TV/Movies Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Also there are some truly beautiful Brutalist buildings on Hannibal

Edit: To add to my last suggestion, Nicolas Winding-Refn should direct the last season about Lecter's incarceration and Graham trying to rebuild his life in Miami, before Manhunter.

I also ended up accidentally watching Jonathan Meades' Joebuilding The Stalin Memorial Lecture':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtoAvSlWxNE

Wonderful.

[jimmy olsen]

Also there are some truly beautiful Brutalist buildings on Hannibal

There's no such thing as a beautiful brutalist building.

[Sheilbh]

Also there are some truly beautiful Brutalist buildings on Hannibal

There's no such thing as a beautiful brutalist building.

Philistine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfGOIhY-cjI

:swoon:

[Capetan Mihali]

If gets such a Shitty grade from Ide, it must be good!

I loved it

I just watched "Berberian Sound Studio" and I thought it was great, too. 

[Queequeg]

Also there are some truly beautiful Brutalist buildings on Hannibal

Between the Brutalist architecture, the three piece plaid suits, the wide ties and the stunning print dresses ( Caroline Dhavernas ) I think the show sometime has a bit mid-70s vibe ( ). 

[jimmy olsen]

Also there are some truly beautiful Brutalist buildings on Hannibal

There's no such thing as a beautiful brutalist building.

Philistine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfGOIhY-cjI

:swoon:

Looks like the dungeon of a warlock.

[Viking]

When I go to the theatre I disregard the paeons that also happen to be there, letting them bask in my munificence. Basically my attitude to the other people in the theatre is the same as Seedy's cats have towards him, disdainful tolerance. It's actually worth it for the big screen, big noise and the audience reactions reminds me which emotions I should fake when impersonating a human.

I also disregard people. If I thought about there being other people then I wouldn't feel comfortable eating popcorn, falling asleep or going to the toilet. Frequently.

Statements mutually unintelligible, does not compute.

[Sheilbh]

Looks like the dungeon of a warlock.

It's a wonderful church:


So I've finished Hannibal and have some thoughts which have weirdly mingled in my head with my recent binge on Jonathan Meades documentaries.

Hannibal strips away twenty years of dolorous film-making started by Silence of the Lambs. From the second Hopkins sniffed Clarice's cheap scent and the Goldberg Variations played we've been treated to iterations degenerating to regurgitations of serial killer thrillers. There's been some triumphs (Se7en) and lots of dross (the Bone Collector, Along Came a Spider) and in between it infiltrated into TV with numerous shows like Criminal Minds or even CSI.

It caused something really sad to happen which was the death of decent horror in the US and UK. The idea of a semi-omniscient serial killer toying with victims and police alike, who can only be caught by a very gifted psychiatrist was established. To shift it from thriller to horror you just need to change the focus from the Moriaty-Sherlock relationship and trying to catch the bastard to the physical horror of what he does (Se7en's poised between). So you have the whole torture-porn genre that lovingly and sensually documents the gruesomely absurd traps and tricks of the genius serial killer. This is a dead end. Horror isn't the same as revulsion.

So Hannibal seems to fall into the same genre. We have absurd and gruesome deaths. We have the very intelligent serial killer who toys with the police. We have the requisite damaged psychiatrist - in this case the synaesthetic savant Will Graham. This is, after all, ultimately a series that's telling the origin of the genre. But it isn't a procedural. At any point in any episode does anyone care who the killer is, or whether they'll be caught? There isn't a steady accumulation of clues and leads and interviews. It also doesn't take much of an interest in the killing. It's there but it isn't lingered over and is, as often as not, far more effectively implied than seen - how to make cat gut for example.

The reason you enjoy the show is like any other good piece of horror, because of the mood it creates. It picks up the tropes of serial killer flicks but the emotional antecedents are Vincent Price and Hammer. The corpses are grotesque and schlocky - but it's them the series lingers over not the process of murder. For example the porn isn't on the torture, but the food. There's a maid (maids?) in distress and a Byronic, dark, continental, suspiciously cultured antagonist. The filming is brilliant at evoking atmosphere in the way that horror does so much more effectively than any other genre.

Crawford and Graham and the rest aren't investigators trying to catch the monster. They're the stupid aristos who stay at the looming castle for the night. Or the family friends Usher's invited round for the weekend. So, of course, it's sometimes silly, camp and melodramatic but that's what it does and it does it well.

But I loved it because it's the best TV horror since Tales of the Unexpected (although some episodes of Inside No. 9 may be better) and, for my money, the best horror from the US in a very long time

[Sheilbh]

CAGNEY AND LACEY IS ON BBC IPLAYER!

[Admiral Yi]

Baggy and Spacey

[viper37]

CAGNEY AND LACEY IS ON BBC IPLAYER!

that's the 80s Rizzoli & Isles?

[Ideologue]

S, I think that's painting horror with a very narrow brush.  Serial killer horror thriller things comprise just a subset of the genre, a subset which has almost always been the least interesting.  (Haunted houses are where it's at.)

I wish I had a better grounding in Gothic horror, which I liberally define as "rich fucks eat a nice meal and then die," but I don't.  I don't even know if Dr. Phibes counts (no dinner parties at all).  But it's the sort of vibe I get from Hannibal--horror that you're not meant to take seriously, like, at all, but which nonetheless has a certain unironic element of dread.

[Sheilbh]

I don't mean to paint horror with a narrow brush. There are many varieties. But with a couple of exceptions (Kill List springs to mind) it's been a long time since an interesting horror's been made in the US or the UK.

The nearest is Cabin in the Woods, which was superb. But aside from that all the interesting horror has been from abroad. As I say I think we mistook something gross and revolting for horror.

I wish I had a better grounding in Gothic horror, which I liberally define as "rich fucks eat a nice meal and then die," but I don't.  I don't even know if Dr. Phibes counts (no dinner parties at all).  But it's the sort of vibe I get from Hannibal--horror that you're not meant to take seriously, like, at all, but which nonetheless has a certain unironic element of dread.

I think that's fair. I think Gothic tends to do best when there are restrictions on what you can show - perhaps why it worked for network TV - and so some of the best examples are from film-makers with no budget (Corman) or when film regulation was really strict.

Because they weren't able to show gruesome death they had to evoke the horror from atmosphere and, often, the grotesque nature of the death when it's discovered. I think both of those are things that Hannibal does well.

[Sheilbh]

Just watched Habemus Papam.

It reminded me of a Roman Last of the Summer Wine. Far, far too reverential.

[Queequeg]

Catch up on the last two episodes?