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

Wondered for a while what John Hawkes has been up to. Good to see him in this.

Hope there'll be a flashback where the one station employee is explaining Wilco and Cormac McCarthy to the other biologists.

Lol but I thought Wilco bro and Blood Meridian bro were two different guys!

Ope, you're right! If only the music playing on repeat was Andrew Bird whistling instead of "Twist and Shout"...

i like that its research station AND town (plus mine) … adds a lot of potential texture to story & characters, already feel some of that in this first ep

foster’s danvers has a great “over-it-clarice-starling” without specifically being played that way, if that makes sense

and i love the actress playing navarro already - her whole scene with the spongebob toothbrush was a good and very drfinitive signpost ie “there’s a new writing/directing sherriff in town”

Yes the setting is very interesting to me. The swampy Gulf Coast setting of season 1 (still the only season I've watched) felt massive and yawningly empty, but this show feels different. Ennis is established from the beginning as a place of entanglements and collisions, where people jeer at drunk drivers from the open windows of their homes. But then the research station, which you would expect to be the most claustrophobic bottle-episode kind of place, instead has this weirdly liminal quality, like the airlock of a spaceship: a place you only visit en route to (or returning from) the void.

Season 2 is still fascinating to me for its potential, and the setting was a big part of it: taking major strands of California (cults, agriculture, land rights) and setting it mostly in Ventura County. Needed a single director for the whole thing and/or a few more drafts, but as ep 1 of this new season came to an end I realized it ended the same way s2e1 did (though s2e1 ends with Nick Cave covering Alabama's "All The Gold In California" and this one starts and ends with Billie Eilish).

Season 2 is underrated. The annoying aspects (that goddamn nightclub singer, Colin Farrell's useless kid) are actually fairly easy to dismiss, and the Vince Vaughn/Kelly Reilly relationship is actually really well drawn. I've watched it several times.

Still haven't watched Season 3.

S3 is good! But also steers aways from
anything much in the way of cosmic horror, so it feels more like its own thing. Dorff & Ali are great.

I liked this first episode, maybe a lot, but wow that was some new low bar for an opening sequence, Harry Potter 1 VFX

Am appreciating an mostly accurate depiction of Arctic after dark

The aerial shots of Ennis are great, the perfect grid of one story shitty buildings, and pitch black shadow.

went well with a sundown of 5pm yesterday and a low of -8 last night

those cursed arctic research stations were everyone dies always look so cosy

The setting and potential supernatural stuff happening giving a bit of The Terror vibes (well plus 150 years lol)

I agree with the JF detective character that the first priority when arriving at a potential crime scene is turn that fucking beatles shite off

lol

creepy AF omg i am loving this

also


holy shit DOCTOR WHO is in this?
AND he’s boning CLARICE STARLING
omg this show man

God I love this show but I am far too impatient for it.

I just want the mystery solved! Whose spiralling these people!

Loving Ennis tho. Need more arctic in my tv screen

They really needed to hire an ilxor as music advisor. Some horrendous choices this season

The music is frustrating especially after three seasons that had original soundtracks. It’s credible that this is the music in Ennis — I’ve listened to CBC stations from Arctic towns and imagine listening to the songs they play, The Everly Brothers and so on, in such isolated places — but the music budget going to The Beatles and Billie Eilish feels like such a waste. The show is following the TD template in so many other ways but really dropped that part of it this season.

what is going on with the AI generated posters in True Detective pic.twitter.com/hLEM7pmAUM

— rachel (@rachelmillman) January 22, 2024

lol what the fuck

how do i shot production design

I've not seen any season of this show. Can I start with this one? Sucker for arctic settings, and good to have Jodi Foster back.

I would think so. The new season has a subtitle

Oops, posted too soon. It's the first season with a subtitle, and they've given Issa Lopez a "created by" credit, suggesting it's some ways a new show.

I like everything about this except the cutesy Taylor Cohle” and “Tuttle Enterprises” throwbacks, it makes me nervous we’re in for some kind of “Carcoldsa” kinda plot twist

Yeah, I'm really annoyed by that too, though I totally didn't grok the Travis Cohle thing while watching. But I guess everyone else did a much better job than me of remembering where a character's off-screen father grew up in a season of a show that aired a decade ago.

xp - those posters were insane, I couldn't stop staring at those

Right, Travis Cohle. I watch CC’d and the spelling is notable

and they've given Issa Lopez a "created by" credit, suggesting it's some ways a new show.

Hmmm; and yet in other, more accurate ways, not at all. They really did Nicky Pizza dirty.

lol I also got derailed by the AI posters, watching this to fill the gap caused by the (predictable) cancellation of Alaska Daily which I really liked

xp - fair point, had I seen it spelled out it would have rung a bell, but I honestly didn't even remember a last name being mentioned

if nothing else, it made my GF want to watch the Thing

The New Yorker review of this just had to squeeze in a sick burn on the most recent season of Fargo, but didn't really make it sound better.

I'm assuming the review is an outlier, but if that critic found season 5 of "Fargo" irritating, but likes this, then I dunno if I can get with this.

i didn’t even notice the posters lol

I thought it was a Metallica poster, but couldn't quite figure out if it was young or old Metallica, and now I know why. That's so weird.

being a music nerd I immediately tried to discern who the bands were, then realized it was just a coating of AI slime.

I could see it being a subtle "we're in a weird dream universe" touch, except that there are a ton of product placements sharp and in focus (was distracted by the framing that featured the Pepsi logo in one shot).

Probably stretching here but I wonder if those were originally actual band posters that they couldn't get (or wouldn't pay the rights for) so they last minute threw AI slime over 'em?

of all the things that happened in the episode it is very ILX to be “BUT THE POSTERS”

sure, but it's not like they are just anachronistic or something, they are absolutely horrid!

Fargo had great character-defining band posters in Gator's bedroom

(sorry I got rid of HBO so I will only be posting about Fargo in this thread)

Ferris Bueller or Mike Damone's bedroom being the obvious standard here.

Interesting that with the CGI elements and those posters that they filmed everything set outside in the Arctic outside:

Every shot outside in the ep was shot outside, in the arctic.
So, by living there for 10 months, I learned that visible breath depends on humidity. Sometimes it happens...
Sometimes not.
🤷🏻‍♀️ https://t.co/BlpVHoSYZB

— Issa López (@IssitaLopez) January 22, 2024

(though then I go google and find out that Iceland isn't actually the arctic, but 40 miles south of it)

Amazing response from her about the AI posters:

pic.twitter.com/y9pggkqwll

— grimm (@ExileGrimm) January 22, 2024