Several Animals Were Harmed in the Making of This Motion Picture

Still alive:

 

Luck got a second season for the same reason Treme got a second season. HBO likes being in business with David Milch just as they like being in business with David Simon. Even if its not a financial boon it lends them enough credibility that they can let the "artists' network" be quietly carried by shit like True Blood.

 

These days, you can take a Canon 5D or any DSLR or even a micro 4/3 camera, such as an Olympus PEN, mount cinema-grade quality lenses on it, attach it to a boom and stick the camera in tight, around hooves, snouts and such. To get all the great racing shots in Secretariat, that's exactly what the cinematographers did. There's several YT vids about how they rigged it up.

 

What the CNN report doesn't say is that "Luck" had been targeted by PETA because of the two previous deaths. Their claims included that the horses had been heavily medicated and in severe pain during their deaths and that the show did not have a licensed humane officer on the set and that they didn't follow the advice of the humane officers during the first season:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2012/03/hbo-luck-runs-out-of-luck.html

Still, the third death seemed to be something out of the control of the producers, and I doubt "The Sopranos" would have been canceled over something similar.

 

I find it impossible to believe there was no humane officer on the set. That's like shooting w/o a fire warden on set: It just doesn't happen in LA...especially at a place like Santa Anita, where the liability for something like that is huge.

 

Call a friend from Indiana and tell them Luck got shut down. Then listen for the sound of their body hitting the floor.

 

HBO doesn't get near enough shit for some of the mediocre to bad shows on that network. When laid up with my gall bladder woes on a road trip, I watched a marathon of them on one of the HBO channels in my hotel.

Boardwalk Empire was great. Most of the rest (some of which, like the odious How To Make It In America, have since been cancelled) were just phantorgasmically pretentious, unfunny, flat-out-shitty or some combination of all of the above.

 

What do you think of 'Luck?'

It's good, not great, with typically Milchian hang-ups like dense plotting and opaque dialogue.

But it has some great acting. The cinematography is phenomenal. Parts of the story -- especially the quartet of degenerates -- are funny and sad and resonate. The horseracing sequences are unbelievably beautiful (and deadly, alas).

It had poor ratings. So what? Since when has popularity EVER had any link to quality in popular entertainment?

I admit a bias: I have a relative on the show.

 

Yeah, I was pretty floored by that as well. Either PETA is exaggerating thing - entirely plausible - or there were some fuck ups of the highest order.

 

Somehow missed Luck. Never caught it on the right night in the various hotels I've been in.

 

Just curious.

 

Hell, five nags dropped in the last two days here -- http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16189040
They ain't canceling nuttin'.