it sort of strikes me that the writer of this article is a hack. i mean, she debunks her entire point early on: alias has long been a nudge-nudge-wink-wink to outlandish spy/action movies and shows (the MI series, and movies included) -- and it should be no surprise to anyone that his version of MI (which i haven't seen) would include similar plot points/action sequences/tech ideas. i mean come on. she also displays some ignorance by assuming that each alias episode is the sole responsibility of the show's executive producer. he wasn't even very hands-on during seasons 2 and 3, as i understand it, because he was developing lost and working on MI:III. so it's not like Abrams said "okay, use the flashback thing in episodes 7, 10, and 22 of season 2."

i would venture that any hollywood director taking on a tom cruise action movie is going to look like a hack. know why? because tom cruise action movies are made by hacks.

yeah, yeah, spielberg too. i love him. but minority report, while higher-grade schlock, was still schlock.

post-schindler spielberg is a hack of sorts, although we'll see what i think after i see munich.

imo, m:i:i is not hackish, and it has tom cruise.

you make a valid point w/r/t alias, but clearly the flashback technique was reused in alias because abrams in a sense encouraged it by using it himself. but yes, the writer conflates abrams's style with characteristic spy-movie elements. also, what was the deal with the last season of felicity?

I don't love spielberg, but Minority Report is based on schlock- ever read any Dick? It's part of his charm. Minority Report's possibly my favorite spielberg, even though Tom Cruise makes me cringe almost as much as Keanu Reeves.

It makes sense to me that J.J Abrams would play it safe on his first movie. Why take risks when you have a style and techniques that have
worked for you before? He needs to establish competence first before
he tries more experimental things. So I don't think it's fair to call it a crutch.

The creator of any TV show makes what is called a show bible. In it, it has all the rules of the characters, relationships, etc. That way, if the creator steps away, the show will still conform to a specific vision. Including in this are also character arcs, story arcs, etc. Sure, this stuff evolves as the show progresses, but it all starts with the creator of said show.

J.J. has been using that flashback thing since Felicity. I am not kidding. And by the way, so far that is J.J's best series as a whole. Watch it. And if you love Alias (before it sucked) you get to see every character you love milling about in other rolls. Fun.

I don't think J.J. is a hack, but I do not consider him a very talented director. Some M:I:III stuf was cool, but did feel a little TV to me. He just doesn't have much of his own look. But that is the job of someone who directs TV shows and that is what makes a good TV director. You can't have your own look. Your look has to be what is dictated by the TV show bible and rules.

And spielberg is not a hack. He has this weird thing where he can't end a movie to save his life anymore. But of the directors to come out of the 70's, he still has some of the most potential and is still trying. Lucas? Coppola? Those, my friends, are hacks.

Megalopolis!

show bible? sweet!

"And on the fifth day, JJ created Sydney, and it was good."

well, i haven't seen mi:3 yet. and i never watched felicity, but i doubt i'd like it as much as alias (season 1, at least) -- i mean, unless there's a time-traveling karate-kicking spy heroine with a sidekick like marshall.

unrelated, i'm kind of tired of everyone hating on mi:2. but i'm not tired of everyone hating on tom cruise. sigh, the world is so confusing now.

i like minority report -- i liked it more than crazymonk and others did, as i recall. as adaptations of dick go, it's clearly the best so far, though i'm hoping a scanner darkly is as good as i think it will be.

munich is excellent, cm. don't be a doofus -- netflix that shit already!

ps, i think my point was that the Slate writer is implying that the techniques employed in alias are unique to JJ Abrams -- my point is that they are not unique to anything, they are quintessential chic-spy-action-thriller techniques.

i mean, surely the alias show bible includes things like: "steal heavily from bond films, run lola run, and 60's spy-tech shows, british and american."

minority report better than blade runner? me no think so.

munich is next on my netflix queue.

&

felicity does feature time-travel... seriously.

And the character who plays Marshall is in Felicity from time to time.

I am not saying it was better than Alias season one (and part of two). I am saying it is beter as a whole. It lasted four seasons, had a nice soild arc, and ended well (and really oddly, what with the time travel episodes). It didn't turn into a total crapfest, as Alias did.

As for Munich, it was decent, but unemotionally involving. Which is tough to do considering the subject matter. And the ending! Ugh, watching a close up of Eric Bana screwing his wife, and orgasming in slow-mo with sweat flying around. That was a bad idea.

Hey, thanks for giving away the ending New York Anthony... :) I hadn't
seen Munich yet. But Felicity to me was much more likeable than the
few episodes I saw of Alias because of Ms. Keri Russell-- Jennifer
Garner is no Keri Russell. And Keri hasn't stooped to some bad-looking
action movies yet either. I hope she doesn't.

you mean like M:i:III? not that it's bad-looking, but she's definitely in some action-packed helicopter sequences. through fields of windmills.

You are right, Liam. She's teetering on the line.

I love me some Keri Russel.

Munich was workmanlike. I expect more of you JBG as you earlier recommended two of the best movies of last year: Me and You and Everyone We Know and The Squid and the Whale.

loved squid and the whale. found MaYaEWK to be cloying.

Yeah, I didn't like Me and You much. Well, except for the best part. ))(( forever

I'm prepared to feel politically very put off by Munich. In fact I'm fully expecting the worst, even if the technical execution is decent.

Blade Runner beats the everliving shit out of Minority Report. Sorry for not talking about Mission Impossible.

Minority Report was Spielberg film with a terrible ending. If I recollect, what was going on was described twice, once by Colin Farrel in the LA Confidential rip off part, and one by the bad guy. Then Tom Cruise rubbed his wife's belly so all of us knew she was pregnant.

munich wasn't my favorite movie of the year; the two you cited were. but it struck me. a lot. personally. and i liked it. because of that.

as for felicity -- are you fucking SERIOUS about the TIME TRAVEL shit?

c'mon -- you were just kidding, right?

RIGHT?

I think it's the fourth one down:

http://www.jumptheshark.com/f/felicity.htm

i did some reading about this. it sounds terrible. like a high-falootin' version of the "it was all a dream!" seasons of dallas and rosanne.

Rumor has it, Felicity was given a short season 4, so J.J and co. wrote the ending and that was that. Then the network asked for four or five more episodes, but they has already wrapped it up, so as a kind of fuck you, this is what they did. And it was sort of genius. I really liked it, even if it was a bit silly. Speaking of silly, has anyone watched that crap that passes for Alias these days. She has an evil twin! How low can that show go. What's next? She gets knocked out unconcious and wakes up in medival times. Angus?

You mean like in The Cable Guy?

wait; evil "twins" are nothing new on alias -- didn't you like the first season, with "evil francie?"

that's not the thing you should be pissed off about -- what you should be pissed off about is the total "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK you" of having a certain totally dead boyfriend/husband popping up, and having a certain heroine knowing that he wasn't actually dead.

I loved the evil Francie plotline. The best part about it was that after evil Francie killed the good Francie, she still had to run that stupid restaurant. The Rodenater and I have spent many hours imagining how annoying this must have been for her. She has to kill Syd, but also, two waiters called in sick and they are short a line cook. She has to find a good position to snipe Syd, but also has to do payroll for the week. Really amazing stuff. Why isn't there a show about this?

And yeah, the show sucks for that whole Vaughn thing. But when your lead character plays an eveil version of herself, you are entering the lowest form of television. It harkens back to the days where Bewitched and I Dream of Genie had evil versions of themselves, and it was just the actresses in brunette wigs.

that's a great point about "Evil Francie."

man, i can't wait to watch season one this summer.

i agree about the sydney clone shit. but the vaughn thing really pissed me off -- not that he's still alive, but that sydney "knew" this whole time. uuh -- no she didn't. you didn't write it that way at all.

but -- i think the redemption of this last season has been in sloane's business for the last couple of episodes. it's nice of them to try to reinstate him as a full-fledged evil fucknut, even if he's a shadow of his former self.

ps i want the series to end with a revelation that rambaldi was a hoax perpetrated entirely by syd's dead fiance from the pilot.

JBG, I like your idea of tying it in with the dead fiance from the pilot. Full circle closure.

I haven't watched Alias since the first few episodes of maybe it was just the first episode of this season. New York Anthony and I kept repeating the part where Vaughn gets shot. If my memory serves me correctly a machine gun was unloaded into his torso at close range. That he was even still alive to say anything to Sydney when she reached him was ridiculous, nevermind that he survived the whole thing, which both NYA and I surmised.

Do you ever think evil Francie had to call in some of her hit man buddies to help her out in the restaurant? "But we have no restaurant experience?" "You don't need that much training to wash the dishes, now get to it Nikolai, I did save your life that time."