‘True Detective’ re-up,
ambitious yet uneventful
TV REVIEW
Season Two premiere
offers exposition and
little action
By MATT BARNAUSKAS
Daily Arts Writer
Last year, “True Detective”
premiered on HBO and became
an instant phenomenon. View-
ers
followed
detectives Rust
Cohle (Matthew
McConaughey,
“Interstellar”)
and Marty Hart
(Woody Harrel-
son, “The Hun-
ger Games”) into
the backwaters
of Louisiana and
a dark world of
crime, the occult
and torment unfolded over eight
episodes. The announcement of
the show’s continuation as an
anthology series, with a new cast
and location, brought simultane-
ous excitement and speculation.
Following up such a highly
regarded first season is not an
enviable task for creator and sole
writer, Nic Pizzolatto (“The Kill-
ing”). While crafting the series
as an anthology allows the show
an opportunity to book big-name
talent and start fresh each sea-
son, there’s the burden of what
came before. Because it falls
under the name “True Detec-
tive,” Season Two needs to fulfill
an obfuscated obligation to live
up to what was established in the
show’s inaugural season while
carving out it’s own identity as a
separate entry in the anthology.
While Season One tackled and
subverted several of the tropes
that make up the buddy cop
genre, Season Two approaches
the classic film noir narrative.
Trading the bayous of Louisi-
ana for the more traditional noir
setting of Southern California
brings forth multiple tales of
corruption, depression and the
morally gray that are bound to
collide.
All these plotlines are estab-
lished in the first episode, “The
Western Book of the Dead,” but
unfortunately the story is spread
so thin between the main charac-
ters that there is a lack of nuance
that
prevents
anyone
from
standing out beyond the broad-
est characterization.
There’s
Ray
Velcoro
(Colin
Farrell, “In Bruges”), a crooked
detective in the pocket of crimi-
nal Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn,
“The Internship”). Ray initially
stands out the most from this sea-
son’s characters. The man pos-
sesses no control in his life, forced
to work for Frank while struggling
to expand his custody for a son,
Chad (Trevor Larcom, “Fresh Off
the Boat”), who might not even
be his. The only consolation Ray
gets is in the bottle or by violently
lashing out at those around him.
However, Ray is driven so quickly
to the extreme, tracking down
one of Chad’s bullies and beat-
ing up the boy’s father in front of
him, it comes to question whether
this character has any chance of
being humanly sympathetic.
In contrast, Frank appears to
be heading down the right path,
finding a way to go through some
rail project involving federal
money that isn’t explained very
well. The project is “A chance for
the grandkids to be part of the
old California families, where
they don’t even know where the
money comes from,” Semyon
claims. Everything is in place,
until Semyon’s partner in the
venture goes missing. Vaughn is
the biggest risk for this season, a
traditionally comic actor taking
on a much darker role compared
to his usual fare. But so far the
character hasn’t provided enough
for Vaughn to show whether he
was the right choice for the job.
The cycle of misery extends
to all the other characters in
“True Detective.” Detective Ani
Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams,
“Sherlock Holmes”) deals with
unresolved issues with her cult-
ish father (David Morse, “The
Hurt Locker”), who may be con-
nected to the disappearance of a
young woman. McAdams gives
a solid, stone cold demeanor to
her character but hopefully she
is more than just, as her father
puts it, “An extended criticism
of my values,” a character who
purely relies on another to define
her. Meanwhile, Paul Woodrugh
(Taylor Kitsch, “Friday Night
Lights”), a highway patrolman
on leave, is struggling to adjust
to civilian life after serving as a
mercenary in Iraq.
All these characters sound
familiar,
archetypes
already
established in some form of film,
television or literature. Their suc-
cess will come from how “True
Detective” utilizes and twists
what has come to be expected of
these types of people, but right
now they remain stuck in their
preordained box.
“True Detective” does a lot to
lay the groundwork for its ambi-
tious redirection, but by doing
so much, it feels like very little
is being done. So when the three
main law enforcement characters
finally meet at the end of the epi-
sode only a few steps are taken in
moving the story forward. Hope-
fully, “True Detective” can soon
make strides instead of trudging
through a tale of woe.
‘Inside’ works
despite its issues
MOVIE REVIEW
By REBECCA LERNER
Daily Arts Writer
As I walked into my home-
town theater full of screaming
toddlers and side-eyeing tweens
on the open-
ing night of
Pixar’s
lat-
est
creation
“Inside Out”, I
was genuinely
excited
for
them. Know-
ing that most
of them would
soon be going
through
the
same
rather
lackluster public school mental
health education that I did, it
was calming to know that more
knowledge on the subject was so
accessible.
“Inside Out” is a lively journey
through the mind of eleven-year
old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias, “The
Shifting”). Riley is a happy kid
from Minnesota, mostly because
her emotions are controlled by
a very peppy chief emotion, Joy
(Amy Poehler, “Parks and Rec-
reation”). Joy is both helped and
hindered by Riley’s other emo-
tions, Fear (Bill Hader, “The
Skeleton Twins”), Anger (Lewis
Black, “The Daily Show”), Dis-
gust (Mindy Kaling, “The Mindy
Project”) and Sadness (Phyllis
Smith, “The Office”). The per-
sonifications of her emotions all
amicably fight over a dashboard
that directs Riley’s behavior and
over time create her likable per-
sonality manifested in different
“islands” — Goofball, Hockey,
Honesty, Friendship and Family.
A shift occurs when Riley’s
mother (Diane Lane, “Man of
Steel”) and father (Kyle Maclach-
lan,
“Portlandia”)
decide
to
uproot from Minnesota to San
Francisco. After a beautiful and
thankfully shortened road trip,
the family arrives at a dreary
apartment and finds their fur-
niture will be days late. To add
to the stress of the situation,
Riley’s parents start arguing ...
and the pizza in San Francisco
has broccoli on it. While trying
to calm the other emotions, Joy
insists on keeping a happy face,
which means excluding Sadness
from activity. After an argu-
ment, Joy, Sadness and Riley’s
core memories are thrown into
the confusing maze of her long-
term memory. They have to navi-
gate long term memory to try to
make it back to headquarters,
where they are urgently needed.
Without them, Riley cannot feel
joy or sadness, leaving Disgust,
Anger and Fear to be her primary
emotions during stressful events
such as the first day of a new
school and hockey tryouts.
What makes “Inside Out”
special and deserving of the
hype is not just its visually stun-
ning animation and the likable
and funny characters; the film
changes the formula of children’s
movies fundamentally with one
characteristic — it doesn’t have
a villain. All of the characters,
even ones that would have been
easy to denigrate with ulterior
motives, are actively rooting for
Riley. Unlike other kid’s movies,
the viewer has to accept that no
one is inherently good or bad; the
world is much more complicated
than that.
However, as “Inside Out” so
articulately demonstrates, there
is a mix of good and bad in every-
thing — including the movie.
As the film serves as a supple-
ment to mental health educa-
tion, the representation of body
types must be addressed. Joy,
the most conventionally “good”
and likable character, is tall,
thin and white. Her counterpart
is Sadness, who is portrayed as
blue, overweight and wearing a
droopy turtleneck and glasses.
For all its other positivity, the
film unfortunately connects sad-
ness with fatness and happiness
with beauty. Pixar can do better
than feeding into stereotypes
that children constantly absorb
from other media sources.
Despite the issues of body
image, Pixar has created a
film that will inspire children
to consider the importance of
their own feelings and have
more consideration for those
around
them.
“Inside
Out”
is a humorous and engaging
reminder to pay attention to the
voices in our heads.
6
Thursday, June 25, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
A-
True
Detective
Season 2
Premiere
HBO
A-
Inside Out
Pixar &
Walt Disney
Pictures
Rave 20 &
Quality 16
COURTESY OF ??????
Smize feat. stache