Jul 1, 2019

A Muted Return to Deadwood

By M.G. Siegler • Issue #176 • View online

I guess the most surprising thing about HBO’s recent Deadwood movie was that I didn’t have strong opinions about it. It was good. Solid, even. A nice ending.

But Deadwood was one of my favorite shows of all time — and I know I’m not alone there — because it was so chaotic and ornery. It was a show that burned out, ending abruptly after only three seasons, with the promise of a fourth season — or two originally proposed movies to end the series — seemingly dead as we passed a decade of dormancy. And then suddenly it was back, set not quite 13 years later — the same time we had waited in the real world.

It’s obviously an abnormal way to end a series. Many shows get revisited as feature films or mini-series. But they’re usually massive hits that played on network television. And we’ve obviously seen many shows now reborn in new incarnations thanks to the rise of the streaming services. But this was just different, a mildly popular (though critically acclaimed) show reborn as a feature movie on the same channel over a decade later. Again, the end result is a pretty restrained, conservative coda for a show that was anything but.

I suppose in that regard the show ultimately ended as a reflection on the character Al Swearengen himself. I feel better thinking about it that way. At least I feel something.

Drinking: a Greenport Otherside IPA 🍻

5ish Links

An HBO Without Hollywood Movies

Speaking of HBO, here’s Jessica Toonkel:

Other studios that now license their new movies to premium cable channels are expected to change their approach in future. Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which now licenses its movies to HBO, is likely to eventually shift its movies to a streaming service of its own that it plans to launch next year. (The HBO deal doesn’t expire until 2021, however.) Similarly, 20th Century Fox, which has a deal licensing its movies to HBO through 2022, was recently acquired by Disney. Former HBO chief Richard Plepler predicted last fall that Disney would eventually pull Fox movies off HBO in favor of its own service.

That will leave HBO with Warner Bros movies, which it will likely keep, although perhaps not exclusively. HBO’s parent, AT&T’s WarnerMedia, is also launching a streaming service and is expected to keep its Warner Bros movies for that offering as well as HBO.

I grew up with exactly one premium cable channel, and that channel was HBO. And we had it because of the movies. In the era long before Netflix, HBO was the way to watch movies “streaming” at home (though not on demand, of course) without having to go to the video store. Now it seems there will be basically no movies on HBO in the very near future (after the network said goodbye to another staple, boxing last year).

And that’s probably fine in the short term given how well HBO has established themselves as the home of premium original content. But that space has also gotten far more crowded. And HBO seems awfully expensive for what it is, certainly without the movies… I’m getting pretty worried.

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Reconsidering David Fincher’s 'The Game,' a Great San Francisco Film

Peter Hartlaub took a look back at the 22 year old (!) movie. Reading this actually caused me to re-watch it — it’s streaming on Amazon Prime Video! — and it does indeed stand the test of time.

Interestingly enough, it was one of the first DVDs I ever bought (alongside Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight — another movie lost to the 1990s that shouldn’t be).

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The iPad Operating System

Horace Dediu on iPadOS:

And yet, the iPad is not Mac. It will remain separate and target Mac non-consumers. Indeed there are three times more iPad users than Mac users and it’s quite possible that the iPad base can expand further with enhancement into productivity.

The iPad has not proven to be either an iPhone or a PC killer. It’s just in between. It’s not a bowl and it’s not a swimming pool. It’s a bathtub. And yes, bathtubs are never going to be as common as bowls but they have their uses and are not obsoleted by better water containers.

I feel like given the past few years of narratives, people forget just how big the iPad base is — it’s massive, far bigger than the Mac, as Dediu notes. It’s just that the iPad hit the market ceiling (at least a first level of it) so fast and furious out of the gate. (Compared to the iPhone, which is hitting it now.)

And that’s a fun, albeit imperfect, analogy. Be gone trucks vs. cars!

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It Might Be Time to Move the NBA’s 3-Point Line

Ben Cohen sits down with Kirk Goldsberry a former San Antonio Spurs executive and Harvard professor, who has a new book “Sprawlball”:

One of the wilder ideas in the book is letting teams drop the 3-point line wherever they want.

I think that would bring some diversity back to the league in a cool way. People have both told me that’s a great idea and a terrible idea.

Why is it a terrible idea? I know it sounds crazy. But is it really a terrible idea?

It’s not more crazy than adding the 3-point line in the first place—which was an insane idea that got through the congress somehow. With that precedent in mind, it’s a very modest change.

At first, this does sound crazy. Then you think about it a bit… Wouldn’t it be amazing if every NBA arena was able to set their own line? It would be like how different baseball parks have different outfield fence dimensions, leading to easier/harder homerun (and pitching) situations. I actually think I love this idea for a league that is becoming so dependent on the three ball.

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A 21st Century Foreign Service

Speaking of interesting ideas, this link features a bunch from Elizabeth Warren to transform the State Department. As she notes:

Today, the United States lacks a presence in nearly 40% of world cities with populations over 3 million, many in the rapidly growing Indo-Pacific region.

The Pentagon is nearly 40 times bigger than the State Department — we employ more people to work in military grocery stores than we do foreign service officers.

The top stat is insane. The bottom one is bonkers.

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A Perfect Picture To Go