Sitemeter
Via Steven's post on site tracking, I found out that Sitemeter was tracking rather more than it really should (use of spyware cookies and all that). This is a shame, as I really loved some things about Sitemeter, and none of the alternatives were able to approach the simple and useful reporting Sitemeter provided. I was particularly fond of their Visitor Detail page (note, that's a link to a screenshot, not Sitemeter), which contains a good summary of a visitor, where they came from, where they went on my site, and other standard info (OS, browser, location, etc...). They only tracked the last 100 visitors, but that was plenty good enough for me, and the service served me well for the past 9 years or so.

Still, they had frequent downtimes, and they've done very little to improve the service over the past 9 years, so I've always kept an eye open for alternatives. None of the popular services have ever really satisfied me though. Now comes this news of spyware, which is just a crappy situation, and so I've decided to remove all instances of Sitemeter from my site. This is most frustrating and I'm not happy with the situation. I've removed it from all blog pages as well as my main page. The rest of the site will have to wait a bit while I breath some life into my crappy, antiquated XSLT content management scheme (hopefully this will be completed by this weekend).

I've been playing around with Google Analytics for a bit, but they don't provide the kind of detail that I want for individual visits (though they're great for collecting general stats). I just installed StatCounter, which kinda, sorta has a page similar to the visit detail page from Sitemeter. But we'll have to see how that works out. I've heard good things about Mint, and I've heard that they have a plugin/extension/whatever-they-call-it that approximates Sitemeter's visit detail page. However, Mint actually costs money (imagine that!) and I don't want to pay for something that I'm not even sure will work for me.

Anyone know of another good stat package? Anyone actually use Mint? Again, what I'm really looking for is something that will provide details like this screenshot (perhaps with more details on what pages were actually visited (rather than just entry and exit pages)). [thanks to Robert for the link to details on the spyware cookies]

Update: StatCounter's visit detail page is pretty good, though you have to click through too many pages to get there.

Technorati
According to Technorati, there are 112.8 million weblogs (as we'll see, this is probably a highly dubious number). I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the grand majority of them aren't very active. Even among active ones, I'm betting that most don't have much of a readership. Like this blog! Part of this is that blogs fall into a power law distribution, with a small set of bloggers getting the majority of the traffic. The rest of us are in the long tail, and it can be hard to find each other.

Enter Technorati, a service that seeks to track weblogs in numerous ways. You can go there and search on a subject to see what other blogs are saying about that subject. And if you're a blogger, you can see what other blogs are linking to you. They give each blog an "Authority" score which is based on how many people have linked to you (I think there's more to it than that, but I don't care enough to look into it that much), and then they rank all blogs by authority. To give you an idea of how this works, Kaedrin has an authority of 20. The top 10 blogs on Technorati have an authority of somewhere around 10,000 to 25,000.

Here's the problem: Technorati sucks. It definitely doesn't track all the blogs out there (not that big a deal, such a task is probably pretty tough), but it's definitely sure to pick up every new bottom-feeding spammer blog. In other words, every time I write a new post, it gets linked by two freshly minted spam blogs. Those show up fine. Meanwhile, a real blogger (who is listed on Technorati) links me, and Technorati doesn't pick that up (I find out by looking at my referrers). And the same thing happens when I link to other people. For some reason, Technorati decides some of my posts are not worthy of tracking. For instance, my last post isn't showing up in Technorati.

This happens every once in a while, and I think I've figured out why. It seems to happen when I post out of order. I generally post twice a week, but sometimes I start an entry early. Last week, I started writing my review of GitS:SAC on Tuesday. I hadn't finished by Wednesday, so I wrote and posted another entry while I finished off my review. On Sunday, I finished my review and posted it, but Technorati didn't pick it up (despite repeated pings and other attempts to allow the post to show up). Now, none of this shouldn't matter, but apparently Technorati thinks it does, because this exact situation has happened several times. Maybe it's because Movable Type numbers my posts, and if I post entries out of order, perhaps it confuses Technorati. For example, last week, I posted entry 1421 after I posted entry 1422. If this is why Technorati can't figure out that I posted something on Sunday, it's pretty damn stupid. It can't be that hard to fix this. Technorati claims that they track posts by scraping the page and also by using RSS feeds, but if that's the case, they must be doing something really dumb to get tripped up by postings showing up out of order.

So basically, Technorati doesn't track all the good weblogs, but it keeps up with all the spammers' weblogs. For some reason, it doesn't register a post that was written out of order either. So what's the point? I guess it works ok for bloggers who get lots of links. If you get a lot of links, the signal drowns out the noise of the spammers, and you don't miss the posts that Technorati doesn't pick up because you've got plenty of other links to go through. But for those of us on the long tail, it's nearly useless. It doesn't hurt anything, I suppose, so I'll continue to check every once in a while, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I don't think I've discovered any new blogs through Technorati that I hadn't discovered first from my referrers.



Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is an anime series that is based on the same Manga that inspired two films (both reviewed on Kaedrin previously). For the most part, it deals with similar subjects and themes, though it does so in a less somber and more prosaic manner, sometimes even finding room for humor and the occasional smile. Despite some flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed the series and if you enjoyed the movies, I don't see why you wouldn't enjoy the series.

The series is comprised of a mixture stand alone and continuity (or as they call it, "complex") episodes. There is a good balance between the two types of episodes, though I do think that some of the stand alone episodes felt a little rushed and could have benefited from having more time to flesh out the stories (whether that be longer episodes or splitting the story up into two episodes). That said, the stand alone episodes are still entertaining and often contribute towards the larger series (i.e. they're not completely stand alone). The continuity episodes tell the story of The Laughing Man, a masterful hacker and terrorist who has been blackmailing major corporations for six years.

Thematically, this series touches on many of the same issues as the films, but in a less direct fashion. The movies could be mind-numbingly dense at times, often directly confronting the philosophical implications of the technology in their universe (a subject I find interesting and discussed in my reviews of those movies). There are occasional info-dumps or philosophical discussions in the series, but nothing on par with the films. However, many of these technological issues come to light as a part of the plot, which tends to move forward as a result of action rather than conversations. This works well after having seen the two movies, though I'm not sure how well it would work if you haven't seen either of them. If I had to guess, I'd say this series still raises all the fascinating questions the films does, just in a less direct fashion. What makes me what I am? Am I really who I think I am? If I could copy my brain into a computer network, would that still be me? If I could swap "shells" (bodies) or project my "ghost" (i.e. soul) into another shell, is that me? Again, the series doesn't confront these issues directly, but it does use such technology in service of the story, which begs the questions. What would the subjective experience of transferring your consciousness from one body to another be like? Can a machine develop or have a ghost? What's the difference between an artificial body (like the Major has) and an avatar (like the Major uses in episode 9)? And so on.

Another interesting thing about the series is external memory, or memories that are not stored in your brain (but on some other media, like a hard drive). These devices are referenced much more frequently in this series than in the movies, and I found it interesting because that is the direction we're heading. The internet has created this phenomenon wherby you think you know something, but you really don't... you just know where to look up the information on the internet. Obviously, this isn't new (or unique to the internet), but it is accelerating. It reminded me of Charles Stross' book Accelerando, a book I didn't particularly love and never actually finished, but which had some interesting technological musings. At one point in the book, a character who stayed in constant communication with the net via a pair of glasses has them stolen. Without the glasses (i.e. without access to his external memory), he feels profoundly lost and unable to cope with reality. Obviously, we haven't reached that point yet, but GitS:SAC shows several examples of this sort of thing.

There are some new themes as well, namely the titular Stand Alone Complex, which refers to a phenomenon where you see emergent copycat behavior without an original. For example, let's say that someone dies in suspicous circumstances. The death could very well be attributed to natural causes, but some people might be tempted to call it a murder or conspiracy, and even others might take the opportunity to commit a copycat murder. The situation could escalate into a series of murders, all by different copycat killers. This is a stand alone complex, and it's distinct from normal copycat behavior in that the original death was not actually a murder. As Chief Aramaki notes, they're "Nothing but copies without an original." It's something of an odd concept, and it's a little difficult to understand during the series, but it does touch on many concepts I find fascinating, such as emergent, self-organizing behavior. It also appears in several forms throughout the series, with direct references, but also in more subtle ways. For example, the Laughing Man's logo is basically a second-order simulacra, which is a symbol without a referant. The symbol contains a quote from Catcher in the Rye and the name Laughing Man is a reference to another Salinger story, but the symbol doesn't really represent either, nor does it actually represent what became known as "The Laughing Man."


Public Security Section 9
The main characters of the series are the members of a special operations task-force called Public Security Section 9. This is a small team of around 8 well trained and competent members whose main charter is to perform search and rescue operations, but this ends up leading to counter-terrorism and more general anti-crime tasks. You get a much better idea of what this organization is during the series, and you also get to know its members a little better (though perhaps not as much as I liked, more on this later). Many of the members who only have fleeting appearances in the movies take on a more solid role in the series. The team seems to be highly autonomous and independent, picking and choosing their targets carefully, but often without interference from the rest of the government. This is probably due to the political leader of the group, Chief Aramaki. Members of the team also share this autonomous and independent attitude and are often trusted to carry out tasks without any intrusion from others. Aside from the Chief and Major Kusanagi (who seems to have emerged as the team's combat leader), there don't appear to be any ranks or jobs, though it's obvious that some members of the team have certain specialties (for instance Ishikawa is almost always at a computer terminal, crunching numbers or tracking down the "ditigal paper trail" of whoever Section 9 is hunting, and he almost never enters battle. On the other hand, Batou is clearly a brute force combat specialist who almost never messes around with information warfare.)


Batou
Again, the movies tend to be more philosophically inclined than the series, which seems content to let the philosophical implications of their universe simmer beneath the surface of a straightforward police procedural (albeit one that is spiced up with hackers, an addition that actuall works well). There are occasions when the philosophy comes to the foreground though, such as episodes 12 and 15, both of which deal with Section 9's AI-equipped mini-tanks, the Tachikomas. In a previous post on Gits:SAC, Author wondered if I was liking the Tachikomas, which gave me the impression that they're dislikd in the Anime world (not sure about that though). To be sure, the Tachikomas do seem to have a child-like demeanor (they're voiced in high pitched, young sounding female voices, for instance) and often make naive statements. These "cute" characteristics are odd when considering that they are combat vehicles. Conceptually, however, they do provide fodder for one of the interesting themes of the GitS universe, namely the question of whether or not a machine can acquire a ghost (aka a soul). In the series, Tachikomas have artificial intelligence... however, they are synchronized every night so they have identical memories. This leads to some confusion later on, as memories experienced by a specific Tachikoma become shared amongst all the other Tachikomas... which begs the question of which one of them actually experienced the event (they can't figure it out). It is interesting that despite the synchronization process, the Tachikomas somehow manage to develop individual and distinct personalities. So even though they "wake up" every morning with the same memories, they still exhibit differing personalities and opinions (for example, one of the Tachikomas spends all its time reading paper books... every night, the memory of reading these books is synchronized with the other Tachikomas, but this one Tachikoma is the only one that continues to read).


Tachikomas
In Isaac Asimov's robot novels, one of the main characters, a humanoid robot named R. Daneel Olivaw, mentions that while he cannot experience emotions, his positronic circuitry seems to run more smoothly when he's around Elijah Baily (his human parter). When thinking about the potential paradoxes created by the synchronization process, I thought of Olivaw. The engineer in me also thought of tolerances and chaos theory, meaning that even though each Tachikoma has it's memories and consciousness synchronized every night, minor defects in the manufacturing process (which are within tolerance) could account for differences in personality (inasmuch as a machine can have a personality). Batou seems to have the most affection for the Tachikomas, and has indeed picked one particular Tachikoma as his own (and he pampers it with natural oil instead of the synthetic oil used for the others - this leads to interesting consequences later on in the series). Ultimately, the Tachikomas are a relatively small part of the series, but I think they are an important part of the series, and I guess given the above, I did really like their storyline and would welcome more.

Despite the lighter tone of the show, it does still tackle mature themes and the setting is somewhat "grim and gritty" (like the movies) and so I can see why someone like Steven Den Beste wouldn't be that interested in the series (though I think he would find the existential questions interesting, I can see how he wouldn't love the universe that brings them up). I have less of a read on what Author likes, though I gather he didn't care much for this series. However, I do think that Fledge would enjoy the show, if only he could get Netflix Watch Instantly running...

One of the big complaints of the series is that the animation is poor, and that is indeed true. This is a huge step down from the two films. The conceptual design is actually quite good, and there are some striking compositions throughout the series, but the biggest issues are that the backgrounds are less textured and the movements are less fluid. There is also an inconsistency in the way certain characters are drawn that gets annoying (see below the fold for an egregious example). The screenshots I'm posting actually look decent, but again, it's the movement of the characters that is really lacking. I'm hoping that the 2nd Gig series will be an improvement (I'm pretty sure it's not), but in any case, though the animation was inferior, it also didn't distract me too much from the story or themes (which I consider more important, and they are indeed very well done).



The music of the series is different than the films, but holds it's own. This shouldn't be a surprise, as the music is mostly done by Yoko Kanno (the composer behind Cowboy Bebop's awesome music). Though perhaps not as distinctive as her work on Cowboy Bebop, Kanno's music is quite good and better than most anime series I've seen. Also on the sound front, I'll note that the dubbing for this series is much, much better than it is for the first movie (I don't think there is a dub for the second movie). I was using Netflix's online-streaming service, so I didn't have the choice to watch a sub, so I can't comment on that (or on any differences in translation), but again, the dubbing is pretty well done here.

So I really enjoyed the series and have added Gits:SAC 2nd Gig to my queue. It's got its flaws, but its positives outweight the negatives handily.

More comments and screenshots below the fold...

Read More >>





Incompetent Boobery of a Solar Empire
A few months ago, I picked up Sins of a Solar Empire, and promptly ran several galactic empires right into the grave. I learned a lot during those first few failures, and I finally managed to win a game. It turns out that all I needed to do was set the difficulty to "Easy." Yet, even after that victory, I wasn't able to keep the streak going. After mismanaging another two empires into extinction, I gave up on the game. It was taking an awful lot of time and effort for me to kill these empires, and continually losing doesn't exactly do wonders for motivation.

The game definitely has a high learning curve. At least, for a casual gamer like me, it does. In one of my posts, I wondered what a more active gamer like Shamus would do with the game. And it appears that he's finally picked up the game and given it a try:

I decided to just run through the tutorials. The most important thing that I learned was that under no circumstances should I ever be allowed to run a galactic empire. It’s harder than it sounds, and the consequences for failure are rather dire. During the tutorial I was taught a few short lessons about some buttons. Apparently there are buttons, and they need to be pressed sometimes. There were some other details in there about economies and spaceships, but they eluded me once the tutorial had run its course. I’m still pretty sure about the button thing, though.

... I built a small collection of spaceships, which were sent to an adjacent planet where they were murdered by space pirates. I built a trade center which sat idle, since I didn’t have anyone with which to trade. I built a series of scout ships and sent them to auto-explore, after which I never heard from them again. I built a capital ship and subsequently misplaced it. I pushed some other buttons related to the running of my main planet, none of which seemed to have any real effect except to deplete my coffers. Then I found some ships I didn’t remember building, flying around my world. They didn’t respond to my commands, and it wasn’t until just before they began bombing the place that I realized why.

A half hour into the game I was running an inept empire whose only accomplishments were staggering financial and military losses. I felt like I was playing Soviets in Space.

He's much better at expressing the futility of a first time player than I was (the comic he created that accompanies his post is utterly hilarious), and I'm somewhat reassured by the fact that even a more experienced gamer had similar problems (reading the Sins forums was disheartening - most everyone there seemed to immediately grasp everything necessary for the game and they all sat about debating minutiae). While his post is very humerous and snarky, he does end up recognizing the game's learning curve:

This is not too say the game is too hard or complex. It’s just different, and you can’t really build on what you’ve learned in other games to help you along here. The tutorial teaches you how to use the interface, but figuring out what you should be doing is your job. At the start of the game there are dozens of possible actions to take, without any real hint as to which ones are a good idea or why. I imagine I’m going to lead a couple more doomed empires into history before I get a handle on the thing.

This is very true, and Shamus is good enough that I'm sure he'll have the game figured out in a few games. Is the game too hard? It was hard enough that I wasn't having much fun towards the end. That doesn't make it a bad game, it was just too much work for me... though I have to admit, reading Shamus' post made me want to fire it up and slaughter my people.

The last game I played was one of the specific scenarios. It was a small map, with only a handful of planets, and three players. Furthermore, the map was shaped in such a way that you really can't take advantage of choke points (which usually helps in other games, even the ones where I lost). Anyway, the last time I played it, I got lit up by the two enemies. But I was careful to save a bunch of times, so I loaded one of my older saved games where I was still in good shape and gave it a shot. I threw caution to the wind and sent two of my capital vessels and a fleet of support ships to attack one of my enemies. This actually turned out to be a mildly successful tactic... for a while. Eventually, the other enemy caught on and attacked my home planet. I was able to fend them off, but my population was decimated and my economy went into the tank. I had to retreat from my attack for a bit to rebuild my forces too. Eventually, I was able to resume my attack, but my enemy seemed suspiciously fortified. It turns out that my two weenie enemies had joined together and had a ceasfire and trade relationship going. I was basically screwed. I could spend another hour watching my empire die a slow, torturous death, or come here and finish this blog post. Guess what I did. I don't know, maybe I could turn it around. It seems that I need to read up on how to do some of that diplomacy stuff.



Netflix Activity
The recent bout with myTV on DVD addiction necessitated an increase in Netflix usage, which made me curious. How well have I really taken advantage of the Netflix service, and is it worth the monthly expense?

If I were to rent a movie at a local video store like Blockbuster, each rental would cost somewhere around $4 (this is an extremely charitable estimate, as I'm sure it's probably closer to $5 at this point), plus the expense in time and effort (I mean, come on, I'd have to drive about a mile out of my way to go to one of these places!) Netflix costs me $15.99 a month for the 3-disc-at-a-time plan (this plan was $17.99 when I signed up, but decreased in price two times during around two years of membership), so it takes about 4-5 Netflix rentals to recoup my costs and bring the price of an average rental down below $4. I've been a member for one year and ten months... how did I do (click for a larger version)?


A few notes on the data:

• The chart shows both DVD rentals and movies or shows watched online through Netflix's "Watch Instant" service. There are certain distinctions that should be made here, namely that DVD rentals are measured by the date the DVD was returned, while Watch Instant rentals are measured when you watch them. Also, when watching a TV series on Watch Instant, each episode counts as a separate rental (if I were watching on DVD, there's usually 3-4 episodes on one disc, but since I'm watching on the Watch Instant service, each episode counts as a separate rental).
• As you can see, my initial usage was a little erratic, though I apparently tend to fall into a 4-5 month pattern (and you can see two nearly identical curves in 2007) where DVD rentals range from 6-13 per month. 13 appears to be my ceiling for a month, though I've hit that several times.
• I've only fallen below the 4 disc per month ratio needed to bring the average rental down below $4 once (twice if you count July 2006, but that was my first month of service and does not constitute a full month's worth of data). To be honest, I don't remember why I only returned 2 movies in January 2007, but that was the first and only time I fell below the necessary 4 rentals.
• My Watch Instantly service usage started off with a bang in July 2007 but quickly trailed off until 2008, when usage skyrocketed. This is when I discovered the TV show Dexter and quickly worked my way through all of the first season episodes (13 in all). Following Dexter, I started in on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and I just finished that today (expect a review later this week), so that means I watched 26 episodes online. Expect this to drop sharply next month (though I still plan on using it significantly, as I'll be following along with Filmspotting's 70's SF marathon, which features several movies in the Watch Instantly catalog). All in all, it's a reasonable service, though I have to admit that watching it on my computer just isn't the same - I bought that 50" widescreen HDTV for a reason, you know...
• You'll also notice that both March and April of 2008 have me hitting the ceiling of 13 movies per month. This is the first time I've done that in consecutive months and is largely due to watching BSG season 3 and my discovery and addiction to The Wire.
• As of April 2008, I'm averaging 9 movies a month (I've rented 198 DVDs). Even if I were to use my original price of $17.99 a month, that works out to around $2 a DVD rental. When you factor in the price drops and the Watch Instantly viewing (I've watched 51 things, though again, in some cases what I'm watching is a single episode of a TV show), I'm betting it would come out around $1.50-$1.75.

So it seems that the service is definitely worth the money and is indeed saving me a lot. Plus, Netflix has a far greater selection than any local video store (with the potential exception of TLA Video, but they're too far from my home to count), thus allowing me to indulge in various genres that you don't see much of in a typical video store. The only potential downside to Netflix is that you can't really rent something on impulse (unless it's on the Watch Instantly service). There are also times when new or popular movies take some time before they're actually available to you, but you have to contend with that from video rental stores as well. Indeed, I can only think of 3-4 times I've had to wait for a movie (this is mostly due to the fact that I tend to rent more obscure fare where people aren't exactly lining up to see it...) For the most part, Netflix has been reliable as well, almost always turning around my returns in short order (I mail it one day, and get the next films two days later). There have been a few mixups and I do remember one movie that wasn't available on the east coast and had to be shipped from California, so it came after a wait of 3-4 days, but for the most part, I'm very happy with the service.

This has been an interesting exercise, because I feel like I'm a little more consistent than the data actually shows. I'm really surprised that there are several months where my rentals went down to 6... I could have sworn I watched at least 2-3 discs a week, with the occasional exception. Still, an average of 9 movies a month is nothing to sneeze about, I guess. I've heard horror stories of where Netflix will start throttling you and take longer to deliver discs if you go above a certain amount of rentals per month (at a certain point, the cost of processing your rentals becomes more than you're paying, which I guess is what prompts Netflix to start throttling you), but I haven't had a problem yet. If I keep up my recent viewing habits though, this could change...



Top 5 Anticipated Summer Movies
The first few months of 2008 has been a real movie wasteland. A couple of interesting releases, but nothing all that great. As summer approaches, things are looking up a little. The guys at Filmspotting will be doing a top 5 anticipated summer movies on Friday, so in an effort to beat them to the punch, here's my top 5:

• It goes without saying: As a twenty-something geek, there are certain movies that are just way too obvious to put on this list (otherwise, my list would look like everyone else's list). In no particular order: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk (these last two worry me a bit, but I will most assuredly be seeing them).
• The International: The most art-housey of the films on my list sounds like one of my favorite kinds of art house movies: the art house crime pic. Director Tom Tykwer infamously combined art house and crime in his brilliant 1999 film, Run Lola Run and while I don't expect this film to be that good, I think it still shows a lot of promise.
• Trailer Trash: The funniest part of the Grindhouse double-feature last year were these "fake" trailers for non-existent movies (for example, Werewolf Women of the S.S.) that they played between the two main features. Director Eli Roth (who did the hilarious Thanksgiving preview, a pitch perfect parody of the original Halloween trailer) had the idea to make an entire movie of fake trailers. It's a high concept, but it sounds like it could be a lot of fun, and Roth seems like a decent choice to head this sort of thing up.
• The Happening: M. Night Shyamalan gets a bad rap because everyone loved his first few films but not his most recent films. The impression is that he's just getting worse and worse but from my perspective, I've never been all that impressed with him in the first place. Sure, I enjoyed his first few movies a lot, but I didn't consider them masterpieces. I think both The Village and Lady in the Water are flawed yet entertaining movies and I really don't understand the almost universal dislike of these two movies (though I will note that I saw both of these films with very low expectations, which could be part of why I enjoyed them). For the most part, my opinion of Shyamalan's work hasn't changed much. I tend to enjoy his movies, and so I'm looking forward to this one.
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army: Guillermo del Toro has emerged as one of the better fantasy/horror directors out there, and the first Hellboy was quite enjoyable (I mean, come on, monsters, the occult, nazis, Cthulhu-like creatures from another dimension - what's not to like?). This second film looks to be an even more eclectic mixture of "folklore, myth, and fantasy" (as he describes it). I love this quote from del Toro: "...he's saving the world from an archvillain who's determined to do, you know, very arch things."
• Pineapple Express: I like stoner comedies. I like action movies. What's not to like about a stoner action film? This movie, the latest from the Apatow juggernaut (written by Seth Rogen and starring a bunch of Apatow gang members), follows two stoners who go on the run after witnessing a murder. It doesn't sound like much, but then a couple of years ago, two fellas set out for White Castle and it ended up being one of the more enjoyable movies of that year (there's a sequel to that one coming out soon too, but it doesn't look so great). Probably not fine oscar-caliber cinema, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.
• Honorable Mention: The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Step Brothers, Hancock, WALL-E, and Speed Racer

And there you have it. Honestly, this year isn't shaping up to be all that great, though there are some promising movies coming out later in the year (including new films by David Fincher, the Coen brothers, and maybe even Darren Aronofsky).



Episodes
I've been watching a lot of TV on DVD (or Netflix Watch Online) lately. It can be quite an addictive experience, as the shows don't have commercials and many episodes end with something interesting (not necessarily a cliffhanger, but enough to make you want to see what happens next). I usually end up watching a bunch of episodes at once. In the past few months I've watched a bunch of shows in this fashion, including Dexter (seasons 1 and 2), Battlestar Galactica (season 3), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (seasons 1 and 2), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and The Wire (seasons 1 and 2). It helps that all of these shows are pretty good, but I began to wonder about the impact of watching shows on DVD versus broadcast television. I also started to wonder what the ideal length of a TV episode should be and why most Anime series, even dramatic ones, tend to be only a half-hour, while the best American drama series tend to be an hour per episode...

A few weeks ago, I finished up BSG season three and in my post on the subject, I said:

I'll be able to watch season 4 as it happens. This presents an interesting contrast though, as I've watched the first three seasons on DVD. I've been wondering lately what impact this sort of schedule has on the perception of a series. It's certainly fun to watch. Addicting, actually. Will watching only a single episode a week (as opposed to 4 commercial-free episodes at a time) have a positive impact on my perception of the show? It's obviously a highly subjective question, but I guess I'm going to find out.

So we're a few episodes into season 4 of BSG, and I have to say that I'm not enjoying it as much as when I was watching it on DVD (though the latest episode was pretty good). It's hard to tell if it's the notion of having to wait a week between episodes, or if it's just that the quality of the episodes is bothering me, and there's no real way to accurately test this, though I suppose if I do it more often (i.e. watch a series on DVD and catch up to the broadcast) I could get a better idea of how this impacts a show. Season 3 of Dexter is supposed to start up sometime this summer, so I guess that's my next chance...

I'm particularly interested in this when it comes to Anime episodes, because most of us Westerners pick up DVD sets and watch multiple episodes at a time. Perhaps it's the typical half-hour duration that Anime uses (more on this later), but I wonder if a series would get frustrating if I had to wait a week between episodes. For GitS:SAC, there are some episodes that fit well into the series when watching it all at once, but that I think i'd find frustrating if I had to wait a week to see the next episode. For instance, the entirety of episode 9 takes place in a chat room where a bunch of people talk about the Laughing Man (a cyber-terrrorist whos is being chased throughout the series). I guess some interesting stuff comes to light in that episode, but if I was watching that series as it aired, I might have been a little more underwhelmed. I love Haibane Renmei, but I have to admit that it's probably not something I'd have stuck with if I had to wait a week between each episode (at least, not until DVD). And so on.

I think part of that is that the duration for the grand majority of Anime seems to be a half-hour (with commercials, OPs, and EDs, it works out to around 22-23 minutes an episode), and I'm not sure that's the ideal length for some of the stories that are being told through Anime. Of course, lumping all Anime together is foolish, as it's extremely broad and some series work fine.

So what is the ideal length of a TV episode? Let's take a look at the typical lengths (emphasis is on American series, as that's what I'm most familiar with, but I'll also go a little into Anime):

• 3-15 Minute Episodes: These series aren't common except on the Cartoon Network's late night programming block, Adult Swim, which features many series that fit this format, including Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Metalocalypse, etc... Each episode airs in a 15 minute timeslot, though with commercials, that ends up being around 11 minutes per episode. However, all of these shows are broad comedies or parodies, and often don't tell a single coherent story, instead relying on one-liners, funny situations (though I wouldn't classify these shows as sit-coms) and short parodies. There also isn't much of a continuity between episodes, which perhaps explains why we don't see much dramatic content being pushed out in this sort of timeslot. However, one high-profile exception to this is the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series. Volume 1 of the series featured a whole slew of 3 minute episodes, while volume 2 featured 12 minute episodes. It's a good series, though again, I've only ever seen the DVDs where all the episodes are strung together... It's worth noting that all of the examples I could come up with for this short duration are animated series...
• Half-Hour Episodes: Probably the most common duration of a television show. Without commercials, episodes weigh in at around 22-24 minutes long. In general, though, half-hour shows still tend to be comedic in nature. Most sit-coms are a half hour long, for instance. The major exception here is Anime, most of which, even dramatic series, are a half-hour long. However, as I hinted at above, I think this might not be ideal for some of the stories being told through Anime. None of which is to say that a half-hour isn't enough to tell a story, but it is telling that the most successful half-hour episodes are ones that tell rather small stories. Seinfeld is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) sit-coms in history, and it's famous for being a show about nothing. Of course, each show has a subject, but they're small subjects and things we can relate to (perhaps adding our own context to the story, thus making it a richer experience), things like getting lost in a parking lot or waiting for a table in a Chinese restaurant. These are brilliant episodes, but there isn't that much of an impact to them, and a lot of sit-coms lose their touch when they try to do something more dramatic (I suppose Scrubs has done a reasonable job of mixing comedy with dramatic tension in only a half-hour episode). One other thing to note about the half-hour format is that it seems to match well with the average human attention span, which is around 20 minutes or so. (this is almost perfect if you're watching it on DVD, though broadcast might be a little worse... then again, commercials give you a break, which might not be a bad thing).
• One Hour Episodes: The impression I have is that one hour shows are becoming more and more popular. Without commercials, they usually clock in at around 42-46 minutes an episode, and this is where you start to see more drama and less comedy. There's more time here to establish characters and grow a conflict while still keeping it at a manageable attention level. You start to get to a point where you can tell a complete narrative in the time alotted, though where things are really going is to have each episode be part of a larger story arc. There can be some overlap with mini-series here, especially when you get away from network television and start talking about original series made by HBO or Showtime. Since those are pay channels, they don't have to have commercials and those episodes often clock in at a full 50-65 minutes. What's more, you tend to see much more of a continuity in these series, to the point where they do start to resemble a 12 or 13 hour movie instead of a show with discrete episodes. The Wire is probably the best example of this - there's no stand-alone episodes in The Wire. Each season tells a complete 12 or 13 hour story.
• Mini-Series: Mini-series are typically a limited set of 1 or 2 hour blocks, typically broadcast for a limited time. Big examples of this include Roots, V, Salem's Lot, From the Earth to the Moon, and Band of Brothers. In some cases, a miniseries is really a collection of smaller tales, connected in some way (as with Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon). Mini-series aren't common elsewhere in the world (and really, there aren't that many here either) because most series are actually limited in scope from the start. Anime is generally like this, with either 13 or 26 half-hour episodes to a series, and that's it. Sometimes there will be a sequel, and I'm pretty sure there are some long running series, but for the most part, they tend towards a more limited run. I think mini-series are interesting in theory, but their quality level varies drastically. Part of the reason for that is that a two hour installment is more difficult to produce than a one hour segment, and more is riding on each installment of a miniseries than each episode of a regular series. A one hour show probably has the best balance between story, budget and expectations.

As previously mentioned, many one hour TV series are blurring the line between TV shows and miniseries, with long and complex story arcs that last an entire season or longer. For instance, both Dexter and The Wire tell a single story over the course of a season, then start a new story featuring the same characters the next season. This is something that wasn't that common in the past. There was a series in the 1980s called Wiseguy that had two story arcs each season, connected by some of the characters. Then you have Twin Peaks, a murder mystery that captured the nation for a season. However, once the mystery was solved, interest declined considerably. The X-Files made a name for itself in the 1990s by mixing stand-alone episodes with continuity episodes, though ultimately I think many got fed up by the open-ended nature of the long-term story.

These days there are too many long-form TV shows to list. A big part of this is that people have broken away from broadcast television and consume their media in different ways (DVRs, torrents, even waiting for a DVD set), so they don't really have to worry about missing an episode and losing track of what's happening in the story. There's also a notion that television series have gotten much more complex and referential to be more cognitively engaging for the audience (Steven Johnson makes a compelling case for this sort of thing in his book, Everything Bad is Good for You). It's much easier to develop a multi-threaded story comprised of a complex network of relationships in 12-24 hours than it is in one or two hours.

Interestingly, television used to be the domain of the short form narrative, where a story was crammed into a 23 or 46 minute timeframe. Movies told more of a long form story that took 90 minutes to 3 or even 4 hours to develop. However, as time goes on and our ability to time-shift television programming gets better, television and film have become inverted. Television now tells the long form stories, and because they have even more time than movies, their stories can be that much richer and more complex. Of course, this all depends on how well done the television show is. The Wire would certainly hold its own with most movies, but it's also a bit of an outlier. Most shows are not done at the same quality level as The Wire.

Given the above, I have to wonder why there aren't more Anime series that have a one hour format. I think hour long episodes tend to be better for telling a complete narrative (or contributing a more meaningful chunk of an overall story arc) than a half hour episode, so I think it would be interesting to see an Anime series take on that sort of format. For instance, I think GitS:SAC would benefit greatly from a little more time to flesh out the characters and their universe (which, as I've noted before, can sometimes be a little confusing - though I should note that SAC is better at this than the feature films, which have even less time to spare). Instead, I get a rushed feeling from some episodes (and I had a similar reaction to some episodes of of Vandread and Cowboy Bebop too). In many cases, Anime series are already telling a long form story, so it would be interesting to see if an hour long format would make that long form story better (or worse?)



Link to Someone New: Philly Film Fest Edition
You know the drill. Blog reading often becomes a closed loop where you find yourself constantly reading and linking to the same group of blogs. I'm as guilty as anyone (plus, I have a tendency to not link other blogs at all), so in an effort to combat the blogging equivalent of inbreeding, here are links to several blogs I've never linked before, all of whom have also been blogging about the Philadelphia Film Festival (for reference, see my posts):

• Melissahead saw a bunch of movies that I didn't see (and one that I did).
• Futuregirl had a little more overlap with my schedule, but also some that I didn't see, including Film Noir, a rotoscoped animation film, which was something I wanted to see but couldn't find the time for...
• Philly Chit Chat attended several of the events and big screenings with guests... and took lots of pictures too!
• David Dylan Thomas saw lots and lots of films and has a significant overlap with my schedule... plus a whole lot more (including some that I wish I found time for, like Vexille) We seem to have similar tastes, with the potential exception of The Wackness....

That's all for now. If you have a blog where you've been writing about the PFF, feel free to let me know...



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