TV Review: Hannibal

The most amazing show I've seen on TV in recent times, I must say, is NBC'S "Hannibal". It's just a crying shame that the low viewership is causing the network to think hard if they want to make a second season. 

The problem is not the writing. Lesser writers would be tempted to turn the show into a serial-killer of the week whodunnit, or even worse, Hannibal worship, where each episode is merely a cheap freakshow performance regaling us with the gruesome ways Lecter kills and devour his victims. Fortunately, writer/executive producer Bryan Fuller doesn't do that. He even puts Lecter on a creative leash until the sixth episode, when we finally see the man kill. Instead, Fuller explores Lecter's relationship with his friend/nemesis Will Graham, who we know from "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Red Dragon" will eventually catch the good doctor. The show contemplates the nature of violence, of life and death, of hideously twisted creatures wearing human faces and acting like human beings. So, no, the problem isn't the writing.

The problem isn't the acting either. Mads Mikkelsen (you might remember him as the creepy European guy who scrambled Daniel Craig's eggs in Casino Royale) plays Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter quite differently from Anthony Hopkins. With all due respect to Hopkins, Mikkelsen gets under your skin in a different way. Hopkins' Hannibal was a caged beast in the first two films and a hunted animal in the third, still potent but past his prime, his human mask long-discarded. Mikkelsen's Hannibal is a predator in his natural habitat, a man of wealth and taste, unfamiliar with the flavor of defeat and incarceration, keeping any hint of his strange appetites well-hidden until he's ready to pounce. (NOTE: Let's forget "Hannibal Rising" ever happened, shall we not?) Again, the problem isn't the acting.

The problem, I think, is that the show makes viewers too uncomfortable. NBC's "Hannibal" is a victim of its own success as a story. Perhaps viewers expected the low-brow freakshow, preparing themselves for the cheap thrill of spilt human blood and innards that would disgust them for forty-or-so minutes before allowing them to shake it all off as just nasty fun afterwards. No harm done. What they got instead was a tale as suave and sophisticated and sensual as Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself.

If the show doesn't get another season, I suspect it will still be remembered for a long time.

Tula

walang pinsan-pinsan

sa titi ng tulisan

walang pangit-pangit

sa titing nagagalit

walang matabang babae

sa titing madiskarte

walang mata-matanda

sa titing nagnanasa

walang banal na kepyas

sa titi ni Satanas

walang menor-menor

sa titi ni Mang Kanor

Hello, Friend

Hello, friend. You've been including me in your list of people to whom you send religious quotes on a daily basis for months now. While I appreciate that you remember me, I cannot say I appreciate the religious quotes. To better understand how I feel, imagine me sending you quotes like these every single day:

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
-Douglas Adams

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
-Stephen F Roberts

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
-Richard Dawkins

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
-Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
-Anonymous

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything around you starts to look like a nail.
-Abraham Maslow

If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
-Marcus Aurelius

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
-Anonymous

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument
-Samuel Johnson

Life is journey, not a destination.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man… living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.
-George Carlin

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
-Albert Einstein

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
-Mahatma Ghandi

Lighthouses are more helpful then churches.
-Benjamin Franklin

We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There’s not much personal about the laws of physics.
-Stephen Hawking

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.
-Blaise Pascal

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
-Steven Weinberg

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
-Delos B. McKown

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
-Edward Gibbon

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.
-Robert Ingersoll

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.
-Benjamin Disraeli

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.
-Anonymous

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
-Isaac Asimov

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
-José Bergamín

Vice Ganda

Something I posted in a discussion about movies:

"Learn from Hollywood" is not as easy as it sounds. More money is spent making Hollywood movies because they're shown all over the world. The audience is global so ticket sales are global. Filipino movies are generally only shown in the country. The audience is local so ticket sales are local. If a Filipino producer actually makes a 100-million-dollar movie with breakthrough special effects and all that, you'll have a really sad producer who is almost 100 million dollars in debt. So, no, there will be no Filipino Lord of the Rings, no Filipino Schindler's List, and no Filipino Avengers. Not unless a Filipino makes it as an A-list Hollywood filmmaker. The movies Filipinos can REALISTICALLY make are smaller ones. Still, a few million pesos don't really magically grow on trees so any businessman willing to shell out that amount of money would expect the movie to profit. So they'll spend most of that money on artistas that have good track records of drawing in the crowd. Like Vice Ganda. I won't watch him. You won't watch him. But a great godawful lot of Filipinos would watch him. So a movie is made around Vice Ganda.

There are no evil studio and network executives gleefully plotting to make movies and TV shows that would piss us off.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la Mort

The world is not going to be forever divided between the rich and the poor. Humanity's compass points towards freedom, equality, justice, and rational thought. It may be derailed from time to time, such as when the Nazi Party came into power in Germany and espoused the idea of one race being superior to others, but history shows us that humanity always gets back its bearings and continues its egalitarian march. Granted, there'll always be those who will cling to the status quo or the status quo ante, whether it's through religion, pseudo-religious organizations, or laughable delusions of aristocracy, but the world has never been more dead-set on social equality than it is in this Age of the Internet.