LOOKING- Page 14
LOOKING
#325LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 9:14am
I honestly wouldn't mind it if Lynn and Dom remain friends. I have a feeling this show could give us a fresh take on the cliched one-sided relationship. Whatever happens, more Bakula, please! Love the smart, subtle work he's done thus far.
I can't remember if I mentioned this and it's 6am, so I'm going to be lazy and not bother checking, but if you enjoy Murray Bartlett, check him out in the gay love triangle film August. Very steamy.
Anyone going to Groff's Lincoln Center concert?
#326LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 12:18pm
I think this show would benefit from being longer too. Maybe just adding another 15 minutes. It always ends too quickly for me.
Episode 5, from what I'm hearing, is supposed to be really steamy.
Oh, Murray Bartlett is gorgeous in August. Highly recommend if you're a fan of his.
I'm going to Groff's concert tomorrow at 7:30. Really excited!!
#328LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 5:22pm
The clip of Groff singing I Got Lost In His Arms on the NYT website, which I think is promo for his concert, is absolutely lovely.
Horse, you did mention August but I'll have to check it out. Never heard of it, and I like to think I've heard of most gay indies. Then again, more often than not I don't bother with them anymore, simply because so many of them are so earnest (be they comedies or dramas) and... bad (TLA releasing is guilty of much of this.) When I was a teen in the 90s I would gobble down anything gay, and give it the benefit of the doubt, but there's SOOO much out there now, and the overall quality hasn't really improved (except for access to so many great foreign films -- I recently have discovered and enjoyed Argentine director Marco Berger's stuff, for example.)
I thought Little Dorritt was great. I suppose maybe it could be seen as twee, but it's faithful to the letter to Dickens, so take that or leave that (ie overly *good* and frankly bland main protagonists/love story, over the top camp comic characters and villains, supremely evil villain, enough coincidences to All My Children for a century, etc.) I thought it was nearly the equal of Bleak House, and it was an obvious followup serialized over so many episodes (yes it's long.) Part of the fun for me was watching it basically as it aired, over weeks, much as I imagine the original people following the serialized novel would have. Tovey's great though his character makes his Being Human character seem assertive and a LOT of other faces you'd recognize (the lead woman--forget her name--from Torchwood does a great job as a mentally impaired woman lol.)
Horse said: "
BTW, just wanted to add that I'm really enjoying Lauren Weedman's ("Doris") work on this show. I think she's doing really funny, interesting work in a fairly minor part. I hope we see a bit more of her if the show makes it past season 1. "
I LOVE her. She's an actress I always love, but she comes off so natural here. It's nice to see a female character like her--some of the negative reviews have called her the requisite fag hag. I don't see that whatsoever, and that's what I find refreshing. She enjoys her time with "the gays" and their world but, from the little we've seen, obviously has her own life as well. It's both a strength and a pity that that with a show this short you really can't have subplots for characters like her, though hopefully if a season 2 happens we can branch out a bit. (If it is a success d'estime, maybe HBO will pony up for 10 episodes next season. Seems only fair since Girls has 12 this year...)
One more comment about the length: it really does feel like a long movie to me, segmented up into little 30 minute chunks. Which can be frustrating, but it leaves me wanting more (they always know just when to cut to the end title card) and honestly with how busy my school and work load is this semester it's nice to have something to look forward to each week. I actually only caught up on the HBO Sunday shows a couple of days back because I was using them as a reward for finishing a paper. Sad, but true.
Someone commented on how if this was QAF (US) the supporting cast at Folsom would all be super hot leather daddies, but they seemed real here. We already discussed looks, but they actually did shoot at Folsom which apparently was VERY difficult logistically (just recording the voices.) This was the first episode not directed by Haigh, and I was impressed that it was visually true to the style he's established, and just as accomplished. BTW while not groundbreaking, the little three minute "inside the episode" things HBO.com has for all their shows are worth a watch for this one with Haigh and Lannan discussing each one.
(I know Lannan's short film, Lorimer, which was the basis for this used to be online --does anyone know if it still is?)
On another forum I was discussing the Herskovitz/Zwick dramas I love so much (thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, Once & Again, etc) and realized where I knew Frank from. He was from their flop webshow 1/4 Life, with his legit British accent (the show infamously aired one episode on NBC before being canceled--it was gimmicky but had a lot of potential and probably now could have had some success as an online or Hulu show but it was still too early.)
#329LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 5:52pm
Eric, you sold me on Little Dorritt, will be checking it out in the near future, I'm sure. Although, I really should get to Bleak House first.
And, hell yes to Marco Berger! His quiet, delicate films are models of restraint and tightly wound tension. I saw his most recent film, Hawaii, a few weeks ago and was surprised at how deeply touching I found it. But we're getting sidetracked here, perhaps it's time for an LGBT themed films thread.
#330LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 6:00pm
Glad to hear it! And yes, I might recommend Bleak House first as well.
I just watched Hawaii last weekend! Completely agree. Have we had a gay film thread here before? Anyway, we should.
To slightly get back to Looking, this isn't exactly a groundbreaking observation but it's interesting that Haigh's first film, before the excellent Waiting, was Greek Pete which I thought was interesting but not really that great. It was a half docu half fiction piece following a London male prostitute (basically the "actors" were all real people playing themselves but the scenes were staged albeit based on real scenes.) I know Haigh is exec producer and the head director but not officially a writer, but I can't help but think he instigated this storyline.
#331LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 8:40pmIt's funny, I hated Greek Pete, found Weekend pleasant but dull, but absolutely love Looking. Third time's the charm for me, I guess. As for an LGBT cinema thread, you can start that one, Eric. Any thread I attempt to start on here seems to have the kiss of death.
#332LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 9:21pm
I have to say it sounds like I liked Greek Pete more than I did. Ultimately I found it really dull, which it seems like the people really were so I guess he succeeded there?
I love Weekend, but I do think Looking's strength is it takes what I loved about Weekend but manages somehow to keep that style while actually giving it a *story*.
Ha well I did ask if others had seen Stranger By the Lake but that thread seemed to disappear. I'll start one later 
#333LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 9:25pmOh I meant to add, the Greek Pete/Augustine and the callboy story connection struck me as funny because, at least to me, it kinda seems to be gently mocking the very idea of what he wants to do (or at least implies he has ulterior motives) and yet that's exactly what Haigh did. Does he now regret the film or think it showed the work of an immature artist?
#334LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/14/14 at 9:35pm
Hmm. That's one to ponder. Later, though. It's v'day. I'm going to powder my nose, open Scruff and do some looking of my own! Happy V'day, queerbos!
Updated On: 2/14/14 at 09:35 PM
#336LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/15/14 at 1:01amWe should have a queer cinema thread! I watched Weekend because of the comments on it here and I really liked it. I've seen quite a few more, but I'm getting kind of tired of gay movies where the two guys don't end up together at the end. Seems like the majority of the time they end up splitting or one of them has to die a tragic death. A lot of the comedies like Long Term Relationship or Longhorns which do end happily don't necessarily have the best actors or the best production values, but they make me smile at least. I watched one recently called Strapped and really fell in love with it by the end.
#337LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/15/14 at 10:52amSo, um, no big deal here, but could we just confirm that none of the regular posters in this thread live in downtown LA? That would be great.
#338LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/15/14 at 3:23pmSan Diego for the record. Is that acceptable?
#339LOOKING (for a new show)
Posted: 2/16/14 at 10:08amHa. Yes, SD's great. I just happened to visit a Silverlake gentleman's apartment on Friday and before the main event commenced, I noticed that an episode of Looking was paused on his TV and that he had framed A Little Nigh Music and Follies showcards on his living room wall. So... you do the math.
#342LOOKING
Posted: 2/17/14 at 12:11amLOVED everything about this episode. I liked that they broached the "bottom shame" conversation in such a sweet and funny way. And, yes, this was definitely the closest to Weekend in both structure and tone. We only have 3 more eps, right? Man, if it comes back, I hope it gets expanded to at least 10 eps.
Luscious
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/20/05
#344LOOKING
Posted: 2/17/14 at 2:31am
Joe Swanberg pulled an Andrew Haigh/Weekend with the episode premise and it soared. Best episode by far. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.
Strummer Girl, I think you skipped ahead to ep 6 (next week's ep) on IMDB. Tonight's ep was directed by Andrew Haigh and written by Haigh and Michael Lannan. Unless IMDB's wrong.
I was just chatting about tonight's ep with a friend who adored Weekend and who always looks quizzically at me when I tell him I didn't really care for it. Funnily enough, after watching the episode of Looking which most resembles Weekend, I think I've realized why I didn't connect with that film. There are so many similarities between the two, but the huge difference is that we've had 4 episodes--2 full hours to truly understand Patrick's history, his relationships, his desires, his foibles. We had some of that with Raul as well. So when we dive into this beautiful, hazy lost day in SF with them, we've already bought into the story, we're already along for the ride with the characters and we can just let go and follow them down the rabbit hole. To me, everything that preceded tonight's episode made it all the sweeter and emotionally rewarding.
There's no way to know this for sure, but I think that had tonight's ep of Looking been the pilot, many of us would have found the story less involving and the characters less compelling. We also probably would have felt like Haigh was just repeating himself, but instead what he's done is evolve by deepening and enriching the kind of story he developed in Weekend. It's not a totally fair apples-to-apples comparison, but to me Weekend was like starting to watch Looking at episode 5.
I hope that doesn't sound like I'm dismissing peoples' appreciation of Weekend--I think there is much to be enjoyed in that film. But to me, it's more a film to be admired than loved. I feel the opposite of Looking.
#346LOOKING
Posted: 2/17/14 at 4:38am
I didn't want it to end. Horsey, you're right it was the most like Weekend (by default I guess, but Haigh did write and direct. Haigh has a solo writing credit on the actual episode, so I'll go with that over imdb, this time.)
I'll have more rambly thoughts tomorrow I think, after spending most of today with class work and watching the episode half asleep, but I completely agree with you, Horse. Man, I wish this series was not just 8 episodes long.
dramamama611
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
#347LOOKING
Posted: 2/17/14 at 5:47am
Loved the episode, quite endearing.
But then the previews for next week pissed me off.
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
dramamama611
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
#349LOOKING
Posted: 2/17/14 at 8:54amGlad I didn't say more! I won't spoil anything for you!
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
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