TV of 2023

[Matt]

I’m kind of dreading this new Mike Flanagan series, ”Fall of the House of Usher,” which appears to remix a bunch of Poe’s other stories into it to pad it out to miniseries length. “The Haunting of Hill House” was good with some very effective episodes until it flushed itself down the toilet in the finale, “Bly Manor” was instantly forgettable, and “Midnight Mass” I actively disliked. The Poe story is one of my favorites, and the Corman film is the best of his Poe adaptations, so taking all this into consideration, I’m already biased against it. But now Roderick Usher is “the CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company who must face his shady past?”

Like all remakes and adaptations, it doesn’t erase the originals from existence and might gain them some new fans. And being able to watch the new Pablo Larrain within the same month will take some of the sting out of the Netflix subscription fee.

[therewillbeblus]

I wasn't a fan of The Haunting of Hill House, outside of that one episode composed of four long takes, but Flanagan is both formally skilled and has an keen sense of creative wit in his directional capabilities, so I'm always waiting for him to come out with another masterpiece. Granted, I haven't seen the majority of his catalogue, but I maintain the DC of Doctor Sleep is thematically brilliant and conveys stuff Kubrick was unable, and probably uninterested in doing, particularly in its accessibility to normally-esoteric addiction and recovery ethos via film grammar (please, nobody mistake that comment as "it's better than The Shining")

[The Curious Sofa]

I was impressed by Flanagan's debut film Absentia and still think it's his most effective work. If you can overlook a few shaky performances and the fact that it had a minuscule budget (it was crowd funded) the plot turns took me by surprise and it's among the more effective Lovecraftian horror movies.

I enjoyed the first half of The Haunting Hill House but it lost me once it turns sentimental, I checked out of Bly House afte two episodes and felt Midnight Mass was wildly overextended. This new series looks like more of the same, though mashing up several Poe stories is a more promising approach than turning the characters of the Shirley Jackson classic into a family and furnishings it with scares out of The Conjuring franchise.

[therewillbeblus]

Based off just the first episode of three, Telemarketers on Max is the most captivating doc I've seen in a long time. Think The Wolf of Wall Street, in terms of literal content and tonal wavelength, only documenting another tale in the age-old tradition of the capitalist elite pitting average lower-class people against one another to protect their position. It's hysterical, entertaining, horrifying, and feels authentic - especially since these guys were clearly fucking around with cameras, "planning" to execute this kind of exposé as a joke from the start, so it doesn't feel retroactively manipulative like so many of its ilk.

[therewillbeblus]

Based off just the first episode of three, Telemarketers on Max is the most captivating doc I've seen in a long time. Think The Wolf of Wall Street, in terms of literal content and tonal wavelength, only documenting another tale in the age-old tradition of the capitalist elite pitting average lower-class people against one another to protect their position. It's hysterical, entertaining, horrifying, and feels authentic - especially since these guys were clearly fucking around with cameras, "planning" to execute this kind of exposé as a joke from the start, so it doesn't feel retroactively manipulative like so many of its ilk.

One incidental effect I think this doc has is exploiting how widespread classism and its effects are, even with one's allies. The doc is transparently focused on immoral weaponizations of classist systems, but by centralizing the action on two (mostly one) kind-hearted but clearly lower-class individual with behavioral patterns and personality tics completely at-odds with the 'social ideal', we are passengers in a journey where he repulses and alienates many politicians and other organizational leaders who would've surely warmed to someone of their familiar ilk asking the exact same questions. This has sparked some interesting questions in my personal life, and I think it brilliantly reveals a lot of implicit biases -with people squirming away from Pat, the rehabilitated truly kind person, who many audiences wouldn't trust or find approachable in real life, and yet would trust and approach the silver-tongued, "put-together" people manipulating and morally abusing everyone, just based on how they look or speak. Its ironies are very self-reflexive to the subject, and I love how understated this aspect is, as well as how the documentary form allows for a visual aid of the medium to force that physical-observance-driven bias to birth outside of the fog of the telephone calls that mask the intruder. On the flip side, the filmmakers go to great lengths to show the love of community outside of these judgmental middle-upper class zones, and organically challenge assumptions that motivate the behavior impeding progress in the narrative, including - in the end - by people very much on the same 'side'.

[brundlefly]

Trailer for A Murder at the End of the World, the new FX/Hulu mini from Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij with Marling, Emma Corrin, Joan Chen, and Clive Owen.

[Mr Sausage]

Looks more conventional than I’m used to from Marling and her usual collaborators, but then the trailer doesn’t reveal all that much, so there’s lots of room for, say, the odd spiritual themes she often favours.

[therewillbeblus]

I definitely sensed ominous hints at spiritualism from the trailer in how the protagonist was framed, but it still seems based around the milieu of a cult, so looking forward for a new spin on familiar terrain from this excellent creative team

[beamish14]

The second season of the incredible animated sci-fi series Pantheon, which was produced and shelved by AMC, is now on Prime

[Matt]

I’m kind of dreading this new Mike Flanagan series, ”Fall of the House of Usher,” which appears to remix a bunch of Poe’s other stories into it to pad it out to miniseries length

I gotta learn to trust my instincts more. I’m halfway through the series and I kind of hate it but will dutifully finish it. The Poe stories are not so much a framework as a kind of “I understood that reference!” running gag. Like someone says “Dammit Toby” to a character who…is not actually named Toby. And the Roderick Usher Experimental medical testing facility where several subjects died is referred to jokingly as the R.U.E. Morgue. But that’s fine because a straightforward poor adaptation in this vein would be much, much worse. It just can’t even summon up enough wit to be camp.

As it is, it’s just an incredibly crude Succession-meets-the-Sacklers riff on a And Then There Were None story. Like crude as in mutiple references to farting in otherwise serious dialogue, every few words being “f*ck” or “f*cking”, and nameless, speechless, topless women just sort of casually walking around in the background. I’m no prude or bluestocking, but it just feels like one of those early HBO/Cinemax shows that, because they could get away with nudity and profanity, carpeted every episode with as much of both as they could. It’s just an eye-rollingly cheap way to make characters seem “wicked.”

I liked Hill House because there was so much sadness in it, but this is just rote killing off of one-note unpleasant characters one by one (and not even in a gleeful “they got what they deserved” manner) peppered with the same exact jump scare in every episode.

But Carla Gugino has a lot of fun playing a mysterious character who seems to pop up in the most unlikely places. Lavish production values, too.

[The Curious Sofa]

I've never been a fan of Flanagan's Netflix shows but weaving elements from various Poe stories into a family saga at least works conceptually a little better for me than turning the characters of The Haunting of Hill House into the members of one family. I'm six episodes in and I'm glad that so far it hasn't swerved into the type of sentimentality, that undid the second half of The Haunting of Hill House for me.

While I'm happy to suspend my disbelief for all sort of supernatural shenanigans, one thing which lets this down for me is the godawful art direction, costuming, styling etc. This is how small children think rich people look and live, from the inauthentic look of the 70s flashbacks, to Mary McDonnell's cheap looking wig, to the fact that everybody is dressed up like they are about to go to the Met Gala even when mooching around at home, there isn't an ounce of wit or care in the visual design.

I'm also not sure casting actors because they are in Flanagan's repertory company always pays off here. Not because they are bad, in some ways Ruth Codd gives the most entertaining performance but is an edgy, disabled, Irish goth girl really the type of a trophy wife a pharmacy tycoon would take ? I can't buy into this mismatched, poorly attired bunch of actors as a Sackler-type family.

I increasingly have a problem with the current approach to minority representations, where evil people can commit every crime under the sun but two things they can't be is racist or homophobic. This show is going above and beyond in that regard. I see the need for providing roles for actors from minorities, but do it in a way that reflects the current political reality, not some no-discrimination utopia. I feel uneasy with a representation that pretends any issues of bigotry have been overcome, especially in the current climate it would be better to be true to the experience of discriminated minorities instead of pretending everything is just dandy.

[Matt]

I concur with just about everything you said there, and I especially appreciate that I am not the only person distracted by Mary McDonnell’s wig. Why does it have that huge bump? Is she wearing a Bumpit? Is there some kind of Malignant situation going on up there?

One thing about the ham-handed gestures towards diversity that bothers me is that every Usher offspring (except one maybe) is casually gay/bi/pansexual but also incredibly abusive of their partners. Is this supposed to be positive representation or is being LGBTQ just another signifier of decadence in this show?

[The Curious Sofa]

I watched the last couple of episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher and wig spoiler alert:

SpoilerShow

In episode 7 Mary McDonnell takes off her wig.....only to reveal near identical wig underneath, which is playing her real hair.

[Matt]

Glad to know there is an in-story explanation, but lol

[therewillbeblus]

Looks more conventional than I’m used to from Marling and her usual collaborators

Unfortunately after a promising start, A Murder at the End of the World does wind up following a conventional, and surprisingly slight route to its finish. Its set-up is basically a more serious Glass Onion-seclusion for Christie-like mechanics, but the opportunity for Twin Peaks season one-reveals throughout isn’t taken, and the drive of activity and its turns slow and peter out early, as if the series is priming us to care about a herring it discards purely out of disinterest (the most interesting active threat looming around the ‘side plot’ involving a conspiracy with other guests/victims is essentially elided in the last act - why?) The way everything comes together kinda works on a plot level, but it’s also annoyingly didactic in a simple and straightforward manner that eschews Marling et al’s staple artistic assets when it comes to rewarding dissonant narrative and thematic engagement. This is probably the worst Marling project - I hope she keeps making never ending series that get cancelled if the alternative is tidy, empty stories that has a leash preventing us from truly sitting with difficult stuff. It’s all the worse when a master at holding the line of that leash is at the helm