Grid Effect

We went to bed around 11pm last night, so there wasn’t much television viewing taking place. We did, however, catch Beauty and The Geek. And the content of the show really doesn’t interest me. What interests me, mainly, was the cross promotion they took part in with the latest remade horror movie, Prom Night.

It was your typical product placement, featuring a snippet of a trailer, some of the contestants claiming to want to see it, and even “prom tips” from the actress who plays the female lead. Now, none of this bothered me, what bothered me was during the trailer, they had one of the characters from the movie voicing over the montage, and the voice sounded familiar to me. Like someone from the recent past. So I went to the IMDB page and sure enough…there was Idris Elba listed as Detective Winn. But that wasn’t it, while perusing the cast, I noticed that James Ransone was listed as the 7th lead.

If you’re wondering who these two actors are, then you probably don’t read this website all that often. But Elba played Stringer Bell on The Wire and Ransone played Ziggy Sobotka during the second season of the same series. And really, going from The Wire to this Swill is kind of like going from POTUS to PTA president in the span of two weeks. We’d say it’s tough being an actor if not for the most often undeserved wealth and recognition, but we will say that it’s embarrassing in many ways, and in Elba’s case morbid. In his two most notable jobs he’s died twice. We’re giving it about a ninety percent chance he dies in Prom Night as well. I mean, at least if he was doing porn he’d get to make it to the end credits.

We are looking forward to the next James Ransone vehicle.

We’re glad Wire alumnae are getting work in movies as retroactive pay for a limited budget on the greatest series of all time. But isn’t there something a little more respectable available? We saw Fruit in a McDonald’s commercial during the tournament, and we find that less humiliating than playing tenth fiddle to Brittany Snow. I can’t imagine this is what he had in mind when coming over from England.

We should mention that Scott Porter, who plays Jason Street on Friday Night Lights is the male lead in this movie. And it seems like more appropriate work for him. Primarily because we’re already used to seeing him play a high schooler, and he also has a lead role. That’s money one can live off of, even if it’s for something as degrading as Prom Night.

The only thing we find troubling about this is Elba’s presence in it, Ransone and Porter are both young and white, this is what’s generally available for them. That isn’t to say Elba hasn’t gotten other work — including about twenty minutes of screen time in American Gangster — but for what he did on The Wire I guess four years after the fact we assumed he’d be landing some lead roles here and there. This might explain why we’re not running Hollywood.

But when we say television is in many ways better than film, this is what we mean. Television, and maybe it’s a result of a higher volume of roles, seems to reward better actors with appropriately more sought after work. At least this appears to be the case in critically acclaimed series’.

South Park & Survivor recaps tomorrow.