David Peace, Novelist

Also I had no problem understanding anything at all, but my family's from Yorkshire, so that probably explains it...

Also, Andrew Garfield is not an attractive man, and inside 40 minutes he'd bedded two attractive women. With that underbite! How?

It was the 70s, that was a hot look.

It felt like a cross between Chinatown and the Beiderbecke Affair.

The ending of the novel is pretty ridiculous as well tbh but in a different way from the TV show. In the novels there is no confession from Dawson and he isn't even one of the people shot in the club in the book. The whole child murder plot sprawls through the four books and even by the end of the last one there's no real explanation for some of it. The TV version tries to get at the elliptical nature of the books sometimes, then blew it with lines like Bean's final one.

(x-p coz I went in a meeting in the middle of writing that).

Stevie T sooo OTM! this morning i was thinking how much this was like CHINATOWN, w/ Towne’s original ‘happy’ ending restored – ie the murder of the evil paedo figure – rather than Polanski’s (to me more persuasive) triumph of power/corruption. So many other similarities – cynical investigator rediscovering integrity, love affair w/ a deeply damaged victim, historical/geographic specificity etc. etc. But again, RED RIDING comes off v. poorly in comparison.

Also, Andrew Garfield is not an attractive man

i find this incomprehensible.

It reminded me of Get Carter a fair bit- developers colluding with corrupt police and local authorities, along with a strong whiff of 60s permissiveness gone horribly wrong. Also a lot of brutalist 60s architecture.

I loved Sean Bean's car. Anyone know what it was? Some kind of Jag?

sean bean was very good in this.

It reminded me of Get Carter a fair bit- developers colluding with corrupt police and local authorities, along with a strong whiff of 60s permissiveness gone horribly wrong. Also a lot of brutalist 60s architecture.

Yes, couldn't help thinking about Poulson/T.Dan Smith when watching this. Favourite moment, Sean Bean crushing the model tree with his finger. Something very comic about it but also told a lot about the guys character i.e brutal vulgarian.

Also, Andrew Garfield is not an attractive man

Of course he is, he looks like Gareth! I think this overdid the "It's the 70s and it's really really grim" bit, I mean what are they going to do in the 80s when things are even grimmer?

Some things were grimmer in the 1980s, some weren't?

Chris Waddle did not 'bottle' a penalty: he had the 'bottle' to go up and take it, and he missed.

Radio On is a terrible film. It's OK until you actually see it.

I've read DP but wasn't around to watch this; to be honest I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway. Stevie T's Morleyesque description sounds true except wasn't Beiderbecke a rather jolly programme?

I thought this was pretty bad - it looked fantastic but it laid on the whole noirish atmosphere so thick it ruined basic things like pacing and tension and characterisation and the viewer actually giving a shit who the killer was. It somehow managed to seem both understated and overwrought at the same time.

That said I stopped watching 2/3rds of the way through because I actually want to read the book at some point and didn't want to blow the ending.

Also the dialogue was so hushed in places it was impossible to work out what was going on. Haven't they heard of dynamic range compression?

a lot of people had trouble hearing what they were saying. i didn't coz i listen to the tv through headphones. i hadn't reflected on how weird that is till now.

with the cinematography, which a lot of people have praised, i kind of think: there was certainly a lot of it. had a similar response to 'hunger', in a way -- slight artiness about individual shots, but, as matt says, getting bogged down in that. im sure they'll win awards.

(also: it wasn't exactly a radical re-imagning of the grimy mid-70s. it looked exactly how you thought it would, brown and smoky. it isn't actually a million miles from life on mars, just a bit browner and smokier.)

Aahh, I meant to keep an eye open for something by this guy when I was out today but was just like "uhhh, his name was...Daniel...something, shit...what was the name of the book I read about...One Thousand Japanese..umm...ah fuck it".

Thanks, ILX.

I think the characterisation of the gay guy was the bit that finally made me give up on this fwiw.

http://blog.wired.com/music/images/2008/06/30/conversation_hackman.jpg
Enrique enjoying the latest episode of Skins, yesterday.

"enjoying"

Can't believe so many people didn't like it. For those wondering about how it ends, remember it's only one of three.

problems:

-lead actor looked like lead singer from the kooks/ex hollyoaks cast member, didn't work as a destructive personality even for a second, no matter how many cigarettes he smoked.

-bad use of music. nothing especially wrong with the songs but at no point did any of them lift a scene or make it work on a different level.

-overkill with the dramatic arty shots, felt very unnatural.

-it felt like a movie made in 2009 about Britain in the 70s, and yet critics are lauding it as if it was the kind of British TV that was made in the 70s/80s. it's odd how these movies have to strain and stretch to escape Americanisation and reach for the sort of natural effortless Britishness that work made in those eras has. odd and disappointing.

all that said I enjoyed it on a cursory level, will watch the rest for sure.

I mean, I think I expected this to feel ultra British and it still was filled with Hollywood tropes.

Looking forward to Paddy onsidine in tonight's episode, he's always worth watching.

Considine!

lol yeah kinda.

Shoulda got Sting in it then.

i always get sad when considine dies because it means no more considine :(

much more reasonable than last week, even if the lover angle didn't quite mesh

this shit is such a massive downer; I'm actually kind of relieved they skipped over '77 cos the ending of that is uh

This is all a bit ponderous; frozen by the weight of being quality with a capital Fulfilling Channel 4 Remit. I think part one maybe seemed better to me coz I drank rum thru it.

Considering the amount of Actors in it they don't seem to be doing much good Acting, marooned as they are in separate frames, the camera slooowly panning forth then back across them. Peter Mullan is the only one with a bit of life.

The score was some particularly boring churn.

I wonder if they're gonna bring in any 1977 ending type stuff next week? I hope so.

interesting that he was briefly questioned by a non-lobotomised Jack Whitehead at the start

BJ scenes didn't really work for me

^^^lol ilx taken out of context lol!!

This was vastly better than last week's. Considine ftw (except for him ending up dead, of course).

BJ dressed better in the books.

at least last week the fact that Rebecca Hall is ridiculously hot lightened the mood a bit though

if they'd done 77 they could of got round the bland soudntrack problem by having the last scene just actually be a man smashing another man's brain with a nail with the sex pistols playing

Haven't read the fourth book so I don't know how much tying up of the previous loose ends to expect

t'ripper looked kind of like playing days martin o'neill

I thot the hooker deserved to die, no question, no question

I'm delighted to'uv smashed her with a claw hammer

sorry that's like custenan tribute thread or something

Can't believe you haven't read the 4th book!

I think I must of had some Viz back issues to get through at the time or something

I missed it for a second time.

Why?

I was out listening to ARTHUR SCARGILL.

On a PANEL with some other people.

The President.
The Men -
The President's Men.

Thought the 2nd episode was good, liked the way it tied in with the 1st. I kept expecting Considine to pull his Dead Man's Shoes psycho act, which never really happened, which on reflection was probably a good thing.

I didn't bother to watch this. Instead we watched .Rec, which was pretty good fun.

thought it was pretty cowardly that they used a fictional first name for peter sutcliffe's wife, presumably because sonia sutcliffe is notoriously writ-happy

I think last night the Y.R. never got called anything more than Peter.

The names of the cops involved in the Ripper enquiry and the names used in the books/show are v v close.

this will sound like a retarded question, but how much of the original Peace novels is based on 'real'/rumoured actualities?

Punishing the Saab, Huntsbotham nick to Brighouse.

Thinking M621, M62, n minus 1, A1 murders and P45s. Radio on:

Love you baby love
Sugar baby love

Sugar fucking baby love.
Never meant to make you black and blue.

Think, think fucking quickly,

Detective Chief Inspector Bob Nasty, The Carp, in the study with the lead piping.

Here lies Phlebas, a fortnight dead

At the Fixby roundabout, ghosts with orchids in their mouths: LUFC. KELLY SUCKS TRAMPS COCKS. FUCK OFF MANU SHIT.

There where the tower was traced against the night
Of Michael Peternoster Royal, red and white.

HELL YOU EFF SEE.

There are books about some of the Ripper murders being actually commited by other people. I know nowt about the Ripper murders though so I don't know how compelling the arguments are, or how the police are involved.

Peter Hunter is obviously based on John Stalker to a large extent.

The Polish kid getting fitted up for the murder of the children is based on this.

thought it was pretty cowardly that they used a fictional first name for peter sutcliffe's wife, presumably because sonia sutcliffe is notoriously writ-happy

That's taken straight from the books.

Always vaguely wondered whether the surname Williams was meant to insinuate some connection with Michael Williams, the 'Exorcist' killer of Jack Whitehead's ex-wife (not in the films, unless it gets shoehorned into next week's).