Lovecraft Country

[Cyrrex]

First episode was a bit of a slow build to set the stage but that slow build also included a James Baldwin speech as the protagonists drove across Jim Crow America so big bonus points for the montage.

The final act was fuckin’ bonkers and the close with a cover of Sinnerman was chefskiss.gif.

So this is a one episode at a time release?  I always forget HBO does that.  I guess I can wait a bit, sounds promising though.

[jgsugden]

...
From the first episode there was a dismemberment, a guy lost an arm but it was relatively quick. No horrible body horror stuff so far.

I disagree.  
I was very happy with it.  The CGI was really well done.  The characters made sense to me.  I am intrigued.

[schild]

this was great

[Surlyboi]

...
From the first episode there was a dismemberment, a guy lost an arm but it was relatively quick. No horrible body horror stuff so far.

I disagree.  
I was very happy with it.  The CGI was really well done.  The characters made sense to me.  I am intrigued.

Meh, I cut my teeth on Miike body horror, so that shit was all low grade. YMMV.

[Sir T]

On the racism in Lovecraft, it wasn't always there. The Mountains of madness is very interesting as the Protagonist at the end identified with the monster, that it had woken up in the middle of a bunch of apes, had no idea what they were, and lhad ashed out in self defense and dissected some of the Men as it was a scientist and didn't know what they were.

[Sir T]

Also I ran across this as a decent adaption of Lovecraft, a 2005 low budget movie filmed like a 1920s silent movie. The reviews all are calling it the one faithful Lovecraftian adaption.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478988/?ref_=tt_sims_tti

[Johny Cee]

On the racism in Lovecraft, it wasn't always there. The Mountains of madness is very interesting as the Protagonist at the end identified with the monster, that it had woken up in the middle of a bunch of apes, had no idea what they were, and lhad ashed out in self defense and dissected some of the Men as it was a scientist and didn't know what they were.

It was sympathy for the Elder Things.... who were slavemasters.  The Shoggoth were rebelling slaves.  It was sympathy with a decidedly different creature, but one that was still involved in oppression.



Lovecraft's biases are both over and under discussed.  He was racist, but he was also broadly xenophobic, elitist, and generally just a misanthrope in his writings, with almost everyone being a monstrous caricature or a dumb unthinking beast.  Shit...  in the Outsider Lovecraft thought of himself (as most of his protagonists were just Lovecraft analogues) as a monster.  

Some other notable instances of Lovecraft hating:
The Terrible Old Man has three robbers who are Italian, Polish and Portugese.  Hint hint.  It is evil immigrants breaking into the wrong house.
Dunwich Horror is bascially just how terrible those incestous poor white people are.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep is again dim, bovine poor white person who is described as coming from a race of poor white people.  (there are a bunch of other stories with "degenerate rural white people")
Dreams in the Witch-House takes place in a Polish neighborhood...  lots of dehumanizing of the Polish immigrants goes on in the background.  It's really bad if you actually stop and notice it...  the baby that is sacrificed?  Police just assume the brutish Polish boyfriend got rid of it/caused the mother to get rid of it because the kid wasn't his.  Surprisingly, Nyleralathotep was not terrible.  Yah, evil was black but "pitch black with caucasian features" so.... yea?
Etc.


Yah, his views were moderating as he aged.  There are also stories that can be read in entirely different contexts.  

- Shadow over Innsmouth?  A common critique is that it is about miscegenation, and definitely has some of those elements.  I choose to read it as about the heritibility and horror involved in inherited diseases, specifically mental illnesses.  It also reads like an anti-colonial narrative:  more "advanced" people come from the sea.  Trade trinkets.  Slowly supplant, take over, and forcefully interbreed with the local population while imposing their own religion.  Usually peaceful, but when stymied respond with force including mass murder and terror weapons.

- Whisperer in the Shadows can also be read as resource extraction/colonial narrative...  Mi-Go are coming to mine shit.  Pay off locals with trinkets, institute their religion, disappear those that squawk, and also abduct people to take back home to show them off (brain jars... odd parallels to how Columbus and others brought natives back to Europe)



So yes:  Horrible racist.  And xenophobe.  And elitist.  Pretty much instinctively hated all non-Upper Middle Class raised WASPs...  and also kind of filled with self-loathing.  The White Supremacy angle is dumb, as are the sexism charges.  

[Surlyboi]

I agree with a lot of that but the white supremacy angle still fits, considering at it's core it is pretty much self-loathing projected outward.

[rattran]

The HP Lovecraft Historical Society produced 1920s-ish Call of Cthulhu is good, the 2011 pseudo-50s style Whisperer in Darkness is also good.

[MournelitheCalix]

...
From the first episode there was a dismemberment, a guy lost an arm but it was relatively quick. No horrible body horror stuff so far.

I disagree.  
I was very happy with it.  The CGI was really well done.  The characters made sense to me.  I am intrigued.

So was I.  Maybe its just me but J. J. Abrams seems to be better at making compelling TV series then he is at making movies.

[Velorath]

Abrams is an Executive Producer on about a million different projects at any given time. I think people really tend to overestimate how much he actively works on most things his name is attached to. I'm pretty sure anything that Bad Robot has a hand has to list Abrams as a Producer. Even Peele, despite being credited as co-creator with Misha Green isn't credited as a writer for any of the episodes nor as a director (although the second half of the season doesn't have directors announced yet). This seems to be largely Green's show as she appears to be credited as co-creator, showrunner, and writer or co-writer on every episode.

[jgsugden]

Interesting second episode.  I have no idea where this thing is going, but the journey seems wildly fun.

[Surlyboi]

Agreed. This one was a glorious mess.

I’m still willing to stick it out.

[MournelitheCalix]

The HP Lovecraft Historical Society produced 1920s-ish Call of Cthulhu is good, the 2011 pseudo-50s style Whisperer in Darkness is also good.

I couldn't find this earlier, but there is also a foreign film called Dagon that I found pretty good for a low budget film.   I would give that a shot if your wanting to see a pretty good Cthulhu Mythos film.

[HaemishM]

Dagon is decent SyFy level schlock.

The second episode was good fun. I expected them to stretch that whole thing out a couple of episodes at least, so was quite surprised by the ending. And from what I saw of the trailer for next week, I have no fucking idea where this thing is going and I'm ok with that.

[Johny Cee]

The HP Lovecraft Historical Society produced 1920s-ish Call of Cthulhu is good, the 2011 pseudo-50s style Whisperer in Darkness is also good.

I couldn't find this earlier, but there is also a foreign film called Dagon that I found pretty good for a low budget film.   I would give that a shot if your wanting to see a pretty good Cthulhu Mythos film.

Not really a foreign film.  Set in Spain, follows (roughly) the plot of "Shadow over Innsmouth" and directed by Stuart Gordon (Re-animator, From Beyond).  Honestly, any of the Stuart Gordon movies are good B-movies in the original sense of the description. 


The Colour Out of Space just came out this winter.  Directed by Richard Stanley, starring Nicholas Cage, Joely Richardson, and Tommy Chung.  Pretty solid, definitely feels like a real movie and not like a B movie....  pretty well reviewed.  He is working on the Dunwich Horror right now.

[Khaldun]

Lots of genre horror has had Lovecraftian elements over the years, too--From Beyond, Cast a Deadly Spell, the first Hellboy film, etc

[jgsugden]

After the first scene of the first episode, I said, "WTF?  Where the hell is this going?"
When the accident occurred, I rewound for a second to look again.  I said, "WTF?  Where the hell is this going?"
When they encountered the police chief I said, "Ah, I knew this was going to happen and … WTF?  Where the hell is this going?"
When the first episode ended I said, "Ah, OK.  Now I know where this is going."
The second episode began and the music kicked in and I said, "Nope.  I have no idea where this is going."
They saw the tower and I was like, "Ah, OK.  Finally.  Here is the structure I was expecting.  We'll … oh, I guess they'll come back."
Then the last act of episode 2 took off and I just drank it in.  At the end of the episode, I was shaking my head as pretty much the entire season structure I'd envisioned was out. 

I am loving this show so far, but I hope this all adds up a bit more by the end of the season to a bit more of a cohesive story.  There are elements there, but they're throwing chaos on top of all of it and tearing away things as quickly as thy build them up.  I want to feel like everything added up to the season climax.  In other words, I don't want it to wander between chaotic moments with no real build like Lost did.

[grebo]

Omar!

[Surlyboi]

Ok, ep 3 continued to be random but so good.

[Khaldun]

The random is faithful to the source--it's essentially a series of stories in a similar/connected setting.

[jgsugden]

Random, but not random in the end. 

I get the feeling I am either going to love this at the end of the season, or be hugely let down.

[HaemishM]

This one definitely felt disconnected from the previous episode right up until the end. Still good just not up to the high standards of the first two episodes.

[Velorath]

I'm fine with some interspersed MOTW middle episodes loosely connected to the main plot. I don't think you can maintain the pace of the first two episodes for another eight.

Also while the CGI for the show has been very hit or miss, overall I thought the visuals were very good in this one.

[schild]

The only terrible cgi this far was crotch snake. It looked like it was rendered a decade ago. Hell. Nearly pre Jurassic Park.

[Surlyboi]

Weighing in to say Journee Smolett Bell is hot AF.

[jgsugden]

Weighing in to say Journee Smolett Bell is hot AF.

Things that go without saying for $500, Alex.

[Velorath]

Weighing in to say Journee Smolett Bell is hot AF.

Agreed, and not to suggest she hasn't been attractive in everything else she's been in (although the Birds of Prey costumes didn't really do anybody any favors), but the look she's got going in this show really works for her.

[HaemishM]

She was hot in Birds of Prey but yeah, the costuming (and really any other efforts) on everyone but Harley Quinn were pretty shit. This one, though, she is just straight fire.

[Velorath]

Still diggin' this and tonight's episode was a fun little diversion into Indy/National Treasure/Goonies territory.

[jgsugden]

My current favorite show - but I still feel like it is 509-50 on whether I am very happy at season end or very disappointed. 

[HaemishM]

I think it's biggest flaw right now is that I don't feel a cohesive direction - it feels very disconnected from episode to episode. I feel like I should be expecting there to be an overarching narrative but the threads in each episode are really thin.

[Velorath]

I don’t know, I kinda like that it feels like a show and not a 10 part miniseries.

[HaemishM]

It's become such a ingrained thing with most of the bingeable shows now that it's almost jarring when I have to treat a season as less than a season long narrative arc.

[jgsugden]

I think we learn a little something at the end of each episode that turns seemingly unrelated material into an indication of something more cohesive.  I don't think we'll know what the finale is about until half way through it... the question is whether it pays off everything.