Anticipating Treme aka "Tremé" - David Simon and his buddies do post-Katrina N.O.

i wonder how expensive the second line stuff is to shoot...when i was out at one they had a ton of cameras & mics running around, but then they just let the bands go in real time and let things roll for a couple hours.

mostly what kills me about this show is all the high-quality second line footage that is never going to see the light of day. it's criminal.

yeah, you know, as soon as i made that post i thought to myself "dude: location shooting" - that alone guarantees its not cheap to make. so really the only thing i can think of is that they want to keep david simon happy.

Well, and they trust them with his show in a way, again, more analogous to publishers/novelists that network-execs and TV shows. He lost one of his main collaborators halfway through season one, so that must've been a bear just to finish, on both personal and practical levels. I'm sure he's already pitched them season three, told them where it'll be going.

New Orleans provides some pretty huge tax breaks for filming here, so I'm sure that makes things more affordable. A ton of movies have been filmed here in the past few years, primarily due to those incentives.

I know a few people who have been extras, and seen a few scenes put together on the street. I'm sure second lines are tricky, but most of the scenes seem fairly straightforward to shoot.

doesn't matter if you're shooting two people talking in a park, location shoots cost tons more per minute shot, because shots take longer to get and moving crew and support to the location is expensive.

Just started watching the first season on dvd (based on the fair amount of critical commentary received from some, I'm not approaching it with high expectations. But I love the music and knew late writer David Mills, so I will probably find enough to like)

end credits of this week's episode was the first time I've felt genuinely excited by the music on Treme

What music did you like on this week's episode?

the song that played at the end of the last scene and into the ending credits.

Ha

all the self-conscious stuff is getting intolerable, how nearly every fucking song in one of the live performances has to be "about" new orleans. and half of what the characters do and talk about is "about" new orleans: summary statements about how new orleans is this, new orleans is that. it's tiresome and unimaginative. and the live performance scenes are hopelessly poorly filmed. in general this show is kind of mediocre isn't it? but i keep watching, i guess the characters are moderately interesting? not the trumpeter though, zzzzzzz.

on 3rd thought, this show kind of sucks. i like the wendell pierce plotline, but everything else is subpar. and fucking steve earle as a wise old singer-songwriter sage. give me a fucking break.

i guess nobody else is watching this.

I watch this. I like some parts but not others.

I've got 4 weeks to catch up on. Will have a marathon sesh once this GoT business is over.

I watch this. I like some parts but not others.

― polyphonic, Friday, June 17, 2011 9:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Worst characters

1. Sofia
2. Harley
3. Toni
4. Sonny

I'm watching Season 1 for the first time now on DVD 'cause it finally hit 4-days/4 videos/$5 status at my store. I was disappointed to the point of sadness with the first two episodes after the great opening set piece--too much talking about, not enough showing or feeling New Orleans, and the Zahn character was charmless. Third episode directed by Ernest Dickerson was a big step forward, and fourth written by Pelecanos was a real pleasure, Zahn finding his feet. I'll read thread when I'm done.

so i guess this didn't stop being awful for the second season?

i don't even mean that in a snotty way. this show broke my damn heart.

how

It's a interesting mess. I like the ambition but it really does a great job of highlighting the things that Simon isn't good at.

otm. The characters, framing, and development are substandard. The key scene (spoiler perhaps): an exchange late in the season between the struggling restauranteur and a rival chef. On "The Wire" the directors would have conveyed the agony of this woman acknowledging defeat and the rival's ambivalence: he won the game but feels bad for his competitor/pal. Here's it's thrown away with boilerplate and blank reaction shots.

Also, the didactic bilge that Simon saved until the last season of "The Wire" spills forth from John Goodman and a couple of other characters every chance. Nothing sticks.

It's like someone imitating David Simon.

if Simon was channeling his true self through a cranky suicidal YouTube vlogger that's a pretty good self-deprecating joke though

Even better: through a bratty overconfident teenaged girl.

it broke my damn heart because everything d. simon has done since the wire has been one big raspberry blown in the direction of my admiration.

not saying the guy should stick to cops and robbers, but the guy should stick to.cops and robbers. actually, treme just points up how crucial the whole group of creatives he assembled was important to the wire. i've got a feeling ed burns acted as a major bullshit detector, having now seen d.s. off the leash with treme.

that is majorly garbled, but i'm gonna blame editing posts on my phone.

generation kill seemed alright, although i don't think i'll ever revisit it

haha i bailed on gen kill early because i figured we werent going to get a tragic heart-rending death/reversal to counteract ziggy's basic annoyance factor.

I grew to really love ziggy's character on gen kill fwiw

generation kill is kinda my favorite thing hes done tbh

also i realize wendell pierce is now stuck in hbo rep players hell but if there was ever a chance to give a REAL star turn this was it, but instead we get this didactic altman-for-idiots ensemble stuff. boooooo.

though i suppose other wire players have had far worse post wire careers

there was a scene somewhere in the middle of Season 1 where a character comments to Clarke Peters that there are probably a bunch of dead bodies in the boarded up housing projects, and I felt almost heartbroken.

also: fuck Elvis Costello.

generation kill was great

more i think about it this really is like if stanely kramer had directed "nashville" instead of altman

it's also irritating that Clarke Peters gets to only have like two different facial expressions

it's hard not to imagine lester freamon looking down his granny glasses and giving a little derisive head-shake

http://i.cdn.hbo.com/assets/images/series/the-wire/character/the-law/lester-freamon-160.jpg

generation kill was great

― caek, Saturday, June 18, 2011 1:33 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i always call this show "tres gay" in my head

more i think about it this really is like if stanely kramer had directed "nashville" instead of altman

i gave up on this show early, but until someone can convincingly contradict this estimation, i'm not coming back

ha i don't even like nashville but jess is kind of otm

amateurist's opening salvo otm. this is an embarrassment.

i haven't seen the new season yet, but treme makes me happy and amateurist is the bummerest of all bummers.

:-(

Really loving this show.

The show put a smile on my face during one of the scenes in David Chang's restaurant where they played 'Uptown Top Ranking.'