The trailers look wild - I'm pretty excited. Would you recommend the novel?
I've been catching up on a few HBO shows lately, and they've all been pretty solid.
- Watchmen was fun, weird, and gripping. Based on some of the feedback from folks who watched when it came out, I expected it to be more difficult to watch or stick with, but I thought it was pretty thrilling, and the characters and plotlines were so carefully drawn - I was impressed by how many of the bizarre elements came together and made some kind of sense by the end of it. The Looking Glass guy's backstory was really interesting. The eighth episode, "A God Walks Into Abar" blew me away, too. I'm a sucker for gut-wrenching storylines that somehow avoid total despair like that. I wonder how episode 6 (when Angela sees the memories) would have struck me if I'd watched it before I knew the names "George Floyd," "Breonna Taylor," and "Ahmaud Arbery." The last few minutes of the last episode though (when Angela goes out by the pool in her backyard) didn't really work for me, though, and felt a little cheap.
- Years and Years was really interesting and sucked me in, too. It was really interesting see the rise of authoritarianism in the near future through the lens of a complicated family with a wide range of views and experiences, flawed relationships, plenty of conflict, but an enduring love for each other underneath it all. I loved hearing each of the family members' unsolicited takes on what was going on in each other's lives - it felt like a real family in that way.
- I'm halfway through I Know This Much Is True right now, and I'm definitely hooked, but just bracing for impact of how this all will end. Mark Ruffalo is brilliant and tough in a pool of talent where everyone is at or near the top of their game. Juliette Lewis in that first episode seems like she's having so much fun as that character. Kathryn Hahn and Rosie O'Donnell are captivating, too. Every single second of the show just feels so significant, you can't look away. You can feel the crushing weight of all of these situations bearing down on Dominick, and there's something heart-breaking about how ordinary it all seems while actually being just nearly unbearable if you're the person trying to deal with it all. Watching Dominick try to hold it all together and seeing his exasperation and Thomas's desperation and their backstories from when they were kids just hits so hard. It reminds me a lot of how it felt watching Tom Hardy in "Warrior," but I'm not holding out hope for as positive of an ending in this show. It feels much more personal for Ruffalo than many of his other roles. The guy who plays the younger version of the brothers is incredible, too - you really get that sense of simultaneous love/anger/loyalty/resentment that binds the brothers together. That "you are me, Dominick" scene just felt so raw.
- I also watched Bad Education [which was just a movie, not a show], and I had high expectations with Hugh Jackman and Alison Janney. It started off pretty well, but got pretty sad and boring by the end of it. I feel like it focused too much on the perpetrators and their motivations (i.e. uh, yeah, greed - what else?) and not enough on the amateur investigative work that ultimately uncovered the bad behavior. It was just kind of depressing without really being that interesting.
But yeah - I might need something a little lighter to watch next - I want to watch Perry Mason, and am hoping it's not quite as heavy as these shows have been.
