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Miami Vice


L.Craig

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Not trying to be snotty, but...

 

Michael Mann created Miami Vice, wrote the pilot movie, and when the show got picked up by NBC, he became the executive producer and one of the principal writers of the series. So saying that Mann is "involved" with Miami Vice is kinda like saying that the President is "involved" with the government.

 

No, I'm not a MV geek. ;)

 

And, YES, I'm eagerly anticipating the movie... ;)

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Re: Miami Vice

 

It'll probably be a swell movie, however...

 

One thing that annoys me about the movie industry lately is lack of creativity. Instead of gambling on something new there seems to be a strong trend to dust-off popular old TV shows and make movies based on them. Sometimes it works okay but a lot of the time you end-up with bombs like The Dukes of Hazard.

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Re: Miami Vice

 

In its heyday, Miami Vice was a baromneter of popular culture -- you could tell what the hot bands were by who got onto the soundtrack of that weeks' episode. and someone built an entire episode around the Glenn Frey song "Smuggler's Blues" and Frey himself was featured in the episode.

 

It is also a surprisingly dark and cynical series for all the flash. No matter how many kingpins Crockett and Tubbs took down, for eevry one they brought down two would take their place. They were on the front lines of a war that was, for practical purposes, already lost.

 

In the process, Mann was frequently accused of galmorizing the very drug trade he was trying to condemn and of romanticizing a level of violence that was extreme for its day on broadcast TV.

 

This was at about the same time that Brian DePalma was being crucified in the press for many of the same reasons over the ultra-violent gangster tragedy Scarface. but while DePalma has been largely vindicated by the passage of time, Mann has fallen by the wayside.

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Not trying to be snotty, but...

 

Michael Mann created Miami Vice, wrote the pilot movie, and when the show got picked up by NBC, he became the executive producer and one of the principal writers of the series. So saying that Mann is "involved" with Miami Vice is kinda like saying that the President is "involved" with the government.

 

Well, depending on who you ask... :)

 

You're right, I should have looked it up!

 

No, I'm not a MV geek. ;)

 

And, YES, I'm eagerly anticipating the movie... ;)

 

Yeah, me too. It's not looking like one of those crappy soulless remakes just to trade on a famous name (Starskey and Hutch, I'm looking at you), but the original artist revisiting a work and seeing how the same concept could work in todays society, so different to the '80's.

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Somewhere, there's a paper or book on Miami Vice as Film Noir for the 80's. I never thought about it at the time, but that was exactly correct. More attention was placed on flashy things (fashion, cars, homes, etc.), but the basic elements remained. Those kinds of stories are timeless in a way, requiring only minor changes in setting and subject matter to retain viability for a modern audience.

 

I loved the television show as a kid. Admittedly, I even catch the occasional episode on the Sleuth channel today. I definitely plan on seeing the movie.

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Let us also not forget Mann's directing Manhunter and making Hollywood's acquantance with a certain psychatrist with interesting dietary habits.

 

That opening scene with the burnt-out profiler protagonist going through the murder house and interrogating, with brutal and chilling honesty, a killer who wasn't there is still one of the most riveting and disturbing things I'vce ever seen on film.

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Miami Vice was one stylish series: Okay, the whole setup wasn't too realistic - two officers living the high life in Miami with a cop's income while staying clean off any graft and hunting perps in LOUD - actually more like SCREAMING!!!! - jackets did not make a lot of sense and "good police work" was usually driving to the criminal's party, giving him the look and then checking out one of his warehouses for some shootout - but who cares? Was good entertainment.

 

We seriously need a Miami Vice RPG or sourcebook.

 

Don't know if I am too excitited about the movie, though. It doesn't look like a great deal of creativity to me to resurrect a series from the 80s for a movie script.

Wouldn't say no to a DVD colection (maybe a good birthday present for me - turning 36 in August)?

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Miami Vice was one stylish series: Okay' date=' the whole setup wasn't too realistic - two officers living the high life in Miami with a cop's income while staying clean off any graft and hunting perps in LOUD - actually more like [b']SCREAMING!!!![/b] - jackets did not make a lot of sense and "good police work" was usually driving to the criminal's party, giving him the look and then checking out one of his warehouses for some shootout - but who cares? Was good entertainment.

 

Um, Her Baron, did you forget what the 1980's were like? I still shudder at some of the fashion sense of the decade (not that the 1990's were much better), but I will also say that I did watch that show regularly (but not religiously) and watched the repeat of the pilot the night before I signed two years, five months and seven days of my life away for Uncle Sam. Call me nostalgic.

 

We seriously need a Miami Vice RPG or sourcebook.

 

I agree completely, though style issues would be the only thing that separates a Miami Vice campaign from a standard cop-oriented Dark Champions game.

 

Don't know if I am too excitited about the movie, though. It doesn't look like a great deal of creativity to me to resurrect a series from the 80s for a movie script.

Wouldn't say no to a DVD colection (maybe a good birthday present for me - turning 36 in August)?

 

I am quite sure that the old series is out on DVD, but yeah, it's a famous tag on an old cop/action/buddy movie formula. In that vein, I always preferred Alien Nation which I did watch religiously (no pun intended).

 

Matt "Somebody's-got-my-photo-on-a-dartboard" Frisbee

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Re: Miami Vice

 

two officers living the high life in Miami with a cop's income while staying clean off any graft

 

Yeah, living in Miami for the past 33 years (wow, that's depressing to look at) I can emphasize the unreality of that. Especially for Metro-Dade cops.

 

But it was a decent show, and as someone pointed out earlier, if you look past the glam, you do realize that they were fighting a losing war and often knew it. They often suffered in their personal lives because of their jobs. A theme Mann touches upon in several of his films (Heat and Manhunter being the best examples that come to mind).

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Mann has fallen by the wayside.

 

I'll have to take a bit of umbrage with this one. Mann is still making great movies.

 

Nominated for Academy Award for The Insider. Made gobs of money for Last of the Mohicans and created two of the best crime thrillers ever in Heat and Collateral. He is a great director, obsessive about detail in his movies... and uses light and sound like nobody else in the business.

 

He's hardly "fallen by the wayside."

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Re: Miami Vice

 

IIRC, the "glam" people are complaning about was part of the "cover identities" that Crockett and Tubbs maintained, and the trappings were paif for by the Miami Dade PD, most likely out out of asset forfeitures.

 

Crockett actually had a well-established "other" identity as a homicidal drug dealer, complete with fictional rap sheet. He was capable of slippiong into that identity when needed, to the point of actually believing it was the truth.

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Re: Miami Vice

 

Just an interesting FYI, I read the other day that Miami Vice (inflation-adjusted) was the most expensive TV series ever produced.

 

As for the movie... I've been hearing seriously mixed reviews. The studio's already way over budget (upwards to $140 million-ish), and the initial reviews have been tepid to downright frigid. Mann's apparently scrambling in the editing room to make it work by the impending release deadline.

 

Besides... Farrell & Fox ain't DeNiro & Pacino ;)

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