Pirates of the North Sea

They say that in an experiment two groups, watching the same movie on a smiliarly-sized screen, but with tinny TV speaker sound on one hand and surround sound on the other, not only experienced the movie more intensely, but actually had the impression that the screen was larger than it was. I don't watch many movies at home (I see them in the theatres), but I do watch a lot of television. I have yet to buy my dream LCD flatscreen, but it might actually be larger than the floor area of my dorm room. Hanging it on the wall with blu-tack is against the regulations.

Back home for the holidays, my television is as outdated as the magazines on the couch; and just as I cringe when I look at the fashion that was the cutting edge before I packed my bags for London, my television is a 4:3 CRT that has never heard of terms such us HD or 1080i. So I've made up for the tiny screen with a plethora of speakers, thanks to an AV receiver with a manual as complex as a statistics textbook, though marginally more interesting. My brother, under the influence of Christmas bonhomie, said he'd set it up for me, a slip of the tongue that he cursed me for remembering after a few hours crouched behind the the entertainment console with a flashlight, draped in cables, while I delivered the scripture according to Yamaha, pacing back and forth.

But it was worth it. Of all the new shows, Heroes shows the most promise; it has a JJ Abrams cliffhanger style, though it isn't as fast-paced as Alias but, unlike Lost, seems to know where it's going. I've only watched up to Episode 11 of the opening season; and my main complaint is the annoying expository voice-over ("Evolution is a complex process...") that frames each episode: you really want to shoot the guy. Another point that may soon be cleared up is the lack of a single, identifiable (in both senes of the word) character through which the viewer enters the world (Josh for the West Wing, Xander for Buffy, George for Grey's Anatomy); at the moment it's a toss up between Hiro and Peter Petrelli. Ali Larter's character seems to have been thrown in as eye-candy for the boys; her superpower appears to be that she can get mad and become violent. I can do that. Of the old shows, Bones and Boston Legal seemed to be chugging along nicely, each episode well made, but easy to snap off. The television equivalent of cocaine is Grey's Anatomy; it leaves you sleepless, your eyes dilated, sniffling into a hanky, yet hungry for more. Season Three promises to be even stronger than the first and second.

Movie studios seem to have taken the hint that people will go to the cinema to watch a movie if they aren't made to wait too long for it, so release dates are now almost simultaneous with the States. Whether they are making more positives from the release internegatives or enough theatres in America have switched to digital, I have no idea, but all I can say is, good for them. Television is another matter. My newlywed friends tell me that their cosy moments at night are spent cuddling together with a laptop, watching TheLatest.s3e5.xvid.lol.avi. Or they might start off the night with two laptops, one watching Prison Break and the other Desperate Housewives, and then watch Grey's Anatomy together. Meanwhile, the 5.1 surround system lies dormant all around them.

There are some things that take priority over shoes, clothes, and Lladro figurines: I have never regretted prioritising spending on books or music; and since I believe that screen narratives are the art form of our time, I'd put DVDs on that list. But one can't buy what isn't being sold, so if I can't get it in the form of a silver disk, then thankfullly there's the Bittorrent underground network. At the moment The Pirate Bay is trying to start its own country off the coast of the UK, and though I am sceptical of their success, I applaud it as an appropriately ridiculous symbolic gesture for the mule-headedness of the distributors.