The central problem? People using the web – whether for “e-mail, accounting, short-selling, browsing porn, buying uranium, getting divorced”" – look the same, how does Hollywood dramatize scenes where the Internet is part of the narrative?
The long-running Fox drama “24″ works otherwise. It features brazen product placement by personal-tech companies like Sprint, Garmin and Nextel. Characters live on phones and at computers; their real-life surroundings are austere, spartan, practically black and white. The rococo action of the series is mental. It takes place in the digital ether.
Though “24″ is bound to look more primitive, as drama that admits the primacy of online life becomes a more sophisticated art, the mise-en-scène is still stunning. The high anxiety it renders so beautifully is the anxiety of ordinary life. Here’s a thriller for everyone: How have we become so intimate with machines that seem by turns so necessary, so enervating, so treacherous and so unpredictable?
Worth a read for more discussion of “24″ as well as the recent movie “State of Play”.
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