hannibal | the m0vie blog

Hannibal – Sorbet (Review)

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Darren

Hannibal took its time building up Hannibal Lecter as a serial killer. According to creator Bryan Fuller, there would have been a joke in Aperitif about Lecter’s culinary habits, but holding off on the sight of Lecter as a serial killer until the end of Entrée feels like it was a shrewd move. Not because it could ever fool the audience into forgetting that Hannibal Lecter is a murdering cannibal or anything like that. Instead, it builds up a certain amount of tension and suspense around the character, allowing us to see how those around him could have been blinded by his persona.

With a few obvious exceptions – knocking out Doctor Bloom in Potage or phoning the Hobbs household in Aperitif – we’ve mostly seen Lecter through the eyes of others. While the very premise of the show counts on the audience knowing who or what Lecter is, keeping him at a distance allowed the show a bit of breathing room in its first year. However, now that we’ve caught a glimpse of Lecter in action, Sorbet feels like its willing to pull back the layers on our eponymous epicurean.

Best served warm…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Anthony Hopkin, Bryan Fuller, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Hugh Dancy, laurence fishburne, Lecter, Mads Mikkelsen, Minnesota, murder, NBC, serial killer, silence of the lambs, Television, thomas harris, will graham | Leave a comment »

Hannibal – Entrée (Review)

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Darren

It’s nice that we got this far into the season before Entrée was necessary. It’s the kind of episode that a show like Hannibal was always going to have to produce relatively early on, allowing it to air the laundry, so to speak, and to overtly and clearly distinguish itself from a popular predecessor. In this case, it’s The Silence of the Lambs.

Although we haven’t met Clarice Starling yet, although the credit at the start of each episode cites Red Dragon as the show’s inspiration, it’s hard to escape the shadow of one of the most popular horror films ever made. Many argue that The Silence of the Lambs was the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar. Even today, it remains a cultural touchstone, and there’s an incredibly large number of people who are only familiar with the character of Hannibal Lecter through that story and – in particular – through the film adaptation.

Hannibal hasn’t been shy about referencing The Silence of the Lambs, nor should it be. Crawford’s office from the start of Aperitif seems arranged in homage to the film, while the arrangement of two of the victims in Coquilles couldn’t help but evoke Hannibal’s dramatic escape from his cell at the film’s climax. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Entrée exists mainly to allow the show to indulge and engage in the imagery and iconography of the film, so that Hannibal can truly distinguish itself.

“Oh, goodie…”

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: amy adams, Anthony Hopkin, anthony hopkins, Christopher Nolan, Clarice Starling, Eddie Izzard, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Henry Cavill, Hugh Dancy, Jack Crawford, laurence fishburne, Lawrence Fishburne, Mads Mikkelsen, man of steel, red dragon, Ripper, serial killer, silence of the lambs, superman, will graham | 2 Comments »

Hannibal: Coquilles (Review)

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Darren

I feel a little bad now. I spent a lot of time in Amuse-Boche and Ceuf complaining about the possibility that Hannibal might turn into a serial-killer-of-the-week procedural, at a time when the networks are over-saturated with that sort of forensic drama. However, Coquilles manages to be a pretty superlative hour of television despite feeling like a pretty conventional “catch the serial killer” story. The key is in the execution, with Coquilles serving as a rich character-driven drama that just happens to involve the hunt for a gruesome serial killer.

It also helps that the “angel maker” feels like a refugee from an early draft of a Thomas Harris novel rather than a bland psychopath of the week.

Served…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Bryan Fuller, christmas, Federal Bureau of Investigation, god, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Hugh Dancy, jack, Jack Crawford, laurence fishburne, Mads Mikkelsen, NBC, red dragon, serial killer, silence of the lambs, thomas harris, will graham | 2 Comments »

Hannibal – Ceuf (Review)

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Darren

Ceuf is somewhat overshadowed by the controversy it generated, an episode of Hannibal pulled from broadcast following several national tragedies (including the Boston bombings and the Newtown tragedy). In the wake of these two high-profile incidents, it was felt that broadcasting the full episode so close to the events would have been a bit much. This move naturally generated a host on on-line commentary with various people adopting various positions on the topic of whether or not Bryan Fuller was right to pull the show from the air. In a way, Ceuf is far more interesting for what it ended up being than as a chapter of Hannibal.

Something to chew over…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, boston, Bryan Fuller, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Ceuf, Fuller, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Hugh Dancy, Jack Crawford, Molly Shannon, NBC, serial killer | Leave a comment »

Hannibal – Potage (Review)

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Darren

Hannibal continues to move apace. Serialisation can often be a tricky beast, because it relies heavily on pacing. Reveal too much too fast and none of the plot beats carry enough weight. Drag out your revelations and your game-changing twists, and things feel too slow. The sense of progression is lost. On top of that, and something which is easily overlooked when it comes to serialisation, the key is to ensure that each episode exists as its own entity, while remaining a part of the whole. As often as one might use the “chapters of a book” analogy for episodes of The Sopranos or The Wire, this tends to ignore that each episode generally tended to be structured as its own entity. While a part of a larger story, each episode was its own self-contained unit of story.

Potage seems to suggest that Hannibal is finding its feet in the area, and carefully pacing itself. We are peeling back the layers on the eponymous psychiatrist at a pace that is neither too fast nor too slow. The evidence is mounting and his moves are becoming more brazen, but he retains his air of mystery. Since Lecter is a character who only really works with that sense of mystery, it’s a shrewd balance between progressing the plot and retaining the character’s appeal. Potage demonstrates the show has quite a knack for it.

The good doctor?

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Abigail, Abigail Hobbs, Caroline Dhavernas, crime, drama, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Lecter, Mads Mikkelsen, NBC, serial killer, sopranos, Television, thomas harris, will graham, Wire | Leave a comment »

Hannibal – Amuse-Bouche (Review)

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Darren

Second episodes can be tough. Pilots tend to establish the core themes and characters of a show, offering a very clear blueprint going forward and perhaps hinting at the direction that you want to take things. They are grand mission statements, couched in broad terms and delivered with a sense of novelty. Second episodes are a bit less exciting. They are about putting that plan into action, defining the edges a bit, expanding outwards where necessary and refining as needed. It’s with the second episode that you really get a sense of what a show is going to be like in a more practical week-to-week sense.

By that measure, Amuse-Bouche works quite well at giving us a sense of putting the show’s feet on the ground and helping prepare us for what lies ahead for the rest of the season.

It’s growing on me…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Amuse-Bouche, anthony hopkins, Bryan Fuller, business, chris carter, Clarice Starling, Crawford, Criminal Minds, god, Graham, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Hobbs, Hugh Dancy, NBC, serial killer, silence of the lambs, texas, thomas harris, will graham | Leave a comment »

Hannibal – Aperitif (Review)

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Darren

I’ll admit to being a bit sceptical about Hannibal as a concept. I am quite fond of all three of the Anthony Hopkins films, although I realise that both Red Dragon and Hannibal are flawed pieces of work at best. I also have a soft spot for Michael Mann’s Manhunter, even if I am not as firm a devotee as others. However, there’s a point where you reach saturation even with an especially interesting character.

There was something increasingly frustrating about watching Thomas Harris and various writers and directors delve beneath the surface of “Hannibal the Cannibal” to offer trite explanations and rationalisations for a character who was originally a force of nature. A television series seems to be the perfect way to over-saturate the market even further. If the character of Hannibal could seem trite and mundane after four films released years apart, how do you make a weekly television series exciting?

Surely you’ll either resort to explaining away all the mystery of the character, or you’ll simply wind up with a particularly shallow and generic serial killer show. There is a middle ground to be found, but it will be hard to strike that balance. With that in mind, I will confess that I am quite impressed with the pilot for Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. Although it’s too early to form a definitive judgement, Aperitif is quite appetising.

The meat of the matter…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Anthony Hopkin, Bryan Fuller, fbi, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Hugh Dancy, Lecter, Mads Mikkelsen, michael mann, Mikkelsen, NBC, red dragon, silence of the lambs, Television program, thomas harris, will graham | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Hannibal

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Darren

I actually have a bit of a soft spot for Hannibal. I think the key to enjoying and appreciating Ridley Scott’s 2001 serial-killer film is to realise that it’s a fundamentally different animal to The Silence of the Lambs, to the point where it isn’t really a sequel – despite featuring many of the same characters and considerably fewer of the same actors. Those expecting a faithful follow-up or conclusion will be disappointed, as will those who fell in love with Jonathan Demme’s delightfully understated The Silence of the Lambs. Even the title character here seems to lack the complexity he demonstrated in that earlier instalment, instead acting like the villain of a slasher film cast in the unlikely role of an anti-hero.

Still, despite these flaws, Hannibal is quite entertaining (if far too uneven and unsatisfying) on its own terms.

She looks good enough to eat…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Belvedere, Bolton, Bryan Fuller, Clarice Starling, Federal Bureau of Investigation, film, Florence, god, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Jesus, laurence fishburne, Lecter, Movie, NBC, non-review review, review, Starling | 4 Comments »

The Once Terrifying Hannibal Lecter: Upping the Ante on the Anti-Hero…

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Darren

I have the pleasure of catching a rather wonderful screening of The Silence of the Lambs last week. It was a fantastic evening, not least because I got a chance to finally see the film on the big screen for the first time. However, it occurred to me on watching it that Hannibal Lecter was much more compelling as a character here than he would eventually become. With the (very debatable) exception of Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon, Lecter’s subsequent film appearances feel like they are missing some vital component. I like Hannibal more than most, but I think the character suffers when promoted to lead. The less said about Hannibal Rising, the better. I am more than a little wary about the upcoming television show, even if it does star Mads Mikkelsen. What happened? When did Lecter become so toothless?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: anthony hopkins, Caroline Dhavernas, Crawford, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hannibal, hannibal lecter, Hugh Dancy, Jack Crawford, Lecter, Mads Mikkelsen, NBC, red dragon, Silence of the Lamb | Leave a comment »

Win! Tickets to a Jameson Cult Film Club Screening of The Silence of the Lambs!

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Darren

“Well, Clarice – have the lambs stopped screaming?”

The Jameson Cult Film Club is back in Dublin for its biggest and most electrifying double screening to date!

We’ve teamed up with the Jameson Cult Film Club to offer two lucky readers a pair of tickets each to the exclusive screening of the horror thriller, The Silence of the Lambs at a secret Dublin location Wednesday August 15^th.

For the uninitiated, Jameson Cult Film Club is all about watching your favourite cult films at spectacular screenings, staged to transport the audience right into the world of the film. These free events are not just your typical screening, as characters from the movie, live theatre and special effects timed perfectly with on-screen action help to create an electric atmosphere throughout the screening.

To give you a bit of a feel, here’s a video sampling some previous highlights:

If you would like to join Clarice Starling, Dr Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill at this exclusive Jameson Cult Film Club screening in the “Baltimore State Forensic Hospital” on August 15^th all you have to do is answer the question and fill out the form below.