HBO lovecraft Country

[Bolt]

 

[TangledThorns]

HBO has some really good looking shows.

[jvmacross]

Ditched HBO, so won't be watching this until either the new GoT prequel or LOTR shows come out...if ever...looks interesting though

[Golden Arms]

Plan to check it out. I've been really excited for this.  The young woman is from Eves Bayou.  I think she grew up to a very gorgeous woman .  Perry Mason is another great show to check out.  As a kid I hated the original.  My mother was a huge fan of the show and it wasn't something someone of my age could appreciate at the time.  We grow up and my how things change!

[blackconvoy_D01]

Definitely watching this.

[TangledThorns]

11 hours ago, jvmacross said:

Ditched HBO, so won't be watching this until either the new GoT prequel or LOTR shows come out...if ever...looks interesting though

LOTR is going to PRIME.

 

 

[jvmacross]

4 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

LOTR is going to PRIME.

 

 

Good....another bonus for Amazon Prime membership!

[blackconvoy_D01]

13 hours ago, jvmacross said:

Good....another bonus for Amazon Prime membership!

Prime is a BS waste of money (IMHO) in comparison to HBO MAX. Except for Good Omens, The Boys and 4 movies. 

Lovecraft has been an amazing start.

[jvmacross]

2 hours ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

Prime is a BS waste of money (IMHO) in comparison to HBO MAX. Except for Good Omens, The Boys and 4 movies. 

Lovecraft has been an amazing start.

So besides providing entertainment, does HBO MAX deliver practically anything to your doorstep within a day...sometimes the same day?  

[Golden Arms]

I have HBO now on my Roku and watched it that way.  Same day of release.

 

[blackconvoy_D01]

8 hours ago, jvmacross said:

So besides providing entertainment, does HBO MAX deliver practically anything to your doorstep within a day...sometimes the same day?  

I'm speaking in the context of "Prime Video/ streaming" and the quality of content. 

The delivery side; ive used seldomly as of the last two months. Its easier and less expensive to buy what I need directly in a store lately.

This is my opinion only.

Edited August 17, 2020 by blackconvoy_D01

[TangledThorns]

9 hours ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

Prime is a BS waste of money (IMHO) in comparison to HBO MAX. Except for Good Omens, The Boys and 4 movies. 

Lovecraft has been an amazing start.

PRIME is just a bonus to Amazon's free fast shipping IMHO. But yeah, Amazon really needs to up their game if they want to compete against Netflix and HBO.

[jvmacross]

2 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

PRIME is just a bonus to Amazon's free fast shipping IMHO. But yeah, Amazon really needs to up their game if they want to compete against Netflix and HBO.

Exactly....but since I never signed up for prime for the entertainment aspect...it now surpasses the benefit I receive from HBO....at least for me....once it has at least a second good show or third....there will be no reason for me to get HBO....I'll just buy the Blurays of GoT via Amazon Prime...lol....oh and could care less about DC content

[Kanedas Bike]

So any other opinions of Lovecraft Country? - thanks @blackconvoy_D01

I didn't get to watch it last night but will check it out after work today.

-b.

[Focslain]

It felt like the opening to a game of Mansions of Madness, but set in the 60's.

There isn't much Lovecraft in the first episode outside the bookends. Nothing was more attention grabbing then seeing Jackie Robinson take on a starchild with a baseball bat. 

Our group of heroes has some brains to them and it's looking to get weirder in the coming weeks. If they can keep up on the creature effects this might turn out somewhat interesting.

[blackconvoy_D01]

4 hours ago, Kanedas Bike said:

So any other opinions of Lovecraft Country? - thanks @blackconvoy_D01

I didn't get to watch it last night but will check it out after work today.

-b.

It hit off similarly to Watchmen's first ep with some historical context, but then took a very scifi turn. It kept pace with survival horror, sci-fi and drama. I could not take my eyes off of Jurnee Smollett-Bell; she stole it. Jonathan Majors as the dork who became hot and dynamic really kept the pace going and was engaging.

Edited August 17, 2020 by blackconvoy_D01

[Kanedas Bike]

6 hours ago, Focslain said:

It felt like the opening to a game of Mansions of Madness, but set in the 60's.

There isn't much Lovecraft in the first episode outside the bookends. Nothing was more attention grabbing then seeing Jackie Robinson take on a starchild with a baseball bat. 

Our group of heroes has some brains to them and it's looking to get weirder in the coming weeks. If they can keep up on the creature effects this might turn out somewhat interesting.

 

6 hours ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

It hit off similarly to Watchmen's first ep with some historical context, but then took a very scifi turn. It kept pace with survival horror, sci-fi and drama. I could not take my eyes off of Jurnee Smollett-Bell; she stole it. Jonathan Majors as the dork who became hot and dynamic really kept the pace going and was engaging.

Thank you both!

Just finished Episode 1 and I thought it was fantastic. It also led me a rabbit hole bringing to light things I didn't know about H.P. Lovecraft. I'll just say that was disappointing, but all-in-all not surprising. 

In any event, super excited for the series and am about to go and track down a copy of Lovecraft Country.

-b.

 

*edit, yes Jurnee is flat out gorgeous  - beyond that I very much like that the 3 main characters are all smart and capable 

Edited August 17, 2020 by Kanedas Bike

[sqidd]

After the GOT, Watchmen and season 2/3 of Westworld dumpster fires I don't have high expectations.

[blackconvoy_D01]

28 minutes ago, sqidd said:

After the GOT, Watchmen and season 2/3 of Westworld dumpster fires I don't have high expectations.

I loved Westworld. 

[tekering]

36 minutes ago, sqidd said:

After the GOT, Watchmen and season 2/3 of Westworld dumpster fires I don't have high expectations.

I loved Watchmen.

[sqidd]

6 minutes ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

I loved Westworld. 

Season 1 was fatastic. Seasom 2 was pretty rough. Season 3 was a raging dumpster fire.

[Kanedas Bike]

2 hours ago, sqidd said:

After the GOT, Watchmen and season 2/3 of Westworld dumpster fires I don't have high expectations.

All entitled to opinions, even when they're very, very, very wrong. 

Granted, seasons 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones left a lot to be desired. 

1 hour ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

I loved Westworld. 

Agreed. Season 2 was a little rocky at points, but I thoroughly enjoyed Season 3 and am looking forward to the final season.

1 hour ago, tekering said:

I loved Watchmen.

100000 times yes, it was brilliant, even with extremely low expectations given Damon Lindelof's previous work Watchmen was excellently written and acted. As much as I'd love to see what happens I hope that they never follow-up the season and let it stand on it's own.

Re: Lovecraft Country, if one can't relate or don't care about the real world struggles of the protagonists or simply don't want to see that in your fiction, then it probably won't matter how well done the fictionalized horror (vs real world horror of racism) is. They're very much intertwined in the novel (from what I've read online - today) and the TV show. But I love that stories that I can personally relate to are finding their way to more and more mainstream media.  

Googling the poem written by H.P. Lovecraft that's referenced early on was eye opening, but like I said earlier I'm disappointed but at the end of the day not terribly surprised. 

-b.

[Golden Arms]

I loved watchmen and Got sans last season. Digging westworld, and loved seasons 1 and 3  of True Detective.

Yeah, Lovecraft was an open racist. 

Edited August 18, 2020 by Golden Arms

[Bolt]

As far as Lovecraft. The Dream Quest Of Unknown  Kadath is one of my favorite of his novellas. I love the Cthulhu stories as well. 

Edited August 18, 2020 by Bolt

[easnoddy]

So...Umbrella Academy season 2, HBO's Watchmen, Doom Patrol and Lovecraft Country are all wrapped up in the 50s/60s civil rights/pre-civil rights movement era?  Are sci-fi writers getting stuck?   Is this really the best decade to set their stories?  IMO Stranger Things picked a far superior decade.

[blackconvoy_D01]

24 minutes ago, easnoddy said:

So...Umbrella Academy season 2, HBO's Watchmen, Doom Patrol and Lovecraft Country are all wrapped up in the 50s/60s civil rights/pre-civil rights movement era?  Are sci-fi writers getting stuck?   Is this really the best decade to set their stories?  IMO Stranger Things picked a far superior decade.

More like an easier decade for us to reference (those in the late 30s to early 50s crowd). Asimov, Lovecraft, Heinlein, Verne, Wells, etc had some of their greatest works done from the 20s to the 60s. So why not show us how: in-part, the world was at that time and give us great scifi to boot?

[electric indigo]

10 hours ago, easnoddy said:

IMO Stranger Things picked a far superior decade.

Sex Education and Dark are also pretty successful at mining from the 80s.

[Kanedas Bike]

14 hours ago, easnoddy said:

So...Umbrella Academy season 2, HBO's Watchmen, Doom Patrol and Lovecraft Country are all wrapped up in the 50s/60s civil rights/pre-civil rights movement era?  Are sci-fi writers getting stuck?   Is this really the best decade to set their stories?  IMO Stranger Things picked a far superior decade.

...I mean, why not?

Sci-Fi can be set in the past, current or future, we've seen past decades touched before. I haven't watched Umbrella Academy or Doom Patrol but given the current state of affairs concerning civil rights I'm not surprised. This is also a subject matter that has generally been ignored in mainstream sci-fi, or at least not treated seriously (at least to my recollection) before.

That said, I'd like my horror and sci-fi to be more escapism than anything else, but 2 to 4 shows is still a pretty small sample size for the subject matter.

-b.

[Kanedas Bike]

So IMO Episode 2 wasn't as good as the the first. I watched it distracted on Sunday and missed a lot. The editing felt off, characters ended up in new or updated settings with almost no transition.

Re-watched it again just now and felt a smidge better about that, but I dunno, it just wasn't a strong an episode. I will say this there were some really compelling moments and the acting really makes you feel the last scene.

Hoping for some more even episodes moving forward. Ep 1 set up a great premise but the show has to deliver on that consistently.

-b.

[vladykins]

Episode 2 seemed to have a lot of editing issues. Stuff like they go into the basement of the tower looking for Tic's dad, pull the wall pieces out, see the passage and SUDDEN JUMP TO OUTSIDE Tic's dad is climbing out of the ground and they just walk up to him after he gets out.

Spoiler

I also felt like wiping out the cult and collapsing the house killed a plot that I figured would go on longer than two episodes.

And yes, Lovecraft was a racist and very much a product of his time. We have to remember this is pre-WW II, eugenics was actually a field of study in colleges. That said- most of his writing is more an attack on white trash "Catskill people" than anybody else. You want to see some racism from the same time period that people have "cleaned" over time? Get some old Agatha Christie novels.

 

[jvmacross]

I should have known by the lack of posts in this thread that this show was going to end up another Bad Robot dumpster fire....and it certainly did not fail at that...

Luckily, I binged it (hoping it would get better....but I should have known better) for free with the HBO Max free week trial....

The series started out well enough, but soon lost its way....by the end, it had no idea what kind of show it wanted to be.....don't waste your time with this

I don't think there has been any HP Lovecraft inspired work I ever liked.....like Stephen King's work....most of it fails to translate into film, well, maybe the reboot of IT, but that's about it (pun intended)....

[Kanedas Bike]

Actually, Season 1 ended up pretty amazing. For sure there were some un-even moments/episodes but when taken as a whole there was a cohesive season-long story that IMHO took some pretty daring risks with the genre. And I absolutely loved the subject matter over and above the horror elements.

Episode 8 "Jig-a-Bobo" was some of the creepiest TV I've seen in awhile. 

Hoping for Season 2.

-b.

[Big s]

I actually liked the show overall. I do think it started out strong, but loses it toward the end. There’s some interesting stuff going on but doesn’t seem handled well. I do however want to see more. I personally think the good outweighed the bad

[jvmacross]

The main problem with Lovecraft Country is that is had virtually nothing to do with "HP Lovecraft"....I thought I was going to get was a good dose of cosmic horror but it barely materialized.....got the bait and switch instead.....nice one HBO! 

[Kanedas Bike]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraft_Country_(novel)

-b.