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It's been a very basic week of dull weather and random injuries and day-long morning stares. The Lovely R smashed the ever living shit out of his thumb whilst putting together a new gate and I put my back out like a big old cull cow. So we've been sitting around hitting the landrace hard and going ow and complaining and my mind is pretty empty of shit worth writing down.
It's been a very basic week of dull weather and random injuries and day-long morning stares. The Lovely R smashed the ever living shit out of his thumb whilst putting together a new gate and I put my back out like a big old cull cow. So we've been sitting around hitting the landrace hard and going ow and complaining and my mind is pretty empty of shit worth writing down.
But when has that ever stopped me? Caution: the following may be garbled.
We have been watching season II of True Detective. I had a casual-to-complex relationship with the first series i.e. nonplussed by universal moans of critical pleasure despite all the jumbo-sized shortcomings but impressed by Nic Pizzollato at least trying something stylistically and somewhat in earnest. Which confuses me because I see exactly the same jumbo shortcomings in this new series while the public response seems so diametric this time around. Scary to think that novelty can be such a driver of perception.
We have been watching season II of True Detective. I had a casual-to-complex relationship with the first series i.e. nonplussed by universal moans of critical pleasure despite all the jumbo-sized shortcomings but impressed by Nic Pizzollato at least trying something stylistically and somewhat in earnest. Which confuses me because I see exactly the same jumbo shortcomings in this new series while the public response seems so diametric this time around. Scary to think that novelty can be such a driver of perception.
Like I said, despite its many flaws I don't hate-hate TD2 and don't feel the need to drag it as hard as other commentators. Squandered casts and subcutaneous misogyny are so fucking ubiquitous that their discussion feels passé at this juncture, so I'll just go straight to the arse-puckering dialogue and wondering aloud how that shit makes it through what are usually tortuous and overpopulated editorial, rehearsal and directorial processes.
Fundamentally I just don't get why so many writers struggle with dialogue. A viable character always speaks for themselves and that's all there is to it. While you could justifiably conclude that Pizzollato's never conversed with an adult human female, he is obviously talented and his instincts are sound. It's just that his most profound and deeply passionate observations so often flounder in the mouths of his human creations. His stuff is Batman in reverse- all real places and intelligent ideas but so few definitive protagonists. I fucking loathe Mathew McConaughey's oxygen-gobbling cymbal-banging and though he got all the damn credit, it was the soupy lowland ambiance, the stinky majesty of TD1, so instinctive and well chosen, that provided placental support for those moments of stunningly poetic truth about death and loss when he almost killed them with his bullshit, breathing for them, salvaging their integrity. I appreciated these narrative pearls to the extent that my admiration has outlived the memory of the words involved and the pompous clunk of their delivery.
Fundamentally I just don't get why so many writers struggle with dialogue. A viable character always speaks for themselves and that's all there is to it. While you could justifiably conclude that Pizzollato's never conversed with an adult human female, he is obviously talented and his instincts are sound. It's just that his most profound and deeply passionate observations so often flounder in the mouths of his human creations. His stuff is Batman in reverse- all real places and intelligent ideas but so few definitive protagonists. I fucking loathe Mathew McConaughey's oxygen-gobbling cymbal-banging and though he got all the damn credit, it was the soupy lowland ambiance, the stinky majesty of TD1, so instinctive and well chosen, that provided placental support for those moments of stunningly poetic truth about death and loss when he almost killed them with his bullshit, breathing for them, salvaging their integrity. I appreciated these narrative pearls to the extent that my admiration has outlived the memory of the words involved and the pompous clunk of their delivery.
TD2 assures me that is probably a merciful omission. We can, I think, throw some blame at the cast. Taylor Kitsch looks like he's perpetually gambling with a wet fart but there's something uniformly alimentary about all of their deliveries and that's a directorial problem. Vince Vaughn is a bream-faced one-expression mofo who couldn't sell me a straight line if both our lives depended on it, and he's allowed to squeeze his utterances past something hard and overdue like a constipated sybil. Colin strains manfully enough to give us a whiff of for-real crazy skid mark, Rachel comes at it from the other end with some cocksucker strep-throat stylings and their performances carry the whole thing. If the creative team (so tellingly overburdened with executive producers) were shooting for visceral, they ended up with brown splatter.
Pizzollato should probably also decide if he wants his evil to be cynical/rational/explicable or occult (in both senses of the word). It's like he's always trying to wed the two strains without paying for the reception and that's cheesy and appropriative. I wish he'd drop his detectives in a deeper hole because there is a point to be made and that is bad people are all the same colour no matter how they got that way.
We could bitch about the baffling, undisciplined plotting but I think I'll just call that shit character driven, avoid eye contact and change the subject, lol.
It's not like we're going to quit watching 2/3s of the way through, though.
Now I've shot my cognitive wad, so it'll probably be a lipstick review this week. Oh go on- you like those too. Soothing. Sooooooooothing.
I fucking hate panflutes.
We could bitch about the baffling, undisciplined plotting but I think I'll just call that shit character driven, avoid eye contact and change the subject, lol.
It's not like we're going to quit watching 2/3s of the way through, though.
Now I've shot my cognitive wad, so it'll probably be a lipstick review this week. Oh go on- you like those too. Soothing. Sooooooooothing.
I fucking hate panflutes.
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