LESS ARTISTS, MORE CRAFTSMEN

Blog number 235 25 October 2008

Today is Sunday. Tonight I get to watch "Dexter," "Mad Men," and "Entourage." Goody.

These programs are produced, written, directed and acted by craftsmen.

On the other hand we have "Crash," a new series with nice camera shots, nice opening credits, lots of money invested. And then it all goes to crap. I knew from the first scene that there were going to be problems with this turkey. It opens with a long sex scene. Obviously a precursor to what is coming.

So humans have sex.

Amazing!

The problem with this series is that nobody cares. A cop with no stripes on his sleeves starts ordering other cops around like a top sergeant, and then when he is out on patrol, he wears sergeant stripes.This same cop hassles a sexy Latina after accidentally ramming into her car, feeling her up, going to her house and kissing her while her husband is out of sight, but in the same room, and then has sex with her on the side of his car while stopped at a stop sign. And she obviously hates him. Guess you have to really insult a woman if you wanna have quick sex with her.

Then we have a Black architect trying to get a job designing some alterations a white woman wants on her house that her husband is very much against. You just KNOW the Black man and the white woman is going to have sex. Because it's cutting edge, you see. And sure enough, they do.

Then a Black poet is talked into doing rap for a powerful music mogul even though he insists he is NOT a rapper, that he writes poetry, period. So after no rehearsal, he proceeds to wow the crowd and is promised that he is going to be "the next big thing."

Crash could have been up there with Dexter, Mad Men, et all. You can see it has the potential, but the insistence on sex, juvenile nonsense and carelessness makes it into nothing more than a teenage sex thriller.

Obligatory sex scenes are like car chases, hand to hand combat and gunfire. They eat up the time while adding nothing to the story. You can almost hear the director saying, "I need something here. I know! I'll put in a sex scene (chase scene, fight scene, gun battle scene).

"I don't really like being a critic, but if not me, who? Somebody's got to say these things. Otherwise trash will tend to propagate its self.