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haven't read the books but assume Irving is more a gray area type character? it probably is a good essay topic for a lot of TV/film portrayals of book characters, where they take a more nuanced and complex part and push it either towards more of a "good guy" or more of a villain. i feel like i was thinking of a different character in regards to this kind of recently, now i'm blanking.

this show and the Refn series make extremely good use of Los Angeles, w/Bosch being primarily Hollywood and the surrounding area and TOTDY being heavily in the San Fernando Valley.

all cop shows are reactionary and conservative by nature; the cop as protagonist means every other character falls into one of two categories: victim or criminal (bcz this is how cops see the world, naturally)

i guess i just meant compared to the wire, which is clearly what bosch is aspiring to.

I don't see that aspiration at all, unless you are thinking that by casting Reddick and Marlo the show is signalling that? Bosch strikes me as a more "personal narrative" centered show, whereas the Wire was about oppressive and/or dysfunctional systems and how it is near impossible through human agency to dismantle or change those systems.

haven't read the books but assume Irving is more a gray area type character? it probably is a good essay topic for a lot of TV/film portrayals of book characters, where they take a more nuanced and complex part and push it either towards more of a "good guy" or more of a villain.

Actually, in the books he is more of a villain and the show makes him more of a gray area type character.

casting Reddick probably makes the character even more likable i guess, plus he's got an underrated gift for comic underplaying. some of the better moments involve his side eyes at Bosch.

I've watched the first episode of the Refn show and need to keep rolling

after finishing the first, I was thinking that his style really made the episode seem longer than it was, but it really was 90 minutes! it's not necessarily intimidating, but I had to acknowledge it's a series where I'm going to have to actually make a commitment to one episode at a time. episode length seems to taper off after the first few

last episode is 30 min. i haven't gotten there yet, just finished up episode 7.

I'm not sure they do taper off. Last one is 30 minutes yeah, but four clock in at 90 minutes and another four around the 75 minute mark.

I've finished it now - was generally very good but I've no idea how many people are going to stay the whole course.

Anyone watch The Boys yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcrNsIaQkb4

i sorta read the first thirty issues of the comic it's based on and I can tell you that it's based on vile subject matter

Based on the trailers and the Wikipedia page for the original series it looks like real chud bait.

the comic redeems itself a bit by the midpoint but anyone who claims to be a big fan is probably a sociopath

it’s Garth Ennis going into the red on cynicism about superheroes and any show is going to either cut things back entirely, or cut back in ways that obscure the obvious vileness of the enterprise, making it apologetic imo

Under the Silver Lake (by dude who did It Follows) got panned and sunk into oblivion, but... I kinda liked it? It’s messy and shaggy dog, not sure what it all amounts to, but it sinks you into its world. Surreal LA noir thing, easy to see the Lynch fiber, but kinda brought to mind Inherent Vice (the book) maybe moreso than the PTA movie.

It got planned at Cannes but it's already got quite a cult following. I saw it on the big screen and had so much fun with it.

I was not aware! Yeah, I had kinda forgotten about it until I saw it on Prime. Intended to just check out the first 15 minutes or so before bed to see what kinda vibe it had and ended up watching the whole thing.

Halfway through The Boys and it might actually be... ok?

It's dialled down in the same way as the Preacher TV series was, probably even more so and has simplified the plot hugely so it can largely avoid the Ennis-isms.

Ready to have to reverse this opinion after the second half.

I watched the first episode and enjoyed it. mh's point is a good one, but I never read the comics, so... *shrug*

From a writeup:

Like Starlight, Quaid’s Hughie finds himself entering into a new reality where he learns the truth about the Seven. His journey starts with an awful loss when speedster A-Train runs through his girlfriend Robin and liquefies her right in front of his eyes. Kripke says he always viewed that scene as vital to the Boys’ ethos, something he doubled down on after talking to Darick Roberston. “When we were having really early conversations, I asked, ‘What’s important to you?’ And he said ‘Please, the most important thing is that A-Train runs through Robin.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that’s really important to me, too, and we’re definitely going to do it.’ Just because, to me, that really sets the tone of what this show is going to be.”

I guess the tone is “me never, ever watching this”

this (nsfw) image from the first issue is on page 8 if it gives you some idea on "tone"

I think that’s indicative of the comic

‘Main character has spiteful sexual encounters” is kind of a different realm in the story from “central main character has his life ruined by unthinking superhero who doesn’t care about normal people”

xp - good god

Ennis had a short series called Rover Red Charlie about dogs after the end of the world that was great until a scene where a giant pitbull keeps a human slave and there's a half page drawing of the human being forced to eat doggy butt.

*good not great, overstating because the initial premise was right up my alley until it got all Ennis-y

I regret to mention The Boys also includes dog-on-human sexual acts

christ. Ennis is truly the pits and always has been since his early days of ruining Hellblazer. I'll give this "edgy" shit a pass.

Ive been watching the show and its had nothing that bad thus far, aside from one rather rapey scene where a woman sits on a poor shmucks face and basically grinds on him til his head gets pulverised.

The main thing weirding me out is what the hell accent is Carl Urban doing? Sometimes it sounds like spot on australian then it veers into comedy cockney.

a woman sits on a poor shmucks face and basically grinds on him til his head gets pulverised.

so, suicide by....

oh god, never mind

Dark edgy parodies of superheroes are somehow even worse than actual superheroes

Forever isn't getting a S2. That's fine. I think they told enough of the story and maybe this will free Rudolph up to do something where I don't have to temper my pure enjoyment of her with tolerating Fred Armisen.

I've liked the first couple of episodes of The Boys ok so far. Don't know anything about the comic, if that's the source, but it's very Watchmen meets RoboCop (the movie) meets ... that James Gunn movie Super? So far said edgy superheroes seem to be in service of a broader satire of corporations and marketing/branding.

can't believe they went disney with a live action megamind

Amazon seem to be promoting the shit out of The Boys (similar to Good Omens) whereas Too Old To Die Young got absolutely zero coverage

Forever isn't getting a S2. That's fine. I think they told enough of the story

Yeah I'm OK with that - unless maybe they wanted to do something in the same universe and same rules with different characters that'd work for me.

the best episode of forever was the standalone one imo. i don't think it "works' as a piece of television without a second season, though on the other hand i don't think a second season would have necessarily have been great. i also dislike fred armisen

I'm on episode 4 or 5 of "The Boys," and man, it gets pretty dark. Sometimes funny, often OTT, sometimes smart. I also think the soundtrack so far (everything from the Damned to Bill Withers) is pretty sharp, and the cast is strong across the board, Urban's accent aside. fwiw, the most "all-American" of the characters is played by another Kiwi.

having read an issue of the comic - which was just absolutely hateful - i can never watch that.

i see that's been covered numerous times

Yeah, I haven't read the cover, but I don't feel I've come across anything hateful yet. Ugly, yeah, but the scenario it introduces seems relatively plausible to me.

Read the comic, I meant.

I get the impression in that case the show is nothing like the comic if that helps because ILX is the only place canning it (and most people doing so haven't seen the show just read the books), it is getting good reviews everywhere I've read and I really quite enjoyed it. Aside from the bit I mentioned earlier there is nothing else really disgusting. Theyre all horrible awful people sure but thats the point of the story. I suspect it was verrrrrry Ennis-sanitised if that alleviates anyone's wary disgust on it.

do they keep the bit where hughie beats the fuck out of one of the heroes and then finds a gerbil wrapped in duct tape shoved up his ass and then befriends it as a mascot?
i'm just wondering what horrible shit they kept and what horrible shit they tossed and "woman grinds man's head to pulp between her legs" as a warning label sounds like it's got the level of fidelity i expected.

...that is getting both versions of the homophobic gerbil meme wrong at the same damn time

SFW, so for reference:
http://i.imgur.com/ULe8xcP.png

guilty lol at “the poor wee man”

There's some dark, gruesome stuff in it, but it handles it pretty well, in that it rarely seems ... I dunno, mean-spirited, if that makes any sense. The tone of the violence is very RoboCop, and the targets of the satire so far seem to be primarily celebrity worship, corporations and religious fundamentalists. If it takes an infant chopping a person in two with laser eyes to get there ... Anyway, again, I think the cast and acting are pretty solid, which is key to its success.

maybe I'm just noticing this more because I've been writing more actively than usual but holy cow is the Boys pilot just stunningly lazy and lame throughout, like Hughie and Annie having a meet-cute because....they share a bench? that was the best they could come up with?

Forever didn't seem like it could even have a second season, I'd assumed it was a one and done thing. I really liked it.

a lot of things were left unexplained which i don't think the show would have ultimately done. there would have been some justification for why the afterlife was like it was, and why the two of them ended up together while everyone else was there alone etc.

I didn't want that kind of resolution from it myself, thought it was great overall. I don't really like Armisen but it made the best use of his limited range. I do love Maya Rudolph tho.