True Detective Season 1 Ep 3 “Locked Room”: The Slow Burn Network Found a Slow Burn Show

 

True Detective MONSTER

True Detective is a great fire which burns bright. It’s story is already fully formed by the time we are thrusted into it. It’s a complex murder investigation, which at first blush, we come in near the end of.

True Detective was a revelation in 2014 when it appeared. It took the well-worn trope of Detective Drama and played with it in a new—obvious way. Matthew McConaughey plays Rust Cohle, an alcoholic recluse who is both good and bad at his job. Woody Harrelson plays Marty Hart. A man with many secrets…

The first 3 episodes concern the hunting of a monster. Really just an overdramatic term for “A man who murders people brutally.” So, he doesn’t breathe fire or anything. He doesn’t fly. He just hides.

Game of Thrones Monster

I like HBO. I like their slow burn technique. But, it has to pay off.

Matrix 4

 

A Charming Escape from our Dystopian Times.

Ted Lasso is Cheerier than COVID

 

Ted Lasso: Cheerier Than COVID

Sasquatch has a reality problem

Sasquatch is the true-crime documentary of a murder in the

“Emerald Triangle” area of northern California. The crime was a triple-homicide in the fall of 93.

 

Episode 1 needlessly deals with Sasquatch lore in the area. It distracts from the triple murder. I have to spend valuable brain energy reminding myself that an eight-foot tall Great Ape isn’t real. I marveled at the art of deception as creator David Holthouse that a figment of popular imagination is real. It distracts from a plain-Jane murder mystery.

 

It was a letdown.  

Reality is much cooler.

Cape Fear or How To Coast in Respectability As The Greatest Director™

 

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Cape Fear or How To Coast in Respectability As The Greatest Director™

 

There are movies that  are Great Movies™ and there are movies that I Need To Say Are Good Movies™. Cape Fear(1991) feels like a 30-year-old movie, because it is. Back then, movies didn’t have to compete with Twitter, or your Bird App friends. You could sit and watch a movie. Playing with a phone would have been strange, because it was just a phone! All it did was call people! Imagine! The horror!

 

Cape Fear is a slow-burner of a movie. Think CSI: Nondescript North Carolina Beach Town but longer. Nick Nolte, pre-brain-damage, plays a lawyer who didn’t adequately defend a scumbag. Less than believably played by Robert DeNiro.

 

All I gotta ask is

HOW?!

How did DeNiro find Nolte once he was released? Nolte had recently relocated from Georgia where DeNiro had committed the crime. It’s a big world! The internet wasn’t around! Not even dial-up! How did he find them! How!

 

Explain, Scorsese! You made Good Fellas! Do Better! Smash edits aren’t enough to build tension anymore! You can’t transition your way to an Oscar! This isn’t Taxi Driver! The men see each other in a theater. Ok. What? How did he know he was going to be there with no search history to hack?

 

Gah! This why White-People-Can’t-Cook-Twitter™ is so much more compelling! Marty, ya gotta be better than that blonde lady doing a step-by-step montage of pan-seering dry spaghetti wrapped in raw ground beef in a star burst reduction! It ain’t 1991 anymore!

 

  

 

Cape 

 

 

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Serenity?

Serenity is a very creepy neo-noir that wants to be something else? My only question is what. The Matrix .5? (Another) One Flu Over the Cookoo’s Nest?

There are plot holes big enough to drive a long-haul truck through. Anne Hathaway plays the wayward wife of a drug lord, or not(?!) who cooks up a scheme right out of a 1940s noir. And then, the late 2010s show up, because reasons. Mathew McConaughey plays a role that could have been written for Humphrey Bogart. And then, those pesky 2010s showed up. Anne Hathaway was either too young, or in certain parts, too old? I mean, I’m no fool, but come on! They didn’t go to school together! Either change a few lines, or get a lady he could have actually sat in that geography class with! The movie needs to be longer. It’s like we walk into the movie thirty minutes in. Their lack of backstory is soooo odd. Until they literally invent a twist just to explain an epic brain cramp that the writer had.

I mean, when Game of Thrones had bad writing, they at least didn’t try to make it make sense. They at least had the decency to own the cray cray, not to turn it into The Matrix .5!

I got into Game of Thrones because of my life-long passion for history. I came to see it as the greatest story ever.

A grand saga which was actually true.

Be Sure to check out my History Podcast by clicking the Podcast Republic button at the right.

I haven’t been here in a while, but I’ll return to give you guys the snarky content you’ve come to expect.

True Detective got it's grove back

Some things on tv shouldn't be a series.

They shouldn't come out every year. 

They should make you want to race home.

Season 3 does that.

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Purple Noon: A nice story done too quickly

Fun Fact: The Talented Mr. Ripley is a remake. 

Bonus fun fact: It's better than the good original.

It feels breezy and clean, where the remake felt far more in-depth. Purple Noon isn't a period piece, it's of the period. It feels like a document of post-War Italy More than a character study. The remake is better! 

Full House, 1987, and Peloton?

Full House is seriously strange. I'm amazed a show about 3 guys in San Francisco raising 3 girls made it as a family show. Or is that just a pre-Tumblr world?

Remember, a commercial for a bicycle was supposed be a    mini-exploitation movie?

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Is that too much porn, or not enough exercise? You couldn't even have Dave Coulier around kids now! Who among us hasn't listened to Jagged Little Pill as an adult and thought:

"Wait? How old WAS Alanis Morissette!?" As the second thing after "Isn't it ironic...?"

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You couldn't have 2 dudes in a bathtub at 8 pm in 2020! How can you have that in 1987?  

Where were the parents of the Peloton Brigade?   

I’m Baaaack

Full Castle

The early 90s were a very innocent time. How innocent? The Peloton commercial would have seemed like a commercial selling a stationary bike, and not a desperate plea of an abused woman. It was a simpler time. A show was a show, not a continuous 7-year-long movie.

There was a time in America were a show with 3 dudes and a couple of little girls could be wholesome family fun.

Too bad things change.

What We Do In the Shadows

Have you ever wanted to see what a vampire liar would look like? No? Why not? To Twilight-y? Visions of True Blood past season 2? Have you ever wanted to see what a vampire liar would look like when a manager's job at Panera Bread was the best job you could get?


What We Do In the Shadows takes perhaps the most over-done genre of the last 15 years and gives it a brand-new twist. Being a vampire when vampires are hip and cool. Imagine a den of vampires bewildered by the society in which they live.  

Now imagine the entire thing as a reality show. It has cutaways, one-on-one interviews, and so much wonderful confusion.

Guillermo, the familiar 


 is the reluctant guide in modern society. This is the show's most genius device. He is their guide through 2019.

The show is returning for the second season in 2020.

Watch a movie premise age badly!

Greta is Baaaaaad

Greta sounds great. Greta should be great. Old lady seduces younger woman into a friendship. The young girl bis looking for a replacement Mom because her Mom died. A suspense thriller that's well-acted starring Cloë-Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert.

It should be good. I keep telling myself. I shout encouragement to myself as I schlog through it. I must persevere. My readers depend on me to make funny comparisons between this movie and Game of Thrones!

Ok. You can do this.

Let’s see, old lady played by Isabelle Huppert. Ok, yeah, she’s good in the role. So there’s lots we can do with that. Cersei Lanister. Olenna Tyrell. That’s a way better comparison. Olenna killed Joffery after all.

Ok, strap in Charlie. Focus.

“Slow burn” is just another way of saying boring.

Um…

Okayyy….

Why is this movie so bad? It’s well-acted. It’s beautiful to look at. It’s just sooo stupid. It’s not even badly written.

I’ve seen it before!

A thousand times. Thirty years ago it would have been a classic. Forty years ago it would have won an Oscar. Fifty years ago it would have been one of the best movies ever made. Today, it’s a dull remake of a movie you’ve seen thousands of times.

Game of Thrones or Dan Carlin: Better History?

How do I like my history? Dan Carlin has me asking that question over and over. He's a podcaster who is educating the world about history. He often takes very deep dives into important events. And even though it's an audio-only medium, it's often engrossing.



Game of Thrones didn't happen, but it can still be very illuminating.



The Battle of the Bastards feels like an authentic representation of what a high middle age society and politics, here, here, and this.

Game of Thrones shows better than conventional historians tell.

Here, we see precisely how Dark Age rulers could instantly destroy an old family, thereby changing the politics of a realm well into the modern age. This is a literal time saver!

But, there are drawbacks. 


Dragons, after all, aren't real. And they are major players in the series. As is magic. 

But it's still a fantastic way to examine the Dark Age mentality. 

Shazam! is the Singularity

Shazam! Is a funny story about about a superhero which was at one time owned by Marvel. 

A foster kid fights evil as a grown man. It feels like an uncanny copy, because it is.

It feels like what would happen if Saturday Night Live did a superhero movie. It's a superhero film that understands it's for kids. And when the kids are doing the talking, the show shines. When the adults get involved, it feels like a very clunky Law & Order episode. Like the adults know that there is something wrong with a thirty-something man who acts like a middle-schooler paling around with a boy, they just can't put their finger on what it is.

2019's Shazam! feels like pop culture folding in on itself. It shamelessly borrows from Harry Potter. 

Hollywood, don't borrow from yourself. Copy from the War of the Roses!

Us has an incredible twist. 

A normal American family kills other normal Americans. Not with guns, but with sheers.



Sheers, and terror. 



The scariest thing is when we find out that they aren't really anything other than people. People who have been driven to do terrible things.



However, Game of Thrones takes the cake when it comes to playing the long game with a twist. The whole series was an enormous setup! And we fell for it!

Terror is (almost) Watching The Wall

Two episodes in, and I have to say that The Terror is great at showing stir-crazy. It's a hard thing to get right. The Terror is about three British ships going into the Arctic for some strange reason.

It tells the story of Victorian England's understanding of the unknown to a great effect. It assumes that the audience understands that they are watching a horror movie. It plays up mundane acts into horrifying events. It makes great work of the "slow burn" trope.

Nothing shocks anymore. So, what do they show? Nothing.

At least the dragons are seen.