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My rewatch of season 2 is over now.

I think I will wait for a rewatch of season 3 until June so maybe if Alan Sepinwall resumes his Deadwood Rewind posts, I can join the fun. I missed it this summer when he was rewatching and reviewing season 2. Jim Beaver and the actor who plays Mr Wu left several comments worth reading, and Beaver sounded up for a third round!

Reading those entries I just realised something about "A Lie Agreed Upon" Part 2. Yes it's true that Alma's red dress calls to the mind the scarlett letter given its colour and the adulterous affair Seth was having with her, but in my case – and it's probably because I rewatched Gone With the Wind on Christmas Day! –, Alma's red dress as she's paying a visit to Mrs Bullock in the hardware store reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara's fantastic red dress that Rhett made her wear at the party Melany had thrown for Ashley's birthday. The dresses are very different, colour aside, but I do think that Alma shares Scarlett's guts (and some of her weaknesses like her fondness for get-away drugs, in Scarlett's case it was spirits, in Alma's laudanaum). *

Of course Alma is a Northern lady not a Southern girl, and Seth is guilty as charged while Ashley didn't cheat on his wife, and Martha Bullock is much more aware of things than Melany ever was...just like she noticed how William was checking the whores' breasts in the coach!

I wonder whether Milch thought of that or if it's only visual works talking to each other...or my brain doing its usual connecting things.

* But no I won't say that Mr Ellsworth was a new Franck Kennedy for Ellsworth is a much more touching character. Yet...

It's been a hectic week again. And I'm under the weather. I couldn't call in sick (too much wok to do, and two meetings with parents) but I went to the doctor on Wednesday evening and I've been on antibiotics since then. This afternoon I had a 2 hour nap. Body needed it. I ran errands afterwards and now I'm relaxing in front of Deadwood S1. *pets the dvd box*

A few thoughts which I don't think I mentioned in previous posts:

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I wish I had more time to watch my shows, read my books and interact with my Internet friends. Unfortunately I am in the grip of RL. And I haven't started shopping for Christmas yet! I am not much of an internet shopper, except for books. By the way many thanks to herself_nyc  for the heads-up about Richard Powers' new story, ebook-style, which I found on Amazon and bought right away. I even passed the info to Tom McRae on twitter, because I know that he is a fan too, and he told me that this will make the kindle he owns worth using at last. It was like having a New York/Paris/London threesome! I love having my literary network all over the world.

The internet contains horrible places and allows ugly behaviours but it is so wonderful. The things and the people you can access, it makes life easier and brighter. 
I often marvel at the fact that I can find many useful papers online when it comes to my thesis research and that I can follow my shows almost at the same time as my fellow American viewers when it comes to my entertainment.

Boardwalk Empire's penultimate episode was terrific and I can't wait for the finale! It isn't Deadwood, and many things are predictable story-wise, but it's so well-crafted and the characters are so wonderfully played. Best show currently on in my opinion.

Steve Buscemi nailed it in "Two imposters" and it was a very exciting episode. Every scene was a little gem, one after another.

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Also, I now own Alan Sepinwall's book on kindle so you can already picture me tonight reading it under the duvet while the cats are purring against me.

That last episode of Breaking Bad made me want to rewatch Deadwood again !!!!!

Will post a review of "Dead Freight" tomorrow.

Re-watching "Advances, None Miraculous" and "The Whores Can Come", I had two mains things on my mind:

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It's been raining for days and I've been watching Deadwood again, from season 1. 4 episodes so far.

( Things I see differently now or that I had forgotten )

I have finished reading Ina Rae Hark's essay on Deadwood, and it put me in the mood for some parsing. It's funny to see how we all come with different readings. I don't claim to be right with mine, but it's meaningful that none of my interpretations are echoed in her scholarly take on the show. We obvioulsy come from different background and it shows. What she said in her book is quite insightful (the chapter on language!) though, and there's stuff I wouldn't have thought of (the chapter on "Deadwood's political economic narrative", or the parallel between Sol/Seth and Hostetler/Nigger General)but that sounds rather relevant. I will post something on that book some day...

But her chapter on "Women and power", although convincing in regard to the characters of Jane and Richardson and thought-provoking, left me unsatisfied in regard to the big scheme of things, and she doesn't even try to analyse the theatre group and what it brings to the show. I wonder if there a work out there that does. If so, point me to the right direction, please!

So let's try to decipher, here and now, the confusing theatre stuff, especially in the final three episodes, a storyline that, according to some fans, made no sense and ruined the show (btw it reminds me of all the critiques of the First Evil in Buffy's season 7).

First, I wanted to write a complete review of each episode but I changed my mind, and will rather study one aspect of the ending season 3 today: Jack Langerish and the mysterious women who were suddenly showed up near the end of the season.

Actually, three new female characters are introduced in the final episodes and I think that three new dark-haired women are supposed to be interpreted together. They look alike A LOT and, yes, it is supposed to be confusing.

The women are: Mary the artist (the woman in red), Josiane the Gypsy dancer (and possibly a former prostitute) and Janine the new whore whom Cy hired at Bella Union.

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ETA: is David Milch's Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills worth reading?

I went to the movies after a sleepless night, several hours of work in the library (had to reward myself!)...and finally saw Martha Marcy May Marlene which is indeed a good film – I wish I had the time to write a proper review and elaborate on the ambiguity the film is based on and all the wonderful little details it provides to tell the story of a shattered personality and of an identity meltdown through mirror plays, memory tricks, merging timelines and madness, and create the right atmosphere, but instead here's a link to a spoilerish review from The New Yorker –, and Elizabeth Olsen is terrific...but damn John Hawkes again blew my mind. As usual his performance was powerful but subtle.

There was nothing cartoonish about the pastoralist sect guru he played, and yet he was totally believable in the role, exuding charisma, virility and danger, but also sweetness (John's smile makes me weak on the knees!) and perversion, appearing both charming and terrifying, caring and creepy.

No, it isn't at all the same role as the one he played in Winter's Bone. Teardrop was a threatening presence, a hillbilly lone wolf addicted to meth who inspired fear, but he turned out to be someone a girl could count on. Patrick is quite the opposite, he appears much nicer, but is much more dangerous; he's a sorcerer who puts on a seduction act and pulls the strings of his puppets/admirers, and he is bad news for little girls.
John Hawkes doesn't have a lot of screen time but owns any scene he is in(even the orgy scene...he doesn't partake but the picture that stays with you is Patrick watching from the stairs while his puppets are fucking), and the character haunts the film, just like he haunts the girl who is Martha/Marcy-May/Marlene.

And of course there's the beautiful scene in which John plays the guitar and sings "Marcy's Song" and the actress seems to become the girl in the song. The scene is a bit like the one from Maria's Lovers, when Keith Carradine serenaded Nastassja Kinski with "Maria's eyes".





Martha Marcy May Marlene isn't flawless but for a debut movie it's really really good. I'm glad that one fo my favourite actors chose it.

Also, apparently John Hawkes has turned down a part in The Walking Dead. Good for him! He's very busy with movies (I'm so looking forward to seeing The Surrogate that some say it gave his career's best role *) and The Walking Dead doesn't deserve his talent.

Anyway, if John should come back to television, I demand that it would be on Justified !!!!! They keep hiring Deadwood alumni, so I'm sure they'd love to have him...and having Sol Star and Seth Bullock reunited on screen would simply give me a tv orgasm.

* Just read an interview in which John mentioned that his "Deadwood pals"– Earl Brown, who plays Dan Dority, and Robin Weigert, who was Calamity Jane– got parts in The Surrogate!

"A Rich Find" and "Unauthorized Cinnamon" on the menu today.

Both have in common the Odell subplot and the "everybody's waiting for Hearst's move" A-plot.

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I have seen the first disc of  the season 3 box which means three episodes of Deadwood in a row!

The episodes in question being "Tell Your God To Ready For Blood", "I Am Not The Fine Man You Take Me For" and "True Colors".

I had forgotten how difficult it is to follow the dialogues and how much subtitles in English come in handy. Did I really watch season 1 online without any subtitle before I bought the show on DVD?

I will have to rewatch the episodes to make proper reviews for each one, for as usual, there's so much to chew on and parse, but here are some thoughts  à chaud.

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