dumbass review and an explanation of the haters mentality
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081017/tv_nm/us_television_crash_1
(I'll also paste the entire text below, since Yahoo news stories aren't archived)
The reason for the hate (and this guy's negative review) can be summed up from this one line in his article: "...the series blasts out a collection of crude, disturbing images without a true unifying theme."
This is a 13 part, slow burn character study. Last night, we only got the first layer of what's probably going to be a very dense story. This guy sounded like he wanted instant gratification and to know every single thing about every single character in the first five minutes. I'd hazard a guess that the reviewer (and a lot of the haters) are all grumpy Gen Xers who have no appreciation for subtlety and pacing. Probably the same bunch- in fact- who complained that you didn't see the monster until the very end of 'Cloverfield' AND that you didn't know the entire backstory of said monster. Part of the MTV inspired dumbing down of America/Americans.
Just for the record, I watched Crash last night even though I fully didn't expect to like it. Two episodes in, I'm curious enough to stick around for the other 11. I'm also willing to be there's going to be a pretty interesting payoff for those who stick around for the full 13.
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Aiming for burning drama, "Crash" goes up in smoke
By Ray Richmond Ray Richmond
Thu Oct 16, 8:33 pm ET
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – As we have come to learn, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who adored the Oscar-winning 2004 feature "Crash" and those who loathed it.
But even those who found it an outrageously heavy-handed, gratingly simplistic allegory on the purportedly simmering hellhole of violence and rage that is Los Angeles might grudgingly acknowledge a certain poetic symmetry to the presentation. That lyrical quality is missing from "Crash," the new TV series version of the film and the first hourlong scripted drama series on the cable network Starz.
If you have trouble finding Starz on your cable system, well, that's the reason why Starz has gone to the expense of resurrecting "Crash" as a high-profile 13-episode cable entry. Starz Entertainment would like this show to do for it what "Mad Men" has managed to do in helping brand and define AMC.
Paul Haggis, the co-writer/director of the "Crash" film, has said he originally saw his creation as a TV drama rather than a big-screen flick, and he's listed as one of four executive producers on the new project. But this can't be the show he had in mind.
Even more stupefying one-dimensional than the film, the series blasts out a collection of crude, disturbing images without a true unifying theme. No longer an allegory, it has devolved into an excuse to shock and repulse, as demonstrated in the pilot script from Glen Mazzara, Ted Mann and Randy Huggins. It opens as an off-putting, disconnected series of vignettes about rage and evil and insanity and money. The only big name in the cast is Dennis Hopper, who portrays an angry hip-hop producer prone to bouts of fury whose first scene finds him talking to his penis in the back of a limo. Yes, his penis.
The fact that "Crash" was shot in New Mexico -- because the tax incentives are better than those in Los Angeles -- perfectly encapsulates an hour that struggles mightily to be something it's not. Like the film that preceded it, the series wants us to believe there is race-baiting danger and mayhem lurking around every corner of our fair metropolis but lacks even the courage of these convictions. The racial fire is oddly muted, the characters disturbingly undefined, the interaction frustratingly nondescript. It's unclear what the show aims to be other than chaotic and boorish. On those counts, sadly, it succeeds brilliantly.