TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - matthew mcconaughey, woody harrelson, michelle monaghan, fukunaga, pizzolatto

lex otm

I just finished this and loved it right up until the last episode which was total garbage and so disappointing. Lex completely otm. MM so good throughout though. Could have done without all that bullshit at the end with the near death experience and oh it was just infuriating. I had such high hopes. :(

man u r all so cynical, need to find jesus or something

otm

finding jesus is as easy as finding the bad guy hiding in a cave in the woods

the biker dude ginger is the same actor as the dude who sez 'you guys up for some reggae tonight' in ghost world

same character too

lol xp

this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ke-_nKHpDs

wait just a damn second here.

http://i.imgur.com/tU4yvLs.jpg

Finally mainlined the first 4 episodes last night. Good show, amazing cinematography, nice modern southern gothic touches. I enjoy Rust's rants but kind of wonder where they are going w the whole occult thing, which is all 100% insane made-up 80s Christian scare tactic stuff. Really wouldn't surprise me if it was just one of the tent revivalalists doing horrible shit and blaming it on satanists. I get the idea Rust knows this and hence his characterizing the mayor's cousin and Anti-Christian Task Force as opportunists.

Marty really fucked up his marriage. Maybe after the case he end up in a Die Hard-like situation and reconciles with his wife on national TV.

Can't wait to see what beer can action figures Rust makes next.

there was a louisiana parish that had a series of confirmed molestation cases sort of like this, which pizzolato acknowledged as the thing that kickstarted the idea for the show in part, it was one of the only real instances of satanic-related molestation and I don't think it happened when the satanic ritual abuse allegations were happening in droves

here's the original nytimes article on it http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/25/us/sex-charges-follow-a-churchs-collapse.html?_r=0

Wow.....yeeesh.

So yes it does sound exactly like that, horrific abuses occurring in a Christian community, mutliple chuch members involved, and the nature of those abuses incurring the convenient label of "Satanic". The Satanic Bible actually prohibits that kind of stuff. It's wholly the invention of 80s anti-metal culture crusaders.

I guess it boils down to what is more plausible, these horrible people that did the crimes deciding to spraypaint red pentagrams and kill feral cats in order to throw investigators off the trail, or an unseen cult of ritual murder that has no written historical basis outside of sad stories like these.

Mostly I just want to have a beer with Matthew McConaughey.

There's more to it. He testified in court that his confession was made up, that he was under the control of Lois Mowbray who was the actual leader of church - even both of his sons recanted & said the abuse never happened

http://forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com/2008/09/of-child-molestation-and-crystal-balls.html?m=1

http://www.reid.com/pdfs/summer2010/Lamonica.pdf

Ok wow, did not expect it to turn into Dark Souls there at the end.

I was sure they were both just going to die, hidden in that deep cavernous room where no-one had any idea where they were, bleeding out.

What was with that swirling shit Rust was looking up at on the ceiling?

Oh, him chugging that bottle of robotussin earlier in the season, that brought back some bad feels.

Really liked that ending though. Rust tended to say some detached and nihilist-sounding stuff but underneath it all was clearly some kind of spirituality. He talked about souls a few times in the early part of the season. I took the whole "Why become a father, take that soul out of nothingness and pull it into this horrible existence" speech as evidence of that.

Don't think him having a profound near-death experience is character-breaking in any way, dude has profound experiences just driving his car.

Did anyone figure out how many people from the cult were left? They killed 3, and Tuttle died as well. It's hard to tell from the video just how many were involved.

Marty really fucked up his marriage. Maybe after the case he end up in a Die Hard-like situation and reconciles with his wife on national TV.

Now I can say it – you weren't too far off!

LOL yeah, especially with the off-camera gunshot to kill the raging maniac right before he gets the good guys.

Reading over this thread and various analysis, it seems like people really read too much into the wrong things, and were upset that the ending didn't feed into that. The mythology the cult members were following was lifted completely from Victorian-era fiction, which is good stuff, but more or less fanfiction versions of the occult. No real underlying history to the stuff, just fabricated by horror/fantasy/satire writers who were writing to an audience living for the first time in a post-religious world, a world of industrialization and romanticizing recently colonized faraway lands, trying to top "1001 Arabian Nights".

Early in the series Rust is convinced there is reasoning behind invoking the imagery, that there is a history behind it, but he doesn't really mention it much past episode 4. The Yellow King and Carcosa are just masks, red herrings, textures to hide the perpetrators of these very real crimes. Just as the good upstanding Christian community is a mask for the horrible stuff they do.

In the end there was no greater force controlling these bad bad people, they were all responsible for their own actions.

Well, no greater force except LSD and meth. Which explains a LOT.

http://i.imgur.com/jci5zU5.jpg

So should I watch S2? Seems most people were kinda lukewarm about it

no it's terrible

genuinely awful

that's what i heard so i skipped it too

http://i.imgur.com/RzoQZKl.gif

now you've seen the good part

it makes it abundantly clear that what was good in the first season was due to Harrelson/McConaughey and Fukunaga

Farrell tried hard but he had nothing to work with

rachel mcadams is attractive

I started this a couple of nights ago--just finished episode 3. Still getting a feel for it, but "There's a monster at the end of it" and Reggie Ledoux was a great closing image.

I just watched both series back to back for the first time. Not gonna wade through over 2400 messages to find out what the ILX take on this is, but I would certainly agree that while S1 was way better than S2, S2 still had a lot going for it and kept me watching till the end. I couldn't work out the plot at all but (as per lag∞n above) Rachel McAdams lit up the screen and I loved the corruption angle.

i liked what i think someone here said about vv's performance being so singularly bad it became transcendent

Got through the rest of season one today. I liked a lot of it, and watched the climactic showdown through my fingers, but I don't know--McConaughey really hammered away at the rhetorical riddles and mystical mumbo-jumbo from beginning to end. Harrelson was really good. I will watch the second season, though I don't think I saw it on the rental shelf.

just finished this (s1, will probably avoid s2 indefinitely), and wow what a monster thread. not to be mr. cynical but i'm a little surprised y'all were so taken w/ this! it definitely hooked me but idk...

good stuff:

the supporting cast -- usually the best thing about hbo shows and cop shows and no different here, even really minor parts were all inhabited so well

the leads -- yeah they were great.

the landscape -- really loved this. i've driven thru this part of the country, once, but on the freeways, which are usually totally elevated, like you're just skimming over a huge mess; it's more like flying really. flood-blasted, refinery-scarred, simultaneously abandoned and teeming. love the vibe that every corner of a river or dirt road has a whole secret life in it, a meth lab, a church, etc

the hallucinatory stuff -- i always like elements that, when introduced into the middle of something, recolor everything you have already been shown. the idea that rust is moving through a space that is m/l at warp speed is shocking and sad.

the lying -- the biker/shootout episode was tremendous; the high pt of the show i think. the layering of their fabrication of events, and how R & M stuck to their story even through their hatred of each other, great stuff

bad stuff:

the women -- nic pizzolato is 15 years old i guess? "woman in trouble throws herself at detective" is an ancient trope but come on. by like the 6th use of the term "crazy pussy" my respect for proceedings was about zero

the conspiracy -- reminded me a lot of the Red Riding adaps. as much as i enjoyed all the pulpy mystical stuff -- the symbology, the hints at various methed-out weirdos being inducted into a pseudo-religion serving unaccountable, rapacious elites -- having it all boil down to a pedo ring was sort of... deflating, idk. texas chainsaw + eyes wide shut ehhhhh. i guess i'm grateful there wasn't a stupid 90s style twist ending where one of the foreground characters was behind it all along.

ugly family dynamics -- cop life and patriarchy are hard on people its true but this all felt p rote to me. when marty spots his daughter's dolls arranged in some kind of ritual sex thing i busted out laughing.

the initial murder -- i enjoyed this enough that i plan on watching it again at some pt, but, what was this even for, from the murderer's perspective? the rest of the killings were untraceable but this one was theatrical? did i miss something obvious here

the rest of the killings were untraceable but this one was theatrical?

haha yeah this is totally glossed over

i'm a little surprised y'all were so taken w/ this!

i'll defend this on the merits all day but you gotta take into account most of us watched it in real time. i can still pretty vividly remember--especially after the twists and turns of the first half of the season--thinking the show could go just about anywhere. it was really exciting in a zeitgeisty kind of way, a real pop cultural "event" of the sort that doesn't seem to happen all that often anymore.

yeah i can see that.

nb i got hbo-now a couple months ago so i'm grinding thru a bunch of the "event" shit of the past like 15 years. i'll invite you to engage with my critical carnivale takes in due course.

https://thefilmstage.com/news/cary-fukunaga-confirmed-to-direct-stanley-kubricks-unfinished-six-hour-project-napoleon/

not gonna lie, am v into this idea

it'll definitely look nice. probably best to avoid someone more explicitly invested in a "kubrickian" style (like, maybe, latter day PTA).

fukunaga's jane eyre is ridic beautiful

i would love to see what he could do with a huge battlefield full of smoke and blood & cannons & horses

yeah i hope they throw a lot of money at this.

the hack portentous cack this guy does is not even fit to mentioned in the same sentence as Kubrick.

Sorry but I really hate him.

best not to think of it as a kubrick movie even in the way that AI is, but as a lavish HBO historical miniseries with a talented (imo) stylist at the helm. could be good!

not that the publicity wont be "kubrick kubrick kubrick" for 3 months leading up to it.