Post by Naj on Jan 11, 2006 16:43:58 GMT -5
Not a very good 'Case' for song-based plots
By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
For the past 20 or 25 years, filmmakers have been taking songs and developing them into full stories, fleshing out characters and adding additional details as necessary.
The results are called "videos."
Except Sunday night on CBS, when it was called "Cold Case."
"Cold Case," an investigative drama that loves music and mildly retro pop culture, built Sunday's episode around eight Bruce Springsteen songs from the 1980s.
As inspirations go, that's a good one. Springsteen's best characters are haunting, and executive producer Meredith Stiehm, who wrote the script and is clearly a fan, chose an A-list of songs, from "Atlantic City" to "Brilliant Disguise."
Taking the characters out of those songs and giving their spirit a flesh-and-blood incarnation on a TV screen, however, is harder than it might seem, and in the end, Sunday's "Cold Case" was as much a cautionary tale as a tribute to a great writer.
The episode was built around two '80s high-school couples, working-class kids who love their cars and dream dreams that don't work out, forcing them to turn elsewhere.
Not all their choices turn out right, as Springsteen fans know. Despite his image as a fist-in-the-air good-time rocker, most Bruce songs fall somewhere between melancholy and downright dark.
That's perfect for "Cold Case," of course, because its premise is reconstructing a situation that went tragically wrong.
In this instance, one friend was murdered, another is in prison and the two women live with the bittersweet memories of glory days, when they loved as they would never love again and the world offered a promise they could never redeem.
So there's no problem with the story taking this direction. It's Springsteenian all the way.
The problem Sunday night lay in the execution.
It's not a stretch that the character who said goodbye to Bobby Jean would also end up in Atlantic City doing "little favors" for a shady bad guy, or end up in a stolen car, or think about driving all night, or fear that things would all fall apart when he turned out the lights.
But when one story tries to pluck details from eight different songs, that almost guarantees a certain degree of choppiness, as the particulars are subtly stretched to accommodate the lyrics or mood of the songs.
In the end, "Cold Case" had the same problem as music videos. You can put all the loving care in the world into creating a visual dramatization of a great tune, and in the end you don't expand the music, you reduce it - because no literal on-screen image can be as rich as what you get in your own mind from hearing the song all by itself.
NY Daily
By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
For the past 20 or 25 years, filmmakers have been taking songs and developing them into full stories, fleshing out characters and adding additional details as necessary.
The results are called "videos."
Except Sunday night on CBS, when it was called "Cold Case."
"Cold Case," an investigative drama that loves music and mildly retro pop culture, built Sunday's episode around eight Bruce Springsteen songs from the 1980s.
As inspirations go, that's a good one. Springsteen's best characters are haunting, and executive producer Meredith Stiehm, who wrote the script and is clearly a fan, chose an A-list of songs, from "Atlantic City" to "Brilliant Disguise."
Taking the characters out of those songs and giving their spirit a flesh-and-blood incarnation on a TV screen, however, is harder than it might seem, and in the end, Sunday's "Cold Case" was as much a cautionary tale as a tribute to a great writer.
The episode was built around two '80s high-school couples, working-class kids who love their cars and dream dreams that don't work out, forcing them to turn elsewhere.
Not all their choices turn out right, as Springsteen fans know. Despite his image as a fist-in-the-air good-time rocker, most Bruce songs fall somewhere between melancholy and downright dark.
That's perfect for "Cold Case," of course, because its premise is reconstructing a situation that went tragically wrong.
In this instance, one friend was murdered, another is in prison and the two women live with the bittersweet memories of glory days, when they loved as they would never love again and the world offered a promise they could never redeem.
So there's no problem with the story taking this direction. It's Springsteenian all the way.
The problem Sunday night lay in the execution.
It's not a stretch that the character who said goodbye to Bobby Jean would also end up in Atlantic City doing "little favors" for a shady bad guy, or end up in a stolen car, or think about driving all night, or fear that things would all fall apart when he turned out the lights.
But when one story tries to pluck details from eight different songs, that almost guarantees a certain degree of choppiness, as the particulars are subtly stretched to accommodate the lyrics or mood of the songs.
In the end, "Cold Case" had the same problem as music videos. You can put all the loving care in the world into creating a visual dramatization of a great tune, and in the end you don't expand the music, you reduce it - because no literal on-screen image can be as rich as what you get in your own mind from hearing the song all by itself.
NY Daily
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