How much is Friday night worth?

By Aaron 9/3/2007

This past weekend NBC aired a Friday Nights Lights marathon that helped remind me why Friday Night Lights is the best show on network television. Great characters in realistic plotlines, powerful sports drama AND emotional high school drama, and then the show has some football in it. The show was unique, yet familiar (easy to connect to) and generally, really good. But the show’s weak ratings put it at risk and now the only hope the show has at surviving is attracting new viewers, and that means YOU.

If you have not been watching Friday Night Lights – here is (some of) what you have missed. Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is the new coach of the Dillon Panthers led by one of the top ranked quarterbacks in the nation, Jason Street (Scott Porter), and junior phenom running back Smash Williams (Gaius Charles). The pressure on Coach Taylor to win is made heavier by the career ending injury to Street in the first game, forcing inexperienced sophomore backup, Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) has to take over. Saracen wants to play well but faces numerous distractions at home where he lives alone with his grandmother (Louanne Stephens) who is more work than help for Matt, while his father serves in Iraq. Meanwhile Eric’s wife, Tami Taylor (Connie Briton) takes a job as a counselor at Dillon where their daughter, Julie (Aimee Teergarden) is a sophomore.

Spurred by his best friend Landry (Jesse Plemmons), Matt manages to start a serious relationship with Julie. At the same time, Street has to deal with new wheelchair bound life, putting stress on his long-term relationship with Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly). Street also has a serious falling out with his best friend, and the team’s fullback, Riggins (Derek Phillips) over similar issues. Riggins relationship with Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki) ends early in the season and Tyra becomes a much larger character when she attracts the attention of Landry. Smash tries hard to have an emotional relationship for a change, and struggles to win the heart of the bipolar Waverly (Aasha Davis). I could go on, but it would be impossible to conduct an entire season summary in any other efficient manner – most of the basic plotlines were discussed above.

In this next season, the show will pickup where the finale left cliffhangers. We will find out if Coach Taylor took the TMU job, what Street and Layla will do next year, where Julie and Matt’s relationship will go from here, if Riggins can stabilize his life, what Tyra wants to do with her life and what the Dillon Panthers will do to defend their state title. So the new seasons offers lots of drama, and lots of football – plenty enough to go around for everyone.

For those of you new to Friday Night Lights the show was not well advertised. The show is much more than a show for guys about football – rather the show is more like Dawson’s Creek except every forty-five minutes is movie-quality footage. The show is different than other shows because it strives for realism, trying to capture realistic shots with revolutionary camerawork. Besides failing to advertise the show properly, the network did not help FNL out by constantly changing the show’s time/day slot. Then, despite receiving exceptional reviews, the show was always on the chopping block because of bad ratings. While the show was picked up again for a second season, NBC slotted the show in at 9/8C on Fridays. Hardly a successful spot for any show and certainly not a show about high school football considering most high school football games are on Fridays. Plus, fans that are not football-goers are hardly going to sit at home on a Friday night to watch FNL – and neither are NEW viewers.

So what can you do to help the show survive? Create some noise – if you already watch the show, tell your friends how good the show is, and if you do not watch the show already, you should start. Like I already said, it is hard to ask people to watch the show in its time slot, but since Nielsen Ratings have recently started to count digital video recordings – so your Tivo’d viewing can count too – that counts. Also, since Nielsen ratings are just surveys “just say yes” to you Friday Night Lights.

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.