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Posted: |
Feb 16, 2014 - 7:34 AM
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By: |
MikeP
(Member)
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HBO's original mini series True Detective continues to be the best thing on TV, and with only 3 more episodes to go, no doubt things are going to ratchet up into an even tighter knot very soon.
The central mystery began with a ritual murder and has broadened into a possible series of murders over a few years, but something early in the series caught my eye and then I read the articles linked below which raises some wild possibilities. Since there's little - OK, there's really NO discussion of this show so far, this is a good place to start.
There were two references that stood out, one was mention of The Yellow King, and the other was a bit of dialogue where a young girl said she was chased by a man with a head of spaghetti or something. The spaghetti head thing immediately made me think of C'thulu. But more likely it is tied to an image we've already seen of the main suspect - a quick shot of a man wearing what looks like a vintage gas mask with a dangling hose -
But this...along with the reference to The King In Yellow, makes the series just that much deeper, and that much weirder.
http://io9.com/the-one-literary-reference-you-must-know-to-appreciate-1523076497
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/01/30/the-most-shocking-thing-about-hbos-true-detective/
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Posted: |
Feb 16, 2014 - 2:48 PM
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By: |
joan hue
(Member)
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MikeP, I am one who missed the Yellow King allusions. Thanks for those websites. Good information.
My husband can barely tolerate this series, but I am into it, but begrudgingly into it. I am into the story; I want to know how it ends. I think Harrilson has been terrific, and I really get a kick out of his religious point of view juxtaposed against his self-serving hypocrisy. Plus, he is a good actor.
I usually enjoy McConaughhey, but not in this series. His idea of being uber-weird is to talk constantly in a whispering, gravelly and extremely MONOTONE voice. I can barely stand to listen to him wax poetic with such a quiet monotone delivery. That isn't acting for me. Maybe in the final episodes he will actually use some inflection. Actors can display nihilism and existential views with a bit of gusto, and he isn't doing it. Oh well. Still going to follow it until the end, and the Yellow King allusions will give me more insight.
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Posted: |
Feb 18, 2014 - 2:19 PM
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By: |
MikeP
(Member)
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MikeP, I am one who missed the Yellow King allusions. Thanks for those websites. Good information.
My husband can barely tolerate this series, but I am into it, but begrudgingly into it. I am into the story; I want to know how it ends. I think Harrilson has been terrific, and I really get a kick out of his religious point of view juxtaposed against his self-serving hypocrisy. Plus, he is a good actor.
I usually enjoy McConaughhey, but not in this series. His idea of being uber-weird is to talk constantly in a whispering, gravelly and extremely MONOTONE voice. I can barely stand to listen to him wax poetic with such a quiet monotone delivery. That isn't acting for me. Maybe in the final episodes he will actually use some inflection. Actors can display nihilism and existential views with a bit of gusto, and he isn't doing it. Oh well. Still going to follow it until the end, and the Yellow King allusions will give me more insight.
For me, both Harrelson and McConaugahey are hitting home runs here. MM is going extremely low key but for me it works very well. Especially in the '12 interrogation scenes, as my thought is he is deliberately being "out there" for the sake of the two cops grilling him. He was an undercover cop for 4 years - he is still undercover. He knew they didn't really solve the case and whatever happened between him and Marty, he is STILL investigating and playing the detectives. As Marty said, they're not reading him, Cohle was reading them all the time. The cult / conspiracy obviously is something huge and Cohle's fall from grace I think will turn out to be just a ploy, something to have him written off over the years while he still ( as we saw in the last scene this week ) is following his own investigation.
Cohle has been quiet yeah and spouting his nihilistic mumbo jumbo while alone with Marty, but perhaps his spaced out visage in the '12 scenes is just for the benefit of the cops interviewing him. We have seen him break out of that whispery delivery - in the previous week's outstanding finale and this past week when he was attacking the suspect who mentioned The Yellow King. And just as he is drinking beer while being interviewed, he beats the suspect in holding, to make any evidence inadmissible in court. Yeah he's still very active but either on payroll undercover or undercover on his own agenda. But I do like MM's work here, what one reviewer called "captivating alert stillness" .
Here's a quote from the show creator Nic Pizzolatto : "I’ve put off going into the philosophy Cohle espouses in the early episodes because I don’t want people making assumptions about the character of Cohle, or the ultimate aim of this season. The totality of Cohle’s character and the show’s agenda won’t be clear until the eighth episode has ended"
He isn't the killer but likely knows who is behind it, probably Marty's rich father in law ( the mention of "rich guys" worshipping the devil and killing people ) . Marty's daughter with the dirty drawings and stick figures depicting what looks to be a gang rape or sacrifice... the one she said she was dared to create, but where did she learn this stuff... from Grandad ?
Or, possibly following the whole idea of The Yellow King, maybe Cohle did get too close and was driven almost mad by what he found. I don't think the series will go full nuts supernatural in the last few episodes, but we can now see the story is rooted in horror, pulp horror. The very name of the series of course is taken from pulp fiction, and the tribute to pulp horror is becoming more and more clear.
For me this is shaping up to be a real slow burn horror story, written by someone who knows and understands horror ( as opposed to the ridiculous kitchen sink approach used by the tremendously bad American Horror Story) . Gripping.
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OMG!
TRUE DETECTIVE ep 2
Alexandra Daddario naked!
Best bod EVER!
CHACKT IT OUT!
bruce
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Posted: |
Feb 18, 2014 - 4:19 PM
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By: |
joan hue
(Member)
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MikeP, you have excellent insights, and you and I have been pursuing rather similar trails. MM's "stillness" acting is still a big bother to me, so we'll disagree a bit on his acting.
However, I think Marty was spot on when he said Cohle was playing the other cops. I'm anxious to see what brought about C's fall from grace. Undercover? Maybe or just privately pursuing the real killer. I'm assuming the cops are there because they have found more similar ritualistic deaths, so Marty's claim that he shot the real killer has to be investigated. Those cops do smell a cover up. Cohle wants to see what the two cops now have, and I'm assuming we will soon know.
Cohle's nihilism may be authentic as he's certainly earned such views with the death of his daughter and his drug addiction. It plays nicely against Marty's supposed religion and moral sanctity while he is having sex with another woman. I kind of thought about the father-in-law, but I also considered Marty as the killer because his wife keeps saying that once she knew he was a good man. When does she finally realize he is not? She forgave him having another woman, but something happened later that we haven't seen. Father-in-law makes sense given the stick figures that the daughter made.
I'd be surprised if it goes all supernatural. It seems so grounded in reality at this point, but we'll see. The last episode was pretty amazing.
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Absolutely adore this series - stellar acting by everybody involved! And the storytelling with the shifting of time is simply magnificent. To call any of this standard is, IMO, really wrong. Unless the standard has become innovative, intelligent and masterful.
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I've not been able to get into it -- I started to watch it a couple of times and lost interest. Maybe the next time HBO has a marathon of it I'll give it another try.
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Warlok:
Re: Some cohorts have mentioned that Cumberbatch`s Sherlock is worthwhile. While not horror, I figure mention of that might be apt, looking for good company. When next I have $room$, I may splurge on the season 1 BluRay.
I kind of enjoyed the first couple of episodes the first season the Cumberbatch Sherlock was on, but quickly grew annoyed by him and stopped watching. Suggest you try to rent some of it before putting out money for it on Blu-ray, and maybe end up wishing you had spent the money on one of your favorite movies instead.
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