American Crime Story

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flyonthewall2983
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American Crime Story

#1 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Feb 13, 2016 12:41 am

Watched the first two episodes of American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson. Some good-to-possibly-great performances with a macabre sense of mid-90's nostalgia (for me anyway).

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colinr0380
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Re: TV of 2016

#2 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Feb 13, 2016 7:20 am

It shows how closely I follow these things but this series has finally made me realise where the Kardashians came into celebrity culture from! Though I seem to remember at the time finding Judge Lance Ito the most fascinating figure of the whole spectacle as a kind of charismatic, yet gnomic figure that I probably read far too much into in terms of respect for authority! Though I did like that he seemed to act as a non-reactor at the eye of the storm contrasting against the wildly theatrical performances of the grandstanding lawyers!

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Re: TV of 2016

#3 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Feb 14, 2016 12:10 am

If nothing else, David Schwimmer is incredible as Robert Kardashian. Such a heartbreaking turn, especially in the 2nd episode.

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Andre Jurieu
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Re: TV of 2016

#4 Post by Andre Jurieu » Mon Feb 15, 2016 12:16 pm

colinr0380 wrote:It shows how closely I follow these things but this series has finally made me realise where the Kardashians came into celebrity culture from! Though I seem to remember at the time finding Judge Lance Ito the most fascinating figure of the whole spectacle as a kind of charismatic, yet gnomic figure that I probably read far too much into in terms of respect for authority! Though I did like that he seemed to act as a non-reactor at the eye of the storm contrasting against the wildly theatrical performances of the grandstanding lawyers!
I'm more interested in watching this now that I know it inspired a three exclamation-mark mini-review from colin. That's high praise!

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Re: TV of 2016

#5 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Feb 15, 2016 5:30 pm

I'm still unconvinced - its value certainly will be revealed in time, but Ryan Murphy is a very poor visual director (if an above average director of actors) and there are inexplicable moments (largely to do with camera movement) in this that never fail to take me right out of it. And the Kardashian "hey, you know who those kids are?!" moments seem to be worse each time they come up, and I don't even have the bone to pick with the Kardashian clan that most people do.

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Re: TV of 2016

#6 Post by cdnchris » Mon Feb 15, 2016 6:01 pm

The Kardashian stuff is cringe-worthy at times, more because of how the scenes are presented, sort of jimmied in there. Travolta's also killing me because I feel like all he's doing is an impersonation of Vince Vega doing an impersonation of Shapiro, and a lousy one at that. BUT, I am impressed with everyone else. Gooding isn't interested in doing an impersonation and is actually delivering a decent performance, and everyone else, Schwimmer included, are also good. Plus it's hard for me to completely hate anything Bruce Greenwood is in, even if it's something like Double Jeopardy (shudder). I'm admittedly into it, though, and will more than likely stick it out.

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Re: TV of 2016

#7 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Feb 15, 2016 6:17 pm

Travolta's Shapiro reminds me of Will Ferrell doing James Lipton. They got some of the mannerisms but are nowhere near getting their voices right. Gooding is okay but there are obviously some differences between him and OJ that acting ability (which he's doing well at here) can't overcome.

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Re: TV of 2016

#8 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Feb 15, 2016 7:19 pm

Andre Jurieu wrote:I'm more interested in watching this now that I know it inspired a three exclamation-mark mini-review from colin. That's high praise!
Sorry, I didn't mean to mislead you! Don't count that as a recommendation as yet, as the first episode was only shown on the BBC this evening - I was mostly just speaking from 20 year old memories of watching those episodes from the trial itself, and this new drama being the first time I'd made the Kardashian linkage!

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Re: TV of 2016

#9 Post by Numero Trois » Tue Feb 16, 2016 2:56 am

colinr0380 wrote:...that I probably read far too much into in terms of respect for authority! Though I did like that he seemed to act as a non-reactor at the eye of the storm contrasting against the wildly theatrical performances of the grandstanding lawyers!
Indeed to a fault. After all, it was up to him on whether or not to have the trials televised. The Kardashians are just continuing what he helped incubate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay ... 96905.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://variety.com/2014/tv/columns/jud ... 201222205/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: American Crime Story

#10 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Feb 16, 2016 5:01 am

Yes, he did seem to have very much of an "I'm going to allow this" attitude to all of the hijinks!

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Re: American Crime Story

#11 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Mar 19, 2016 11:44 am

I'm caught up on the show now. It's a crowd as to who the show's MVP is, but I think Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark is certainly the front-runner. I wish that the show was a bit more slavish to the facts (not showing what day it is during the trial for example), but it's doing a hell of a job in other regards. Nathan Lane as F. Lee Bailey is a surprise.

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Re: American Crime Story

#12 Post by Soothsayer » Sun Mar 20, 2016 9:22 am

IMO, Courtney B. Vance as Johnny Cochran is far and away the best performance on this show.

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Re: American Crime Story

#13 Post by Polybius » Sun Mar 20, 2016 4:51 pm

Agreed. I haven't seen much of this but Vance (as always) has impressed me mightily with his work.

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Re: American Crime Story

#14 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Mar 23, 2016 2:03 pm

The actress who played the juror first sporting a black wardrobe played Mrs. Nordberg in the first Naked Gun movie.

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Re: American Crime Story

#15 Post by Werewolf by Night » Wed Mar 23, 2016 4:55 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:It's a crowd as to who the show's MVP is, but I think Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark is certainly the front-runner.
Soothsayer wrote:IMO, Courtney B. Vance as Johnny Cochran is far and away the best performance on this show.
Courtney B. Vance and Sarah Paulson are both doing great work. I hope they get some Emmy recognition for their work on this show.

The show does a great job with era-specific music, too. I had completely forgotten that Folk Implosion's "Natural One" even existed until last night.

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Re: American Crime Story

#16 Post by Davy Gallagher » Wed Mar 23, 2016 8:02 pm

Paulson is always great. The quality of her work in the Horror Story series deserves all sorts of awards but being genre, gets overlooked.

Vance is fantastic and Travolta is staying just shy of being too much. The only downer is Nathan Lane who is playing his role as a cartoon.

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Re: American Crime Story

#17 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Mar 23, 2016 10:28 pm

Even the use of music not specific to 1995 works too, like using Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" in last night's episode.

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Andre Jurieu
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Re: American Crime Story

#18 Post by Andre Jurieu » Thu Mar 31, 2016 5:44 pm

Though Queen did enjoy a huge resurgence in the 90s due to Wayne's World, so it does feel "of the era" in a certain way.
Werewolf by Night wrote:I had completely forgotten that Folk Implosion's "Natural One" even existed until last night.
I always wondered how that song was never more well-regarded and omnipresent within pop-culture. I think it kind of got lost because it debuted in a sort of in-between period, after grunge had started its decline and everyone was trying to figure out what the next stage of alt-rock was going to sound like. Of course, I'm totally biased since I was an adolescent at the time, so my whole perspective of that period is warped.

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Re: American Crime Story

#19 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Mar 31, 2016 8:00 pm

Gonna be honest, I'm going to kind of miss this cast and these characters. It really made me aware of the whole mess that the case was. I was 10 and 11 when it all happened, so I was kind of shielded from it and it also didn't consume my attention as it might have if I were a bit older. I do remember hearing the 911 tapes on CNN, and was kind of mortified by them. Even still my naive thinking was skewed towards thinking OJ was framed, because that's what his team was pushing on heavily. And the way it's showing the feeding frenzy of the media mixed with the outrage of citizens, you can't help but draw comparisons to this current mess of an election.

If Murphy and his guys can pull this off again for a 2nd season I'd be very surprised. I kind of feel about this the way I did about the first season of True Detective, that whatever will follow it up will stand long in it's shadow and possibly suffer for it.

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Re: American Crime Story

#20 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Tue Apr 05, 2016 3:20 pm

Schwimmer is the standout for me so far. The whole series balances the high camp and serious drama stuff really well.

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Re: American Crime Story

#21 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Apr 07, 2016 2:08 pm

I didn't see much camp value beyond the appearances of the Kardashian kids, which you see much less of after a certain point.

The finale was devastating, on nearly every level.

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Re: American Crime Story

#22 Post by beamish13 » Thu Apr 07, 2016 5:23 pm

I absolutely loved this series. I think the portrayal of Chris Darden deserves a lot of praise as well. The show is very careful to separate him from Johnnie Cochran in virtually every respect, but the two are never depicted as being true antagonists. The experiences that both of them had and which informed their approaches to dealing with the system they operate within and the LAPD were so artfully and intelligently handled (e.g. Darden explaining his frustration and despair over being viewed as being admitted to law school due to affirmative action-which was repealed in California when these events occurred, and illustrates how race always helps to define the American cultural zeitgeist).

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Re: American Crime Story

#23 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Apr 07, 2016 5:28 pm

Andre Jurieu wrote:Queen did enjoy a huge resurgence in the 90s due to Wayne's World, so it does feel "of the era" in a certain way.
I think it fit in more with the R&B/funk music that was largely out of the era, but fit in with the show.

My two favorite little moments were when Darden called into the radio station to say that Marcia was a "babe", and when Shapiro is yelling at his TV when F. Lee Bailey "defends" him to Larry King.

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Re: American Crime Story

#24 Post by guidedbyvoices » Thu Apr 07, 2016 11:30 pm

I thought the series was great. At first I thought the casting of travolta's eyebrows and Nathan lane as f Lee Bailey was just bizarre, but it worked, just helped with the feel of the whole thing being surreal and how hyped up 24 hr news and celebrity got whipped up. Reminded me almost of the end of the Player to be honest, where the stars end up doing the death penalty scene after all. That said, Paulson, Vance and the guy playing darden were outstanding.
The one part I felt was ridiculous, the flirting between Clark and darden, well that actually looks to be true according to the real darden and Clark. More weirdness from the trial

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Re: American Crime Story

#25 Post by The Narrator Returns » Mon Feb 06, 2017 2:08 pm

Season 2 will be about the handling of Hurricane Katrina, and the first casting announcement has been made; Annette Bening as Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco.

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