Wednesday, March 26, 2014

034: Hannibal 2x04 "Takiawase" - Fridging, Mushroom Whispers, Murder Dungeons, and Frippery



SPOILERS UP TO (and including) HANNIBAL 2x04, as well as potential spoilers for HANNIBAL 2x05

In this episode:
  • Cleolinda joins us again! Hi Cleo!
  • Discussion of Hannibal 2x04 "Takiawase," including the ungainly horror of the uncanny valley (yes, again), Amanda Plummer's portrayal of the Killer of the Week (KotW for all you kool katz in the housebutKATZOHNOBEVERLY), Zeller and his ability to deliver one hell of a side-eye (BEVERLY WHYYYYYYYY), and Beverly, whether or not she was fridged, what that means for the show's plot and what we can glean about the philosophy of the writing from this decision.
  • Wild Walls are a thing, by the way. Don't say we never taught you nothin'.
  • Aside from that, we also manage to get into a weird discussion of the Worf Effect, Will's memory palace, and a whole lot of other nonsense.
  • Cleolinda introduces us to the most disturbing idea for a fanfic ever. Seriously, not safe for your soul, guise.
  • We speculate a little more on the Admirer storyline, what this means for our previous speculations (mostly just egg on our face. Eggy eggy egg on the face of the Matter of Taste podcasters. Or at least, that's what I'm assuming now. If I'm wrong about this, does that make it double egg or single egg because being right in Hassun negates going back on it now? Something to ponder.)
  • We talk about Constantine for a little bit. I'm SO EXCITED but SO NERVOUS, you have no idea.
  • Oh, here's a link to Bryan Fuller's AV Club interview re: Takiawase
 THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:
  • There's no way we can actually be as nuanced as one would need to be to give due deference to both the complaints about the way the show has handled Bev's departure from it and the defenses of the writers in how heavily they weighed the decision before they made it. That said...
  • This is an image from a game Ian was referencing in regards to Beverly stepping down into the murder dungeon. Is it from Silent Hill? Is it from some other game series it's from Silent Hill.
  • This is the mixed media piece that Ian references.
  • Without further ado, here's some highlights from Ian's timestamps this week:
    • 34:49 - Splice “Pathetique” in right here if you want--I uploaded the section I was talking about to the Google Drive (Piano Sonata in C minor). I would fade it out around the 30 second mark if you do use it.
      Or you can delete my tangent into Romantic-era music; I won’t be hurt. It’s also my dream that Sleepy Hollow uses “Broken Crown” by Mumford & Sons for a night-time horse chase scene, if they ever have more of those.
      (...Der Erlkönig would be another cool one for Hannibal. I’ll stop now.)
    • 1:01:03 - 1:02:15 - You can totally cut my comparison to the screencap from Silent Hill if it feels like too much of a tangent. It’s kind of dumb. I’m DUMB, Fio. SO DUMB. [/cries in a corner clutching a Pyramid Head doll]
    • 1:31:13 - This is when I first mention we should start wrapping things up. There’s still 22 minutes left in the recording. X)
  • IAN EDIT FROM THE FUTURE: For those curious, this is the Beethoven piece I was referring to--the 1st movement of his "Pathetique." The 2nd movement is possibly more famous, but has a MUCH different feel than what I was talking about.
Music:
  • Intro: "Taps," which is... it's "Taps," you guise. Also, "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
  • Outro: "Cups" - Anna Kendrick | YouTube | iTunes |

http://archive.org/download/AMOT034/AMOT034.mp3

7 comments:

  1. Yes, Hannibal Lecter was Mason Verger's court-appointed therapist, I don't remember over what exactly (he refers to it vaguely as 'the thing with the kids' or something like that).

    I think Will gets put in the mask after he asks the Admirer to kill Hannibal Lecter. Remember, Chilton is recording everything down there.

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    1. OH DAMN I just remembered what else I was going to say: Dolarhyde (career-wise) could be one of those people who processes physical media into digital. You know, the guy you take old home movies to so you can get them on a CD, my Dad took a bunch of my brother's football videos to someone in that way. He could also be a freelance photographer, someone who goes and does, like weddings and birthday parties and shit for affluent people. Or all of the above.

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    2. I think freelance photographer might make a little more sense. I thought about the analog-to-digital-converter-man-dude angle, but I'm actually not sure how many of those still exist/how prevalent they are. I think I remember seeing commercials about those places a while back, but I'm not sure how many are still around. That said, I have utterly zero data on the popularity of people who cut home movies into cheesy presentations at the time Red Dragon was written, so the entire point could be moot.

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    3. I don't know how common it was, but I know that my mom's folks did that. There was a bunch of old 8mm film running around for a while before my Uncle Charles got it all converted to dvd a few years back, and they started filming stuff in the late fifties/early sixties, so it can't be all that uncommon.

      Red Dragon is set in 1980, which is when the VHS/Betamax war was just starting to heat up and, from what I can tell, before either format of tape became cheap enough for home movies on tape to be common and feasible. A lot of home cameras still taped on 8mm film, from what I can tell.

      Though, since they're bringing it all into the 21st century, he could just look for people by searching for family videos on youtube (genericvideotube, I guess) and tracing them from there. Then his form of employment wouldn't really matter, except that it brings him into contact with Reba, somehow.

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  2. Hi guys! De-lurking to say great podcast! I especially enjoy it when Cleolinda pops up - you three make a great team. The links are awesome; I'd already read Hetienne Park but I it was my first time reading bonearenaofmyskull. Lots of good insights there - I'll have to start following her. Keep up the great work... *slinks back into the shadows*

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  3. Great show, guys! I was really happy to hear the discussion of Abigail's first scene with Will, since my first thought upon seeing it was, "Oh hey, the AMoT guys will enjoy the callback!" What's striking to me in that scene (aside from how it tore my heart up) is that Abigail's dialogue with Will about hunting vs. fishing is the exact same as her dialogue from episode 12 in the last season - just in a much happier, bouncier way, and this time Will has a reply for her as well. It adds to the tragic callback factor while also making it kind of tragic that Will could never help Abigail get to this point where the pain of what her Dad did wasn't so overwhelming. And they both *smile* aaagh.

    (I find that tragedy more compelling than the death of Beverly, if only because the latter seems so damn useless right now. And I know, I know, there are "horror tropes" being played with in terms of going down into the dark Silent Hill basement, but as a federal investigator, Bev should know that the secret to B and E is get in and get out toot de suite. Noting that there's something beneath her and needing to look at it are two different things. In other words, curiosity shouldn't have killed the Katz, dammit.)

    I've also pondered what Dolarhyde's new job could be, and it creepily occurred to me that he, um, doesn't really need video processing to get the inside look into people's lives anymore - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare make it quite easy to figure out where people are and what they're doing during their day-to-days. Hell, I play a Facebook game that *encourages you to add strangers* to your flist so you'll have partners to play it with. Not that I think Bryan Fuller is going to push for Dolarhyde the Candy Crush champion, but the drop in privacy awareness these days does allow for a lot more options than just a job with photography.

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    1. That's a good point, about Dolarhyde's career, but I would pay ALL the money for Frances Dolarhyde, Candy Crush Champ

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