True Detective

Started by Punch, January 13, 2014, 07:42:56 AM

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Brando

I wasn't as down on this episode as everyone else seems to be. The last two episodes were intense. There is only two episodes left. The final two episodes have to build to the ending. This episode needed to set it up while also bringing us back down to earth so it can take us where it wants. If the show was at level 10 for the final 5 episodes then the ending wouldn't be as dramatic. We needed to be back at a reasonable level.

I too feel like I should ignore the argument but as soon as a show gets remotely popular there's an article complaining about weaknesses. They did it with breaking bad. They did it with Game of Thrones. I'm sure they did it with other shows.  I was among the many that complained about Laurie on The Walking Dead.

Quote from: Drenk on February 24, 2014, 10:31:15 AM
Skyler isn't as flat as Marty's wife.

Skyler was a flat character until the writers had time to expand her. She was flat for the entire first season cause the writers had to focus so much on Walt and his transformation. They expanded Skyler along with the other Breaking Bad characters once they had established Walt. That's not a bad thing. They had to do that cause the story's success depended establishing Walt.

I don't think Maggie is flat. I immediately knew who Maggie is as a wife, mother and woman. I didn't need much set up cause the actor and director knew Maggie. I'm sure with a lesser actor and a lesser director Maggie would be flat. The talent is able to overcome it.

Quote from: Drenk on February 24, 2014, 10:31:15 AM
And she's supposed to be important, right?

She's not as important as you seem to think. She's a secondary character not the third lead.

Quote from: Drenk on February 24, 2014, 10:31:15 AM
This story has eight episodes and tries to tell the end of a marriage.

It's not called True Marriage. The story has 8 episodes to tell 17 years of two detective's investigation into a murder while expanding into their lives. Rust and Marty's partnership is 100 times more important than Marty's marriage.

The article mentioned The Good Wife and other shows. How is that comparable? Those show are about a woman and the end of their marriages. Of course there is more focus on the wife and the breakup. Why hasn't the Good Wife had any focus on Satanic murders in the Bayou?

I also don't understand people being upset that the marriage ended over infidelity and that Marty cheating is obvious. That's the kind of guy he is. He's "just a regular dude with a big ass dick."  That's how he describes himself. Did you think he was a faithful husband after he said that?  Did really you think Marty changed his ways and would never cheat again?

People cheat and marriages end. It's not obvious. Its what happens. Something like over 40% of marriages have dealt with infidelity. It's dealing with something common in relationships.
If you think this is going to have a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.

Mel

Simple mind - simple pleasures...

Kellen


Pubrick

Can we have one fucking show that doesn't get ruined by the feminist equal opportunity brigade??

I can't believe what I'm reading with these criticisms. It's the same shit I've been hearing my whole life about Kubrick.

If these women and white knights are so bloody insistent on making every single show 50% equal screentime/importance to women they should make their own masterpiece. Good luck making it realistic or interesting when the entire premise of the show is about the psychological perspective of two MEN in a patriarchal oppressive environment.

The hard fucking truth is that when addressing certain phenomena of the 20th century, especially serial killings in the religious south, it necessarily is going to depict women in a state of powerlessness. The show addresses that. More importantly it addresses the conflict these two men have in their own macho world guided by rank and aggressor-ruler tactics.

Cohle is highly aware of this. And he would see it as a sick improvement if it only stopped at female oppression. Instead in their world (quite believable in many respects, exactly because it stays true to their contrasting mindset) it goes beyond gender and into targeting the weakest in society, the children. Rust says himself in this latest ep, in a very telling line, "you, you people, this place. It's like you eat your fucking young and that's all good as long as you've got something to salute."

The show is largely about anger and helplessness, it shows irrational solutions to irrational problems. Look at the beat down Marty gave those punks, he thought he was restoring order. The truth is his daughter wanted it that way, just like the matriarch whore told him at he caravan brothel, that what angers him is that they are having it in a way he doesn't get to decide. It's a tough sell to say that's feminist girl power personified but they are irrational circumstances and there is dramatic truth in the way it affects him. His philandering with the girl prostitute turned T-mobile sales girl is really sick in the perverted way he is reconciling his daughters transgressions thru Beth by first perceiving of Beth as an innocent victim and then approving of her making a whore out of HIM now that she's left the game.

I'm sick of whingeing feminists and knee jerk reactionists who think that any work of artists has to represent a utopian ideal when in fact the artist only reflects their own human truth. Would these same fucktards complain that Picasso didn't paint enough men? Or that Hamlet should've been Hamlet and His Twin Sister Hamletta? Let's decry DaVinci for not making Jesus a woman or Mona Lisa a more obvious transsexual.

These ignorant blogs and vapid opinion pieces by idiots is part of a bigger problem in modern culture: no one believes in art, no one understands artistic truth, no one can tell you the meaning of anything because we've been told there is no meaning only agendas. Not everything is a political campaign. Some things still possess integrity.

I look forward to talking about the actual show and not the malcontents trying to bring it down to a boring level. That last shot of ep 6 in particular I think will prove to be very foretelling. The brake light is broken and we're strapped in, there's no stopping this train. It acknowledges the transitional pause we all felt in this episode.
under the paving stones.

Alexandro

great post, pubrick. I laughed out loud with "hamletta".
I really like the show, and so far the only problem I have with it is the way they solved what "went down between them". I also thought they would surprise us with that one, but one for the most obvious choice.

Punch

Pubrick

True Detective is great so far, i think Emily Nussbaum criticism is weak and seems to not get the show. Also all of these reviews hacking away at one particular thing isn't good criticism even feminist bell hooks doesn't write such reviews, but i don't think these voices should be completely disregarded. you have to admit a constant portrayal of women as weak, needy and bitchy through these mediums is detrimental and should be criticized. you speak as if the playing field is even and women can just go out and make these "masterpieces" its not.
"oh you haven't truly watched a film if you didn't watch it on the big screen" mumbles the bourgeois dipshit

Jeremy Blackman

Not sure if I'm alone on this, but I thought the last 3 episodes were vastly superior. (Spoilers ahead.) The biker gang plot and the confrontation with Ledoux were the best television I've seen since BB ended. Escape from the ghetto was masterful.

Let me get some nitpicking out of the way, then I'll have some more nice things to say at the end...

I did have problems with the first 3 episodes. Not that I care much anymore, because the show has more than redeemed itself, but it's worth noting.

The interviews felt especially crude when they were used mechanistically to develop the lead characters. Let's be honest, it got tiresome for a stretch. There's a lot of subtext as text, a lot of telling instead of showing. Sometimes they even tell before they show, then tell some more. For example, how much content was dedicated to the scene where Cohle shows up drunk for dinner? We had interviews with Cohle, interviews with Marty, a scene of them discussing it in the car the next day, and the actual scene in its entirety, which itself contains more than enough exposition. That's just too much. Not everything needs to be comprehensively spelled out for us through dialogue. The script was like a super-efficient subtext-draining machine.

I've tried my best to ignore the police procedural cliches, but they can be fairly distracting. It's disheartening that this show decided not to sidestep them. They even employ the "find a body within the next 2 days or I'm pulling you from this case!" device, which I thought had been pounded into the ground by The Wire. At least The Wire put some effort into making it believable; here it's just a tossed-off way to create artificial urgency. In general, the procedural content felt like a collection of things from Dexter, The Wire, and The Killing... which I was not expecting. The institutional corruption plot feels a little bit borrowed from The Wire too. (Seeing actors from The Wire in this show certainly encourages the comparison.)

Anyway...

Some of the feminist critiques are valid, but I don't think they realize that Maggie is actually one of the show's best characters. And she's kind of been great from the start. She of course was never really fooled by Marty. She not only picked up on his cheating (before there was any evidence of it) but sensed the deterioration of his character. She's extremely sharp. He seems like a lumbering oaf in comparison, a violent primitive who is outmatched by his wife at every turn. The show is merciless on Marty for his cheating; his rationalizations that it helps keep his family life in balance are instantly revealed as absurd and misogynistic.

MacGuffin

CARY FUKUNAGA WILL NOT BE BACK TO DIRECT TRUE DETECTIVE SEASON 2
The director is moving on to several planned film projects instead.
Source: IGN

HBO's True Detective will have to add finding a new director to the challenge of finding an entirely new storyline for next season. Cary Fukunaga will not return to the director's chair for season 2. He will stay on only as an executive producer.

Critical response to True Detective has been resoundingly positive. Much of that praise has been rightly aimed at Fukunaga, who directed all eight episodes of the current season.

According to Deadline, Fukunaga has a bevy of film projects lined up thanks to his breakout success on HBO. Just about every studio has a deal with the emerging young talent, including Warner Bros. (a feature adaptation of Stephen King's It), DreamWorks (Noble Assassin) and Fox, which just hired Fukunaga for an untitled contemporary war movie mid-pitch.

Fukunaga's next film project will be Beasts of No Nation with Idris Elba.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Mel

1x07 SPOILERS

It definitely feels like a third act. Tension omnipresent in previous episodes was gone for me and right now I'm perceiving this as the weakest episode so far (could change after rewatching). It reminded me a bit noir cinema and classic Hollywood, maybe it is related to some of the shots. Some examples (some types were used multiple times e.g. there were numerous shots with mirrors - I'm posting only most obvious one):



Multiple expositions.



Invisible wall.



Mirror shot.



Mirror shot again.



Drinking booze and telling story from profile - that is a bit change from head-on interviews.



Frame within the frame.

You can find more, but even those prove technical values of the series yet again.
Simple mind - simple pleasures...

cine

Spoilers




Remus knows the whole coast.

Brando


Not a strong episode. The season has played out much more like a novel. I think it's been one of the strengths of the show. Last night's episode was when it was a weakness. As a chapter in a book, it wouldn't come off as weak but as a penultimate episode of a tv season it didn't work. If it was the 6th or 5th episode rather than the 7th of 8, I don't think it would have been much of a problem. It's just too close to the end.

I think it shows the inexperience of the show creator. His only previous experience writing a couple of episodes of The Killing. He worked on the first season of The Killing and is now a show runner and writing an entire show by himself.

The success of the season will ultimately be how the show ends. It's gonna have to payoff big cause it has been promising a lot.

I'm gonna have to go back to episode 3 and look at the guy mowing the lawn at the school. Was it the same guy at the end of last night's episode?
If you think this is going to have a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.

polkablues

Quote from: Brando on March 03, 2014, 12:39:39 PM
I'm gonna have to go back to episode 3 and look at the guy mowing the lawn at the school. Was it the same guy at the end of last night's episode?

I'll save you the trouble; it was.

And did you all notice the way he was mowing that lawn? Fucking spirals, man. This show has layers for days.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Axolotl

Quote from: polkablues on March 03, 2014, 01:10:05 PM
And did you all notice the way he was mowing that lawn? Fucking spirals, man. This show has layers for days.
I thought that's the optimal way of mowing your lawn? But it was neat.

This is starting to disappoint me. Lots of superfluous dialogue, redundant information reiterated.  A big clue that the pacing of this season is off is that suddenly every thread they pull seems to be unraveling the case way too fast and too neatly.
I hope it's redeemed by the finale.

Jeremy Blackman

I agree with Axolotl. My main problem with the episode was the mind-numbing fashion in which some of the procedural content was delivered, which is to say, simply in dialogue as though it's being read. And maybe McConaughey and Harrelson were plowing through it just a little too fast. I had to rewind a couple scenes just to stay on board, and I don't think I'm that slow... I never had to do that with The Wire, which had enormously complex procedural content but was able to make it digestible almost effortlessly.

I'm slightly disappointed with the reveal. Not sure that actor is strong enough... he kind of botched that line and his accent sounds approximately like Rick from The Walking Dead. Also, not really scarry enough or giant enough. Maybe it was the lighting. I found Reggie Ledoux significantly creepier.

cine

Quote from: Axolotl on March 03, 2014, 03:51:26 PM
This is starting to disappoint me. Lots of superfluous dialogue, redundant information reiterated.  A big clue that the pacing of this season is off is that suddenly every thread they pull seems to be unraveling the case way too fast and too neatly.
I hope it's redeemed by the finale.

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on March 04, 2014, 06:31:47 PM
I agree with Axolotl. My main problem with the episode was the mind-numbing fashion in which some of the procedural content was delivered, which is to say, simply in dialogue as though it's being read. And maybe McConaughey and Harrelson were plowing through it just a little too fast. I had to rewind a couple scenes just to stay on board, and I don't think I'm that slow... I never had to do that with The Wire, which had enormously complex procedural content but was able to make it digestible almost effortlessly.

I'm slightly disappointed with the reveal. Not sure that actor is strong enough... he kind of botched that line and his accent sounds approximately like Rick from The Walking Dead. Also, not really scarry enough or giant enough. Maybe it was the lighting. I found Reggie Ledoux significantly creepier.

i'm starting to think this is a parody thread. you guys weren't really that over-analytical of episode 7, were you? holy cow haha.