[PoleAxe]

Just finished the first two episodes of True Detective on HBO. I was at first sceptical of another crappy police procedural, but this is above and beyond in the writing and dialogue, and is slowly stirring in a deeper mystery that has me interested. Anyone else watching this, fans of Lovecraft???

[JesusMonroe]

I'll admit that the cop genre is getting very tired and boring...

But goddammit, I love mysteries and Monk is my second favorite show of all time. I'll check it out this weekend. Thanks for the recommendation!

[Walker_Bait]

I really love the show so far. It has some really fantastic dialogue and use of situation to develop each character. Plus it has great visuals of Southern Louisiana.

Being an anthology series, with a new cast and story for each season, the plot will probably move along more quickly pretty soon with only six episodes left.

[Bizneatty]

Great show, with an all star cast . Quickly working its way up my list of favorite shows. First two episodes have been very good

[zombiehunter]

I want to see it but I don't have HBO

[Shane is the Man]

I looooooooooooooooooooooooove this show. As much as I like TWD, it sure does make the writing in TWD look like child's play.

[Shane is the Man]

I just saw the preview, and the semi nude guy walking near the end seriously skeeved me out. It had such a Silence of the Lambs type of feel to it.

[Ansceniiiic]

I caught the first five minutes of this show the other week and I've been meaning to start watching it. It looked and sounded pretty great from the trailer and reviews, so I'll definitely check it out soon.

[Walker_Bait]

Oh god, that long take escape scene in last night's episode was so good!! Wow, truly impressive work. I'm really excited for the back half of the series.

[Walker_Bait]

Here is an interview with Director Cary Fukunaga on the long take from Sunday night's episode!

 

Before reaching the halfway point of the series, Director Cary 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.

[PoleAxe]

That was one hell of an episode, was still hoping for more supernatural, but still better then anything else out there. 

[Walker_Bait]

With some of the elements in the show and with Cohle's character and beliefs, I can see how the show could move toward a Lovecraft type of horror.

 

Maybe the records "destroyed by storm" and Cohle acting how he is in the 2012 scenes could have been to keep forbidden knowledge he learned during the 1995 investigation hidden. His initial beliefs expressed to Hart in the car are confirmed through the investigation. Cohle and Hart perhaps even got the right person back in 1995 but that was just a human "follower" to an unbeatable non-human force who continues to influence other people in 2012.

 

But I don't think Nic Pizzolatto is intending to take the story that way. Thematically, his style reminds me more of Cormac McCarthy, who delves into fate and sometimes has unbeatable human forces.

 

True Detective could be showing us how coastal southern Louisiana was "lost" and the characters' reaction to that defeat.

 

Obviously I'm not sure and this is all my speculation.

[Ansceniiiic]

I just finished catching up on the series, and wow..the ending of the last episode was mind-blowingly amazing. Watching Cohle escaping from the gang members was so intense and the one take directing was impressive, seriously some of the best television I have seen in years. Every episode so far has been pretty great, the acting, writing, production..the only thing that makes me sad is that it's an anthology series, which means we most likely won't be seeing the same characters after this season. But with that said, I can't wait for Sunday's episode. I'm not 100% sure on who is responsible for the killings, but I honestly think it may be linked to a cult, one which Reggie Ledoux is apart of.

[PoleAxe]

 

With some of the elements in the show and with Cohle's character and beliefs, I can see how the show could move toward a Lovecraft type of horror.

 

Maybe the records "destroyed by storm" and Cohle acting how he is in the 2012 scenes could have been to keep forbidden knowledge he learned during the 1995 investigation hidden. His initial beliefs expressed to Hart in the car are confirmed through the investigation. Cohle and Hart perhaps even got the right person back in 1995 but that was just a human "follower" to an unbeatable non-human force who continues to influence other people in 2012.

 

But I don't think Nic Pizzolatto is intending to take the story that way. Thematically, his style reminds me more of Cormac McCarthy, who delves into fate and sometimes has unbeatable human forces.

 

True Detective could be showing us how coastal southern Louisiana was "lost" and the characters' reaction to that defeat.

 

Obviously I'm not sure and this is all my speculation.

 

The writing is leagues more cereberal than TWD or anything else "supernatural" on cable or elsewhere.  If they added in the Lvoecraftian element, some horror, this would explode.  But even if it doesn't it is time well spent in watching it.

[Walker_Bait]

True, I agree.

[writeoff]

Just binged on the first five episodes after a friend recommended this series. Will need some time to digest everything that I just took in.

[Ansceniiiic]

Just binged on the first five episodes after a friend recommended this series. Will need some time to digest everything that I just took in.

I honestly think this is one of the few shows you can't binge watch. There really is too much to take in, and I feel like you would miss out on so many clues and details if you watched episode after episode. Every time I re-watch an episode, I learn something new or I see something that I didn't pay attention to before.

[OMEN]

I've just caught up watching one episode a day. Great dialogue plus psycho Lizzie is in it. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk 2

[DaneBramage]

It's pure gold.

[OMEN]

Yes Yes it is.

[DaneBramage]

Ok Goddamnit. Rabbit hole it is. Have fun my babies.....

 

 

 
Look above his heart It is an octopus in the form of the "Yellow Sign" with an added arm (probably from prison)- This is all alluding to the writings of Robert W. Chambers and this article references DIRECTLY a poem that came out in December but now is gone from this guy's website.

This World

Your love, your hate –-
it's all the same thing
it gathers me in the same web
entangling me with empty promises.
and like a lot of dreams
it made a monster at the end of it.
 
This is a world where nothing is solved --
where time is a flat circle
and everything we ever do, or have ever done,
we do over and over and over again.

Where you touch darkness
and darkness touches you back. <<<<< this was the tagline for TD before it aired.

 

 
http://en.wikipedia...._King_in_Yellow
 
http://en.wikipedia....iki/Yellow_Sign
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcosa
 
http://en.wikipedia....des_(mythology)

[DaneBramage]

Tonight's ep: I Saw that comin and I didn't want to. Important Episode although none of the case was pushed forward. I just hope (and I do doubt) that Hart doesn't kill Cohle at the end.

 

Two more episodes.

[Ansceniiiic]

Tonight's ep: I Saw that comin and I didn't want to. Important Episode although none of the case was pushed forward. I just hope (and I do doubt) that Hart doesn't kill Cohle at the end.

 

Two more episodes.

I don't think he will. Hart checking his gun was just him being a little apprehensive because of the allegations against Cohle, so he doesn't completely trust him yet. And I highly doubt he will want to get revenge because of what happened between him and Maggie, unless he has an ulterior motive. With that said, I think Cohle will reveal to Marty of all the evidence he has gathered over the past ten to fifteen years that he has kept stored in the abandoned school he came across before. That evidence being of the those responsible for the drugs, kidnappings, sex ring and murders.. as well as who is involved within the cult. I'm almost certain Reverend Tuttle is/was one of the main members of the cult, also the former sheriff, Maggie's father and other political/law enforcements. 

[Walker_Bait]

I'm almost certain Reverend Tuttle is/was one of the main members of the cult, also the former sheriff, Maggie's father and other political/law enforcements. 

 

I was thinking this too. Then Reverend Tuttle is in his giant office wearing that yellow tie and handkerchief.

[OMEN]

The golden one