David Peace, Novelist

Leeds can't be worse than E16. ^That Observer article^ is very amusing

nah it probably isn't. Read numerous reports that call parts of London and parts of Glasgow the most deprived areas in Britain and I can believe it.

When is the TV adaption broadcast?

Tokyo Year Zero was really the last straw. Peace's style is so irritating. That book could have been like four pages long. And yes, ha ha, I know it's about repetition. But there's good repetition and then there's charmless, dull repetition.

It's been a while since I've read the books so can't recall specifics (there's no anal rape [who does that to who?], unless it is alluded to so subtly I missed it, which wouldn't be impossible), but it really captures the spirit of bleakness, misery and corruption, even the repetition (?! - xpost) of Peace's style. It couldn't be much darker without becoming completely unwatchable - ie, it's the right side of Catherine Breillat.

And Sean Bean is great.

Only seen the first mind, so it could go downhill.

anal rape: Eddie Dunford to Paula what's her face in the first one (tells her he loves her and is then having sex with her, then forces anal sex on her).

the cop Bob Fraser to a prostitute when he's looking for Janice after she disappears in the second one.

Damned Utd could have done with an anal rape scene.

lol

I thought he alluded to a pretty close working relationship between Clough and Taylor ...

I've now lived in Leeds for about four and a half years and I think it is delightful so nyer.

the first time I ever visited Leeds, within two minutes of leaving the train station an unkempt man drinking white lightning threatened to kill me and another member of this forum for being gays who spread AIDS

a) it was at least 15 minutes

b) it was in a can, so I think it was either Carlsberg or Strongbow

Read the first two of the quartet one recent weekend while I was ill. Not necessary the Norman Cousins choice of sickbed reading material, but there was some kind of weird synergy between my illness and the seedy atmosphere. Now that I've recovered I'm afraid to read the third one lest I fall ill again.

I'd love to have been able to read The Damned Utd from the persepctive of having no knowledge of football or who Brian Clough was, wonder how it would read

I did this. It reads very well.

caveat - I do know what the sport of football is, have dimly heard of Brian Clough (but would have been able to tell you nothing about him before picking up the book), and remember people in school hating Leeds United back in the 1970s.

The trailer for the film makes it look a bit suckass.

I think Peace should stick to football novels, actually.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/22/fiction-david-peace-the-damned-utd

Red Riding on Four tonight!

K-Punk compares it to, err, post-punk.

"attain an expressionist naturalism that exceeds practically anything British cinema has achieved in the past 30 years"

the fuck does "expressionist naturalism" mean?

final par pretty much encapsulates state-of-play chez k-punk/other theoryheadz. such-and-such is good because it doesn't do x, y, and z; in this case provide closure or catharsis or whatever. which may be true, but perhaps one needs to explain all over again why these things are bad before saying that avoiding them is a virtue in itself.

this is going to be great. psyched!

i absolutely love Andrew Garfield. i'd watch any old shite if he was in it and, in fact, i have: i watched "Lions For Lambs" two nights ago.

that last line is a serious cringe. "it's like a piece of post punk music, AND I LOVE THAT I DO"

"it's like a piece of CHOCOLATE"

"it's almost like a good tv programme which I feel is good"

also psyched

love me some andrew garfield too

the fuck does "expressionist naturalism" mean?

and why 30 years? did he just pluck that out of the air or is he marking the release of the last (proper) carry on film "Carry on Emmanuelle"?

no, pretty sure he means radio on.

TS:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o183/getshirtless/whishaw/ben_whishaw6.jpg Vs. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01182/arts-graphics-2007_1182337a.gif

i absolutely love Andrew Garfield rebecca hall. i'd watch any old shite if she was in it and, in fact, i have: i watched "Lions For Lambs frost/nixon" two weeks ago.

wishaw out there, doing it for skinny dudes. i approve.

no, pretty sure he means radio on.

of course!

Apart from "cunt", I can barely understand a word Sean Bean says.

eh, lol, only thing I'd actually planned to watch on the telly this year and I've missed it. Probably just wait until it's finished and torrent it tbh.

expressionist naturalism is a lol.

not really feeling it. im imagining the novel is a lot more complex and loose-endy. maybe i missed something, but did they really make the evil property developer a child-killer? who was then pinning the child murders on gypsies? so he could build a mall? didn't think it terrible but still.

it's pretty terrifying to think that that was toned down compared to the book

been a while since I read 1974; did they conflate Derek Box and John Dawson into the one Bean guy? Also there was no mutilated underground serial killer and wife, dog torture or rape

pretty sure in the book the child killer was a swan-obsessed aspie who was making nice swan-related patterns for the Bean character's shopping mall, no shit

Dunford finds him mutilated underground and buries him alive with his insane wife

I don't think he rams any Police at the end though he just sits in his car waiting for them

i think this was pretty great but it's hard to say because i couldn't hear the dialogue and i couldn't understand the plot, was that just me? i'm not really used to following that sort of thing on TV so maybe that's it. or maybe it was all just too condensed or subtle.

the acting was amazing though and it looked incredible.

yeah captured the mood of the novel beautifully, but also captured the batshit plot intricacy

hope the greasy twat rival journalist's character isn't marginalised in the next one, he wasn't in the preview very much but the way 1977 handles the switch to his perspective is great

i'm guessing this will bomb if even us smart-arses couldn't understand what the hell was happening.

xpost 1977 is the one that wasn't filmed i think?

orite I thought they'd condensed four books into three programmes

oh no, wait, that's wrong.

yr right, i think.

the plot was classic noir ish:

- children are being killed
- evil developer in cahoots with police and local press wants to pin it on the gypises and irish who are squatting on the land he's bought to build a mall on
- young buck reporter back from london, investigates
- gets hardsonned by police
- encounters femme fatale (mother of adducted kiddie) whom he wants to save but
- she is 'difficult', and shagging aforesaid developer
- shose wife is mad and hints developer himself is a paedo or something?
- femme fatale disappears
- reporter gets done over so bad he decides to take revenge

is that right?

I dunno, I think Eddie shoots him for being so flippant about the killer's, like "pfft he kills kids, we've all got our vices huh" but I don't have my copy of the book to check if I'm wrong and I don't know if they were trying to convey the same thing in this adaptation

Classic James Elroy yes.
xpost

also, the reporter was in BRIGHTON dummy

it's all down south to me

This adaptation did explain stuff that's never explained in the book (and in a ridiculously off the cuff way), and also explained stuff that's explained in the book a lot quicker. You don't know why there's been the (frankly fucking terrifying) attack on the gypsy camp in the book till about 200 pages later, it initially seems to just be massive police spite and hatred. Maurice Jobson being an obviously malign guy straight away is a big example of the TV show straightening out the source material.

As a reverse to this there were a couple of added refs to things in the first book that weren't at all explained in the show, principal among them the decor at Dawson's party, which makes me think that some of that will be in later episodes.

MP4xA is right about Box and Dawson being conflated in this adaption.

Biggest disappointment was the lack of anyone being called "bad fucking Bowie".

The biggest change in style was the stillness of some of the shots in the TV version. The novels have no respite with people waking from horrific dreams to even more horrific reality. Dude's kinda like the 70s Northern HP Lovecraft or something.

Despite everything I'm still hyped for next week.

apart from some impressive location scouting, costume design, set dressing and mise en scene, thought this was a REAL let-down - haven't read the novs, but all the Ellroy comparisons only highlight the failure of this a whodunnit/thriller. the characters (and lots of the plotting) were total cliches - the ambitious journo, the damaged femme fatale, the banally evil criminal mastermind, the corrupt cops, complacent/drunken reporters etc etc. far too many 'dream sequences' and slo-mo sex scenes; a final half hour that was melodramatic beyond belief; no surprises or excitement, and nothing gained by, or said about, the historical setting. will watch next week in the hope of much better things (but will be amazed if it can match either the gordon burns or michael bilton bks abt sutcliffe and abt the police's incredible mishandling of the case)

the plot was classic noir ish:

- children are being killed
- evil developer in cahoots with police and local press wants to pin it on the gypises and irish who are squatting on the land he's bought to build a mall on
- young buck reporter back from london, investigates
- gets hardsonned by police
- encounters femme fatale (mother of adducted kiddie) whom he wants to save but
- she is 'difficult', and shagging aforesaid developer
- shose wife is mad and hints developer himself is a paedo or something?
- femme fatale disappears
- reporter gets done over so bad he decides to take revenge

is that right?

― FREE DOM AND ETHAN (special guest stars mark bronson), Thursday, 5 March 2009 23:21 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is spot on but makes it sound clearer than it actually was on screen. why were they mumbling too? had to mute the adverts and their mad compression we had the volume up so loud.

beautifully shot, but when was that ever going to be in dispute, but I had no idea what was going on half the time and I wasn't even idly browsing during

Pretty disappointed overall. Think the conflating of characters from the book didn't work at all and actually made it more confusing. I mean it was fairly ridiculous just having Dawson offhandedly admit to being the killer. Although apparently Sean Bean and Rebecca Hall are in the third one, so it might all be explained in due course?

had to mute the adverts and their mad compression we had the volume up so loud.

same here. i don't think i've ever had my TV up that loud and i still couldn't understand half of what was said. then the ads came screaming in and i'd mute the volume and miss that it had come back on.

also, i have to say, a lot of the financial end of this seems to be riding on the possibility of selling it abroad or even releasing it in cinemas overseas which seems a vain hope. it might work in non english speaking countries right enough: i even tried watching it with the subtitles on!