Director’s Cut: Helming ‘True Detective’
When it comes to True Detective season 2, any news is fascinating news. Ever since Season 1 wrapped, the rumors surrounding HBO’s literary-minded goth detective series have been almost as mysterious as the show itself. Who will star in the next season? Where will it take place? And, most recently, who will direct it?
Earlier this week, director William Friedkin told Indiewire that he was considering joining the True Detective team, saying “I like this writer [creator Nic Pizzolatto] very much. I’ve met him, and he’s the real deal.” Though nothing is set in stone just yet, the prospect of this collaboration is a good one. Not only does Friedkin have a flair for psychologically compelling horror – he directed the original The Exorcist as well as that underseen study in paranoia, Bug, (all Michael Shannon fans should see it post-haste) – but he’s made some of the more distinctive cop movies in the history of American film: The French Connection and Cruising (which admittedly is a fail in the identity politics department). Indeed, his films – even 2011’s Killer Joe, which is mostly heralded for launching a McConaussance – build to a thrill by cultivating an appealingly broody familiarity he withdraws the minute we feel comfortable. Bottom line: There’s no director better suited to realize the rarified, yellow kingdoms of “True Detective.”
But assuming the seventy-eight-year-old won’t sign on to film every episode, it’s still worth considering who else might helm Pizzolatto’s moody masterpiece. Continue Reading →
Overcome
Most of the time I don’t put my mishegos online, at least before it’s been digested and lessons have been learned. I will try not to do so here. But suffice it to say it’s not been my standard mermaid summer thus far–more like an unhappy summer of reckoning– and chances are good the next six weeks also will prove challenging. I don’t relish that others struggle too but it helps to know I’m not the only one in the thickets from time to time. So this morning, as I tackle an obstacle that makes my blood run cold and my guts turn to lead, I send bolstering energy, white light, bruja magic, deep breaths, blueberry pie, and love, yes, love to all of us, not just me. It feels bigger and stronger, somehow. I keep flashing on that Becket quote: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” And thinking: People do it all the time.
2014’s Best Films (May Already Have Come)
The following was originally published in Word and Film.
Let’s be honest: In the dog days of summer, most of us crave popcorn movies that won’t tax our wilted brains. Gross-out comedies and smash-’em-up action pictures are the order of the day, and really, there’s no shame in that. Some of them, like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, are pretty great. (Not so much Tammy or Transformers: Age of Extinction.) Some of them, like Snowpiercer, are even pretty smart.
But for those craving complicated, grown-up cinematic fare – the sort we can mull over for an afternoon while the rest of the world melts away – 2014 has already produced its fair share of memorable films. And it’s worth catching up on them before the autumn’s rush of “Oscar-consideration” movies begins. Distributors tend to release their most artistically adventurous films (that is, the ones likely to alienate the conservative Academy) earlier in the year.
Here are the five best movies of 2014 so far. Continue Reading →