According to this tiny paragraph in the rainforest version of last Thursday’s Age, The Movie Show is getting the chop:
Movie Show axed
SBS Television’s The Movie Show will disappear from screens in June - most likely never to return.
The long-running film program has shed ratings since hosts Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton defected to the ABC in 2004, with the broadcaster revealing yesterday it will be “rested” during the soccer World Cup.
When the hosts’ shock shift was announced in April 2004, they took a swipe at SBS’ controversial search for a wider audience and higher ratings. Yesterday’s news confirmed Pomeranz’s worst fears.
“It’s like a baby has died,” she said. “It’s a sad, sad day.”
The pair were among SBS’ biggest stars during their 17-year run, with the show consistently one of its top 10 ratings performers.
If what the report suggests is true and The Movie Show won’t be brought back after the football ends, I’ll be bitterly disappointed - but not altogether surprised.
One minor reason this seems like the inevitable is that the program is just not as good as it used to be. I very much dislike the approach that’s been taken since the abovementioned change of personnel. While D & M can be incredibly windbaggy and irritating at times (D rather more so than M, I submit), they are always wholly focused on evaluating the movie and helping the viewer get an idea of what kind of experience the movie offers. That’s exactly what a weekly review program ought to do. By contrast, the current Movie Show hosts seem to approach moviegoing as some kind of hipster contest, using the current crop of offerings to display their film buff credentials, without saying too much about the film itself. For example, the segment on the remade When A Stranger Calls last week namechecked a bundle of 1970s teen/slasher movies but didn’t really give the kind of info viewers can use to work out whether it fits their own criteria for a movie worth seeing. D & M have an unbeatable lead in this department, just because they’ve made their own tastes and preferences abundantly clear over the years and you can take them into account, but the Movie Show team don’t seem to have individual tastes and preferences - or perhaps the program format doesn’t allow for their expression.
Anyway, that’s just my opinion, and whether or not it has any relevance to faltering ratings, I would still regard it as something of a catastrophe if the show were really to vanish forever. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to see its fate as indicative of how SBS intends to fulfil its Charter, which stipulates, as you know, that the broadcaster’s purpose is to
provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society
News & current affairs services aside, the key way SBS does this is by making available an unparalleled selection of movies from around the world. As the phenomenal success of the Hollywood empire demonstrates all too well, not much beats a good movie when it comes to opening intensely inviting windows into other cultures and other lives. I appreciate that globally significant sporting events such as the World Cup & the Tour de France also bring cultures together, but there is sometimes a competitive, ‘mob’ element to sport which is not always entirely conducive to fostering dialogue, understanding, knowledge and tolerance. The Movie Show is a critical part of the SBS cultural message, continually raising awareness of what’s out there beyond the ubiquitous mainstream American film, and very often providing accessible introductions to cinema releases that show up on the station itself a year or two later. Scrapping The Movie Show is the kind of small erosion which cumulatively wipes out what progress Australia has managed to make towards making a functional multicultural society. We can’t do without it.
maybe they need hosts who are not (or who do not act like) inner-city bourgies?
Yeah, that’s kind of my feeling too Glen, but as I implied in the post, I don’t think that’s enough of a reason to can the whole program.
I’m pretty sick of David in particular, but maybe that’s just me. You could just as easily have a go at D&M for an old-fashioned cinephile style of pretention.
Having said that, I can’t stand Jamie - the sbs show works much better when it’s Fenella and Megan.
Sorry, that was a bit obfuscatingly pithy.
I always thought some ‘fieldwork’ might be appropriate.
The consumption of movie texts is no longer (if it ever was) merely about the ‘text’ itself, but the material and cultural networks within which it was suspended. Two (or three) people gassbagging about what they think of a film is a bit boring. Who cares about their opinions? If I want an opinion on any cultural text I can go to the internet and find as many as I want. That is one of the reasons why the ABC’s culture vulture failed, too. They are operating in an imaginary time and discussing culture as if intellectual capital was restricted to the elite; it is not. Era of google!
The role of the ‘critic’ has to mutate and can longer be content with maintaining an audience because of the sheer (non)charisma of the critic(s) or the intellectual poverty of the audience. The critics just come across as being paternal idiots (inner-city bourgies). The role of the critic has to exist in mediating between cultural commodities and the propositioned audiences/markets for the commodity.
So, fieldwork. That is part of my answer to SBS and the ABC’s problem. Give a camera to two film students and tell them to cover a cultural ‘beat’. One thing you can not get from the internet, well, not at the moment, are representations of others consuming things and the conjunctural dimension to these events of consumption. Or, better yet in this broadband era, open the floor for content to be submitted!!
More broadly, there are two ways to look at this: 1) take cinema as an esoteric social field, and explore the cultural terrain of cinema enthusiasts in Australia or around the world. Films only exist here as catalysing points around which collectivities are individuated. If critics can no longer critically intervene in this individuating process as they once did, then represent it and assist in it. Or 2) film as a mass-culture industry organised into streams of fandoms and markets. (This is how all the ‘culture’ programs on pay TV are organised and it is a bit sickening. They say the most trivial shit EVER about music, tv and film. Yes, I am talking about those weekend jokers on MAX.)
I am sure people in the ABC/SBS have already thought through this stuff.
SBS has said they will run something like the movie show in the slot - just not that. I reckon that working out a substitute to D&M would be very very difficult.
Ah, the good old Charter. Since it was introduced in the early 80s as an independence mechanism it’s never quite described what SBS television does, and I’m not sure any set document ever will be able to do it.
Programming of ‘cult’ shows, non-English drama and semi-pornographic Eastern European movies has never really fit with the Charter, though I don’t disagree they make an important contribution to the Australian media scene. With a properly functioning and non-monopolised television market, though, SBS TV wouldn’t be nearly so important.
The Board had it written far more as a means of asserting their independence from Ministerial control, which when they were set up as a Corporation in 1978, was absolute. The Minister for Immigration could, theoretically, even have directly interfered with programming in the Kerry Packer way (get! it! off! the! air!) It’s no coincidence that SBS’ radio arm was far more prominent in the late 70s and early 80s as 2EA/3EA.
…
I’ve got a photocopy in my files of the Herald Guide advertisement for one of the first ever Movie Shows, back long before Margaret joined the show, and David looks nearly identical. I suspect that long before he sold out to the ABC he sold out to Satan for eternal middle-aged average looks.
I’m sure Paul Watson was happy to see D&M go (actually they are probably beyond boomer) but the poverty of experience (boomer) or freshness (
You’re on the money, Laura, it’s a hipster contest; they seem like three likeable people but the group dynamic doesn’t work. What about the young dude who does the DVD reviews, maybe he could be half of a new duo? There’s nothing wrong with the format, as David and Margaret continue to demonstrate.
fuck - there goes 200 scathing words all because of a left angle bracket
Glen,
You confuse movie criticism with movie reviewing. Also, cinema does have specific effects (or, if you want, effect/affect) that are competely separate to its existence as a mere text.
As for “Two (or three) people gassbagging about what they think of a film is a bit boring. Who cares about their opinions? “. Well, I do. First, the whole David/Margaret pairing can be taken as a rather entertaining text in its own right. Second, see above re: the movie review. It is not a scholarly programme of film theory. Reviewing is a “buyers guide” approach; trusted and well known tastes are required so as to measure one’s own tastes against them, and in turn, decide if spending the necessary $15 and 2 hours to see the film might be a worhtwhile investment of one’s limited time and meagre monetary resources.
That all this doesn’t fall into the design of a high-falutin’ discussion of the text isn’t at all surprising, but is rather all beside the point.
oh, sorry, tyro rex, it seems as if “SBS’ controversial search for a wider audience and higher ratings” doesn’t relate to you because you were already part of the audience and ratings of the program they got rid of. I am pretty sure that the current SBS Movie Show crew was aimed at people like me, you know, hip, over-educated, sexy, young people. Unfortnately it didn’t do it for me, so it failed. Thanks.
did you actually read my comment or assume that I am some kind of intellectual/academic who writes about ‘texts’ all the time and therefore makes the same booboo here?
I actually wrote: “The consumption of movie texts is no longer (if it ever was) merely about the ‘text’ itself, but the material and cultural networks within which it was suspended.”
You write: “Reviewing is a “buyers guideâ€? approach”
Oh My GOd!!! Did you understand the last distinction I made between intelligent engagements with ‘cinema’ as a scene compared to ‘cinema’ as a mass culture industry? I assume too much of the AUstralian public!! My post was based on the assumption that people from my generation would find infinitely more information on the internet/blogs/etc than rely on this one-to-many medium of TV movie shows. My assumption is that this mass-consumer model you want is not relevant anymore.
If you actually bloody read my comment I suggested to fufill their charter requirements regarding ‘culture’ they need to get more creative in representing the consumer experience. Give video cameras to film students and tell them to report on a cultural ‘beat’. They would be looking at consumer response/reception.
Do you really think that the I’m-gonna-spend-$15-on-a-movie-so-tell-me-about-it is at all relevant in an age of alternative channels of content distribution, ie internet piracy? I think there will be more of this, maybe not illegal, but something similar, and not less of it in the future
And I thought the consumer-as-sheep model was dead! Long live Adorno!
Please don’t condescend to me Glen, I read what you wrote before. Maybe, just maybe, you ought to consider that you are not clear in your communication, if you think I so massively misunderstood it that I’m incapable of grasping what you write and riffing off it.
You can have your cultural-theoretic approach if you like. I prefer a film-theoretic approach myself, it engages with the medium and not just the inter-textuality of cultural objects. So I’ll take your Adorno and raise you one Bazin.
But I wouldn’t be running off to the local broadcaster asking for a programme based on that. The relevance of the mass-culture model is amply shown by the continuation of the very successfull David&Margaret format. It’s funny, the very audience you speak of prefers the D&M model, they’re instantly suspicious of anything that is trying to interpellate them.
indeed, who is being interpellated when you accuse me of ‘inter-textuality’?!?!?! lol! please, i think you are barking up the wrong academic tree there…
I have been thinking about this sort of confrontation, where someone such as yourself jumps in with a multitude of assumptions about what they have read or the person who has written it. I find them so incredibly boorish. My primary gripe is this:
When I write such things I am not primarily worried about the clarity of my expression, so for that, I apologise. Rather, I am trying to reach for something, throw something out there. REACH! Like a discursive toothbrush. If you come along and read what I write and place me in a little box of some out-of-date ‘text’-based conception of culture, or any other gross misreading of what I have written, then do not be surprised when I jump down your throat for having the audacity to be critical of me for something I have not, in fact, written. It is not a question of you being critical of what I have written if it is worthy of criticism, sure go for it (discuss the political economy of media and the role of reviewing/criticism in it, tell me about how people are directed into cinemas because the charisma of so-and-so’s review won them over. I have actually mentioned some similar things on this blog before).
It is a question of the absolute intellectual poverty of criticism when it attempts to shut down, not an idea, because an idea hasn’t been grasped, but the process of reaching for an idea. There is a problem, not with one solution, but a problem that demands the creative response of multiple solutions. You get me? That is what pisses me off. The worst response to this process of writing/reaching is to react in the most reactionary manner possible and say “It Works Fine The Way It Is.” That is, there is NO PROBLEM!!! No, it works fine the way ‘it’ is for only a certain group of people, whatever the ‘it’ is. Do not be so bloody righteous in your own pleasure! If you are offended by the prospect of your ‘it’ and the ‘working’ of this ‘it’ being somehow corrupted by the desire to have something else, then fear not. The reactionary tastes of the mass public will always be satiated, and you will happily belong with the rest, with all your mewing and baa’ing.
You are certainly right about the difference between criticism and reviewing. Criticism is a parasitical development that appears on the flank of the cinema complex borrowing as deep as it can go in the hope that it will suddenly become a symbiotic partner in the entertainment of the masses, that is, according to the ‘entertainment’ the critic him or herself thinks appropriate. Film criticism, let alone academic film theory, produces its own space adjacent to the actual film industry itself. Reviewing, on the other hand, is internal to the film industry. It is a bit like the stockie at a cattle yard who prods the smelly beasts with an electric shock (effects/affects) so they run blindly up the arse of another beast in their little grids and think about how exciting life is.
MooooOOOOO!
MooooooooOOOOOOOOO!!
MoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
I only caught the post-D&M Movie Show a couple of times. I thought the presenters came across like Tim and Debbie from ‘Australia You’re Standing In It’ but all serious like.
Everytime a hear megan spencer’s voice, I want to smash something.
I have worked with Jaimie on various projects over the last 15 years, and I know he is an extremely intelligent, versatile and funny individual. It came as no surprise to me when he got the job as SBS presenter. For a long time I have seen him as having a great future in Australian TV. I believe that, if managed correctly, he could become the next Graham Kennedy.
That’s a shame! Not because I’m a great fan of D & M (entertaining initials), but the Movie Show has been invaluable for me, living in a regional area, in terms of keeping up with what movies are being released, lobbying the local cinema for them or catching them when I’m in a big city.
As for potential new Movie Show hosts — bring back Tim & Debbie I saw!
elsewhere, Tim and Debbie did do a movie host thing on the ABC for a while - called Reel to Real, I believe. It was a scream. They only reviewed films where the musical director was one C. Bakaleinikoff. I recall Tim trying to explain that the ships in some Hollywood sword-and-swashbuckle epic or other were not really real, but only models, and Debbie just couldn’t get it. “But why would they fire their cannon at models?” she demanded. Tim: “No, Debbie, no, you see, the other ships are models as well….” (gave up).
Empathised with your experiences riding around the Telegraph Station, btw.
On a related subject, does anyone else get the feeling that the ABC aren’t sure what to do with D&M? Now they’ve got them, with much fanfare - well, what audience are we aiming at? What timeslot?
re. the SBS movie show, it really is a bit of a stinker, but I’m not entirely sure why, because Megan Spencer at least is pretty good in my opinion. She’s a bit overtly highbrow but at least she’s frank about liking or hating something (and when she gives the thumbs up to zombie flicks like George Romero’s Land of the Dead, I’d question whether she’s even that snobby. The other two on the panel are a bit more annoying.)
I quite enjoy her radio version of the movie rundown on Triple J.
The kid who reviews the video games shits me to tears.
At last, a real Cultural Wet to equal our foremost exponent of Cultural Dryness, Mr Strocchi. Quick, someone e-mail Jack and let him know that the genuine article is finally commenting at LP.
er, the kid who does the DVDs I guess I meant. Got it confused there.
I’d love to join the discussion, but I can’t see SBS on my television. Even with the bunny ears and outside aerial and expert tuning.
The David & Margaret Show is not about cinema - it is about David & Margaret.
I like it.
I like Peter Thompson’s reviews on the 9 Sunday show too.
And I agree with Rob above who said re the trend triplets on SBS:
‘the presenters came across like Tim and Debbie from ‘Australia You’re Standing In It’ but all serious like’
I tried to watch it once and could not make myself go back again.
What I want to know is - Is Fenella Kernebone lesbian?
Well, Kim, according to Laura she’s now looking for a gig, so maybe it’s your big chance to find out…..
…and it’s a bit strange, but your comment all that time ago on “the post that won’t die” was the first thing that sprang into my mind when I read this post….
Part of the problem for me with the ABC’s handling of D & M is that their show is on Thursday nights, when new movies open, and I for one am not very likely to be at home to watch it. The SBS movie show is on Wednesday night - a lot more useful.
David Tiley says SBS are not in fact going to can the movie show altogether, and I believe him over a paragraph in the paper any day:) So that’s a relief.
Owning up to liking George Romero doesn’t prove Megan Spencer (or anyone else) is not engaged in a hipster contest - Romero’s very much on the cool directors list.
I understood very little of what Glen posted, but I have to say I’m disappointed (and to tell the truth, kind of offended) to be told that textual criticism is outmoded and passe, and that reviewing is just a tool of the culture industry. Regarding the first point I don’t know why anyone should care about keeping up with intellectual fashions; re the second, reviewers who don’t cultivate their independence and their sensibilities don’t keep their jobs.
Howdy-doo Miss Laura.
And Mr D. Heidelberg. Hello buddy.
The movie show? Finishing? Who cares.
I could never understand a word of it, but Pomeranz, with her teenage hairdo, and old sugar daddy Stratton, were a good laugh.
I could watch them - this grinning pair of cadavers, with the sound off and be enormously entertained. They were like estate agents praising some dirty old wreck; nothing was so bad they couldn’t find something wonderful to say about it.
I never once heard them say a film was no good.
But the truth is, if Movie/DVD production stopped altogether the world would be a nicer place.
Yes, me too, Tony!
The shorter Glen; “I don’t care about writing for my audience. Therefore the audience is stupid when it misinterprets me.”
You’re so advanced, oh great Doctor-to-be, my puny mind cannot comprehend your greatness. For this I am truly sorry.
Please, enough with the elaborate self-justifications already.
Laura, unless it’s on a different day in Melbourne, if you check the Brissie tv guide, D&M are on Wednesday nights at 10pm.
I liked the discursive toothbrush, though I prefer Occam’s indissoluble razorblade.
I like the discursive toothbrush too, though like Tyro Rex I am bemused by the scorn expressed for lucidity. Anybody would think Glen didn’t want people to understand what he was saying. Surely that can’t be right.
Still, it would explain why he is trying to reach for something by throwing it out. Or vice versa. Hard to tell.
I think we need to make allowances for the fact that Glen’s native tongue is Deleuzian rather than English.
Probably an outreach exercise aimed at his incontinently expectorated false teeth, which continue to chatter whilst doing a castenet number on the bathroom floor while dodging the cat.
Laura — “Owning up to liking George Romero doesn’t prove Megan Spencer is not engaged in a hipster contest — Romero’s very much on the cool directors list.”
Hmm, yeah. Ya think Ms. Megan has rented “Martin” or “The Crazies”?
R.H., I’ve quite often heard them say a film was no good, stratton in particular (MP tends to hedge around a lot more and look for good aspects - “I liked Brad Pitt’s haircut…”). They don’t tend to just say “that was shit - next!”, but they certainly do bag some films. David, I seem to recall, was particularly harsh on Team America?
If it wasn’t for the multi-syllabic words, I could have sworn I was just reading the World of Warcraft forums, not LP.
David can be a bit PC. Years ago he refused even to rate Romper Stomper (Russell Crowe’s first big outing) on the grounds it promoted violence against Vietnamese immigrants - which it didn’t. Margaret gave it a five (I think).
Perhaps that might better read:
it is not a question of understanding, you are not stupid for not having the specific chunks of information that require understanding, that is only a matter of years of reading and thinking, it is a matter of being aware of your own stupidities. i live with my stupidities everyday. don’t be afraid of your stupidities, dance with them. name a stupid song and whenever you hear it do a stupid dance. brilliant. BLOGGING! STUPID DANCE!!!
laura, sorry to cause offence. re you first point: i meant ‘text’ in my original comment as in the basic element of a structural semiotics/marxist combo. sure if you do literature studies (or some version there of) then I can understand holding on to ‘text’ as a specific concept, but the grand ‘textual’ conceptions of culture by armchair theorists are surely dead!?!? (there is a neat set of concepts sometimes associated with ‘text’ that are also problematic when understood as ‘textual’, such as ‘commodity’, ‘bodies’, etc.) I am in cultural studies remember, and I am pretty sure that the ‘text’ is dead here. (Thus spoke glen! lol!)
your second point is much more problematic and I am not sure what you have written that contradicts what I have written!!! Firstly, “reviewers who don’t cultivate their independence and their sensibilities don’t keep their jobs” well, this is precisely what I was getting at!!! Jobs in the cultural industry!?!?! By cultivating their independence and sensibilities reviewers also cultivate (individuate) a given population who read/consume their work, in part, for those very sensibilities and independence that the reviewer has cultivated. Such audiences as commodified as, at worst, an audience for the advertising that goes with the review, or, at best, a resource for the cultural capital of the reviewer.
Lastly, it is not a question of “intellectual fashions”, if it were simply a case of keeping up with the intellectual jonezs, then I would be a full blown Zizek/Badiou monstrosity by now, lol! It is a question of ‘what it can do’, and what the various elements of intellectual fashion I engage with enable me to do certain things for my dissertation (REACH in certain ways) that I think are the most productive. I am not interested in carving out a well worn space for myself. I am a mechanic.
hmmm, what is this simplistic wet/dry bullshit? pffft…
Happy blog birthday (well almost) to our commenters too…
Still one of my favourite quips. Keep them fires burnin’ Glen
Who are the interpellated collectivities individuated by conjectural dimension in this contextualised cultural domain?
What?
Shutup.
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO*
*Last line in The Killing of Sister George.
Really? Well now, who said RH wasn’t a huge BIG BIRD CULTURE VULTURE!
Okay?
All right?
Shutup.