Category: Television
The Leftovers (HBO)
Writing in 2014, James Poniewozik (Time) reviews the first season of HBO’s excellent series, The Leftovers
By the standards of fictional global disasters, The Leftovers’ is a teensy one, just a smidgen of apocalypse. Two percent of the world’s population is gone–not dead, but vanished one Oct. 14 in what is being called the Sudden Departure. It sounds like the Christian Rapture, but it’s utterly random. It takes babies and adults; Christians, Buddhists and atheists; the devout and the drug dealer; plus Gary Busey and the entire former cast of Perfect Strangers. All told, 140 million people are gone, enough that some families are unscathed but no one is untouched. It’s enough to leave the species intact but heartsick; to leave society functioning but rudderless; to leave humanity standing but to kick the legs from under every existing belief system. (more…)
Creating Six Feet Under’s Title Sequence
“I was taught that design is a type of visual communication and storytelling where a single image needs to say something profound immediately, in the simplest form possible.”
Danny Yount discusses directing the title sequence of the cult HBO television series over at Art of the Title.
The Mediated Woman Writer
“What I didn’t know then that I know now is that art is deeply and necessarily political. Women’s authorship is a fundamentally radical instrument, which promises to rewrite the terms of everyone’s socialisation. From Mary Wollstonecraft to Charlotte Brontë, from Virginia Woolf to Judith Butler, the history of feminism is almost indistinguishable from the history of women writers, and of women writers writing about writing.”
More at Marie Thouaille’s All the Single Writing Ladies.
David Bowie Was Set to Appear in Twin Peaks Reboot
“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has been scrubbed from the memories of many Twin Peaks fans, but it’s best not to forget that David Bowie was in the film, as Agent Phillip Jeffries. He appears as a dream vision in a weird montage to his former buddies Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Gordon Cole (David Lynch) and provides key information to cracking the case. It seems now that Bowie had signed on to reprise the role for Showtime’s upcoming revival of the show, though his passing in January came too soon for him to film his parts.”
More at Flavorwire.
Sarah Waters’ Cultural Highlights
The novelist on unusual cinema experiences, LGBTQ history and the genius of Happy Valley (Source: The Guardian).
Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon to become HBO miniseries
Research photography for Kubrick’s Napoleon
Costume test for Kubrick’s Napoleon
Note written by Stanley Kubrick
Napoleon notes at the Kubrick Archive
“Jan Harlan, Stanley Kubrick’s executive producer, revealed some juicy news about Napoleon, Kubrick’s greatest unmade film. During the conference “Stanley Kubrick A Retrospective” held at the De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, last week, he said the project is going to happen as a HBO 6 hours miniseries, directed by Cary Fukunaga […]”
Source: A Stanley Kubrick tumblr.
Hear the Music of Twin Peaks Played by Xiu Xiu
The full album is available to stream online, free of charge (via Open Culture).
