true detective

April 15, 2016

HAP AND LEONARD is better than TRUE DETECTIVE

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized crime, debbie rochon, hap and leonard, hidden remote, horror, ihorror, interview, jim mickle, joe lansdale, Joe R. Lansdale, l. falcetti, review, shock until you drop, sundanceTV', swamp noir, texas noir, true detective

Following the conclusion of HAP AND LEONARD season 1, the reviews and other interesting things continue to come in.

James Purefoy and Michael K. Williams as the titular characters in SundanceTV’s HAP AND LEONARD

IHORROR explains the 5 Reasons Horror Fans Should Watch Hap and Leonard (Before It’s Too Late).

1. Joe Lansdale

If you’re not familiar with author Joe Lansdale, you should fix that immediately. He’s one of the most purely entertaining novelists I’ve ever read, and I’ve ready many of his works. They’re not all horror, but some are very much so. If you don’t know him as an author, you may still be familiar with some of his stories. He wrote Bubba Ho-Tep, which Phantasm director Don Coscarelli turned into an amazing movie starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis fighting a mummy.

Photo: Karen Lansdale

Hap and Leonard are the main characters in a series of books and stories that Lansdale has sprinkled throughout his career. These are of course the source of the new television show. Hap and Leonard stories aren’t outright horror. Like much of Lansdale’s work, they blend genres, but make no mistake. Plenty of horrific shit happens, and the stories (and show) have heart. Given the brutality of much of Lansdale’s work and the people who make the show happen, I would expect plenty of horror in the mix if the show continues. There has already been a heaping helping of the red stuff.

L. Falcetti of HIDDEN REMOTE loves the series.

The casting of HAP AND LEONARD is another bit of inspired brilliance from the show’s creators. James Purefoy delivers a stellar American accent, possibly not of the Hugh Laurie caliber (but really, who can?) but definitely far superior to the aforementioned Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln or David Morrissey. He manages to play Hap Collins as just thick enough to make you root for him (no one likes a know it all) and just trusting enough to make your heartbreak. Michael Kenneth Williams as Leonard, a gay Vietnam vet and Hap’s best friend since childhood is intense and alluring, giving off enough “leave me alone” tough guy vibes but at the same time (much as his companion) displaying the right amount of emotion at the perfect times to give you the vision of a fully formed human being, rather than a generic southern badass.

Christina Hendricks honestly almost steals the entire show from her costars. As Trudy, she is at the center of a subtle (and then not so subtle) game of tug of war between two men, yet the producers give us insights to her character through the (happily) not overused flashbacks resulting in, again, a fully fleshed out character.

What really gives the show it’s unique feel and lasting power however is the villain team of Jimmi Simpson and Pollyanna McIntosh. Simpson, who you might be familiar with from his appearances on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as half of the McPoyle brothers, plays the part of deranged maniac with an exuberance and style that makes him seem like the demented lovechild of James Spader and Jack Nicholson. McIntosh is his amazonian girlfriend/muscle and the pair’s love is genuinely on a Mickey and Mallory level of pop culture twisted brilliance and genuine heartfelt human emotion.

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HAP AND LEONARD is better and more enjoyable than True Detective and I’ll say that while standing on Nic Pizzolatto’s coffee table, kicking Thomas Ligotti books to the floor. It’s more coherent, it’s more sympathetic, it’s more comfortable with itself and maybe most importantly, it’s actually fun to watch. Where True Detective has to confront masculinity and family, trust and time with all the subtlety of a plane crash,Hap and Leonard manages to do so with a sly, clever nod that asks for a little more from its audience and delivers a whole lot more in return.

At SHOCK UNTIL YOU DROP, Debbie Rochon interviews director Jim Mickle about adapting Joe R. Lansdale.

SHOCK: What has the experience been like adapting Lansdale’s work, has he been protective at all about his stories or how you may use or not use his ideas?

MICKLE: Joe is incredibly supportive and respectful of the process, but he also knows what he likes and speaks up when he doesn’t. The whole process of adapting something you love can be really challenging because there’s a reason why you’re doing it— you loved it and it worked beautifully for you on the page. So you’re trying to translate something without fucking it up, yet every medium has its limitations so inevitably you have to reconfigure some things and not force the right elements into the wrong shape. Luckily we’re pretty faithful with this season of HAP AND LEONARD more so than other books to series, so I think we’re all happy with it. He wants his dialogue to be right, but we all do. That’s one of the best parts of any Lansdale story. Hopefully when it’s not verbatim, it still feels like him.”

SUNDANCETV delivers an in-depth virtual tour of Leonard’s home.

January 15, 2015

LOVECRAFT’S MONSTERS is one of the top ten books of 2014

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized anthology, best of 2014, Brian Hodge, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Creature Feature, cthulhu, Elizabeth Bear, Ellen Datlow, Gemma Files, horror, howard waldrop, hpl, Innsmouth, Joe R. Lansdale, john coulthart, John Langan, karl edward wagner, Kim Newman, Laird Barron, lovecraft, lovecraft's monsters, mythos, neil gaiman, nic pizzolatto, Steve Rasnic Tem, steve utley, thomas ligotti, tomb, true detective

The Creature Feature included two Ellen Datlow-edited books among their top ten books of 2014: Nightmare Carnival and Lovecraft’s Monsters.

Fans of the HBO True Detective series (and those who are not) will love this new themed anthology from acclaimed genre editor, Ellen Datlow. There are several selections written by authors whom Nic Pizzolatto cited as influential to the series, so let’s look at them first: Laird Barron’s “Bulldozer”, features a rough, resilient Pinkerton Man and a traveling circus strong-man enmeshed in cosmic mystery; Karl Edward Wagner’s “I’ve Come to Talk With You Again” tells of an American author of Lovecraftian tales on holiday in London who invokes the Yellow King himself; Thomas Ligotti crafts a narrative nightmare about a man who unwittingly locates a hidden world, and John Langan contributes a brand new and spectacular dark tale, “Children of the Fang” about an old woman who returns to her grandfather’s home to reveal secrets she and her brother stumbled upon as children. The rest of the stories contained in this anthology stake new territory in the Lovecraft mythos as well, several of them set in Lovecraft’s fictional town of Innsmouth by Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman, Brian Hodge and Catlin R. Kiernan. Elizabeth Bear’s darkly humorous “Inelastic Collisions” finds a pair of exiled (and very hungry) creatures marooned in attractive female human bodies shooting pool in a bar while hunting prey; Steve Rasnic Tem goes full dark with his tale of a hybrid human/monster traveling with his human wife and hybrid children; Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley collaborate on a lively weird tale set in the Old West; Gemma Files contributes two disturbing poems, and much more. There are eighteen varied and marvelous pieces included in this anthology and, strangely enough, the one story I felt most closely aligned with the True Detective series is written by the inimitable Joe R. Lansdale, a hard-boiled noir detective story titled “The Bleeding Shadow” set in mid-1950s Texas, in which an unlicensed and unorthodox private detective who is on the trail of his ex-lover’s missing brother finds a darker world than he ever imagined possible. As Editor Ellen Datlow states in her Introduction, she sought stories that bring something new to the mythos of Lovecraft’s Old Ones and their minions rather than pastiches that cover well-trodden tropes. Mission accomplished! Each story is a dark wonder and the volume itself is absolutely gorgeous, sumptuously illustrated throughout with steampunky-baroque original art by World Fantasy Award-winning artist John Coulthart. LOVECRAFT’S MONSTERS is a must-have for every fan of dark speculative fiction, so click on the cover graphic and grab it!

Check out the rest of the Creature Feature selections at the Tomb.

For more information on Lovecraft’s Monsters, visit the Tachyon site.

Cover by John Coulthart.

January 7, 2015

Michael Moorcock’s literary agitation shook the fantasy and science-fiction establishment

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized Ann Monn, anti-tolkien, blue oyster cult, collection, david mitchell, elric, game of thrones, hawkwind, hobbit, jeff vandermeer, led zeppelin, michael moorcock, new yorker, novella, peter bebergal, profile, short stories, the best of michael moorcock, tolkien, true detective, under the skin

In The New Yorker, Peter Bebergal delivers a profile of “the anti-Tolkien” Michael Moorcock.

Moorcock’s influence is nothing like Tolkien’s, at least on the surface, but his vision of a speculative-fiction genre that can be psychologically complex is evident in how very sophisticated some of it has become—from “True Detective” to Jeff VanderMeer, from David Mitchell to “Under the Skin.” But Moorcock also embraces the joy of pulp, and, like Tolkien, his creations are namedropped and sourced high and low.

Rock and roll has proved to be one of the more potent vehicles for enshrining both Tolkien and Moorcock’s characters in pop culture. For all the claims of devil worship lobbed at Led Zeppelin, Satan makes only one appearance in their lyrics.* Tolkien is where their real allegiance lies, with references to Gollum, Mordor, the Misty Mountains, and Ringwraiths. Moorcock, however, came of age during rock’s ascension and understood rock’s power to give electrified life to his creations. Moorcock worked directly with bands like Hawkwind and Blue Öyster Cult as both a spiritual and literary guru. And, like Tolkien’s characters, Moorcock’s heroes and anti-heroes appear in comic books and role-playing games. But more often his presence is seen the form of loving nods as, when, in the “Game of Thrones” television series, someone yells out “Stormbringer” when King Joffrey asks for possible names for his sword.

Moorcock’s literary agitation shook the fantasy and science-fiction establishment and made it possible for writers to step outside the long shadow of Tolkien and other fantasy devices. And frail Elric, dependent on a soul-stealing sword to keep his kingdom from utter dissolution, is a necessary corrective to the bloat of something like the “Hobbit” movie trilogy. Elric is not high art by any means, but is as rich and complex as anything calling itself fantasy. And the Elric stories are terrific fun. But, more importantly, Elric is not about abstract ideas of good and evil, with faceless powers looking to strip the world of its trees and its hobbit holes. Elric is about law and chaos, and how, sometimes, choosing one over the other is no more or less just.

Read the rest of Bebergal’s Michael Moorcock profile at The New Yorker.

For a survey of Moorcock’s literary legacy, check out Tachyon’s The Very Best of Michael Moorcock.

Cover by Ann Monn

June 9, 2014

“[True Detective’s creator Nic] Pizzolato approached me years ago as a fan,” says LOVECRAFT’S MONSTERS contributor Laird Barron

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized anthology, Ellen Datlow, hbo, horror, interview, john coulthart, Laird Barron, lovecraft, lovecraft's monsters, mythos, nic pizzolatto, short story, stu horvath, true detective, unwinnable

For the first issue of the weekly digital magazine Unwinnable, Stu Horvath interviewed Laird Barron. The piece includes an extensive discussion of Barron’s short story “Bulldozer,” which was included in Lovecraft’s Monsters, and establishes a connection with a popular TV show.

Fans of HBO’s show True Detective might detect a similarity to Reggie Ledoux’s ominous warning to Detective Rustin Cohle: “Time is a flat circle.”

“[True Detective’s creator Nic] Pizzolato approached me years ago as a fan,” says Barron. “We’ve corresponded infrequently since. He loved The Imago Sequence and Occultation, and has mentioned them positively in interviews. My work seems to have influenced some of his artistic choices. I’ll take it as a compliment.”

Despite a resurgence of interest in weird fiction thanks to True Detective’s use of references to Robert W. Chambers’ perennial horror collection The King in Yellow, Barron dismisses the notion of his chosen genre’s trendiness with similar language. “The big old wheel keeps turning,” he says. “All there is to it.”

For Barron, this circular theory of time fits right in with the theme of experience absorption. “Time consumes itself, or cycles through itself in an endless loop – from Big Bang to heat death and collapse into a single ultra-dense point that eventually destabilizes with another Big Bang, and so on for eternity.”

For the rest of the fascinating interview, be sure to pick up Unwinnable #1.

For an excerpt from Laird Barron’s “Bulldozer,“ visit the Tachyon tumblr.

For more information on Lovecraft’s Monsters, visit the Tachyon site.

Cover and illustration by John Coulthart.

May 6, 2014

Say Hello to Horror’s Undisputed Queen and Her New Lovecraftian Monsters

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized anthology, Complex Pop Culture, Ellen Datlow, horror, interview, john coulthart, lovecraft, lovecraft's monsters, mythos, permanent midnight, short stories, true detective

As part of his regular column Permanent Midnight for Complex Pop Culture, Matt Barone first gets all excited about Lovecraft’s Monsters, the new anthology from Ellen Datlow…

Her latest collection is Lovecraft’s Monsters (now available from Tachyon Publications), a follow-up to her 2009 book Lovecraft Unbound. Both, of course, are homages to genre fiction icon H.P. Lovecraft. For Lovecraft’s Monsters, Datlow collected reprints of older Lovecraftian stories, as well as one original tale, from writers like Neil Gaiman, Laird Barron, Elizabeth Bear and Joe R. Lansdale that modernize the legendary author’s otherworldly creatures, like Cthulhu, the Shoggoths, the Elder Things and Yog-Sothoth. (Trust, they’re scarier than those tongue-twisting names suggest.) Adding to the book’s excellence, illustrator John Coulthart provided gorgeous new black-and-white artwork for each story.

…and then interviews Daltow herself.

Thanks to the recent success of True Detective, H.P. Lovecraft and “weird,” cosmic horror fiction were big topics of conversation earlier this year. Thus, the timing of Lovecraft’s Monsters is ideal. For you, though, what made now seem like the right time to re-explore Lovecraft again in this new Monsters anthology?

I edited Lovecraft Unbound several years ago. It had mostly new stories, with four reprints in it. It sold, and is still selling, well for the publisher, Dark Horse. I was approached back in early 2012 by Victoria Blake, who at the time, was the publisher at Underland Press. It was her idea for me to edit an all-original anthology of Lovecraftian monsters, to be illustrated.

But within a month of discussions Victoria realized that she couldn’t afford to publish such a book, so the idea died—until Jacob Weisman and I brainstormed about my next all-reprint anthology for Tachyon Publications. I mentioned the dead idea of Lovecraft’s Monsters and he was interested.

The timing of publication is a happy coincidence. We didn’t even know True Detective was in the works when I put out my call for suggestions.

For the rest of the interview and Barone’s thoughts on horror fiction, visit Complex Pop Culture.

For more information on Lovecraft’s Monsters, visit the Tachyon site.

Cover and illustrations by John Coulthart