True Detective

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perkana
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Re: True Detective

#41 Post by perkana » Mon Feb 10, 2014 8:56 am

It wasn't at all. I wanna have my babies with Mathew McConaughey :love: (sorry creep)

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Re: True Detective

#42 Post by Artemis » Mon Feb 10, 2014 10:38 am

Last night's episode was the best thus far, imho. That last scene was so intense, I was on the edge of my sofa. I read that last scene was a single shot! The acting and directing continues to impress - BRAVO!

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Re: True Detective

#43 Post by Jasper » Mon Feb 10, 2014 12:44 pm

Artemis wrote:I read that last scene was a single shot!
Yeah, the entire drug raid right until they get into Marty's car at the very end was a single shot by a single cameraman. It's so smooth it's hard to believe. Really ratcheted up the tension.


Feb 9 2014 10:02 PM EST
'True Detective': How Did They Pull Off That Final Shot?
Director Cary Fukunaga walks us through the epic six-minute take.

By Kevin P. Sullivan (@KPSull)

Four episodes into its run on HBO, "True Detective" is earning the kind of high praise usually saved for drama series with two or three seasons under their belts, thanks to its stunning visuals, pitch-black worldview and career-best performances from Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. Cary Fukunaga helmed each installment of the eight-episode run, and his careful direction has been a key factor in "True Detective's" success, even if it's not as apparent as Harrelson's and McConaughey's acting.

But if you watched the fourth episode, "Who Goes There," tonight on HBO, by the end, it's likely you are very aware of just how good Cary Fukunaga is.

MILD SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 4 AHEAD

Before reaching the halfway point of the series, Fukunaga decided to end the episode with a six-minute oner, or long take, that follows Cohle into a heist inside a housing project, through a number of shootouts, outside to escape from swarming police, through another house, over a fence and finally into Hart's car. It's the kind of incredible shot that's worth watching again and again to catch every detail in it and further blurs the line between television and film.

To find out how he pulled off the complex sequence, I reached out to Fukunaga to see if he would walk me through the planning and execution of the best "True Detective" scene yet.

Off the bat, it's important to know that the oner is nothing new to Fukunaga. Having used the technique in both of his feature films, "Sin Nombre" and "Jane Eyre," Fukunaga signed onto "True Detective" knowing that he wanted to include a long take at some point, because he considers it a tenser kind of directing. "The best ones, you don't even realize that they're oners," Fukunaga said. "They're the most first-person experience you can get in a film."

Reading Nic Pizzolatto's script for "Who Goes There," Fukunaga knew almost immediately that the heist was the scene to make his oner. All he had to do was convince the entire crew that it wasn't impossible to pull off.

To cover as much ground as he wanted to in the sequence, Fukunaga needed to shoot in an actual housing project, and that was the first complication in planning the oner. It took weeks to even get permission to film on-location, but once he received it, Fukunaga went straight into mapping the shot and finding "the most interesting path, but also the most logical path" for Cohle to escape with Ginger. That interesting and logical path eventually takes Cohle and Ginger over a chain-link fence, a maneuver that proved to be the most complicated of the intricate sequence.

Watching just the fences portion of the oner back, the camera floats over the high barrier in a movement that almost looks effortless. Getting the shot, however, was anything but. Because the location was an actual housing project, the "True Detective" crew wasn't allowed to take down any portion of the fence, so they had to improvise. "At one point, we were going to build a ramp, and the operator was going to walk up it," Fukunaga said. "But that wasn't very safe." The solution ended up involving placing the Steadicam operator on an elevated jib, or a weighted crane, which carried him over the fence and back down to earth.

Once the camera movements were figured out, the production carefully choreographed everything that had to happen in front of the lens with the help of a stunt team led by Mark Norby, who personally worked with McConaughey to develop a fighting style for Cohle. The crew even built a replica of the stash house for the stunt team to practice in before the big shoot.

"We had ADs [assistant directors] all over the neighborhood because we had to release extras, crowd running background, police cars, stunt drivers. There were actual gun shots and stones being thrown through windows. There were a lot of things to put together," Fukunaga said. "Even the action, the stunt sequences were complicated. We're working on a television schedule. It isn't like a film where you can spend a lot of time working the stunts out with the actors. We only had a day and a half to get Matthew and everyone else on the same page."
All told, the sequence clocks in at around six minutes. Fukunaga and the crew ran through the whole thing seven times while the cameras were rolling. The director built in possible edit points if two takes had to be combined to make the perfect version of the shot, but anyone who is wondering should know that the sequence everyone saw in the episode is, in fact, a true single take and one of the great achievements of filmmaking for television.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/172200 ... take.jhtml

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Re: True Detective

#44 Post by creep » Mon Feb 10, 2014 7:50 pm

perkana wrote:It wasn't at all. I wanna have my babies with Mathew McConaughey :love: (sorry creep)
:nyrexall:

don't forget about some of his horrible roles. you might change your mind.

here is an interesting clip. i didn't know woody was in surfer dude too. they have both come a long way.


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Re: True Detective

#45 Post by perkana » Tue Feb 11, 2014 9:14 am

But we will always have this

P.S. I couldn't see the surfer clip :nyrexall:

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Re: True Detective

#46 Post by perkana » Wed Feb 12, 2014 10:09 am


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Re: True Detective

#47 Post by blackula » Thu Feb 13, 2014 8:00 pm

I just watched this past Sunday's episode....damn. Even though it's obvious the younger version of Cohle survives, the last 10 minutes were pretty suspenseful.

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Re: True Detective

#48 Post by Jasper » Thu Feb 13, 2014 10:38 pm

Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/ ... detective/

By Michael Calia

Horror and mystery go hand in hand on HBO‘s “True Detective.” The hit series — which stars Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as Detectives Martin Hart and Rustin Cohle, respectively — is rich in dread similar to the kind inherent in the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and it has featured words and imagery derived from Robert W. Chambers‘ story anthology “The King in Yellow.” As a result, the show has opened up the worlds of weird fiction and cosmic horror to broader audiences.

Executive producer and writer Nic Pizzolatto, responding through email, commented to Speakeasy about some of the more ominous literary and philosophical influences on ”True Detective,” as well as some of his favorite horror writers. Read the Q&A.

Speakeasy: If you could recommend any single work of weird fiction and/or horror to people, what would it be?


Pizzolatto: That’s tough — on the one hand I want to name one of the blue-chip classics, and on the other I’d like to give an endorsement to people who may not usually get enough attention. I mean, I’d suggest Lovecraft or Poe, but everybody knows them already. More recently, I’d point people in the direction of Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barron, John Langan, Simon Strantzas and others. For fans of the show who’d like to see what contemporary voices have done with Chambers’ “King in Yellow,” I’d point them toward Karl Edward Wagner’s short story “The River of Night’s Dreaming” or the recent anthology “A Season in Carcosa.”

When did you first hear of and read Ligotti?

I first heard of Ligotti maybe six years ago, when Laird Barron’s first collection alerted me to this whole world of new weird fiction that I hadn’t known existed. I started looking around for the best contemporary stuff to read, and in any discussion of that kind, the name “Ligotti” comes up first. I couldn’t find any of his books in print, and their used prices were prohibitive for me at the time. But I located a couple at libraries, and his nightmare lyricism was enthralling and visionary.

What work of his do you find the most influential? Are you more attracted to his fiction or his nonfictional writing? Have you read his nonfiction book, “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race”?

I read “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race” and found it incredibly powerful writing. For me as a reader, it was less impactful as philosophy than as one writer’s ultimate confessional: an absolute horror story, where the self is the monster. In episode one [of "True Detective"] there are two lines in particular (and it would have been nothing to re-word them) that were specifically phrased in such a way as to signal Ligotti admirers. Which, of course, you got.

The philosophy Cohle promotes in the show’s earliest episodes is a kind of anti-natalist nihilism, and in that regard all cats should be unbagged: “Confessions of an Antinatalist,” “Nihil Unbound,” “In the Dust of this Planet,” “Better to Have Never Been,” and lots of Cioran were all on the reading list. This is before I came out to Hollywood, but I knew that in my next work I would have a detective who was (or thought he was) a nihilist. I’d already been reading E.M. Cioran for years and consider him one of my all-time favorite and, oddly, most nourishing writers. As an aphorist, Cioran has no rivals other than perhaps Nietzsche, and many of his philosophies are echoed by Ligotti. But Ligotti is far more disturbing than Cioran, who is actually very funny. In exploring these philosophies, nobody I’ve read has expressed the idea of humanity as aberration more powerfully than Cioran and Ligotti.

How do you feel about the philosophy in general?


To answer your question about my personal views, I’m about as far from a nihilist as you can get, though at times my personal philosophy would be deemed pessimistic. I would label it realist, though. Maybe beleaguered romantic. However, to openly confront the ideas of artists like Cioran and Ligotti, without defense, is to be riveted and increased by the power of their vision of the unspeakable, of annihilation at the most intimate level.

And if we’re talking about hard-boiled detectives, too, what could be more hardboiled than the worldview of Ligotti or Cioran? They make the grittiest of crime writers seem like dilettantes. Next to “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,” Mickey Spillane seems about as hard-boiled as bubble gum.

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. It’s also important to me that the mass audience doesn’t need to know or engage these associations in order to enjoy the show. Likewise, I wouldn’t want any viewers to assume we had some nihilistic agenda, or reduce Cohle to an anti-natalist or nihilist. Cohle is more complicated than that. As I’ve said recently, Cohle may claim to be a nihilist, but an observation of him reveals otherwise. Far from “nothing meaning anything” to him, it’s almost as though everything means too much to him. He’s too passionate, too acutely sensitive, and he cares too much to be labeled a successful nihilist. And in his monologues, don’t we detect a whiff of desperation akin to someone who protests too much? When Cohle speaks of the unspeakable, is it with the same illusory perspective as when Hart speaks about the importance of having rules and boundaries? Perhaps that is what Hart references when he tells Cohle in episode 3, “You sound panicked.”

That doesn’t lessen the potential validity of the ideas he expresses, and that is what I finally think is disturbing about the show so far. It’s not the serial killer that’s unsettling; television shows you far worse than that all the time. What unsettles are the aspects of being human which the show chooses to highlight. That this stuff is being delivered through actors as instantly amiable and comforting as Harrelson and McConaughey makes it doubly subversive. And then I think you’ll find, as we go forward, the show keeps subverting its own subversions.

Nic Pizzolatto is also the author of the story collection “Between Here and the Yellow Sea” and the novel “Galveston,” which was published in 2010 and is slated to be adapted into a film.

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Re: True Detective

#49 Post by Juana » Sat Feb 15, 2014 5:10 pm

So I have caught up on the first 4 episodes and I have to say this show is pretty fucking good. I was a bit torn after the first episode but it keeps building from what I have noticed and this last episode especially the final scene really kept me interested. The character of Cohle is very interesting to me.

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Re: True Detective

#50 Post by Jasper » Sat Feb 15, 2014 7:15 pm

Juana wrote:So I have caught up on the first 4 episodes and I have to say this show is pretty fucking good. I was a bit torn after the first episode but it keeps building from what I have noticed and this last episode especially the final scene really kept me interested. The character of Cohle is very interesting to me.
I loved the first episode, and the slow, atmospheric nature of the first three episodes, but either way if they can keep from fucking up this will be one of TV's all-time classics (at least this story/cast/season).

Too bad there's no more Rust & Marty after this. :wavesad:

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Re: True Detective

#51 Post by creep » Sat Feb 15, 2014 7:24 pm

Jasper wrote: Too bad there's no more Rust & Marty after this. :wavesad:
i hope they rethink that with the success of the series...that is if one of them doesn't end up in jail. :noclue:

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Re: True Detective

#52 Post by Xizen47 » Sun Feb 16, 2014 3:02 pm

creep wrote:i hope they rethink that with the success of the series...
No way, for one I'm sick of good shows being cancelled prematurely.

I believe keeping it as an anthology series will bring in the big names (Harrelsons and McConaugheys) of the acting world. I don't think they would have signed on in the first place if not for the fact it was only going to be 8 episodes.

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Re: True Detective

#53 Post by clickie » Sun Feb 16, 2014 4:40 pm

Exactly, Woody and Matt finished their obligation towards the show, if the writing stays good i'm not too concerned who they cast.

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Re: True Detective

#54 Post by Jasper » Sun Feb 16, 2014 4:49 pm

Xizen47 wrote:
creep wrote:i hope they rethink that with the success of the series...
No way, for one I'm sick of good shows being cancelled prematurely.

I believe keeping it as an anthology series will bring in the big names (Harrelsons and McConaugheys) of the acting world. I don't think they would have signed on in the first place if not for the fact it was only going to be 8 episodes.
You've got a point there. This format does ensure that a story will not be interrupted by cancellation. Many fine shows have been cancelled too soon, the most infamous among them being Twin Peaks. For their part, HBO have a very bad record as far as this goes, prematurely canceling Rome, Carnivale, and Deadwood.

On the other hand, it's a shame if we can't enjoy a long story arc. Boardwalk Empire wouldn't be so great if it were stuffed into one season, let alone one 8-episode season, which is borderline mini-series territory. But True Detective really is working very well. It seems like an eight-hour film in eight parts (apparently with three acts). That keeps everything so tight. The acting and directing and writing and cinematography. Plus it allows for one writer and one director, which is pretty much unheard of. If it were longer they'd need more writers and directors. The only question is if Nic Pizzolatto can keep coming up with stories this good, and if the acting and directing (etc.) can be this riveting. I don't even know if this director, Cary Fukunaga, will direct another season, and that's a scary thought.

Going back to the three-act thing, apparently episodes 1-3 were act one, episodes 4-6 will be act two, and episodes 7 & 8 will be act three. The move into act two in the last episode was pretty unmistakable. I just hope it doesn't go the direction of The Place Beyond the Pines, where each of the three acts was weaker than the preceding act.

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Re: True Detective

#55 Post by creep » Sun Feb 16, 2014 9:10 pm

tonight's episode was my favorite episode so far

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Re: True Detective

#56 Post by Jasper » Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:55 pm

It was a great episode. Things are really going fast now.

Do you think Hart (Woody) was faking it when he acted like the detectives might have some kind of point about Rust being a potential suspect? I didn't really believe him. I kind of picture him saying "Rust, guess what these assholes think about you...", but I guess it could be either way.

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Re: True Detective

#57 Post by Jasper » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:05 am

Yo, check it out, it's the complete unabridged revival tent sermon with Shae Whigham:



You already could see it in the show, but this even more clearly shows the similarities between the preacher's words and some of Rust's philosophies. Like how Rust says that your life is like you being alone in a locked room and having a dream about being a person, while the preacher says that the physical matter we perceive isn't real, that the world is a veil, and that the respective faces we wear are not our own.

Another thing is where Rust is talking about time being a circle, and our entire histories being like a complete unchanging arrangement on a dot, rather than the linear progression or 2D thing we perceive. That's mirrored in the circular twig portal he discovers in 2002 on the same tree where they originally found Dora Lange.

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Re: True Detective

#58 Post by crater » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:10 am

Great song at the end of the episode


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Re: True Detective

#59 Post by Hype » Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:36 am

I thought episode 5 was excellent, but I think it has a similar minor issue that is also a problem in House of Cards: they both use a kind of fourth-wall breaking (though at least in True Detective it's far subtler) to give the audience direct access to more information than any of the characters have. And while it does a lot to keep the plot from being unwieldy, I think it's done a bit too much, to the point where it takes away too much of the mystery, at least within each episode. Someone (I can't remember who) suggested that in House of Cards, it's lazy writing... But the show is still excellently done for a variety of other reasons.

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Re: True Detective

#60 Post by Matov » Tue Feb 18, 2014 9:39 am

I'm really liking this show so far, and the fact that it will only be 8 episodes for this story arc has me even more excited.

Also, Cohle's "Shut up Nietzche" from last episode made me both chuckle and think of Hype/AS :wiggle:

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Re: True Detective

#61 Post by nausearockpig » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:14 pm


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Re: True Detective

#62 Post by CaseyContrarian » Sat Feb 22, 2014 6:06 pm


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Re: True Detective

#63 Post by Jasper » Sat Feb 22, 2014 6:19 pm

So, Charlie Lange tells Marty and Rust that Reggie Ledoux spoke of being involved with rich old men who did Satanic worship and killing in the woods and so on. He mentions that this involved "The Yellow King" and Carcosa.

Marty and Rust bust/kill Ledoux and his fat cousin (?), and completely forget about the rest of it for seven years. Seven years of women and children being abducted, raped, killed, etc.

It's not until, by dumb luck, Rust is reminded of the Yellow King and the claim of powerful people being involved in a larger cult.

Nice going, detectives. :no:

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Re: True Detective

#64 Post by creep » Sun Feb 23, 2014 8:05 pm

another great episode. the women hart gets is very impressive....but what a dick move by his wife. only two episodes left. can't wait.

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Re: True Detective

#65 Post by perkana » Mon Feb 24, 2014 8:07 am

Dick move? Marty is fucking prick! I didn't like her using Rust though. Loved the ending.
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