed a plot-point that could easily have been dropped into some typical sitcom or was pulled directly from He's Just Not That Into You. Unless of course this type of thing is now commonplace in society and I'm just missing out on experiencing/inflicting this type of trauma on people.Matt wrote:Just like it's not enough that Maggie used to date the guy who works for Jan Brewer. No, she had to have an extremely humiliating experience with him that somehow became her fault for lacking courage.
This is a Sorkin pet peeve of mine. He demeans the opponents of his lead characters by ascribing stupid mistakes to them that make them look like buffoons. I remember an episode of West Wing where NEA opponents were made the fool by Toby because they thought Oklahoma was written by Rogers and Hart AND that Death of a Salesman was written by Arthur Murray. Really? Both of those mistakes in same sentence? That's just one example. It happens constantly.Matt wrote:And her snappy insult to the ex was dependent on him flubbing the name of the Race to the Top program?
I actually remember being annoyed by that exact same opening scene. I recall thinking "does that mistake really nullify his entire argument?" In retrospect, I'm a bit irked that they devoted the majority of Procter's introduction onto the show to displaying just how awestruck/out-of-her-depth Ainsley (Procter) was by her surroundings when asked to serve as White House Counsel. Of course, now it seems like another re-occurring characteristic for all of Sorkin's young female characters.wattsup32 wrote:I remember a West Wing episode where Sam puts the town Kirkwood in Oregon when it is really in California just for the purposes of Emily Proctor's character showing him up. This just a few episodes after Sam gets made fun of because of his freakish knowledge of geography.
Holy crap, Matt! You were sooooo close! Olivia Munn picked up a second Ph.D. this episode. A second Ph.D.! Oh, and this one was in Economics, too. Why would someone get a Ph.D. in the same field of study?Matt wrote:Olivia Munn. In a couple of episodes we will surely find out that she's also a medical doctor and has adopted seven kids, each from a different continent.