Hacker Cinema
Rubicon
2010 · TV series · 45 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Jason Horwitch
An intelligence analyst at a national think tank in New York City called the American Policy Institute discovers that he may be working with members of a secret society that manipulates world events on a grand scale.
2 positivefrom 2 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
If you're ever looking for something that captures the Sneakers spirit then I very highly recommend the TV show Rubicon that was on AMC a few years back. Unfortunately cancelled after one season but if you look around you can find it.
I think many, if not most, of the people in this conversation really are forgetting that taste is subjective. What you view as a terrible film is often what millions of people enjoy. What you view as great cinema millions of others would find boring.
As an antidote most people I know do not share the same tastes as me (I find the 30s-50s as my golden age of cinema and love Humphrey Bogart) as I with them. While my wife can't stand black and white movies (with a few exceptions) I also really dislike most modern romantic comedies (with a few exceptions such as Love Actually). Of course she says she enjoyed the black and white movie that I made. :)
This also holds true to television as well. I don't want to keep up with the Kardashians or see which C-list celebrity has the best dance moves. Other people didn't want to watch Rubicon or don't want to watch Portland Timbers soccer. (I also think I'll be much worse off with unbundling of cable channels as the niche channels are often included in packages with more popular channels and will likely die off without enough interest and pricing power to sustain the programming.)
John August, a screenwriter with a great blog and podcast and a geek at heart, has made the observation that talented writers are starting to prefer working with TV (channels such as HBO, Showtime, AMC, FX, etc.) as they're given more latitude to tell their stories than they are in a feature length film for a studio. So, if you were to ask me for a prediction (and you didn't), that is the way I imagine the industry going with Amazon, Netflix, etc. picking up some of those shows as well. Those, along with live sports, will continue to draw audiences as they provide topics of conversation for the majority of society. (Obviously you and your group of friends are too sophisticated for that and discuss philosophy and indie rock but you're a small segment of society.)
You can never please everybody. And you'll likely go broke trying.
I wonder what would happen to a show like Firefly[1] or Jericho[2] Caprica[3]if they were suspended after the first season, and the studio put up a kickstarter saying "We'll cancel unless we get $2m from fans of the show".
At least those shows do stand a chance with fan-backing. Something like 'Rubicon' would, I think, totally fail at kickstarter even though it was good.
[1] A great show. I'm not sure how well it would have lasted with the traditional US "spin out a series for as long as possible" format. But, with careful plotting, it would have been an amazing 3 season (12 episodes per season) show.
EDIT: Fox hates the Firefly fanbase. (http://io9.com/fox-bans-the-sale-of-unlicensed-jayne-hats-from-firefly-471820413) Really, this is just open contempt for people who are willingly promoting your content.
[2] I really wanted to like this. I did like the first series. I really wanted an OQO (the tiny handheld computer that one of the characters has). But the second series was daft. This could have been a pretty good show and it's a shame it's gone.
[3] Caprica was good, I thought. Had some interesting concepts.