We're halfway through the Red Dragon arc on Hannibal, and are being given both stunning beauty in the scenes between Dolarhyde and Reba, and stunning acts of CGI crappery (see the below CGI teeth). We go off on several tangents, Cooper calls some fans hipster douchebags and spends a good four minutes angrily ranting about the aforementioned terrible CGI. Find more information about The Great Red Dragon paintings of William Blake here.
All on this episode of Eat The Rudecast, a podcast about NBC's Hannibal, and the works of Thomas Harris.
The Silence of the Lambs trailer we spoke about.
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You guys are having way to much fun talking about Butts.
I don’t think the Ravenstag has ever looked badly made, although perhaps darkness played a role.
I absolutely agree that Dolarhyde is more humanized than Buffalo Bill. That’s why Silence is only my second favorite Thomas Harris film.
I don’t really understand the connection between “the way he kills” and Dolarhyde’s background. I suppose he targets families because he was rejected by his own mother and felt out of place with his grandmother.
In Potage, the deer Abigail killed is referred to as “she” and Garret Jacob Hobbs insists on referring to it in the present tense.
The glowing fur was very well done, and inclines me to forgive the use of a fake tiger.
We haven’t seen any Gateway employees other than Dolarhyde & Reba. In Manhunter, our first scene of Dolarhyde at work has a coworker named Eileen talking to him about some technical issue. She does a bit of a hair-flip as she’s staring up at him, and that could indicate she finds him attractive. On the other hand, he looks like Tom Noonan. That version of Dolarhyde is partly based on a schizophrenic murderer Michael Mann had been corresponding with even before he read the novel. He merely imagined that he had a close relationship with a woman (who in fact barely knew him) and that Inna-Gadda-da-Vida was “their song”, hence it’s inclusion in the movie. The incorrectly tuned tv is due to the common belief among paranoid schizophrenics that there are hidden messages intended for them in the noise.
If Dolarhyde on the show actually does reach completion with Reba while seated, he must have a fast recovery time, because he’d ready to bring her upstairs shortly after.
The depiction of Reba as the woman from the paintings really works, which puts in contrast the earlier depiction of Dolarhyde as the Red Dragon aping the number of the beast watercolor.
If you like Frank Langella, watch The Americans. It’s the best show on tv.
The reference to Thomas Butts may amuse our inner middle-schooler, but I like that the show doesn’t do any winking over the line.
Cooper’s theory about surveillance in a modern museum is interesting, but the show has rarely acknowledged the existence of that hazard to lawbreakers before. Hannibal’s murder of the judge in his chamber is an example.
Good point on Dolarhyde himself as possibly inferior reproduction of the Blake picture. It did not occur to me until you mentioned it.
When it comes to commentary on the movie trope of knocking people out via single application of a blunt object to the head, I like Alpha Protocol.
Nobody appears to have seen Dolarhyde eat the picture, so I don’t know if Will realizes that’s what he did, or why he did it.
You mention that Dolarhyde could have just shoved Will, and I don’t understand why he didn’t if he wasn’t going to take the time to kill him. Some have speculated he’s trying to stop killing (hence knocking out the attendant), but there hasn’t been much to suggest that, and the lead investigator knowing what he looks like seems too much of a risk.
When Dolarhyde was escaping, it looked like the elevator arrow pointed up.
The backstory we learned with Bedelia fits poorly with previous seasons. In Releves she tells Hannibal that she told Crawford half-truths by noting that a patient attacked her and died, but not who was responsible. Now we see that everything she said about the attack was a lie, not merely to whoever she was speaking to but also the audience. And her spiel to Will about Hannibal influencing him to think that killing someone he loves is the only choice (which I suppose only fit Abigail pushing Alana out the window) appears to have been pulled out of her ass. I don’t know how Cooper thinks her murder of her patient was possibly self-defense against Hannibal.
In Bedelia’s own account of herself as having a sociopathic revulsion toward weakness, she leaves little motive to visit Will in prison to assure him that at least someone believes him. And Will in turn has no good reason to take time off a case with a ticking clock to go call Bedelia a liar (no more than Jack did to meet with Hannibal). This version of Bedelia who has sought to become a public figure doesn’t much resemble the recluse and near-agoraphobe from before, nor does her earlier anger about Hannibal putting her in a position to lie seem reflected in her current comfort with flagrant dishonesty about her involvement with violence. Aside from her, Hannibal appears to have had an atypical lack of subtlety in his dealings with Neil (who I don’t recall ever being referred to by name). Maybe practice makes perfect.
Ed Gein inspired not only Norman Bates & Leatherface, but also Buffalo Bill in terms of making a woman suit. I had not heard the story of him almost getting released, and my impulse is to be skeptical.
Barney wasn’t in Red Dragon, but an orderly still brings Hannibal the phone, and he gets similarly threatened with mace in Manhunter.
Phone phreaking peaked before the 80s. Long distance calls got cheaper during that decade, and computer hacking started to displace it.
I don’t think Cox or Hopkins used accents all that dissimilar to their normal ones on the phone. But as native English speakers who may well have thought Hannibal was an American (I know Hopkins stated he went for a mid-Atlantic accent), their voices would be somewhat less distinctive. In contrast, even viewers used to this show sometimes have trouble understanding what Mads Mikkelsen is saying.
I may resemble Cooper’s purported hipster in a number of respects, but I don’t think Cox is the best Lecter. He’s better than when Hopkins got excessively hammy in Red Dragon, but he’s not supposed to steal the show (as Hopkins did to great effect in Silence of the Lambs, before he crossed over the line). Good horror typically relies on having the monster on screen for a fairly short but effective period of time. And in this story he’s not the primary horror. Manhunter is my favorite Harris film, but that’s in large part because Dolarhyde is more interesting than Jame Gumb.
Hannibal says the symbol means “you hit it” (perhaps purposefully avoiding what he learned from Dolarhyde), leaving it to Will to note that it also means Red Dragon. He does however then connect it to the Blake paintings.
Now ranging off-topic, it sounded like Cooper called Torgo a “seder man” rather than satyr. But I rarely hear that work spoken aloud, so I can’t claim to be an expert on its pronunciation. Torgo could well be Jewish though, you never know.
Am I the only one that thinks Cooper sounds like Penn Jillette? Can’t help but picture Penn Jillette when ever Cooper is talking. Anyways.. I didn’t mind the cgi of the dragon. I rewatched it several times and even slowed it down to get a good look. I found it extremely affective. I was jumping up with excitement the first time i saw it. But I also liked the tail… I just don’t understand why you all three have a problem with it. I actually would have been really disappointed if they had only shown shadows or nearly black images of it. that would have absolutely killed it for me. So far the only CGI that has made me cringe so far is those dumb fucking teeth.. I feel like i could make more realistic teeth in MS Paint.. It almost makes you wonder if Fuller intended them to look fake. But that raises way more questions than it answers…
You are not the first to point out my vocal doppelganger.