The Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading

burn after screening is more like it

hardly, I'd burn Barton Fink way faster. Malkovich is kinda great.

I'm seeing this tomorrow. It was either this or The Women remake.

malkovich definitely the best thing about but everything else is so meh... feels like so little effort went into writing it.

There are some funny lines. "Dribble?"

btw Manohla Dargis shares my opinion that they hate people, only it bothers her even more.

i don't know if they hate people but pretty much all the characters in this movie are so unlikeable i guess you could draw that conclusion.

ohh eric i really wanna see the women remake, no matter how thoroughly it butchers the original. meg ryan's hair + annette benning's face = OK

Sur, Brad Pitt's skunk-dyed hair in this looks funnier than Meg Ryan's stretched face.

i can't wait to not see this movie

so i guess the "it's great as Big Lebowski" rumor was incorrect (?!)

no, it's about as amusingly mediocre.

(ie, not sure if being stoned will help this time)

Man, this looked complete shit in the trailer, but it being Coen bros I was hoping the trailer was misleading.

Trailer/promos overemphasize slapstick. I actually find a couple of the principal characters sort of pitiable, despite their idiocy. (and in support, Richard Jenkins)

Yeah, I actually thought from the trailer that the Coen's might have deliberately overemphasized the slapstick as a kind of confuse-the-audience and/or deadpan-joke-about-trailers move.

Like one of the trailers is obviously edited so that clearly disjointed lines sound connected

that's SOP for trailers.

yeah exactly, but it was to such an extreme that I thought it was a Coen brothers joke

might be, anyway

I don't think it'll do well at the b.o. long term, as it basically sort of sets Idiocracy in the present day, and ppl don't flock to such things.

(when they can just read the ILE presidential threads)

"order before october first and receive these five dvds ABSOLUTELY FREE!"

clip of frances mcdormand: "sure, why not?"

The promos for don't look encouraging at all. But I'm maintaining high hopes due to my desperate (but, so far, foolproof) belief in the McDormand Axiom: That the Coens produce a winner every time they reserve a role for Frances McDormand; or, indeed, any combination of McDormand/Turturro/Polito/Buscemi/Goodman. And if it still sucks, well, damn...I may just have to write 'em off entirely - or hope that they can miraculously get back to basics and write something involving a kidnapping that isn't a kidnapping. Assuming that the Fake Kidnapping Axiom is still in effect. (Thus far, they're 3-for-3 as far as that goes.)

Either way, even if they never produce an enjoyable film again, it'd give me some personal closure if they could write a couple of new scripts set in the 1960s and '70s, since they've touched on every other decade from the '20s thru the oughties. Just sayin'.

Next film is set in Minnesota in 1967, so just got the 70's to do.

ohh eric i really wanna see the women remake, no matter how thoroughly it butchers the original. meg ryan's hair + annette benning's face = OK
― Surmounter

You don't even watch the actual movies, do you?

this was fun, & the score works great

I am never going to be able to get the dildo rocker out of my mind, though

This was OK, but happy I didn't expect anything better than a breezy throwaway.

The trailer was a bait and switch, but I liked this a lot.

i liked this.

Pitt was actually very funny.

thumbs up. it did a great job of neutralizing the horrible taste of Righteous Kill.

This was OK, but happy I didn't expect anything better than a breezy throwaway.

A breezy throwaway that paints America as a land of moronic douchebags (otm, obv).

Pitt was funny til it reached the "look at me acting stupid" stage.

Number one this weekend!

is "portrays americans as stupid" really your benchmark these days?

? I think the bleakness under the comedy belies "breezy."

Of course it's #1, it's full of movie stars. Steep dropoff coming.

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I think the best joke is Pitt getting shot in the face in his first scene w/ George.

no, mark, I don't think it's all that good. The thesis is just one of its virtues.

i think that got the second most laughs, after dildo chair

xpost

well, I didn't mean haha funny, more "George & Brad, together ag... BLAM."

I have to confess I really didn't "get" the running Clooney/bolster joke.

he was using it to fuck Tilda

or he was using it to position his body in order to get at Tilda from another angle

yeah the lols were of the wtf variety, but definitely lols.
xxpost

i think it was just funny that his character was carrying it around. And it was the only thing he left with after they fought. I laughed.

oh, you hets

Most laughs in my theater was the scene where the bureaucrats green-lit McDormand's long-awaited surgeries. "Pay it!"

Dogville painted America as a land of moronic douchebags, too, and made a much better case.

But unfortunately, it was made by a bigger douchebag.

Most enthused smart-critic reaction:

Ooh, it's mean, ooh, it's misanthropic, oh dear, the characters are cartoonish, my my, but there's next to nothing at stake in this empty little contraption. WHO. CARES. This film is endlessly, uproariously funny, and never stops generating new dimensions of witty stupidity... So what if it has no "heart"? It never struck me as being actively mean, in the way that Todd Solondz or Neil LaBute movies or certain Alexander Payne movies are.... Aside from the endless FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.s, this is how they used to do screwball. I say this as someone who honestly never thought I would ever like another Coen Brothers film again, much less love one. I'm just flabbergasted. All hail the new Lebowski.

http://academichack.net/reviewsSeptember2008.htm#Burn

I also read Pitt's Chad as gay, ja?

I enjoyed this. Especially in retrospect, having sat through Eagle Eye last night.

i figured that was for certain.

For me the problem with Intolerable Cruelty is that the film never achieved the sense of play it hoped to deliver. It was generally amusing in concept and execution, but it desperately wanted to be delightful and it failed.

josh otm re comedy, everyone has their favs and least favs with the coens but for me all the ones that i think dont work are comedies. its a much, much smaller target to hit.