Skip to main content

Two Ehs

I occasionally swap DVDs with a friend, and for our last exchange I received the movie follow-up to Deadwood and a mini-series called The Outsider. Since neither one dazzled me I thought I'd kill two ehs with one post.

I did like the original Deadwood cable series. It had far too much profanity and violence for me to love it, but most of the characters were excellent, the casting was inspired, the attention to detail with costumes and sets absolutely stellar -- plus it only lasted three seasons. Sometimes enough is enough.

Deadwood the movie takes place ten years after season three. It's mostly fanservice and nostalgia, and the plot is almost non-existant. I also think they aged some of the characters too much (Bullock looks like a senior citizen) and some not enough (Jane barely changed, and frankly she should be dead from all the nonstop drinking.) I liked the movie because it did provide some closure -- I liked how things wrapped up with Trixie and Seth -- but not enough to justify a movie. So eh.

The Outsider was based on a Stephen King novel, and really was just a dull, uninspired reimagining of It. I could not believe how ordinary and boring they tried to make everything look -- the cast, the settings, the pacing, the dialogue, the conflict -- it was blandfest. And slooooooow -- holy cow, I nearly nodded off every five seconds. I suppose all this was an artistic choice to make the series seem exactly as it would happen in real life -- only nobody lives like that. At the end, when the usual implausible King protagonist "We Must Kill It" shenanigans ensue, somehow they even made that seem tedious. There are multiple stories within the stories in the usual King droste effect style, and a few interesting characters (Holly and her guy, and the defense attorney) but otherwise, eh.

As a result I cannot recommend either, but if you're a masochist and want the DVDs, give me a yell in comments and I'll pass them along to you.

Comments

nightsmusic said…
I watched the first episode of Deadwood and that was it for me. I've never heard of the Outsiders. Thanks for taking one for the team ;)

Popular posts from this blog

Old Loves & Such

My guy kindly bought me my favorite Chinese take out the other night, and my fortune cookie offered up an interesting story starter: This sounds sweet, right? Only the first thing I thought of was an old love coming back from the dead . . . . must be October. In other lovely news, my favorite hand-dyed thread artist, Lorraine from Colour Complements , is moving her business from Etsy to her own web site. Many of my favorite sellers on Etsy are leaving due to the whole "free shipping" coercion debacle, which has also soured me on the site. To show support I did a little shopping at Lorraine's web site and got in these: I love her threads and trims; you simply can't buy anything like them anywhere. Her work makes my specialty thread box look like a treasure chest: At night I'm spending just as hour working on quilting the scrap project runner, and I'm making slow progress: I'll keep quilting the runner while I try to decide on a design for t...

Wild Ride

Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds is an epic, dazzling film that hurls you into the Korean version of the afterlife while showcasing some of the most impressive special effects I've ever seen in any movie. The story begins with the death of firefighter Kim Ja-Hong (Cha Tae-hyun) who jumps out of a burning building with a child in his arms. The kid lives, but he dies at the scene. Two strangers inform him that he has passed away right on schedule, and toss him into a vortex that takes him to the world of the afterlife, where he meets his three guardians: Gang-rim (Ha Jung-woo), Haewonmak (Ju Ji-hoon) and Lee Deok-choon (Kim Hyang-gi). At the gates of the afterlife Ja-Hong learns that he is considered a paragon (an exemplary person who lived a noble and self-sacrificing life) and is eligible to be reincarnated -- but there's a catch. First he has 49 days to make it through seven hells in which he will be judged on his sins. His three guardians will help and defend...

Progress

My guy is back home safe, sound and exhausted. I think he just realized he's over seventy now. :) I didn't finish a sewing project while he was gone, but I did make some progress on the beach bag. I've tacked down all the fabric elements on top of the old backing fabric I quilted. Time to break out the embroidery thread box and have some fun.