Hacker Cinema
Yellowstone
2018 · TV series · 5 seasons
Created by Taylor Sheridan, John Linson
Follow the violent world of the Dutton family, who controls the largest contiguous ranch in the United States. Led by their patriarch John Dutton, the family defends their property against constant attack by land developers, an Indian reservation, and America’s first National Park.
2 positive1 mixed21 neutralfrom 24 commenters
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24 comments on Hacker News
I was unaware that Veronica Mars, Sons of Anarchy, Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lioness, and Landman were considered "Westerns" (in the USofA sense).
I myself would have reserved that label for his multitude of Yellowstone and Glam Ranching spinoff productions.
My own AV collection of media I enjoy watching or have been involved in the production of does include a collection labled Western .. but these are not the Westerns you are thinking of.
* https://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/710/milli-milli.html
* https://www.screenwest.com.au/made-in-wa/production-highlights/breath/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Bastards
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame_(1988_film)
* https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092220/
* etc. (many more)
( Yes, I've been in a film with Nicole Kidman, and another with Hugh Jackman's wife* )
( * Well not then, nor now - but wife for much of the time between ... )
Landman is objectively a bad show. I gave it about 5-6 episodes before giving up. It's so far from Yellowstone, it might as well be in Australia.
>Top Gun: Maverick and Taylor Sheridan’s nostalgic, libertarian-inflected Yellowstone. And a longstanding Christian culture industry has backed projects like the 2023 film Sound of Freedom, a dramatization of child trafficking that grossed more than $242 million for Provo’s Angel Studios. The Christian drama The Forge earned $30 million on a $6 million budget last year.
There’s good evidence that this is an untapped market which normal studios are too afraid to tap.
I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all. If you listen to people on the right they have felt unrepresented in popular entertainment for a long time, and these successes are evidence that they are willing to pay for entertainment which aligns with their values.
> National Assembly Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet on Sunday ruled out abandoning the legislation, named after the conservative lawmaker who proposed it, as it would "save a certain number of our farmers".
Sometimes I have questions about the narrow-minded views of politicians. Sure, it helps 10 farmers but harms 100. Nobody seems to keep in mind the fact that if we kill the bees they're gonna take us with them.
Feels like that episode from Yellowstone:
John Dutton: And what effect you think 7000 acres of solar panels are going to have on their environment?
Stanley: There's no evidence that solar panels would have any impact on the sage grouse
John Dutton: What do they do with the sagebrush when they put in the solar panels?
Stanley: They, they, they would clear it before putting in the solar panels.
John Dutton: And remove the sagebrush?
Stanley: Yes sir.
John Dutton: Sage Grouse live in the sagebrush.
Stanley: They do.
John Dutton: And you don't think removing the sagebrush is gonna have an effect on the population?
Stanley: I just said there's no evidence...
John Dutton: You know what scares me about you, Stanley? You're serious.
In 1986-87, when Family Ties was at its peak, it had a rating of 32.7, which means almost a third of all US households watched the show every week.
That probably amounted to 60m+ people tuning in, which is close to Super Bowl numbers ... every week. The TV audience was concentrated then in a way it isn't now. Yellowstone gets less than 12 million viewers per episode today.
Maybe you think Meredith Baxter was better known, but I'll bet more people were paying attention to the teenager than the hippie mom. But let's say she was no 2, or no 5. She was galaxies more famous than the most famous people on TV today. And she has a CS degree. Which taken together is more astonishing than Ben Affleck opining on LLMs.
Well for a look at how the pros do it, check out the FUDdy-duddys at https://www.express.co.uk/latest/yellowstone-volcano to see the UK-Express Yellowstone Article Roll of Doom. It goes on forever, and is now hilariously sprinkled with soap opera gossip from the Yellowstone TV series which is a shame, it used to be all volcano all the time.
I watched season 1 of Yellowstone (with kevin costner), and it was pretty interesting.
I don't usually watch the extras, but for some reason I let it run and watched the behind the scenes interview.
and they summed up the premise behind the entire series in a one line burn-all-the-bridges SPOILER.
ugh.
I haven't bothered watching season 2...
Yellowstone
This is a storyline in Yellowstone TV show.
That ski destinations price out locals, due to million dollar vacation homes & tourists.
You see this happen at Telluride, Aspen, Jackson Hole, etc.
A previous commenter asked “Are ranchers in Colorado uniquely unequipped to adopt any of the solutions used by ranchers elsewhere?”. I interpret this as snark and was answering in kind. Here in the western USA ranchers have been very, very adept at dealing with predators, human and otherwise, for 150+ years. It’s the stuff of movie and TV legend, most recently in shows like “Yellowstone”.
The options are restricted mostly by law and local custom.
Edit: Movies, unsorted, from the top of my mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter%27s_Bone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) , seen before Covid, deemed to be realistic, and therefore better than stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Sign_(film) somewhere in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_(film) The remakes of the Planet of the Apes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later a little less so, though it had some great scenes of flying into London City Airport and the modern parts around that. Bladerunner in the original versions, the remake not so much. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the intro and first parts, spaceflight to the moon and such, the rest not. Too boring. I liked the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two better, actually. Avatar. Part one only. All of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise) with the exception of the crossover stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) for the almost cyberpunkish fuckedupness of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_Untold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southland_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_(2000_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_(1987_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Zero_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecop Ron Silverman Badass! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Blonde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_(1998_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjustment_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Seduction
TV-Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) and the remake linked from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series) and its prequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_(TV_series)
WESTWORLD!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_(TV_series) Praimfaya! Yeehaa! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series) All of Black Mirror! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_by_Wolves_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83 and sequels. ÄXZÄLLÄNNT! JAWOLLJA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Night_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2019_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(2009_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica
This all began about 2006 with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2004_TV_series) after having abstained from possessing a TV, or watching that by other means (with some exceptions for news and documentaries) since 1996, and mostly no cinema either.
That stuff rehooked me in a binge-watching session. Shit happens :-)
Do yoo vanna häff fries wiff thät?
/nerdsnipe off
The closest thing I have found is ReelGood. They let you pick all your services and search, browse, etc. Handles cases where multiple providers have the same content pretty gracefully. Your authentication creds don’t talk to Reelgood, so they’re deeplinking as closely as they can to each provider’s content page. For instance if Yellowstone is streaming on paramount plus and Hulu I’m presented with buttons for each, which will launch on those respective providers. I’ve only ever seen a URL be wrong once, and I use Reelgood almost every day. I also wrote a TamperMonkey script that embeds a show/movie’s rotten tomatoes score on the page to help optimize chances of whether I’ll enjoy it or not. I find this really helpful as opposed to switching between streaming sites or apps.
Not perfect but pretty good. Plex are attempting something similar but I was less impressed when I tried theirs. that was over a year ago, though
I haven't seen Yellowstone but I'd be amazed if it comes at all close to Blood Meridian for violence. I can't think of any movie or TV show that would.
edit: American Psycho might have if they'd stayed faithful to the book
> So Wales being under attack on Twitter is sad but doesn't necessarily represent "public opinion".
Even before Musk took over twitter was a very specific, very tiny, slice of the English speaking world.
There was a film theory a few months ago which looked at movies and trending on twitter, and dug a little deeper. Twitter for exmaple completely ignored major cultural phenomenon like Yellowstone, but really bigged up stuff the vast majority of the world doesn't care about ("the Snyder cut")
Presumably this applies to pretty much any subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg
https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTazviRabg
It might be countertuive but I've developped a sort of claustrophobia watching heavy cgi/vfx movies, I can't stand layers and layers of fake peoples, cities, ships, cars... It might not be aligned with my political views and might sad to disclose but I kind of find relaxing watching the true cows, horses and landscapes of Montana in Yellowstone.
> You mean companies never fail and go out of business? It happens all the time.
It's true that "if you can't make payroll, the company goes out of business" but anything less unoptimal than that also happens all the time. Individual executives who cause the failures get promoted, bad products with price-insensitive customers/investors live on, unprofitable business lines in otherwise surviving companies can live forever, managers grow their teams for non-economic reasons, customer brands of failed companies get bought and relaunched by anonymous Chinese companies instead of disappearing.
(Wrt this website, capitalism has given former YC president Sam Altman multiple McLarens and a New Zealand apocalypse bunker despite his never having a known productive job in his life.)
> Did you read in the news recently that Amazon axed Alexa? Because it was losing $billions?
That wasn't a rational decision. Amazon started Alexa on a whim, didn't monetize it on a whim, and canceled it on a whim. In a large company, the R&D people who develop products are often walled off from knowing about finances because the execs don't want corporate finances to be widespread knowledge, and so their yearly performance reviews are based on inventing cool stuff rather than if they were profitable or not. So the execs just didn't decide to tell them to do profitable stuff, then got bored and cancelled it instead of doing that. Too bad for anyone who got laid off, but it wasn't their fault.
(It's strange for them to claim it was losing billions though. It sure seemed like they were selling a lot of licenses, and Amazon is usually known for good cost control. Where was it all going?)
> It's like a TV series. "Yellowstone" was wildly successful, and Paramount is pouring money into prequels and sequels. "The Time Traveler's Wife" didn't do well, so no second season.
The TV industry has lots of cost-insensitive customers because most people don't cancel their cable/streaming accounts every month even if they don't use it. So they don't have perfect signals here either.
Netflix in particular is famous recently for constantly cancelling series even if they're doing well. And when something underperforms just a little they also cancel it, when they probably could've invested a bit more to improve it instead. This is actually hurting them because it reduces customer trust, which suggests they really just like cancelling things - or at best, they're irrationally sensitive to the possibility actors might ask for a raise next season.
> it never in practice being true
You mean companies never fail and go out of business? It happens all the time.
> Does the profit motive actually stop Google or Uber from constantly doing useless makework projects and releasing unprofitable products?
Did you read in the news recently that Amazon axed Alexa? Because it was losing $billions?
Besides, it's rarely possible to tell in advance whether a new product line will be successful or not. The thing to do is try it and see. If it fails, you axe it. If it succeeds, you put more investment into it.
It's like a TV series. "Yellowstone" was wildly successful, and Paramount is pouring money into prequels and sequels. "The Time Traveler's Wife" didn't do well, so no second season.
Exactly as free market principles predict.
I’ve started using the library a lot. They have multiple racks of TV shows that I paid hundreds in subscriptions to watch in the past. For example, I want to watch Yellowstone next. I checked out the DVDs for Season 1 rather than pay for Paramount+. Sure, I have to wait sometimes for popular stuff, but I am so inundated with content (even from just the library!) that I have no problem keeping myself entertained while I wait.
Better AND Worse? Streaming video. The convenience of on-demand and a sort of a la carte experience that we've always been clamoring to have since the days of "regular" Cable TV are here. And while that's nice and convenient in manys (i.e. high-quality streaming feeds of many kinds of both live content, popular shows/movies, and past/old movies and shows).
The downside is now it's a huge pain in the ass to remember what streaming network has what, in some cases down to which show's seasons exist where. Example? Yellowstone TV series (w/ Kevin Costner). You can watch the first 3 seasons on Peacock. But Season 4? Only on Paramount Network. Oh and don't get confused with Paramount Network versus Paramount+.
It's an upgrade in some ways but offset but incredibly frustrating and annoying experiences trying to figure out where shit lives in order to watch it.
It’s a little more complicated than “an episode”. For instance, the most popular cable program “Yellowstone” is on the Paramount Network. New episodes are shown there for a few days, but prior episodes are on NBC’s Peacock network. Many other popular shows are that way—new episodes on one platform (Chicago Med on Hulu), prior episodes on another platform (earlier eps in Netflix).
The Star Trek franchise is a grab bag between Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and Paramount+.
Thanks, I read this expecting not to like it, but it resonated with me a lot. This past Oscars show, I'd seen only two of the Best Films nominees, and they were both streamed. I also tried Nomadland and I turned it off.
TV has indeed taken over. The creativity of Breaking Bad or Succession or Yellowstone is what we used to watch movies for. Real creativity is always there and it'll go where it's appreciated.
I don't want to make this tl;dr so just one more thing: I hosted A.O. Scott at Google [1] and I mentioned that I never look at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. I read him, and whoever's on the Roger Ebert site. An 80% "score" from a bunch of stupid people is still stupid.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kh3-DGU3l4
Yellowstone (TV show) reference? :)
Now you’ll able to watch Yellowstone again in the comfort of your couch. Star Kevin Costner‘s hit series Yellowstone Season 3 is set to stream on NBC’s Peacock on November 22 at 12 a.m. ET in the morning.
"On the next episode of 2020 - Yellowstone - we find out more on volcanic activity and how different tectonic plates interact from Iceland to North America and beyond. Stay tuned"
It astounds me how much US TV airtime is devoted to adverts - roughly 18 minutes out of every hour, AFAIK (plus any split-screen advertising shenanigans).
In the UK, (outside the BBC, which doesn't have adverts) TV broadcasters are limited to an overall average of 7 minutes per hour, with limits of 12 minutes for any individual clock hour (which drops to 8 minutes during primetime).
The BBC's Natural History unit deliberately inserts ten minutes of "disposable" content that can be cut from the program when it is broadcast on commercial channels (e.g. the 'Yellowstone People' segments that were included at the end of episodes of 'Yellowstone' when it was broadcast on the BBC, but are dropped when it's broadcast on commercial channels).