Wednesday, July 03, 2013

TV vs. Hollywood...No Contest

I am in the process of watching The Tudors on my Kindle Fire. It is turning out to be a very entertaining and educational experience. This is the kind of thing that we once looked to Hollywood to bring to us but not anymore.
The Tudors is the story of King Henry VIII starting from when he was a young man and still married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. It is a major production that is 38 hours long. It is beautifully done and is historically accurate (I hope).
I do wish it were not so sexually explicit. There are parts where it is downright nasty. (This means I can’t recommend it to my grandchildren in the hope they will begin to find history as interesting as I do.) I’ve seen nasty in my life but I find myself wishing they would have gotten Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn, Ethel Barrymore, Barbara Billingsley, Harriett Nelson to star in it and, when the nasty part started getting nasty, the camera would move away and your nasty imagination would have been allowed to take over.
The real interesting part is all this quality movie making is brought to us by the Television Industry. You may want to come to the defense of Hollywood and tell the Smartfella that Hollywood could do this kind of good stuff also. The operative word in your defense of Hollywood would be “could”.
They could but they don’t because they are too busy bringing us Car Chases, Machine Guns, Machine Men, Comic Book Characters, Car Chases, Sex, Hollywood Celebrities Standing On Red Carpets Looking Stiff (so we can adore them and their clothing) and (did I forget to mention?) Car Chases.
If they insist on having all those machine guns shooting all those bullets, at least they ought to teach the shooters how to shoot. The Hits to Bullets Shot Ratio is about as low as the Worthwhile Historical Content to Trash Ratio of these productions.
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
When I was a child I paid 12 cents to get into the Carrolton Theatre and I got a full 12 cents worth of entertainment. Today I still get a full 12 cents worth of entertainment when I go to see one of these Hollywood “Blockbusters”.
Would I kid u?
Smartfella
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched the Tudors over the 5 or 6 seasons in was on HBO or
Showtime. I think it was fairly accurate. Near the end it had King Henry with leg sores which I know he is purported to have suffered with, but on the show he never got fat.

Anonymous said...

WHY DON'T U BUY A TV? THE SCREEN IS MUCH LARGER THAN YOUR KINDLE FIRE & WOULD MAKE FOR BETTER VIEWING.

Anonymous said...

Thanks SmartFella .....a great read!

Anonymous said...

Mary Ann and I are great fans of the Tudors. Now I can name all 6 of Henry VIII's wives. I could never do that before, not even after taking Dr. Witte's Western Civilization course. Also, Dr. Witte never mentioned in any of his lectures that Henry VIII use the f-word. Watch it on BBC, all the nasty scenes and f-words are deleted.