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> > Great analysis. Each of our "tarnished heroes" tried to take on Hearst in their own way, and failed in their own way.(Trixie's embarrassing nakedness backfired on her; maybe it threw off her shot.)
Thanks! Good point, Trixie probably wasn't exactly in the zone.
> > We're over ten years out now, I doubt anyone would make this movie. [...] I don't see Deadwood suddenly turning into a "happy ending rout of George Hearst." We know the real Heart survived to sire Citizen Kane.
Yes, I doubt that whatever David Milch had or has in mind is much different in tone or direction from Season 3—the series evolved as it should have—but it felt to me like there were loose ends, and I'd love to see what else he wants to cover here. The real-life Deadwood fire of 1879 and the rebuilding of the community, for one, would be interesting to see. But yes, the ending as-is is also a fine and fitting one.
I'm not yet betting on a movie happening, either, but for what it's worth, word has it that a Deadwood film might start filming fall of 2018*, and that HBO is just waiting on Milch to "make it happen,"** as he's also currently working on an adaptation of Peter Matthiessen's "Shadow Country" with Jeff Bridges, also for HBO. (That sounds great, too.)
I think now is as good a time as any, if it's going to happen, with the show's co-lead Ian McShane going strong right now with both the "American Gods" series and the "John Wick" films.
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* [url]http://deadline.com/2017/11/deadwood-hbo-movie-david-milch-ian-mcshane-casey-bloys-1202206774/[/url]
** [url]http://www.slashfilm.com/jeff-bridges-shadow-county-adaptation/[/url]
> > I'm wondering if Season Two has a guest star with the charisma of Carradine and McRaney...
I thought McRaney and Carradine were great in guest star roles representing something larger than just their characters. I don't recall Season Two having an equivalent type of character, but it does have one of my favorite character actors Garret Dillahunt, who plays a chilling Francis Wolcott. (He also pulls off another great casting feat, which I would never have suspected and only discovered when I had looked up his resume specifically.) Brad Dourif is another great actor here throughout.
> > A great voice, too -- so many of the actors on Deadwood have great voices.
I especially loved the rich tones of Powers Boothe, Ian McShane, and Keith Carradine. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Carradine has been known for musicals, after all!
> > Four episodes in, I'm liking Carradine. He's got the same 'guest star charisma' playing an almost-good guy that Gerald McRaney has playing a pure bad guy. Funny, I didn't think Young Skinny Keith Carradine had much charisma in the 70's(Nashville, Emperor of the North), but age gives it to some people.
I think some people acquire a nice gravitas over time, that gives them charisma. Confidence is another thing I think some people gain with time that translates into charisma.
You know what I find even more pleasantly surprising, though, is when actors reveal strengths or depths I didn't suspect, seemingly by virtue of just being given the chance. John Hawkes among the "Deadwood" cast is an example for me. I like him fine in this show, but he really shined within the next 5 years in things like "Winter's Bone" and "Martha Marcy May Marlene." It makes me wonder how many more actors are capable of much more than people may have seen, and how often it's just a question of opportunity. I also think there are more quality actors than quality roles and films, so I feel that many actors are probably better than we know or can know. (Maybe not all, but I won't name names!)
I remember looking up Keith Carradine after seeing him as Wild Bill Hickok, wondering if he'd done other similar work, and was surprised to see he'd mostly been known in musicals! I haven't seen any of his other work, but he's been recognized in a drama called "Chiefs," so I'm curious about that. "The Duellists" is also on my list.
> > Swearington's initial willingness to kill that little girl(to save his own skin after his complicity in the slaughter of her family) is the stuff of evil, but I can't say he's much 'nicer' when he kills that hooker in Season Three. Perhaps more resigned to having to submit to Hearst rather than see the whole town burned down and everyone killed.
I think Swearengen is a pragmatic and political individual in the sense of always seeking to maintain his own power and position (and mostly apolitical in the sense of moral principles). While I think that he'd grown to care for some of the people of the town and maybe even the community itself, I think a lot of his motive for killing that woman to save the town is that, without Deadwood, there would be no context for his power and his livelihood. He'd have to move and start over. And what a pain that'd be to him!
> > A woman that two men sort of "share." That happens more than you would think.
Yes, shared is a good way of putting it.
> > Hearst (or someone like him) was probably inevitable as America grew. People always want to take over and run things; they like the power as much as the riches. It is done today in America, but with less bloodshed. For instance, how Hearst "rigged" the election at the end is pretty much done legally today -- the party in power "cuts the districts so that they stay in power"(gerrymandering, its called.) It has the same "unfair" effect as what Hearst did more nastily on Deadwood. And yet today's parties would say "we have every right to cut the districts to help us."
Yes, we can also see it in the way the party in power heads up various government agencies (the EPA, the Department of Education), nominates judges, writes the tax bill, you name it. There's policy, and then there's politics. Fortunately there are people in office and people who vote who still know and act as though there's a meaningful difference.
> > One thought I have is that the characters were pretty much the same in Season One as in Season Three -- three seasons isn't really enough time to massively change characters anyway.
Yes, and after reading more about the show and comparing it to the real-life history of Deadwood, it seems to me that Seasons One through Three cover the time period from around June 1876 to perhaps March 1878. Not long.
"I'm not sure such stories sell so well in the 21 Century. But Milch went for it."
I'm not sure, either, but they've gotten due recognition when done this well. Another superb series that ran around the same time (2002-2008) that blurred the line between the good guys and the bad guys and the right and wrong in making its social commentary was "The Wire." Happily, it got to complete its run as its creator David Simon intended. I love stories like these.
[quote](with a supposed four final episodes not allowed to be made, by one party or the other -- did Milch refuse or HBO revoke?.)[/quote]
My understanding is that, first, in May 2006 HBO declined to pick up the actors' option contracts for a fourth season of Deadwood, but did offer Milch a short order of 6 episodes. Milch declined that order and instead agreed to make two 2-hour television films. Things went into development limbo from then until August 2015, when HBO and Milch resumed talks, this time with HBO green-lighting in January 2016 a script for a Deadwood movie, and Milch submitting in April 2017 a script for one two-hour movie. So the ball's back in HBO's court.
At this point, if HBO stalls, I wonder if Milch could just keep trimming and pitch a 55-minute pilot episode for another round of Deadwood instead. Ha!
[quote]the show makes the point that Swearington doesn't know how to shoot, so ALL his killings are with a , blade, and hence brutal, intimate , and gory.[/quote]
Interesting, I hadn't noticed that. It fits the character, too. He strikes me as having his own moral code, and believing in accountability in his own perverse way. I can imagine that someone like him might even prefer to use a knife, as though to pay for his cold brutality and willingness to murder with the burden of doing it up close and getting his hands bloody.
Or maybe he just plain doesn't know how to shoot. Could be he doesn't want to scare away the business downstairs, either.
That fight to the death was indeed horrific, too. It's not easy depicting violence that graphic and making it humanizing and appropriately traumatizing rather than desensitizing, but the cast and crew did a great job with that scene.
"its kind of fun to "do it backwards."
Another nice thing about that is, since you already know that you like how it turns out, you can just sit back and enjoy the ride, knowing it's not going to go wrong.
"I think it is rather surprising how little Bullock and Swearington and the others changed in three seasons. But I guess people don't much change."
Yes, I feel that that's true to life, how people change to a certain extent with experience and circumstances, but the essence of them doesn't usually change. You can still see what makes them who they are. I loved that about this show, how it kept its characters true to themselves and its character arcs credible. (When characters start going in a different direction seemingly for mere plot convenience or out of writers' whim is when I start thinking a show is going pear-shaped.)
That said, I did some reading about "Deadwood" in light of our conversation, and found that the show was formatted so that "each season portrayed two weeks in the life of Deadwood, with each episode representing one day," with some passage of time between each season. Comparing the series' events against the history of the real-life Deadwood, I think the show takes place from around June 1876 to sometime before March 1878 (when Deadwood's first telephone lines were installed). Certainly Season 3 concludes before the fire of September 26, 1879.
So with a timeline of less than two years, three tops, that could be another reason Seth and Al and company remain very much the people we see at the outset (and thank goodness, for Seth; I do like to speculate that he gets to relax a little.)
[quote]That's why I love 'world cinema', because I can see actors I have never seen before and that helps in making me 'believe' their characters more.[/quote]
Yeah, I enjoy seeing non-Hollywood films partly for that reason, too.
Although there are also actors whom I just enjoy watching, and I don't mind that I know it's them nor if they give a performance that feels "like them." In fact that may even be exactly what I was looking for! (It's taken me a while to reconcile with this: how to or whether to judge between actors who do something different from role to role, and those who tend not to, but for me it still just boils down to honesty and charisma).
Anyway, there are times I seek out the work of actors I like, and there are times I don't even want to think about the notion of an actor behind the character—I just want to be immersed in the story as though it were real. But the problem with alternating between knowing and not knowing, is that eventually I can't "not know" anymore! That immersion thanks to a total lack of recognition of an actor isn't sustainable. Turns out that many known actors are known for good reason. I've also recognized certain talented non-Hollywood actors understandably getting cast again to lead good non-Hollywood films. There is no escaping knowing!
What to do? I used to avert my eyes from opening credits. Then I found that good actors have a way of drawing my attention, anyway, such that eventually they *will* feel familiar, and then recognizable even if I don't know their name. And I do indeed like certain actors more than others, and often find it worth seeking them out. It's been an uphill battle to "not know" ever since! :)
Hi Cornelia123, sorry for such a late reply; life threw me off my groove here, but it's settled now. Hope all's good with you.
I'm glad you liked "Free State of Jones"! I thought it was a much better movie than reviews made it out to be (esp. since some critics didn't separate their idea of the film's perceived politics from their critique of the film on its own merits). I had some issues with "Free State of Jones" myself, but there's a good film in there, and I'm glad I saw it.
Yeah, this film did a good job depicting some of the racist mentality that still exists today. I know people who—although they've never explicitly expressed a dislike or distrust of people of a different race—nonetheless think of them as being meaningfully, inherently different, and treat them that way. I don't get it. We're all here in this time and place, we ought to make the best of it together. I'd rather try to learn about and share the best of everybody's cultures and ideas, and be glad for and try to expand on what I have in common with other people, than use any differences as a barrier. I know it's not always as simple as that, but it doesn't have to be impossible, either.
That's unfortunate about your colleague's blood family. Good on her for moving on, sometimes that's all you can do, or it's best.
Hey MovieMan, and fellow MCers, sorry if the months-old bump seems out of left field. But I don't like loose ends and am haunted by unfinished conversations. And I miss 9!
And I still say it's neck and neck between Manchester and Moonlight.
I don't imagine it was Jenkin's intent for the teenage Chiron (Ashton Sanders) and the adult Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) to be such clearly different people, though! I understand the point he was making about Chiron, that we're meant to see that Chiron had worked hard to transform himself into a physically and psychologically intimidating man. But yes, I just think they went a little far in that direction. I couldn't help having the distracting thought that the two actors were fundamentally of a different body type. But it's a minor nitpick, like seeing the seams in the filmmaking, that's all.
(It speaks to Rhodes as an actor, though, that despite the obvious physical differences, he still evoked the essence of younger Chiron in his body language. Wary, guarded, shy... darting eyes, downward glances, a hunched, closed-off posture.)
That said, I also realize that Jenkins wasn't going for a completely realistic film in the first place. There are stylistic visuals that give the film a dreamlike quality, that mix the present day with what feels like memories. It's a beautiful, well done film. Cheers, 9.
At any rate I think Paula's second scene was a rude awakening for us to Chiron's reality. The two Paulas we've seen by this point are like day and night (and even photographed that way, her first scene a daytime scene and her second scene in evening). To be fair, we did get a hint beforehand that something was amiss about Chiron's home life (e.g., that first night when Chiron indicates to Juan and Teresa that he doesn't want to go home, and readily accepts Teresa's invitation to stay the night at her and Juan's home, even though he'd only met them for the first time a few hours ago). Still, I wasn't prepared for the stark difference in feeling between the fond and protective Paula of the first scene, and the cold and closed-off Paula of the second scene. They felt like two completely different people (and I know that substance abuse can do that to people... heck, regular stress and fatigue can do that to people), which added to our sensitivity to Chiron's isolation. I can see that being Jenkins's intent.
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That second scene involving Paula was so impacting. Right after I watched it, I felt what I believe was intended: a sense of betrayal with the mother, who had initially come across as warm, fond and protective of her son, yet now turned out to also be unreliable and unable to give her son an emotionally stable home life. I was also struck by the quickly changing dynamics of the scene. We had started with a sweet moment between Juan and Chiron at the door, then the (at the time) sympathetic humor of Paula abruptly pulling Chiron into the house and slamming the door on Juan, then a dawning soberness and sharper understanding of Chiron's isolation and sadness as we see a strange man in the house, and realize Paula is a drug user, and see her turn away from Chiron as quickly as she had brought him into the house, and shut the door on him just as she had shut the door on Juan. I think the pace and the emotional turns and the bookending of that scene (the front door and the bedroom door) were great filmmaking.
But afterward I wondered about the character psychology a little bit. If Paula was so concerned about her son or Juan knowing about her habit, how come she didn't check who was at the door before opening it? How come she didn't remove or hide the drugs before pulling Chiron in? Did she think Juan's influence on Chiron was even more troubling and harmful to Chiron than her habit? Maybe she wasn't really thinking; we can gather she probably wasn't in a calm, rational state of mind. Maybe—and this is the conclusion I've settled on, because it's consistent with all of Paula's scenes—there's Paula's overriding conviction that, whatever shortcomings she may have as a mother, *she* is still Chiron's family, not Juan.
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9, where'd you go, my friend? I hope all is well. Apologies for my very late reply to your thoughtful post, life had thrown me off my MC groove as I was pondering "Moonlight," and now that I've come back, it seems that you've left (for now?). Hopefully our paths will cross again...
Regarding "Moonlight" [more spoilers ahead]...
Yes, as you said, reality can be like that. In movies, though, I like looking for that fine line between what feels natural and what feels like filmmaking. Sometimes a movie makes me stop and ask if I could imagine it would unfold like this, or why the filmmakers chose to tell it that way, or if my reactions were too much manipulated. For me that's an interesting part of watching movies.
And it's true that first impressions are incomplete, and we may not have a good sense of what may be going on in someone's life, nor what direction their life may be headed, based on one brief encounter (i.e., we are led to perceive Chiron's mother Paula as a "clean and straight arrow" type of person because she's a nurse and a warm and caring mother in the first scene, and then she's shown to be a drug user, and belligerent and unapproachable in the second scene). And we may not anticipate the degree of change in someone even if we understand its causes and would've predicted it (i.e., Chiron's life change and physical transformation).
But yes, the particular way that the film chose to reveal Chiron's mother Paula as a belligerent, emotionally closed-off crack addict in the very second scene following her first scene as a responsible nurse and a fond and caring mother, and the casting of the adult Chiron compared to teenage Chiron, were two things that gave me pause.
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Kiki's Delivery Service
Dogma! "All I'm sayin' here, is one of us might need a little nap."
Salma Hayek is a hoot, Alan Rickman as the "Voice of God" is as casting-appropriate as I could hope, Ben Affleck gives his best performance that I've seen so far, and the exchange between Bartleby and Loki in the parking garage is great. I love how Matt Damon takes us through the emotional beats in that scene.
And yes... wow, what did happen to [spoiler]"that guy's head?"[/spoiler]
7/10 for me, too.
Thank you, Moderator5. While I didn't like the "News, Rumors & Gossip" pages themselves, I did like the feature of having these articles automatically generate posts in the "Discuss" pages that users could reply to.
On the other hand, I think the quality of the articles matters. If there isn't a way to curate these, I wouldn't mind the removal of the "News, Rumors & Gossip" pages/tabs.
[quote]It used to be a good spark for conversation.[/quote]
Yes, I like how this feature starts a thread in the "Discuss" page. It's nice to be able to comment on these articles by replying directly to those posts, instead of having to create your own thread and copy-paste the article URL.
Yeah, there's a lot of sadness in that story, but I found the ending beautifully hopeful. I like the symbolism of the final scenes, [spoiler]with Patrick keeping Lee in their game of catch, even after Lee had said to "forget it," and then the final scene of them together on the boat.[/spoiler]
With movies that deal with trauma or grief, I feel like it's easy for them to either remain bleak, or give an optimistic ending that feels false. It's hard to communicate a line of hope in these films that could feel both true to the story and true to life, but I think "Manchester by the Sea" achieved that with its last two scenes. I really appreciated that about this film, because I think these stories should somehow be affirming, not disaffirming—they should suggest a way to deal with hurt, not just give us hurt. For me Lonergan gives us (and Lee) that through Lee's bond with Patrick, by giving Lee purpose.
I feel like Lonergan is really coming into his own as a writer and director with this film, and can't wait to see what he does next.