Red Mosquito

Mickey wrote:Amazing
True Grit
No Country For Old Men
Fargo
The Big Lebowski
O Brother, Where Are Thou?
Burn After Reading

Slightly Less than Amazing
Hail Caesar!
A Serious Man
Raising Arizona
Miller's Crossing

A Little Disappointing
Inside Llewyn Davis
Blood Simple
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Still Need To See
The Man Who Wasn't There
The Hudsucker Proxy
Intolerable Cruelty
The Lady Killers
Barton Fink

Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

tragabigzanda wrote:i didn't know they were shot-for-shot remakes, that was really interesting to see...

My memory of the original, which I haven't seen for a long time, is that Rooster and Mattie both come across as kind of hokey. The dialogue's not the same, is it? If it is, then maybe I need to watch it again.

But man, I just loved the chemistry between Bridges and Steinfeld. I don't remember that being nearly as good in the original, it felt like there was no humor whatsoever. And in the new one, at the core of the film is Mattie's ability to disarm all these grown men with her vocabulary and gritty personality. Did the original have that stuff in it as well? I remember watching it on TV when I was younger and it just felt very lame.

Malloy wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:

tree_ wrote:I've yet to see Miller's Crossing and Blood Simple. Need to see those soon I think.

Miller's Crossing is a bonafide masterpiece, but it's a bit impenetrable on the first viewing. The dialogue is fast, deep, and the accents are heavy. Consider watching with captions on!

I love Blood Simple. But it's kind of a minor Coens film, in that they improved on the core formula in their later works.

big agree

tree_ wrote:old westerns may by my biggest cinematic blind spot, which is weird because I know I will probably love them. I loved Good Bad and Ugly.. just saw that for first time several months ago.

epilogue wrote:The Hudsucker Proxy is probably my second favorite CB movie, behind Barton Fink and just barely ahead of Fargo.

Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

tragabigzanda wrote:I LOVE the first 2/3 of Hudsucker, but it kind of loses me in the third act.

tragabigzanda wrote:I LOVE the first 2/3 of Hudsucker, but it kind of loses me in the third act.

Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

tragabigzanda wrote:

epilogue wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:I LOVE the first 2/3 of Hudsucker, but it kind of loses me in the third act.

I can't really fault that criticism. But the whole thing just works perfectly for me. It was maybe my introduction into full magical realism, which is a sub-genre that has captured my heart ever since. I sometimes wonder if I would have ever found David Lynch (for example) if not for The Hud.

Given what the CB do best, maybe it's a little to pat, a little too tight and bow-wrapped, but that's also something that I respect the hell out of when it's executed well. And The Hud is just so perfect.

Yes! That's exactly what bothers me about that ending! Not that it's magical realism, but because it's such an abrupt and tidy ending to things!