The Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading

(and all those movies irritate me to differing degrees)

oh you were serious

yeah he does have some comic chops. i bet if i saw a river runs thru it again i'd laugh to beat the band, tho.

this looks terrible

haha True Romance

Sam Goldwyn would never have let Braddie try "drama."

The trailer looked ok. Family relations notwithstanding, I'm glad they're writing roles for woman of Frances McDormand's age.

Sam Goldwyn would never have let Braddie try "drama."

He's come a long way from Interview With The Vampire, baby.

It's better than Ladykillers.
ie, another so-so Coens comedy.

I'm glad they're writing roles for woman of Frances McDormand's age

She's sort of -- what did Hoberman write? -- "savaged" throughout. A desperate Web-dater and seeker of cosmetic surgery funds.

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.

I had totally forgotten that in the Coens filmography No Country for Old Men is sandwiched between this and The Ladykillers, which kind of blows my mind.

I think the reason this never worked for me is that it seemed like a case of the Coens self-consciously trying to make a Coen Brothers Type Movie

Pitt's performance isn't about having multilayered comedy chops, it's glorious clowning.

Agreed

Also no country is just lifted straight from the novel, so maybe they didnt have to work themselves into the mood as much

Not that they finish editing a serious drama and then get the bends sitting down to write a goofy comedy - they're usually struggling to get a screenplay financed from the slush pile - but it's more the pattern than not to go from srs bsns -> goofball shit.

Blood Simple -> Raising Arizona
Crossing & Fink b2b -> Hudsucker
Fargo -> Lebowski
Man Who Wasn't -> Intolerable
No Country -> Burn After
Llewyn Davis -> Hail Caesar

i was surprised not so much by the shift in mood but in quality. all this time i'd been thinking of cruelty, ladykiller & burn as one continuous string of misfires (the first two so misconceived & badly executed that i'd wondered if the coens had completely lost it, the third better but just sort of an ungainly clunker), with no country being their reinvigorated return from the wilderness. its wild to realize that it comes square in the middle of that otherwise very awkward string of films. good point darraghmac, maybe the relatively straight adaptation took some of the pressure off

Yes but *also* intolerable cruelty and burn after reading are good tho

It's also harder to be funny than to be serious, imo. One reason I suggested "Burn..." to my wife is that there are far too few contemporary funny movies to watch.

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.