Fascinating Facts About HBO’s . There was supposed to be a fourth season, but the mediocre ratings didn’t justify the expense, and HBO cancelled it. Efforts to bring back a shortened fourth season or a two- hour wrap up film never materialized, but for three seasons, Deadwood was groundbreaking television, not just for the lavish production values and incredibly performances, but for the language created by David Milch. It was a phenomenal series that elevated the stature of many actors and actresses who are still considered some of the best character actors around, and there’s hardly anyone in this case who we still don’t’ see regularly on our television sets. In honor of its 1. Anniversary, I thought we’d take a look back at some interesting facts, not just about the show, but about the town of Deadwood, and the real- life people who inspired David Milch’s characters. It’s not the best reason to watch Deadwood, but it’s a pretty good one: The word “f*ck” is used 2,9. When hundreds of titles hitting your streaming services this month, it's hard to know where to start. That's where we come in. Hundreds of movies come to American theaters every year. Sometimes they arrive at a rate of 20 per week, at least in New York, where most films that don’t open. HBO’s international streaming services HBO Nordic and HBO España accidentally published next week’s episode of Game of Thrones yesterday, and right now the ep is. Find, shop for and buy Amazon Video at Amazon.com. I can only imagine how many times the word “c*cksucker” is used. There are so many brilliant characters actors in Deadwood, one of which is Jim Beaver, who played Ellsworth. The character of Ellsworth didn’t actually have a first name for a long time, and when they finally decided upon one, Jim Beaver chose Whitney, after Whitney Ellsworth, the producer of 1. Adventures in Superman with George Reeves (Jim Beaver is such a huge George Reeves nut, he served as a consultant on Ben Affleck’s Hollywoodland). The Deadwood pilot was directed by Walter Hill, best known as the director of Warriors and Another 4. Hours, as well as the screenwriter behind Aliens. Hill won a Directing Emmy for the episode. Interestingly, before Walter Hill signed on, David Fincher had been attached to direct the pilot. Below is the real- life Bullock Hotel, which was built by Seth Bullock, the lawmen and hardware store owner played by Timothy Olyphant. That hotel still stands today. Seth Bullock hailed from Canada originally and married his wife Martha (played by Anna Gunn) in Salt Lake City, before they moved to Deadwood. As in the series, Martha left to live with her mother while Bullock tamed the violence in Deadwood. Interestingly, however, although Bullock witnessed Wild Bill Hickock walk into Deadwood in the series, Bullock didn’t actually move to Deadwood until the day before Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead. In fact, it’s unlikely they ever met. As the series suggested, Jack Mc. As if high school weren't enough, these troubled teenagers have to deal with vampires, witchcraft, and maniacs. For more, visit our Guide to Horror. HBO has ordered a Talking Dead-style talk show for Game of Thrones called After the Thrones, which will be produced by Bill Simmons and some Grantland folks. Celebrity News & Gossip more. Demand Film offers Le Ride August 23. 23, Demand Film is offering a one-night only chance to see the fascinating. Find movies playing on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, HBO and DVD. Sort by critic rating, filter by genre, watch trailers and read reviews. ![]() Call (Garret Dillahunt) shot Wild Bill Hickok. In real life, because Mc. Call felt insulted after Hickok beat him in a game of poker and then offered him some money to eat. However, during his first trial for the murder of Hickok, Mc. Call claimed that he shot him because Wild Bill had killed his brother. Mc. Call was found not guilty. However, the trial was thrown out because it took place in Indian Territory, and in the second trial, Mc. Call was found guilty and hanged to death. Truth was, Mc. Call never even had a brother. The real life Al Swearengen (Ian Mc. Shane) was actually a much worse figure than the character on the HBO series. He lured women into Deadwood with the promise of good jobs as stage performers, only to turn them into sex slaves. He abused the hell out of them. After his saloon burned down for the third time, Swearengen finally left Deadwood penniless. He was killed trying to hitch a ride to Colorado. If you’re curious about the fate of Seth and Martha Bullock, the lived very long lives (Seth died of cancer at the age of 7. Martha lived to the ripe old age of 8. In fact, Martha helped to have the Deadwood library built. Seth Bullock was actually friends with Theodore Roosevelt (and even rode in his 1. Justified character that Timothy Olyphant plays, Seth Bullock never actually killed anyone. You’ll also be glad to know that Seth Bullock never had an affair with Alma Garrett, as she didn’t actually exist (and it’s unlikely that Seth Bullock would have ever cheated on his wife, anyway). When the amazing John Hawkes, who plays Sol Star in Deadwood, told David Milch that he was not Jewish, Milch responded as such, according to Hawkes: “David asked me, . ![]() Garret Dillahunt (Raising Hope) played two characters in Deadwood, Jack Mc. Call (who shot and killed Wild Bill Hickok), and Francis Wolcott, an employee of George Hearst. However, Dillahunt originally auditioned to play Bullock, and after he failed to land that role, he was also nearly cast as George Hearst, a role that eventually went to Gerald Mc. Raney. 1. 1. Fourteen members of the Deadwood cast have also starred in Sons of Anarchy, so far. Ten Deadwood actors have appeared on Justified. Ian Mc. Shane also had a role in American Horror Story. Basically, FX is where Deadwood actors go to get work these days. ![]() In real life, the two two favorite shows of Ian Mc. Shane, who plays Al Swearengen, are Family Guy and The Simpsons because they, as he said, “tell you what’s happening in the world. Best shows on television.”1. I know I mention it every time I talk about W. Earl Brown, but someone new is amazed by this fact every time, so I feel an obligation to remind everyone that Brown — who played Dan Dority in Deadwood — also played Warren in There’s Something About Mary. Getty Image. 14. During this period in Deadwood history, there was so much gold that the average miner brought home $2. As a result, everything was incredibly expensive: A dozen eggs in 1. Deadwood cost as much then as they do now (several dollars), and it was not uncommon for the miners to spend all their money by the end of each day on food, alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. Deadwood at the time, however, was not a good place to find a wife: Men outnumbered women upwards of 2. Finally, you have not truly lived until you’ve seen a Deadwood gag reel. The one below is from Season 3, and Ian Mc. Shane absolutely owns it. He is tremendous (skip past the first one minute, which is a silly Facts of Life mash- up). Source: Wikipedia, Legends of America, Jewish America, IMDB, BH Pioneer. The best movies of 2. Hundreds of movies come to American theaters every year. ![]() Sometimes they arrive at a rate of 2. New York, where most films that don’t open widely begin their first runs. And that’s not even taking into account Netflix and other streaming services, which have changed how movies are being distributed without really decreasing the total number of them out there. What this means, practically speaking, is that it’s impossible for The A. V. Club to review every new movie available to audiences in a given year, month, or week. The hard reality is that we can’t cover everything, and plenty of films slip through the cracks—not because they’re bad (although some of them are), but mainly because they’re too small to compete with the more high- profile fare we have to privilege. These oversights do weigh on the conscience, though. And so to atone for our annual sins of omission, we try to carve out a space every December for some of the best movies we missed along the way—the films that deserve to be seen, even though we didn’t review them during their initial release. Below, we’ve singled out 1. Don’t sleep on these movies, even if we did. The Academy Of Muses Most of the films of the Barcelona- based director Jos. Club favorite In The City Of Sylvia. Like that beguiling and self- reflexive masterpiece, The Academy Of Muses concerns itself with the old story of men drawing inspiration from the mystery of women. Playing a fictionalized version of himself, the real- life academic Raffaele Pinto teaches a seminar on historical muses (“As philologists, we know that love and desire were invented by the poets”) at the University Of Barcelona. Most of his students are women, and as the semester trudges on from fall into winter, their discussions stretch the movie’s boundaries further into both fictional drama and documentary. Like much of Guer. Playing in select theaters; click here for cities and dates. But it’s also, somewhat sneakily, a paean to a community of workers who live communally right in the brewery for seven months each year, forming a unique bond. Many of them are elderly and wonder aloud how much longer the old way will endure. Should the tradition die, however, this doc provides most of the information that’d be necessary to resuscitate it. Available on Netflix, i. Tunes, Amazon, and VHX. Initially asking how weapons of war ended up in the hands of everyday cops, Do Not Resist carefully digs beneath the phenomenon to find a whole evolving culture within American law enforcement, wherein the poor, the foreign, and the petty criminal are cast as savage supervillains whom bleeding- heart politicians and defense lawyers are too weak to stop. Along with some jaw- dropping ride- along scenes with armored small- town officers in urban tanks, the film features chilling snippets of the us- or- them rhetoric being drilled into rank- and- file policemen every day by modern crime experts—including, yes, FBI director James Comey. This doc is a vital record of an America transitioning to martial law so quickly and stealthily that we’re barely acknowledging the change. Playing in select theaters; click here for cities and dates. There’s definitely a Carruthian vibe to the enigmatically titled H., though, in terms of both its no- budget formal precision and commitment to tantalizing obfuscation. Divided into chapters, it first introduces a middle- aged married couple (Robin Bartlett and Julian Gamble) whose easy rapport extends to the woman’s obsession with creepily lifelike baby dolls. Unrelated weird stuff—objects that suddenly float; a loud, paralyzing hum—happens in the margins and continues in the second chapter, which shifts focus to a younger couple (Rebecca Dayan and Will Janowitz) who collaborate on art projects. But its unusual amalgam of low- key, keenly observed naturalism and WTF inexplicability is potent enough to keep viewers enraptured. Available on Netflix. The narrative picks up steam when Jun (Rira Kawamura) announces her intention to divorce her husband, then takes a boat out of town and out of the movie entirely. As in L’Avventura, a disappearance resets the narrative tone completely, as the movie turns increasingly sinister, morbid, and far away from the restrained emotions of the first half. Long workshops and rehearsals prior to shooting enabled the actresses, all making their big- screen debuts, to seem like people who have genuinely known each other for a long time. That’s already a huge achievement. That Hamaguchi then pushes that group portrait into unexpected, strange terrain makes for a bracing, adventurous experience. But since this birthday party is a parent- supervised one for evangelical teen Henry Gamble (Cole Doman) and his devout friends, you might not expect too much debauchery. Still, Henry’s becoming aware that he might be gay, and as day turns to night, all the characters’ problems emerge along with the alcohol that wasn’t supposed to be there. Writer- director Stephen Cone—himself a preacher’s son whose features generally explore Christian milieus—doesn’t condescend while tracing the moment when faith becomes an obstacle to self- realization. And he’s still thrown a party, with lots of moments of group uplift and hilarity captured in elegantly framed widescreen by cinematographer Jason Chiu. Streaming on Netflix; also available on i. Tunes and Amazon. Which is a shame, because Mike Flanagan’s ruthlessly efficient Hush would play like gangbusters on the big screen. At just 8. 1 minutes, the film wastes little time setting up its cat- and- mouse game, which pits a deaf novelist (Kate Siegel) against the psychopath stalking the perimeter of her secluded country home. The heroine’s impairment ratchets up the threat level (how can she fend off what she can’t hear?), and Hush toys with genre convention by unmasking the killer fairly quickly. Mostly, though, this is just an effectively straightforward exercise in suspense, one that further positions Flanagan—who also made the year’s well- received Ouija prequel—as a filmmaker with a strong grasp on horror’s fundamentals. It’s enough to make one wish those rumors about him taking over the Halloween franchise had turned out to be true. Streaming on Netflix. But director Zhang Yang’s movie—a meditation on ritual filled with jaw- dropping Tibetan scenery—isn. The clear- eyed Paths stays admirably focused throughout on the sheer enormity of the months- long, 1,2. Their devotion is staggering. And so is the film. Available on i. Tunes and Amazon. True, it stars Dominic Monaghan as a socially inept loner who gets frustrated when his awkward efforts to woo an old schoolmate (Ksenia Solo) come across more like stalking. And yes, when he picks up her journal and learns her habits, he forms the kind of plan that normally turns into dime- store violent voyeurism of the gratuitous kind. But from there, the films zigs where you expect a depraved zag, resulting in a smart and unsettling tale—filmed with surprising brio by director Carles Torrens, who makes sure the viewer knows every nook and cranny of the layout—in which the expected plod through yet another disturbed creep torturing a plucky damsel gets a jolt of campy energy. Playing in select theaters. Not all of The Prison In Twelve Landscapes’ segments are equally fascinating. An overlong chapter on Ferguson, Missouri, tries to squeeze too big of a subject into an inadequate frame. Even there, though, Story mostly focuses on the alarming and heartbreaking particulars of a society that first criminalizes then exploits its underclass, squeezing every last dime from citizens who can’t spare a nickel. Playing in select theaters; click here for cities and dates. The Seventh Fire mostly follows criminal lifer Rob Brown, a frequent convict who lives in a small village on a reservation, where he picks up a teenage disciple, Kevin. Combining nuts- and- bolts detail about the low- rent narcotics trade with evocative scenes of extreme poverty and native rituals, the film explores how cultural pride has been warped over time by pervasive criminality and the cold grip of addiction. Available on i. Tunes and Amazon. Madness observes the day- to- day life, by turns chaotic and somnambulant, on the men’s floor of a hard- up mental institution in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province. Having gained (improbable) access to this forgotten corner of the world, Wang proceeds to do something remarkable with it, crafting deeply humane portraits of these troubled individuals and their makeshift community. It’s a tough sit, bleak in content and forbidding in length, but also a formidable achievement. Yeon clearly establishes the rules governing his flesh- eaters early on and works within them well (one clever set piece involving a climb through the luggage racks will leave one’s nails in shreds), though his humans don’t have that same thought- through quality. Workaholic dad and precocious young daughter? Tragic teenage lovers? Check.) But a zombie movie content not to aspire to any loftier subtextual readings needs little more than a skilled choreographer of action, and there’s plenty of evidence that this film had one in Yeon. Ooh, do “demons in a submarine” next! Available on Blu- ray and DVD.
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