{"id":3645,"date":"2012-07-25T12:05:49","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T17:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=3645"},"modified":"2012-07-25T09:03:35","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T14:03:35","slug":"are-miniseries-motion-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2012\/07\/are-miniseries-motion-pictures\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Miniseries Motion Pictures?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, 23 July 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last night, my wife and I finished watching the last part of Mildred Pierce<\/a><\/em>, a 2011 five-part miniseries from HBO starring Kate Winslet.<\/p>\n

Jennifer put this one on the Netflix queueueu, and I figured I’d watch it with her because it starred Kate Winslet. Did I mention Kate Winslet is in it? She’s one of a few actors or actresses where I’ll actually watch the movie just because they’re in it. Obviously, the best way to get me to see a movie is if I’ve heard good things about it’s story, but I am often a sucker for a film if I like the director (e.g., Tim Burton) or if I like the studio (e.g., PIXAR) or if it’s won an Oscar for best picture. But, there are a few cases where I am willing to sit through a film because of who stars in it. Or, put another way, there are a few times when I sit down to watch a movie, and the credits begin, and I see so-and-so is in it, and I think, “Hey, so-and-so is in this! That’s great! I love so-and-so.”<\/p>\n

Besides Kate, I also like James Cromwell, Helena Bonham Carter, Jodie Foster, Steve Buscemi, Patrick Stewart, Johnny Depp, and probably a few others I can’t think of right now. I’ve seen at least 13 movies in which Kate has either acted or voiced, including, as of last night, Mildred Pierce<\/em>. And that brings me to my main topic:<\/p>\n

Do miniseries count as motion pictures?<\/p>\n

See, it’s an important question because I keep a listing of every feature length motion picture I’ve ever seen. My list contains a couple dozen made-for-TV movies, so I’m not trying to slight Mildred Pierce<\/em> because it was “only” on TV and not on the silver screen.<\/p>\n

I scrolled through my list of motion pictures, and the only other miniseries on the list was Roots<\/em>. By a long shot, this is (was) the longest motion picture on my list. But then I got to thinking: Roots<\/em> and Mildred Pierce<\/em> aren’t movies…they’re TV shows. After all, they’re not called “Maxi-movies,” they’re called “Mini-series,” indicating they’re not incredibly long movies, but incredibly short TV series.<\/p>\n

[Incidentally: I also once listed Roots<\/em>\u00a0in a blog post listing my 50 All-time Favorite Motion Pictures<\/a>; I guess it shouldn’t be on that list, either.]<\/p>\n

“Wait,” you say, “Don’t think of Mildred Pierce<\/em> as one long movie, think of it as five movies, kind of like Star Wars<\/em>, only with five instead of six.”<\/p>\n

“Nah,” I say, dispensing with the quotation marks from here on out, it seems each part is an episode, just as HBO used to have a series called The Sopranos<\/em>, and each of those parts was an episode. If I include each part of\u00a0 Mildred Pierce<\/em>, then I should include every episode of every TV show I’ve ever seen. Which would be both impossible and embarrassing.<\/p>\n

So, today, I made a thoughtful decision and, instead of adding Mildred Pierce<\/em> to the list of motion pictures I’ve seen, I deleted Roots<\/em>, bringing my total number of films down (wow, that’s the first time the total’s gone down<\/em>) to 1,322.<\/p>\n

Anyway…Mildred Pierce<\/em>. I’m gonna go ahead and say skip it. Unless you really like Kate Winslet. Did I mention Kate Winslet is in it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, 23 July 2012 Last night, my wife and I finished watching the last part of Mildred Pierce, a 2011 five-part miniseries from HBO starring Kate Winslet. Jennifer put this one on the Netflix queueueu, and I figured I’d watch it with her because it starred Kate Winslet. Did I mention Kate Winslet is in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3645"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3653,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3645\/revisions\/3653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}