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John Adams Running Thread

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Fenian_Bastard, Mar 16, 2008.

  1. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    This is Tom Hanks taking Spielberg's tricks for a spin.

    Now you know how some feel about a Gary Smith graf.

    Jeff Shaara's novels would have worked much better with this than McCullough. Much better.
     
  2. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    I immediately noticed this as well. It's so distracting it ruins whatever good acting might be going on.
     
  3. I think he'd have fought for his copy a little harder.
    Goddamn old farts on the desk!
     
  4. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    He looked like every other writer in the world being edited.
     
  5. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    Pauline Maier has a great chapter on this in American Scripture, re. the editing and Tom's storm and stress over the whole process. At one point in his journal he bitched that they were "mangling my prose!"
     
  6. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

    I was hoping for more; cinematography is excellent, sets are well done, casting is the best you'll see on TV all year. But the script reads like an AP history class in high school with very little tension. And, no, I don't mean Associated Press.

    I imagine a lot of critics (and Emmy voters) will fall over praising it, but then again they love MadMen too and TV don't get more cliched and hackney'd than that!
     
  7. finishthehat

    finishthehat Active Member

    I watched this via On Demand; I have to admit I fast-forwarded through some scenes (the pox innoculation sub-plot, the final speech by the South Carolina guy, which threatened to reach Castro proportions).

    I hope it gets better.
     
  8. GBNF

    GBNF Well-Known Member

    I loved every minute of it. Paul Giamatti could shit in a bucket and I'd find it entertaining. One of my favorite actors.

    Some very powerful scenes...
     
  9. lantaur

    lantaur Well-Known Member

    Prediction: Laura Linney will win an Emmy.

    I read one review which said Giamatti was miscast (something about him making John Adams look like Shrek). Maybe that's sullied my thinking, but Giamatti seems like the least of the acting thus far - Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin, the guy who plays Dickinson (the former attorney from Homicide), the guy who plays Sam Adams, etc.

    Like any HBO series, seems like it takes about 2 or 3 episodes to really get gripped by it, if you can make it that far. It's on season pass for me, so I'll be watching the entire thing.
     
  10. Brooklyn Bridge

    Brooklyn Bridge Well-Known Member

    have gotten into (most of) the first two episodes so far (on demand). And its not bad. Love Paul Giamatti. But the story is based on David McCullough's book tho, no? I would suggest 1176. You could get a lot of the same story line, but could've also had a hella lotta fightin' scenes. That part of the war was just a disaster for the rebels--from the seige of Boston, Washington lost New York, West Point and was on the run and on the verge of losing his army. I think there is much more drama in that.
     
  11. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    A lot is being missed here because it's being framed by a noncombatant. This was my fear all along. There's no reason Bunker Hill, in capable hands, shouldn't make for a terrific action piece.

    I don't know how you presume to cover prewar Boston with nothing on the drama surrounding Thomas Hutchinson. He's one of the great tragic figures of the ordeal. You want failure, this is your man. At least one of them.

    Washington was pockmarked and mildly disfigured by smallpox he contracted as a young man. If they're to provide painstaking detail of the colonial dining room, then I expect other little things to be gotten right.
     
  12. This is why I threw this thread up.
    Hutchinson was a great steaming cauldron of abject Fail.
     
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