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‘the pacific’ will be this season’s tv highlight

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At this point-in-time, HBO’s The Pacific – the follow-up mini-series to Band of Brothers created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks – looks like a certain lock to be the best television program of the year.

HBO could pull a rabbit out of its hat with David Simon’s Treme, but anything short of the greatness of The Wire or The Sopranos will not be able to touch what Hanks and Spielberg have created.  At least that’s what all the early reviews of the HBO series are saying.

The most high-profile review comes from THR.com, which can be found here.  This is the nutgraf – journalist lingo for “the point” of the story…

But call it what you will, it is a gem of a production and would be a highlight of any TV season. “Pacific,” in its totality, conveys a sense of the combat experience that is as complete and realistic as any work of film could be. From the harrowing nighttime battles with a deadly but invisible enemy to the sheer misery of the punishing jungle climate to the macho posturing of the young American fighters, “Pacific” omits nothing.

Doesn’t that paragraph make you want to see what Hanks and Spielberg have created?

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

david simon talks about the influence of new orleans

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Three years removed from closing the book on epic crime drama The Wire - seemingly the favorite television show of 95% of television critics – show creator David Simon has created a new television show for HBO.  It’s called Treme and is about post-Katrina New Orleans.

In the attempt to promote Treme, Simon recently did a full-length Q&A with The Guardian. It’s a fantastic interview and further proves that Simon is indeed a genius (further confirming what we knew from The Wire), but the best excerpt is unquestionably Simon’s point about the influence New Orleans has had on music across the world.

What is it about Americans that makes us Americans? The one thing we have unarguably given the world is African-American music. If you walk into a shebeen in South Africa, or whatever version of a bar they have in Kathmandu, if they have a jukebox, you’re going to find some Michael Jackson, some Otis Redding, some John Coltrane. It has gone around the world. That is the essential American contribution to worldwide culture. The combination of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale and European instrumentation and arrangement. That collision of the two happened in a 12-square block area of a city called New Orleans that had a near-death experience in 2005.

Treme premieres April 11th on HBO.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.