House of Cards...Frank Underwood: Figure Painter

[Blue in vt]

My Wife and I have really be enjoying the NetFlix original series House of Cards....in fact as Valentines Day included a significant snow storm here in VT we spent the evening watching the newly released Season 2.

Last night as we were watching episode 7 of Season 2 ...they cut to a scene of the Main character, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), and he was painting Civil war Figures and building a Diorama!  it was Genius!  and now my wife has slightly less scorn for my hobby/obsession.

Its always nice when our hobby is displayed in a "positive" format instead of being mocked.

Anyway...check it out...great show.

Cheers,

Blue

[Cory]

The show is like the Underwood character, nothing is done by chance, which makes me wonder where they are going with the whole civil war thing. The miniature painting I see as just part of the a larger civil war focus and putting Spacey's character in touch with roots he has said in the asides to the camera he despises.

[Plynkes]

If Spacey's character is anything like the Francis Urquhart character in the BBC original, then associating him with miniature painting isn't doing us any favours.


Better we be thought of as nerds than murderous megalomaniacs, I reckon.

[Blue in vt]

yeah he is a bit of an evil SOB...but at least he is not the archetypal Nerd gamer (40yo virgin?!)...so its a nice change of pace.

Cheers,

Blue

[Wachaza]

yeah he is a bit of an evil SOB...but at least he is not the archetypal Nerd gamer (40yo virgin?!)...so its a nice change of pace.

Fifty year old psychopath?

Annoyed my wife as I pointed out he seemed to be painting with the edge of the brush rather than the tip. 

[Hammers]

If Spacey's character is anything like the Francis Urquhart character in the BBC original, then associating him with miniature painting isn't doing us any favours.


Better we be thought of as nerds than murderous megalomaniacs, I reckon.

Underwood is no more pleasant than Urquhart but he is distinctly more American and thus, in a way...'boyish'. You can't really apply the House Of Card concept straight to American political conditions so they are considerably different. They share some story lines and protagonist types and concepts (liek breaking the fourth wall) but other than that different. I liked the original very, very much. Ian Richardson was bloody good and the whole series reeked o corruption. Lovely. The Netflix version is good to, much thanks to the actors. But I think the contrast between the cultivated intellectual Englishness and the utterly corrupted ways is brilliant. Applied to an American setting it doesn't have the same effects because everyone knows that Yankees are vulgar, self serving louts to the core anyway...

Very interesting that Underwood is a mini painter. I wonder how that will be used in the series.