(March 6, 2014 at 9:35 am)LostLocke Wrote: I might have to disagree on that a bit. Maybe.

The problem might be that I saw Silence of the Lambs before Manhunter. In fact, I never heard of Manhunter before SotL, and it was only because of SotL that I read Red Dragon then learned there was a movie made of it.

Now, I have no problem with Mann, and I'm an 80s baby, but Manhunter was so 80s stylized, clean, sterile, etc... that it just left a sour taste in my brain. Maybe it was a good work relative to Mann, but being part of the Lechter series I just can't look past its shortcomings from that perspective.
SotL, and eventually the new Red Dragon, were far more close to what I'd expect from those books.... Earthy, dark, surrealistic..etc.

But that's just my 2 copper. (Adjusted for the king's inflation that would probably be about 1 electrum and 4 silver these days)

That's pretty much what I was saying; Red Dragon is a good film and a better complement to the other films in the series. As a standalone film, Manhunter is quite good, even if you pretty much have to forget that it was adapted from another book to see that (which is more or less what I do when watching it.)

Really liked the first season of Hannibal. A whole new slant, and compelling watching. The sick twists and torment are there. Not so sure about the Will Graham character, but it's still very enjoyable.

Darn I was just about to finally dump Sky.

I really dig the artistry and the symbolism in Hannibal. Every serial killer is an artist; even Hannibal, the way he takes parts of his victims and turns them into culinary delights.

Apparently, about half of the Bates Motel viewers like Norman's mom, and half want him to just kill her already. I'm just interested to see how far the writers take their relationship. I do have one quibble, though. I don't really think that killers with DID would take trophies.

Where and when is Hannibal on?

(March 11, 2014 at 7:33 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Where and when is Hannibal on?

Hannibal is on Fridays at 10 EST in the US.
You'll have to look it up if you're not in the US.

Boths shows are ok, but nothing more.

They run a distant second to shows like Breaking Bad and Walking Dead

UK

(March 5, 2014 at 8:59 pm)futilethewinds Wrote: You can supplement the show with a viewing of Red Dragon. Red Dragon is an alternate course of events with some of the same characters - Will Graham, Hannibal Lector, and Jack Crawford are all in it, though played by different actors (Sir Anthony Hopkins is of course Hannibal Lector). However, Red Dragon is very similar to Silence of the Lambs as far as plot. What's going on in the Hannibal TV show is far more interesting. I would tell you more but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Holy hell there are so many things wrong with that statement. Red Dragon the movie is one of the worst thrillers of all time, and one of the worst remakes too. The plot is similar?

Red Dragon (the novel) has a plot centred around the antagonist - Dolarhyde - and the protagonist - Graham. Dolarhyde has a split personality - or at least believes he does - and furthermore believes that he can become stronger by allowing the "Great Red Dragon" to thrive. A central theme is also Graham's obsessive compulsions and hence the way the book ends, both the movies changed the ending to a "happier" one. Crawford is depicted as deliberately using Graham without regard to his health or wellbeing, and Lecter is desperately seeking revenge against Graham for capturing him.

The Sequel - Silence of the Lambs - has a plot centred around the protagonist, Clarice Starling. Crawford, knowing that Lecter sent Graham mad resulting in him becoming an alcoholic, and thus afraid to interview him himself decides to send Starling to interview Lecter. This time Lecter is presented as a literal cannibal, perhaps to make his character more menacing. Although Lecter knows the identity of the Buffalo Bill serial killer, he is more interested in escaping and then enacting revenge against Crawford, Chilton, and everyone else who he hates.

The movie is surprisingly accurate to the book's story, except for Benjamin Raspail, in the film Raspail is killed by Buffalo Bill and not Lecter, which allows for a death's-head moth to be found inside his head thus proving that Lecter knows the identity of Bill. Offhand I can't remember how the novel originally handled proving this link, if it did at all.

So, in summary, in the first book Crawford selfishly uses Graham to catch a serial killer, and in the second book Lecter selfishly uses Starling to escape from Baltimore State. He does not try to help Starling more than he has to in order to escape, but he is impressed when she catches Bill.

I might add that the 2002 remake would have been more like the book and less like SOTL if it hadn't used material from SOTL in the story. The reason why Bill kills Raspail in the SOTL movie is because in the book he kills Klaus, the FBI discover the moth in his throat and Raspail is the link, thus with the simplifying of the story, Klaus is removed and the moth moves from his throat to Raspail's.

The conclusion of SOTL is that Starling has in fact captured one serial killer, saving one life - but has also allowed the other to go free costing five lives. One the one hand she's saved Catherine, but on the other she's released Lecter who's wasted no time in killing officers Pembry and Boyle (who facilitate his escape through their own incompetence), and then the two paramedics in the ambulance (which Lecter calls in advance in order to ensure it arrives quickly) and then "Lloyd Wyman" in order to steal his identity, and finally ends with him plotting revenge against Chilton.

(March 11, 2014 at 7:36 pm)futilethewinds Wrote:

(March 11, 2014 at 7:33 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Where and when is Hannibal on?

Hannibal is on Fridays at 10 EST in the US.
You'll have to look it up if you're not in the US.

It's on after Grimm on Friday nights, which is a very good reason I should catch up with season 1 and 2 and start watching it.

(Grimm filmed the finale of one of their episodes on my family's industrial property just over a year ago)