Following weeks of rumors, months of amusing memes and hashtags and Colin Farrell leaking the news himself anyway, HBO has finally confirmed that Farrell, Vince Vaughn and Director Justin Lin are signed on for the second season of Nic Pizzolato’s True Detective. Via Deadline, Farrell will play a compromised cop in a corrupt Los Angeles …
“What Jesus Said” opens with Chalky and his loose cannon partner breaking into the house of the latter’s former employer. In what is easily the low point of the episode, Chalky’s plot consists of balancing precariously between his edgy accomplice, Milton, and the a mother and daughter whom they have taken hostage. Although on paper, the idea might sound engaging, it plays out in a mostly uninspired manner due to the fact that Chalky isn’t given a whole lot to do. These scenes, which take up roughly 1/3 of the main plots explored this week, consist widely of three other characters who we are given little emotional investment in.
There are revelations aplenty as we catch up with a few more members of the cast after the crash, and in the beginnings of the Great Depression. Gillian is seen early on under surprising circumstances; in not a prison, but a mental institution. Her initial sequence, in which she dozes comfortably in a steam bath while discussing frivolities is rapidly dissipated when one of her fellow patients loses control over a radio program, and riles up the other patients in kind.
There is an air of finality to even this first episode of Boardwalk Empire’s final season. From the opening scene to the final moments, “Golden Days for Boys & Girls” has the distinct feeling of a ticking clock. Ironically while the episode takes its sweet time, from skipping out on several of the shows most notable characters to adding in a recurring flashbacks of the childhood of the Thompsons, it only further solidifies the fact that this is the end. Like the last ruminating drink of a dying man, the simplest of things only matter more with the end in sight.
In what sounds like a match made in heaven, famed filmmaker David Fincher and author James Ellroy are in the early stages of collaborating on a new show for HBO. The Playlist and /Film report that details on the project are scarce, but the show is said to be a 1950s set noir detective story. Fincher …
Created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon, The Wire is regarded by many, as the greatest television show ever made. The American crime drama set and produced in and around Baltimore, started out as a straight-up police procedural about cops surveilling drug dealers in the inner city. In subsequent seasons, …
A year ago this week it was announced that Jonathan Nolan will act as showrunner and writer alongside Lisa Joy on a new HBO series based on Michael Crichton’s book and cult classic film Westworld. Busiest man in the world J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot cohorts Bryan Burk and Jerry Weintraub will also produce …
Martin Scorsese’s 2010 hit Shutter Island will be adapted into a TV series for HBO entitled Ashecliffe, named for the mental institution in Scorsese’s film and Dennis Lehane’s novel. Deadline reports that Scorsese and Lehane are attached to produce a pilot for the show beginning next year and that Scorsese will remain on as the …
After such a solid final season, True Blood’s finale is almost a disappointment. Too many storylines feel forced or rushed, and the ending, though happy, rings a little false. Of course, the show didn’t exit without releasing a few more shocking surprises–including a pivotal moment that involves the death of a major character since series’s beginning.
Cults on TV are tough. They seem like a really good idea. They’re weird and scary and, bonus, we have them in real life. But anyone who has seen or read my reviews of The Following knows that it is incredibly easy to abuse (big, unnamed plans that go nowhere; non-believably-cultish members, too much access and synchronicity on too many fronts). It’s exciting to see, then, that this show, which has saddled itself with two cult plots—both trickily heightened from real life— finally comes through with really activating at least one, with making it live. A lot of what’s in “Cairo” is material I’ve been waiting for since the pilot. The gusto with which it delivers it makes it absolutely worth the wait.
With only one episode left in the series, True Blood makes it clear in “Love is to Die” that it’s ready for the end. Couples are splitting up, reuniting, or just beginning, people are leaving town, and all of this season’s story threads are being whittled down in a promising and reassuring way–it’s unlikely the series finale will be disappointing after a season this good.
Last week’s True Blood was very slow in a dull way, but “Almost Home” rectified last week’s lack of intriguing story by simultaneously wrapping up a few loose story threads, tossing in several heavily-reflective character moments, and setting up the season’s–and the series’s–final two episodes.
True Blood’s final season has been excellent thus far–the writing’s tight, the story line’s are cohesive even when they branch in various directions, and the acting’s been lovely. After so many solid episodes, there was bound to be a dud–“May Be the Last Time” is, arguably, the weakest contribution to the series’s final season.
Deadline reported Wednesday that HBO has officially greenlit Show Me a Hero, a six-hour miniseries from David Simon (co-creator of The Wire). The miniseries will star Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis, and the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII) and Catherine Keener (Captain Phillips, Being John Malkovich). Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) is set to direct. The …
Damon Lindelof’s latest TV effort, The Leftovers on HBO (co-created by and adapted from the novel by Tom Perrotta) just hit the halfway mark through its first season on Sunday, and it’s easily the best new show to premiere this summer. This comes with two disclosures: 1. Summers are usually treated more like draughts than harvesting …
The Leftovers, Season 1, Episode 5, “Gladys” Written by Damon Lindelof & Tom Perrota Directed by Mimi Leder Airs Sundays at 10pm EST on HBO Gladys, Gladys, you were so classless, intimidating the leftovers with sass and badass-ness. This is a song. This is a song I came up with, but do not necessarily feel …
The best way to tell when the creators and writers of a show actually have a plan and a structured story path is how well they bring back storylines, or even mere moments of story, from the past and mesh them with current storylines. Several episodes ago, when Sookie was splashed with the blood of several Hep-V vampires, it felt like little more than True Blood engaging in the gross-out gore it’s used since the pilot–but no, it actually had much larger and more heartbreaking reverberations that are just now making themselves known.
The Leftovers, Season 1, Episode 4, “B.J. and the A.C.” Written by Damon Lindelof & Elizabeth Peterson Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter & Carl Franklin Airs Sundays at 10pm EST on HBO Starting off positively—and it’s a big one—no new mysteries were introduced this episode! At least, nothing of the paranormal, never-going-to-be-answered-adequately nature. What we …
One of the best things this season of True Blood has done is balance the action with retrospective character moments–the past two weeks have featured plenty of bloodshed, so “Lost Cause” fittingly focuses solely on the residents of Bon Temps, human and supernatural alike. The result is an episode that isn’t particularly thrilling but is still satisfying on a deeply emotional level.
The Leftovers, Season 1, Episode 3, “Two Planes and a Helicopter” Written by Damon Lindelof & Jacqueline Hoyt Directed by Keith Gordon Airs Sundays at 10pm EST on HBO What is The Leftovers? A mystery wrapped in an enigma, sure, but what else is on the show’s mind, and most importantly, what does it have …
While the pilot was almost pure set up, and in this mostly disappointing second episode we have a further muddling of that set-up, what has at least become clearer now is that despite its literary origins, The Leftovers is definitely shaping up to be, for better or worse, Lost’s direct successor.
From the very beginning of the show’s pilot, True Blood has done its best to explore the idea of belonging and fitting into a world that doesn’t want or accept you. Sure, the show originally used vampires as a metaphor for LGBT rights, but, with the final season, the struggle to belong is much more rooted in the show’s supernatural and small-town environment.
The best thing about The Leftovers is its premise, and not because it’s really that ingenious, or cool. Its rapture-based concept is ground that has been covered before in other series and books, but the scale of it is just right here for nuanced material, the incident being big enough to be a personal catastrophe, yet small enough to keep it from being a global one (like say, all the males dying was in Y: The Last Man). With no rhyme or reason to who was picked, on top of a three-year gap from the event itself, what we’re left with instead of the typical action plot or mystery, is basically the perfect, world-wide existential crisis.