Sun, April 4, 2004
Deadwood: Alive with Pleasure!—10:37 PM
I originally tuned in to HBO's new series Deadwood because it seemed like a worthwhile idea and I'd heard somewhere that it's "more than just a western." Plus, you know, the nudity. Turns out, it's not much more than just a western. In fact, at first it appeared to be yet another of HBO's recent superficially complex but ultimately shallow and pretentious hour-long original series. It even had the requisite opening theme music – I swear, the themes to Carnivàle, Deadwood, and Six Feet Under are completely indistinguishable. But they hooked me in with Keith Carradine's dreary, laconic turn as Wild Bill Hickok, plus an interesting mixture of violence and Survivor-type alliance strategy. Two episodes later, they've now introduced Kim Dickens and Ricky Jay as the madam and casino boss, respectively, of a the town's new saloon. Sold! I'll stay around until they kill off those characters, at least. And it's a good thing – Carradine's performance is truly ingenious. Not since Clint Eastwood in A Perfect World have I seen such a magnificently tight-lipped and world-weary performance ("I do like tater tots."). But Carradine also adds ample wit and a splash of hackneyed apathy, making it impossible to turn away.
Also, Holy Christ am I in love with HBO's internal promotions! I've always enjoyed them, but lately they've gotten really inventive with their graphics and editing. Their "Two big movies. One big night." promotions have been dazzling me for months with their stunning achievements of visual juxtaposition. (In case you haven't seen them, they promote the premieres of back-to-back movies on HBO and Cinemax by running clips from the movies in split-screen, and the clips match up perfectly.) This week's match-up between Charlie's Angels and The Matrix: Reloaded is impressive, but nothing tops the first one I saw – managing to match films with such variations of theme, setting, and style as Unfaithful and Minority Report. It was truly astonishing the way they managed to line those clips up. Also new (at least to me) this week are the "You do the math" spots, which overlay perspective-matched clips of math equations on clips from their shows, and "What's a little networking between friends?" which superimposes clips from The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Carnivàle, Deadwood, and Curb Your Enthusiasm so that the characters really seem to be interacting. After doing similar (although much less arduous) match-up work for the Photoshop effects on the Athletic Reporter for the last year, I can really appreciate the hard work that goes into that sort of compositing. So, even if their shows mostly showcase preening pseudo-intellectual screenwriting run amok, between the Costas, the C Your E and the promo spots, HBO is still worth my $12 a month.
