On the Netflix drama You, in the season two premiere “A Fresh Start” the main character Joe/Will says “..if LA is hell, the LA DMV is surely the ninth circle.” (You, Netflix, December 26, 2019)
Contributed by Faeryn Lee (The Bolles School, ’22)
Dante in poster for HBO’s series, “Succession” (2019)
Image on wall is a painting entitled “Dante and Virgil” (1850) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. It appears to be the falsifiers of Inf. 30, Capocchio and Gianni Schicchi, in combat.
Contributed by Kristina Olson
The original painting, currently held in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France, below.
Criminal Minds, “Burn” (S10E02)
“There’s been a string of killings, from a drowning, to strangulation, to a hit and run. There seems to be no connection – except all the victims are fathers with sons the same age, and the killings are following the sins laid out in Dante’s Circle of Hell. Apparently, the UnSub has some serious daddy issues.” — CBS
During the episode, the killer hallucinates a voice repeatedly crying to him, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Veiko Ounpuu, “The Temptation of St. Tony” (2010)
“Bizarre and beautiful, disturbing and droll, The Temptation of St. Tony wonders what it means to be a good man. Kicking off with a quotation from Dante’s Inferno, this delirious sophomore feature from the Estonian filmmaker Veiko Ounpuu observes Tony (Taavi Eelmaa), a triumphantly depressed middle manager. Dissatisfied with his adulterous wife and a boss who orders him to sack all his factory workers, Tony descends into a midlife crisis that manifests itself as a series of increasingly hilarious, horrific visions.” [. . .] –Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times, September 16, 2010
Joe Wright, “The Soloist” (2009)
“The Soloist is a buddy movie with none of the usual grace notes of the genre, and the backdrop–a skid row seemingly conjured by Dante where legions of homeless lead a feral existence –is part of a Los Angeles few ever see. In his films Mr. Wright has displayed a remarkable visual facility, and The Soloist is no exception. Instead of hills and canyons, the city is rendered in soaring concrete, brutal poverty, scary dark nights and hard sunlight.” [. . .] –David Carr, The New York Times, April 15, 2009
