Luck: HBO series: David Milch, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Mann

this could be good.

btw walter hill directed by the pilot of deadwood, which had some extraordinary moments. where did that guy's career go, though?

― by another name (amateurist), Wednesday, March 3, 2010 5:32 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

For some reason I thought Walter Hill was dead... guess I was thinking of George Roy Hill.

Can you really call Milch an autodidact when he graduated from Yale? Unless you're saying he's like... a student of life or something.

do people still watch treme? i liked it at first but had like a physical aversion to watching it. same with boardwalk empire. it just feels exhausting.

― cathy: ACK-er (s1ocki), Tuesday, October 12, 2010 10:00 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

I felt the exact same way about Treme... I think the scene where Bunk gets his teeth knocked out by a cop really made me realize how enormously unpleasant watching the show made me feel. Boardwalk's airier and more fun to me though, even if it's way more violent and gross.

the 67-year-old filmmaker has shown a profound gift for connecting human emotion, music, color and light on the big screen

lol trying to write abt wtf michael mann is up to

from the article:

Luck is the latest example of talent from the big screen crossing over to TV and boasts a cast that includes Dustin Hoffman, playing a seasoned gambler, Nick Nolte and Dennis Farina, a former cop Mann first worked with 22 years ago on his TV series Crime Story.

didn't they first work together on Thief?

i waited on treme until i could watch the whole season in one week and it felt like a massive perfect movie.

you mean massively boring imperfect boo-vie

sorry, yes, that's clearly what i mean.

np

man I thought this was supposed to start airing in January. now they're saying autumn of 2011.

got to side w/team slocki over team forks when it comes to tremé, sorry john

tremé was awful, overbearing forcefeeing of david simon's BIG VIEWS. i feared boardwalk empire had a similar level of heaviness/tediousness (i didn't watch episode 2 till this week) but i love it now, it is worth sticking with.

overestimating the BIG VIEWS argument of Treme imo.

but i think when your mouthpiece commits suicide it is an intentional complication of those big views.

David Milch is a total school of life autodidact. That New Yorker profile is one of the most fascinating things I've ever read. The guy's a genius, and I almost got the impression the Ivy League had more to gain from him than he it.

Here's a taste:

[Robert Penn] Warren had arranged for Milch to begin teaching seminars in fiction and poetry at Yale that year and to work on a two-volume textbook anthology of American literature that he and Lewis were editing with Cleanth Brooks. It didn’t take Milch long to acquire a cult following; his classroom style was vibrant, earthy, and often derisively funny, and details of his avocational exploits enhanced his mystique. For instance, he was a gambler who knew a great deal about horse racing and was writing a screenplay set at a racetrack. (Were his students also aware that he was an alcoholic and a heroin addict?) Depending on how one interprets the data, Milch was either bedevilled by self-destructive urges or possessed of keen survival skills that sustained him in the face of unhealthy compulsions. A superior student—he graduated summa cum laude and won the prize given for the highest achievement in English—he was an unlikely member of the jock fraternity (Delta Kappa Epsilon; George W. Bush, president), which provided a venue for his main extracurricular activity: drinking.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact_singer

Some great Milch stuff at The Idea of the Writer. His lectures tend to be more about his experiences than anything else, but they're still enjoyable. I seem to remember really liking the USC Religious course one myself.

In fact that might be place where he discusses John from Cincinnati being about preventing genocide through mercantilism.

man, i would say treme is three (3) times as good as john from cincinnati
and (almost?) as good as deadwood

Dude, Treme is nowhere near Deadwood quality. Deadwood was just a zillion times more entertaining, the only thing that kept me watching Treme was the great cast, and I doubt there's any force of nature that could get me to watch a second, John Goodman-less season.

shrug

Deadwood is the greatest show of all time. Treme is very good, but it's about equal with John from Cincinnati (though for different reasons). Treme has a lot of potential and a great community vibe, so I think it's worth sticking with.

the Cult of Milch makes me a little suspicious/skeptical, honestly. i liked deadwood a lot but it was really pretentious, and some episodes just didn't work. it felt like twin peaks levels of bad-with-the-good sometimes.

pretty sure it wasn't 'the greatest show of all time.' it had a couple of the same flaws as 'boardwalk empire' -- gratingly 'upscale' violence against women, bit slow -- though obviously it pisses all over 'boardwalk empire' [via ian mcshane crushing it].

How many dramatic TV shows have been better than Deadwood? You could probably count them on one hand. I'm not saying it was perfect, but 'pretentious' doesn't really scan as a great criticism to me, or at least not one that I really care about. I mean, I don't have anything really interesting to say about the show except that I liked it a whole lot, but is pretention really bad if the show is still massively entertaining? Is it really a lot more pretentious than The Wire? That's a show which I love but also found much more wearying with its laser-like focus on being an IMPORTANT show about IMPORTANT things. I guess either it works for you or it doesn't.

i'd put deadwood in top ten tv dramas

I think Deadwood is very enjoyable on a surface level. I don't know what's pretentious about that. John from Cincinnati was probably pretty pretentious though. Also 'upscale violence against women' - yawn.

deadwood was amazing but it's lack of a conclusion hurts the series as a whole I feel, or think; I mean I never finished watching it once it got cancelled. maybe I should.

I think HBO has had a solid run with dramas again lately. Boardwalk Empire and Treme are both excellent.

It's a shame that Deadwood got cancelled, but it was hugely successful at what it wanted to do during its run, so I can't hold anything against them. Even the third season, which I found to be unsatisfying first time through, improves immeasurably upon second viewing.

The last shot is pretty depressing, which sort of flies against the optimism of the series, but it's fitting in its own way.

i liked the first season of deadwood okay but i couldnt really get into the 2nd. mcshane was great, but i felt like i had enough.

did u watch the third

no should i

tbh i thought most of dude's "shakespearean command of language" was a lot of lorem ipsum mumbo-jumbo

ha, yes, i'm listening to these idea of the writer lectures and most of the sentences remind me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously

Season 3's the worst so I dunno if I could recommend it to someone who was sick of the show by s2, but there's some cool stuff in there... like one of the most memorable fight scenes I've ever seen on film or tv.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un1XLmK84Vw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeS6y6mbUzY

Now you don't need to bother!

Also 'upscale violence against women' - yawn.

― No Good, Scrunty-Looking, Narf Herder (Gukbe), Saturday, October 30, 2010 2:36 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

shrug

all im saying is these shows are a bit too tasteful

but 'boardwalk' is way way worse on that score

think 'deadwood' had a pretty good non-conclusion conclusion -- it always ducked the really massive 'oh shit' possibilities, not just in the third season

Boardwalk is too tasteful? I don't follow you. It doesn't seem very tasteful to me.

Deadwood wasn't cancelled, which just adds to the myth. It simply stopped. But then again, Milch et al. sort of boxed themselves in by using real characters. When one of your major villains is a future US senator, you can't just kill the guy off.

the way deadwood ended def brought it down a notch a two ime - still v classic tho

original idea was to include the historical flood and fire that each destroyed the town and other wild shit - iirc hbo canceled it then changed their mind but milch was already working on that piece john from cinini so he was gonna do two movie length eps then that never happened neither - agreed it couldve been more compelling if he didnt worry abt historical feality

Yeah, I could've dealt with season 3 ending the way it did if I knew there was more coming, but for that to just be IT - eugh

can we go easy on the deadwood details? planning to watch it at xmas.

guys caek still hasnt seen star wars so just chill

yeah i mean you can talk about star wars vs. beverly hills buntz in generalities but please no details

SPOLIER bullock and swerengen get gay married final ep is their honeymoon in CINCINNATI

Dan VS The Captain was one of the most intense things i've ever seen in a drama. Kinda feel like rewatching deadwood again now!

the season 1 veronica mars shit was the coldest shit i've ever seen

the movie length pieces never ever ever happening + john in cinci being difficult to justify really soured me on deadwood in retrospect.

kind of surprised major #teamolyphant bro s1ocki has not seen s2-3