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18 of 18 humans found the following review helpful.
Innovators In Radio NOW on TV
By Black Eagle Child
Ira Glass and company have been formulating the lovable radio show “This American Life” for years now. Fans of the radio show will undoubtedly be fascinated in the television show.
The show is masterfully photographed, and very well produced. I thought at introductory that if the television show was to be as effective as the radio show, it would be almost out of the question to produce, but apparently not so! Content-wise, it’s very similar to the radio show. Every story follows a mutual narrative arc, but each story likewise features the distinctive setting that the radio show is known for. There’s genuinely little more to be said, exceptionally if you are already a fan of the radio show. This is real American journalism concentered on not common persons who each day pass for common. Ira Glass and his show fetch us these people’s stories and do so with great artistry.
Often humorous, now and again sad, but always interesting, “This American Life” is groundbreaking television!
22 of 24 persons found the following review helpful.
What You’d Expect Reality Television To Really Be Like
By SORE EYES
I’m continually impressed with Ira Glass as an editor, interviewer and now with his new Showtime programme, This American Life, TV host. I candidly can’t believe how good this series is. I’ve watched each episode back to back twice and I’m still reeling.
Quite simply, this is reality television or what reality television must have been before it got commandeered by posers in constructed atmospheres. Have you ever thought with regards to why it’s called “Reality TV” when there isn’t anything real in regards to it? A bunch of persons who would never meet up in real life are thrown together in a exclusively artificial situation-a house, an island-to compete for something evenly artificial-a modeling contract, a million dollars. That’s not real. This American Life is a hundred percent human, real, and down to world all the time. The stories are forthright, touching, amazing.
It’s a testament to Ira’s skill as an interviewer that he in some manner manages to find humans and tell their stories without artifice-there isn’t an ounce of cheese or a single turn of spun in any one of these stories. You don’t listen Ira or his staff ask a lot of questions on camera, but he will have to be amazing at his occupation because he brings out the best in people. Also the camera shots in this series are outstanding. In one consultation a 13 year old boy rallies versus love while his red headed classmate floats dreamily altho a field of grass. In another consultation the viewers get to see Chance the Bull through the kitchen window of it’s owner. It’s beautiful. All of it. It’s plainly amazing. My husband and I were both teary eyed after assorted of these stories.
Besides meeting a 13 year old boy who has sworn off love, you’ll visit a Chicago hot dog stand where clients and staff swear at each other in a free for all that brings out the worst in humane nature, sit with a man who watches TV in his wife’s mausoleum each other day, walk the ranch of a kind hearted Texas man who had his beloved bull cloned and you’ll in all likelihood give up meat after “smelling” an Iowa pig farm. And after each single episode you’ll feel like the humane race isn’t headed for a huge black hole in space after all. You’ll feel like we’re good, like there’s hope for us because it can’t be that bleak if this is what persons are genuinely like-vulnerable, kind, interesting, good hearted.
If you’re looking for more culture like this-I’d commend The New Kings of Non-Fiction edited by Ira Glass and Best American Essays 2007 edited by David Foster Wallace. And for a movie that’s down to world (if a little quirky) Eagle v. Shark.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
But would it be as good as the radio version?
By James Hiller
…. was a question I’m sure a lot of people asked when hearing that the most innovative, fantasti NPR radio program “This American Life” was going on television. It seemed almost out of the question to believe that they would be taking their winning format and attempting it out in a totally dissimilar medium. Would the intimacy that radio provides be possible on TV? Would seeing ruin the visuals the stories build in your heads? Rest assured, the show was in good, good hands and the result is a winning combination.
Host Ira Glass, with his nasally calm voice, introduces each week a theme, and spins stories on that theme from a wide pancea of possibilities, each a finish story within it’s own, each adding to the examination of the question without ever directly answering it. The television show picks up the same concept, even though in a shorter, half-hour version. More regarding this later.
The opening episode tells when it comes to reality, and two disparate stories (and one of the funniest introduction stories I ever heard) that you may perchance imagine. One with regards to a tame bull named Chance and his improbable offspring, and the other regarding a radical improv group in New York City. That’s the beauty of Glass’ radio show: taking these two stories, that in a literal sense take place in dissimilar worlds in our own country, and putting them together to make pretty poetry. That’s Glass’ and the show’s genius.
I found the show’s visual distinct features to not be a detractor, but to heighten the storytelling of the show. One segment in the second episode tells in regards to a group of dastardly senior citizens resolving they were going to make a movie for Sundance. The story was unquestionably intensified by seeing the woman who was chosen playing the robber, a plastic mask covering her face, her hand shaking. Less needs to be said description wise as the stories are told (yes, I did miss that), but it’s nice to in truth see the “reality” of it.
My only little beef is the length of the show. It cuts at a half hour, and each time the episode ended and the credits rolled, I did feel ripped off. I’m very applied to the hour format of the radio show, and the three act format (although even the radio show bends that format by doing one or two act shows, depending on the content). I plainly want an hour of the show!
Glass manages to tells diverse stories of our diverse country, honoring the humans telling the stories, and giving them a wondrous sense of dignity. Their realities may not be one ounce similar to your or my realities, yet we find mutual themes that unite us together. This American Life expertly unites all of us by helping us understand life in other people’s shoes just that much more. Bravo for that!
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