I have had a long string of days with no specific time commitments earlier than late afternoon (because things are quite frankly pretty really difficult right now with the vertigo and the meds). As a result, I have the flexibility to try out movies that are in my Netflix queue on an “oh why not, let’s see how it goes” basis, because if they run over the amount of time I need for my workout, or if I have to stop one because it’s no good and move on to another, it won’t screw up the rest of the schedule. I have this theory that if I never run into bad movies (or TV or books or music or restaurants or or or or), I am not casting the net wide enough and am probably missing things I would like that don’t look like things I would definitely totally like.
Lordy there are a lot of bad movies out there. It is hard work to make a movie, and the sheer quantity of terrible ones out there–just the ones on Netflix–just the ones on Netflix that do not immediately trigger the “no, that one will be terrible, do not watch” buttons–is staggering.
One of the things that’s come up a lot about movies that have talented actors in them and come out terrible anyway is that a lot of them start out only trying to do one thing at once. They are doing setting. Not even setting plus gorgeous camerawork, which I could forgive. But look! Here is a solid seven minutes of setting! We are in this particular location! It has buildings! Sometimes a tree or two! (If there are lots of trees I am also more forgiving. Me and trees, you know. Also water. But no, mostly buildings.) Here are some people who are not shot in such a way that you could possibly get to know them, so: still setting! Yep! Setting! No theme here! No characters! Just setting! Seeeeeeettinnnnnng!
Don’t do this.
Or character: here is this guy doing stuff! Boy, is he doing stuff! He is folding his laundry! Hee, what a quirky guy, with the way he folds his laundry! It is what we call stage business, the laundry folding! And this can be great. This can be really good, the stage business, the introducing us to the character. But you can’t let it drag. Because if your actor is talented enough to show us who he is with the folding of his laundry, he’s talented enough to show us who he is with the folding of his laundry in a few minutes. And then more of it…is not actually giving us more backstory of who he is and who his Uncle Carlo is and what his Uncle Carlo did in the war and all that. Not just with the laundry. You have to give us another character, you have to give us more setting, you have to give us something more than just the one thing.
I’m not saying everything has to be fast-paced. I’m saying that even in leisurely pacing, even in a loving slow and gentle buildup like you often get with the hour and a half BBC mysteries, you’re generally doing more than one thing at once…and if you’re not, you lose audience attention, because you have to earn it, you don’t get to just call names when it slips away.