mirthless chuckle
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 February 2016 12:31 (eight years ago) link
would that it were so simple the best scene for sure. the kid who played hobie was so great!
― Hungry4Ass, Sunday, 7 February 2016 16:10 (eight years ago) link
otm that scene was the only(?) redeemable thing? ugh this was a chore. felt v pasted together under like a day in the life of the brolin studio exec auspices
― johnny crunch, Sunday, 7 February 2016 21:58 (eight years ago) link
I liked this quite a bit, but it seemed severely edited - Jonah Hill and Frances McDormand each had one scene; Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes, and Tilda Swinton all only had a couple. What was the matte painting gag in the beginning?
― flappy bird, Sunday, 7 February 2016 23:17 (eight years ago) link
yeah it felt a bit like a digest version of a more generous story.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Monday, 8 February 2016 05:21 (eight years ago) link
yeah sorta mysteriously perfunctory in its construction; it felt especially strange when it would kind of linger & let a movie scene play out, like the mode the film was operating in wasn't really narrative, more collage. fiennes was such a delight though. it really did feel absent of the kind of investment that can be so rich in their work, like either in making vivid & real the excerpts - which happened a few times with the clooney/caesar scenes, but felt kind of generic in some others - or sort of drilling the characters into your head. brolin's muscular exec is so limp & unconcentrated next to say-the-admittedly-high-water-mark of the harried serious man protagonist.
― bloat laureate (schlump), Monday, 8 February 2016 06:34 (eight years ago) link
i really don't get the tepid critical reception, i thought this was WONDERFUL
― goole, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 17:59 (eight years ago) link
you're tepid
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:00 (eight years ago) link
my, ran out of All About Eve lines at last?
― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:02 (eight years ago) link
not until the last ILX poster has stopped being a pill
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:04 (eight years ago) link
i think the only contemporaneous Coen films are Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, Raising Arizona, and Blood Simple, maybe. even Fargo takes place in the late '80s.
add their most popular movie to that list
― 0 / 0 (lukas), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:06 (eight years ago) link
deepest examination of the desires and ideas that drive people since, idk, miller's crossing
also the only movie i've ever seen where communists talk like communists
H4A otm, the dude who played hobie was terrific. and i never thought i'd see michael lambert turn up anywhere.
― goole, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:07 (eight years ago) link
the communist plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense really; who knows what indoctrinating clooney was supposed to get them. i suppose the implication is that even with dr. marcuse advising them (lol) they haven't shaken off the ideology of the hierarchy of stardom?
― goole, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:12 (eight years ago) link
an easy task when you're quoting Das Kapital
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:26 (eight years ago) link
― 0 / 0 (lukas), Wednesday, February 10, 2016 1:06 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
the big lebowski takes place in 1991
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:42 (eight years ago) link
i thought he meant No County For Old Men, which takes place in 1980
― nomar, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 18:44 (eight years ago) link
True Grit was by far their most popular movie in terms of box office
strangely forgotten about now
― Number None, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 21:19 (eight years ago) link
its p boring
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 21:26 (eight years ago) link
'forgotten' in the sense that stoners never talk it to death?
― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 21:27 (eight years ago) link
A Coen version of The Dog of the South coulda been a stoner classic. What might have been
― Number None, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 21:55 (eight years ago) link
The Coens' True Grit was lovingly adapted from great material, had excellent casting, top notch performances, marvelous cinematography, set design, costumes - the whole package - and if it isn't a top ten western of all time (which is where I'd place it), then it is only barely outside the top ten.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:01 (eight years ago) link
True Grit >>> Big Lebowski
ain't gonna watch it again to confirm
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:28 (eight years ago) link
this was just delightful. i can see how some of the narrative beats feel cursory or condensed, but it didn't really bother me.
― sam jax sax jam (Jordan), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:34 (eight years ago) link
true grit was an excellent movie!
to be clear, i enjoyed "hail , caesar," it was just a little graceless by their standards, a little cobbled-together.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:40 (eight years ago) link
Enjoyed this, but I think I might have liked it better if it was strictly about Brolin running around putting out fires without the Clooney arc to provide a 'narrative'.
― "Damn the Taquitos" (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:56 (eight years ago) link
I would've enjoyed 95 mins of Tatum dancing and five minutes of sodomy b/w him and Fiennes.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:57 (eight years ago) link
only 5 minutes?
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:58 (eight years ago) link
*mirthless chuckle*
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 22:59 (eight years ago) link
Huh, crazy, I also enjoy watching people have sex.... Anyone else?
― • (sleepingbag), Wednesday, 10 February 2016 23:01 (eight years ago) link
only if i'm one of em
― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 11 February 2016 02:27 (eight years ago) link
the "reveal" of what happened off the set of on wings as eagles was such a predictable letdown! i guess that seems typical of the slight half-assedness of this film. just nothing terribly surprising.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 11 February 2016 03:13 (eight years ago) link
damn
― 0 / 0 (lukas), Thursday, 11 February 2016 03:31 (eight years ago) link
I liked this, but found it a bit too busy. More than any other recent film, it reminded me of Inherent Vice, in that it gives us almost too much good stuff, to the point where the whole ends up feeling less impressive than the pieces. I wish it had found a way to mostly stick with Brolin's perspective throughout--where the chaos of the film would at least have been consistent with the character's experience--rather than to keep finding ways of shoehorning movie parodies and new characters into the narrative. I get why some were saying that it felt rushed and unfinished--a consequence, I think, of the Coens trying to fill it with so many different set pieces and cameos.
― pitchforkian at best (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 17 February 2016 04:55 (eight years ago) link
Not up to speed on the thread, but here's a thing:
Religion often fills the frame in the Coen Brothers' latest, Hail, Caesar!. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), the film's long-suffering and almost comically decent Catholic protagonist, spends quite a bit of time haunting the confessional, desperately seeking penance for the cigarettes he's snuck. And fatuously awful as it might appear, the production of the titular Biblical epic can't help but foreground the difference between true faith and its shallow performance.
So, is this a Christian tale? Is goody-good Mannix meant to represent Jesus (as a few have suggested) or at least to stand in for his virtuous followers?
Probably not. Robert Picardo's Rabbi is one of the best and most morally authentic characters onscreen. More crucially, of the influential religious leaders attending a Capitol Pictures focus group meeting in a key early scene, he's the only not completely full of sh!t.
That said, we're obviously meant to see the actors employed by the fictional Capitol Studios as haplessly wayward sheep. Their foolish, selfish lives would tend inevitably toward ruin were not Brolin's fixer keeping constant watch over them, working invisibly to nudge them toward "the right thing". Mannix shields his dimbulb charges from exploitative pornographers & ideologues, steers their slutty mermaid asses toward traditional marriage & childbirth, and ensures that evil yet distressingly handsome dance-gays return to the Godless lands from whence they came.
Tilda Swinton's "two faced" twin gossip columnists, meanwhile, stand in for the media's self-righteous naivete. They're not necessarily evil, but only Mannix's paternal manipulation can ensure that they print constructive untruths. The Lockheed Martin headhunter who insidiously courts Eddie with smokes and craters, meanwhile, is clearly the military-industrial devil.
Even so, it's hard to ignore the staggeringly conservative message that emerges from the whole, especially given the Cold War setting and correspondingly dated sexual politics. If the film's Hollywood is a microcosm of midcentury America, then Eddie Mannix represents not Jesus but Herbert friggin' Hoover, sleepless watchman of the liberty we're apparently too damn stupid to deserve.
― somewhere btwn Gabriel Garcia Marquez and early Evel Knievel guy (contenderizer), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 18:44 (eight years ago) link
Picardo's character not full of shit, but he's cynical (his reaction to the film-within-a-film: "meh.") Basically, he's the Coen Brothers.
― pitchforkian at best (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 24 February 2016 22:24 (eight years ago) link
J. EDGAR HOOVER for chrissake
gah
― somewhere btwn Gabriel Garcia Marquez and early Evel Knievel guy (contenderizer), Friday, 26 February 2016 19:54 (eight years ago) link
wth, brain?
i never bothered with the new true grit cuz i like the old one so much i really need to see it?
― scott seward, Friday, 26 February 2016 20:58 (eight years ago) link
I enjoyed Picardo and liked the entire scene for multiple reason, not the least of which was the Greek Orthodox, when asked about religious suitably, just starts giving notes about the plausibility of the chariot bit.
― Darkest Cosmologist junk (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2016 21:10 (eight years ago) link
Greek Orthodox leader, that is
― Darkest Cosmologist junk (kingfish), Friday, 26 February 2016 21:11 (eight years ago) link
I like the original but the new one's better.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 26 February 2016 21:15 (eight years ago) link
frankly the coen bros films are the last things we should be searching for hidden or submerged meanings in (a really dull pasttime to begin with)
― wizzz! (amateurist), Saturday, 27 February 2016 03:16 (eight years ago) link
The interesting thing about looking for hidden or submerged meanings is that, if you want to find them badly enough, they will appear. Although no one else may see them as you do.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Saturday, 27 February 2016 03:32 (eight years ago) link
Tilda Swinton was my favorite part of this very weird movie
― JRN, Saturday, 27 February 2016 03:40 (eight years ago) link
wasn't sure how i felt about this immediately after seeing it but then on the bus ride home i ran into a former friend who i haven't seen in forever and who described his new life pursuit as 'community building through puppetry and object theatre' and his review of the movie as 'red-baiting neoliberal propaganda', which on the whole made me like it more i think.
i don't know about any hidden or submerged meanings but they seemed to be building up a nice meditation on idealism, hypocrisy, naiveté, power and corruption that felt underserved by the apotheosis of josh brolin slapping clooney in the face (however great that scene was)
i thought the film would be better but it was still really good? 'would that it were so simple', brolin consulting the religious leaders, the channing tatum tapdance and everything with the communists it were the best scenes
― flopson, Saturday, 27 February 2016 18:52 (eight years ago) link
a really dull pasttime to begin with
beg to defer! it is the best.
― somewhere btwn Gabriel Garcia Marquez and early Evel Knievel guy (contenderizer), Saturday, 27 February 2016 18:59 (eight years ago) link
guh the channing dance sequence was a chore. like if someone remade singin' in the rain starring half a cow.
― somewhere btwn Gabriel Garcia Marquez and early Evel Knievel guy (contenderizer), Saturday, 27 February 2016 19:01 (eight years ago) link
it was fantastic
― flopson, Saturday, 27 February 2016 19:03 (eight years ago) link
would watch an 100-minute cut of the dance sequence.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 27 February 2016 19:04 (eight years ago) link
guh
my faorite part was the love triangle btwn singin' ropin' hobie, miss carlotta valdez and sir laurence laurentz. want a sequel w/ just them.
― somewhere btwn Gabriel Garcia Marquez and early Evel Knievel guy (contenderizer), Saturday, 27 February 2016 19:06 (eight years ago) link