Too good not to share:
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I’d never heard of this until this week and watched it last night. It came out in 2014
https://www.netflix.com/title/70299904
It was one of the better documentaries I have seen. Highly recommend it. Just an amazing story and cast of charaters. My only complaint is it feels like this could have been a 3 or 4 part series instead of one.
What? You weren’t reading the TZ seven years ago? 
Anyway, I’ve seen it as well and concur on the highly recommended.
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Brandy! I miss that crazy bastard.
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As do I.
I started watching “Hannibal” yesterday. That was probably a bad idea. It leaves Netflix on Friday, and now I’m trying plough through 39, forty-five minute episodes of crazy, fucked up shit by Thursday.
When “Red Dragon” begins (the book/first movie versions, not the flashy cash-in movie following the success of “Silence of the Lambs”) Will Graham is retired with a family, having previously caught Hannibal Lecter. That was not without cost, as Lecter had fucked Graham up both mentally and physically. This TV show is that back story.
There are a good number of Easter eggs looking forward to what’s to come, and they do borrow a little bit from some of the Dragon and Silence plot lines. But this show is chock full of imaginatively conceived murderous nutters, and is pretty graphic, so it’s entertaining but very creepy and often gross enough to make your skin crawl. Having peak Lecter at the heart of things, pulling everyone’s strings and pushing everyone’s buttons, is deliciously horrifying. Yes, I said deliciously.
I enjoyed the book of “Red Dragon” and also the original movie adaptation “Manhunter” (rentable on Amazon). This show is respectful, while fleshing out (pun intended) the otherwise untold story of Graham’s and Lecter’s history. It’s good to see some of those characters (one of whom doesn’t survive the Tooth Fairy) in this prequel. The staples are here too, including Lecter (du-uh), Jack Crawford and Dr. Chilton (who always was a cloying dick, it seems).
Given the little time left to complete the show on Netflix before it disappears, you may want to think about it before plunging in.
Manhunter was the one with Brian Cox as Lecter and William Peterson as Graham. Also Tom Noonan as the killer. I like that one.
Correct. It was a good and faithful adaptation of the book.
The remake, as “Red Dragon”, tried to make Lecter central to the story when he’s only a peripheral character (even more so than in Silence). It had a big budget and big name actors and is significantly worse than Michael Mann’s movie because, ultimately, it was dishonest.
ETA: I just read that the plot of “Red Dragon” forms the second half of the 3rd season of Hannibal. I imagine that brings this vehicle to a close because I can’t see how it continues beyond the conclusion of that storyline (Crawford was clutching at straws at the beginning of “Silence” because Graham’s expertise wasn’t available to him). I hope they do a good job of it.
Hannibal update: I’m bearing down on the end of Season 2, and I’m confused as to how this is going to mesh into the Red Dragon and Silence plots.
Spoilers
So far this season, Dr. Chilton has been blamed for all of Lecter’s very grisly crimes - thus exonerating Graham who was on trial for them - and he (Chilton) was shot in the head by a survivor. He’s been discussed as being dead, but I’m not sure he isn’t in witness protection. He plays a part in both Red Dragon and Silence, so him being dead is already JJing the timeline.
They have introduced Mason Verger - the billionaire freak from the “Hannibal” book/movie (played by Gary Oldman). That’s fine, but they’ve just had Will Graham knock up his sister. With Dr. Bloom - gender-flipped to female - sleeping with Lecter, it’s all got more than a whiff of soap opera. Adding random relationships is usually lazy writing to keep involved an otherwise un/underutilized character.
Lastly, Freddie Lounds of the Tattler (also gender-flipped to female) just took her flaming wheelchair ride from Red Dragon. But the show infers it was Graham who did it - although she did find a set of human teeth in a freezer just before being grabbed - so what happens when the Tooth Fairy shows up? There has been no use of her to place an antagonistic story in her tabloid rag and no forced statement, Red Dragon reveal or face-mauling.
Lounds was mutilated by a knife prior to immolation, so they are really mixing shit up in ways that seem irredeemably incompatible with what I know is to come. Season 2 has got bogged down in Donnie Darko-type subconscious stalking and plot lines that are overly complicated and clumsily intertwined.
At this point, I’m going to press to the end to see how they fiddle with it all…and as I type, Freddie Lounds just showed up very much alive and unburned while Graham, not Lector is about to throw Verger to his pigs. So…WTF?
ETA: They really stuck the landing on Season 2. By which, I mean, it was excellent…and everything ended up very sticky.
Season 3 is a floating, careening dumpster fire. I gave up watching in Ep 3 and read the Wikipedia summary. It gets worse.
They decided to make a Thomas Harris smoothie, blending all the books with an expanded story filling in the blanks. In the process, they mix and match characters, events and timelines, while bloating the whole thing additional characters and endless dream sequences that are used to provide foreshadowing, red herrings and exposition.
I’m not mad at the changes; I’m just confused at the choices. They take the characters that Harris created and unleash ludicrous amounts of mental and physical carnage on them, leaving them all as the same, revenge-driven caricature, while for the most part miraculously physically fine. Allegiances and motivations shift and change on a whim.
Basically, after Season 1, this show spent two seasons trying to up the ante in every more elaborate and ridiculous ways. Sad really; they could’ve told the Red Dragon prequel story and lead us up to that plot point - with Lecter in jail and Will Graham in recovery. Instead, they turned him into Lecter’s handmaiden the same way that Harris did with Clarice Starling in the widely and appropriately panned “Hannibal” sequel to SOTL. It’s not as if they hadn’t seen how that went before…
I might have been more disappointed in other books, but I’d be hard pressed to name them. Maybe Andy Weir’s follow-up to The Martian.
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I just listened to Weir’s new book. I liked it.
They tried to use the book/movie “Hannibal” as the basis for Season 3. It was a house built on shit.
Just finished watching When Eagles Dare. I loved it, but then I’m pre-disposed to. It’s 5 episodes of just under 60 minutes each, so it’s an easy watch. It’s a great story, told exceptionally well. They do a great job of setting up the backstory and the present peril, and follow it through to triumph.
Give it a go and let me know what you think.
I just watched MASH and Dunirk.
Both fantastic movies.
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Has anyone watched Mythic Quest or The Mosquito Coast on Apple TV+?
I tried watching both, but quit during the first episode (in the case of Mythic Quest, this was a while ago when S1 came out). I see good reviews for both, but this may simply be the usual cherry-picking positive takes for publicity.
So…did anyone give When Eagles Dare a go?
I am current on Mythic Quest, and I’ve really enjoyed it. It took a few episodes to get going, but the storyline is actually engaging and behind all the slapsticky Community/Silicon Valley stuff, there are some really great storytelling episodes and acting as well.
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Tried to get into Mythic Quest, but couldn’t get past the first episode or two. Sounds like I need to give it another shot.
Based on the advice of a few friends, we finally started watching Bosch last night. It’s good, mostly because the pacing keeps the epsodes moving at a decent enough clip you’re interested enough in watching the next one. Acting is pretty solid as well.
I will also say that I loved Billions. One of the best shows I’ve watched in awhile. Shame that we don’t have Showtime so I could binge the fourth and fifth seasons (first three were free on Amazon Prime). The writers did a marvelous job of creating interesting, substantive characters and pivoting away from the initial storyline between the two protagonists that would’ve inevitably faltered and gone stale.
I keep planning to. Netflix, right?
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