FOT Forum
FOT Community => Links => Topic started by: bruce on May 22, 2007, 08:21:27 AM
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I know Chris L read the book also. Heres the new Coens Brothers flick
http://www.commeaucinema.com/bandes-annonces=76586.html
Looks just like I imagined when I read it. It's a dark story this is no Ladykillers
Coin Flip scene looks to be exactly like the book description.
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I still haven't read it! I kept meaning to get around to it - especially before the movie came out - but then The Road was released and I think I finally read Suttree somewhere in that time as well.
In any case it's the very next thing I have waiting for me after Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - which I started today and after 20 pages is already astounding.
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after Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - which I started today and after 20 pages is already astounding.
I read Gilead last year and I agree.
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I still haven't read it!
:o I'm shocked Chris I thought you read it when it came out in PB. I so want to read THe Road but I'm waiting till after Oprah book club so I can find a used copy from all the housewives who read it.
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I decided to read the entire book today. Great stuff, unsurprisingly. What a brutal imagination. Thematically, it can be considered a kind of prelude to The Road, no?
Here's a roundup of the overwhelmingly positive movie reviews from Cannes, with some calling it a masterpiece:
http://daily.greencine.com/archives/003764.html
Looks like the movie will be extremely faithful, although I wonder how the Coens will handle the ending. Also, can someone give Garret Dillahunt some major roles?
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Interesting conversation between the Coens and McCarthy in TIME. Appropriately enough, he's a Malick fan:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1673269,00.html
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I think I finally read Suttree somewhere in that time as well.
I read Blood Meridian and loved it. I would love to see a "Dead Man" style western made from it.
After reading the "Outer Dark" and feeling rather unimpressed I tried to read the meandering and frustrating "Suttree"; with about 20 pages left I decided that this one trick pony wasn't getting any more of my time and put that snooze down.
Just when I thought I had gotten off the McCarthy bus, I read someone else's copy of "The Road" while on vacation. I read it in one sitting, intense in all the right ways, disturbing and touching. I think this is as close to a happy ending that this guy's ever going to get.
Now I have to play catch up and read "No Country..." before I see the movie.
Am I back on the bus? Maybe.
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Now I have to play catch up and read "No Country..." before I see the movie.
You really should; it's a tremendous piece of work, one of the few actual "can't-put-down" books I've read.
I'm glad to see that this movie is getting such great reviews. I'm a huge Coen Bros. fan, so I was looking forward to seeing this before I'd even heard of the book. It's good to know that they're doing right by the source material.
Edit: Just watched the "coin toss" scene...Javier Bardem is my new hero.
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Saw a screening on Saturday. Easily my favorite movie this year, which isn't at all surprising. I saw it with some people who hadn't read the book and others who had and all agreed that it was stellar. Can't wait to see it again!
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I think I finally read Suttree somewhere in that time as well.
I read Blood Meridian and loved it. I would love to see a "Dead Man" style western made from it.
After reading the "Outer Dark" and feeling rather unimpressed I tried to read the meandering and frustrating "Suttree"; with about 20 pages left I decided that this one trick pony wasn't getting any more of my time and put that snooze down.
It's 500+ pages! How could you have given up with 20 left?
I've "only" read six of his books so far (still never read the last part of the Border Trilogy) and No Country was definitely the easiest. I didn't know before that TIME article whether he had any interest in movies, but that was the only one that seemed not only adaptable but practically tailor-made for the screen. I'm glad the Coens appear to have nailed it.
I suppose a Blood Meridian movie is inevitable - last I heard, Ridley Scott was working on it - but I'm not looking forward to it. Funny enough, in Patton Oswalt's awesome list of "dream" movies on his MySpace blog he picked Terrence Malick for the job.
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I think I finally read Suttree somewhere in that time as well.
I read Blood Meridian and loved it. I would love to see a "Dead Man" style western made from it.
After reading the "Outer Dark" and feeling rather unimpressed I tried to read the meandering and frustrating "Suttree"; with about 20 pages left I decided that this one trick pony wasn't getting any more of my time and put that snooze down.
It's 500+ pages! How could you have given up with 20 left?
I remember thinking the same thing but feeling that I had to quit on principle. I couldn't imagine what might have happened in those last 20 pages that would have made the previous 480 seem worth while.
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I've heard some talk that John Hillcoat (the guy that did The Proposition) is going to direct a film version of The Road. Could be interesting.
I don't see how anyone could make a movie of Blood Meridian, though. If it's faithful to the book, no one will release it. If they try to make it palatable, it'll be bowdlerized to the point where it has nothing to do with the book.
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I've heard some talk that John Hillcoat (the guy that did The Proposition) is going to direct a film version of The Road. Could be interesting.
Guy Pearce has already been cast as the Father
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Guy Pearce has already been cast as the Father
Really? When I was reading the book, I was imagining someone a lot older. Maybe that's because I'd read that the book was about McCarthy's relationship with his own son.
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Guy Pearce has already been cast as the Father
Really? When I was reading the book, I was imagining someone a lot older. Maybe that's because I'd read that the book was about McCarthy's relationship with his own son.
Originally they were talking to Viggo Mortensen but I guess that ain't happenin.' Andy Milonakis has already been cast as the son.
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This was the best movie I've seen in a long long time.
I'm going to see it again tomorrow night.
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On a scale from 1-10 of movie violence, with 10 being the most violent, what would you rank it? My very literate (despite his radio show call-in to the contrary) 15 year old Andy From Knoxville wants to see it. My policy has been that if it's exceptional art, I can tolerate some adult situations, thus he's seen The Usual Suspects. What kind of ground am I on here?
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well Dave from what I heard it follows the book. So expect it to be about a 10
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On a scale from 1-10 of movie violence, with 10 being the most violent, what would you rank it? My very literate (despite his radio show call-in to the contrary) 15 year old Andy From Knoxville wants to see it. My policy has been that if it's exceptional art, I can tolerate some adult situations, thus he's seen The Usual Suspects. What kind of ground am I on here?
9. It's more violent than Fargo and much more so than The Usual Suspects.
Would I let my 15 year old see it? Probably, but not knowing what other R movies AFK has seen, I'd recommend seeing it yourself before making the call.
If you wouldn't let him watch Silence of the Lambs or Saving Private Ryan, you won't want him to see this.
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Yup, it's great.
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Guy Pearce has already been cast as the Father
Really? When I was reading the book, I was imagining someone a lot older. Maybe that's because I'd read that the book was about McCarthy's relationship with his own son.
Originally they were talking to Viggo Mortensen but I guess that ain't happenin.' Andy Milonakis has already been cast as the son.
Brilliant casting decision on Andy Milonakis!!! A better decision couldn't have been made. There was no other choice, really.
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does this open wide on Wednesday? I was so pissed when I couldn't see it this weekend.
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We named Andy From Knoxville after Andy Milonakis.
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Joel & Ethan Coen, Josh Brolin, and Javier Bardem being interviewed by Charlie Rose:
http://bigscreenlittlescreen.net/2007/11/22/video-charlie-rose-and-the-coen-brothers-on-no-country/
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Greatest laugh i got this past Friday was seeing this film. Once it ended hearing all the What the Hell ending is that in the crowd. I wanted to yell that's how the book ends maybe you should have read it.
the movie was fantastic by the way
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Greatest laugh i got this past Friday was seeing this film. Once it ended hearing all the What the Hell ending is that in the crowd.
Haha, it was the same thing when I saw it. The screen went to black and there were several "Eh?" "Huh?" "What?" exclamations. On the way out, I heard someone say "I guess that was an art film" in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
I thought it was a great ending, personally. And I have yet to read the book.
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Yeah, I feel like I have to read the book now. It started out like a Coen Brothers movie and wound up like a Flannery O'Connor story. What I loved so much was how the Coen Brothers knowingly subverted not only genre conventions, but the conventions of other Coen Brothers movies - everything I had come to expect from seeing every one of their other movies was deliberately defied.
I stayed up until three o'clock this morning talking about different interpretations of the Javier Bardem character and his relation to Tommy Lee Jones. My friend Danny made a convincing case that he represented the invisible hand of the marketplace, i.e., the violence that underlies the capitalist economy, and that he punished anyone who tried to keep money out of circulation. My wife thinks he's death. I tend to look at it as sort of a Buddhist interpretation: that Bardem is inevitable suffering that can neither be defined nor avoided, and the only way to be spared by him is by letting go of earthly attachments - some of those being money or pride, but in the end even the pursuit of justice or safety. What's so great about all of these interpretations is that they all work to a point but eventually they all fall short - the movie both invites and defies interpretation.
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My friend Danny made a convincing case that he represented the invisible hand of the marketplace, i.e., the violence that underlies the capitalist economy, and that he punished anyone who tried to keep money out of circulation.
I like that interpretation. Listening to TLJ's description of his dream at the end, it sounds like a premonition of McCarthy's The Road, with the father and son "carrying fire in a horn," and the father riding ahead of the son into the darkness. In that context, Chigurh can be seen as an herald of the apocalypse.
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Yeah, Chris L - he took a long, long time to convince me, as he's been reading Lewis Hyde's The Gift and viewing everything from the point-of-view of the gift economy (and I should add that I still don't buy it 100%, as I think the story defies any kind of easy interpretation). The one thing that made me stop short was the scene with the accountant in Dallas or wherever that was: "are you going to kill me?" "It depends. Can you see me?" The invisible hand interpretation really works in that scene.
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My friend Danny made a convincing case that he represented the invisible hand of the marketplace, i.e., the violence that underlies the capitalist economy, and that he punished anyone who tried to keep money out of circulation.
Can you explain that further? Does your friend think that Llewelyn would have hid the money under his bed permanently?
There's a part in the book when the sheriff says:
There is no such thing as a county law. You think about a job where you have pretty much the same authority as God and there is no requirements put upon you and you are charged with preservin nonexistent laws and you tell me if that's peculiar or not. Because I say that it is. Does it work? Yes. Ninety percent of the time. It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.
I think this sets Chiguh up as sheriff of the ungovernable, enforcing his own notion of fairness, and with the same disregard for the governable that Sheriff Bell has for the ungovernable.
Edited for grammar and spelling.
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all you people coming up with ideas about the purpose of the movie...JEEBZ.
all i know is that that was the sexiest movie ive seen in years.
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Thank you, Petey. I haven't seen the movie yet--and won't till it hits the miniature screen--but when I do I know that I'll just be hoping to have a good time. To hell with meaning; I just want to have fun.
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My friend Danny made a convincing case that he represented the invisible hand of the marketplace, i.e., the violence that underlies the capitalist economy, and that he punished anyone who tried to keep money out of circulation.
Can you explain that further? Does your friend think that Llewelyn would have hid the money under his bed permanently?
Well, it was my friend's argument, one I don't entirely agree with, but I'll try. Actually, I think they're two different arguments: one, that Chigurh is the latent violence that underlies capitalist economies - that is, that exchange is a way for people to take things they want from one another without blood being shed. When people refuse this exchange, then Whoa Differences! The other one is based on Lewis Hyde's The Gift, another book that has been on my reading list for years but I have yet to read, so take this with a grain of salt. But Hyde's book is about Gift economies, and basically I think he's saying that resources or capital or whatever have to constantly be in circulation. When capital is hoarded, things start to go bad. I honestly don't know where the consumer model of spending and debt fits into this worldview. But this does make a little sense in re. the depiction of the "old" world of the Sheriff et al, and of the Mexican "Other" in the film. That is, gift economies are possible in small, homogeneous communities, but those tend to be racist and mistrustful of outsiders. On the other hand, capitalism does have the tendency to neutralize differences - this is not to say that capitalism is free of racism, but it does tend to favor equal playing fields and neutral, quantifiable methods of exchange - it makes things like globalization possible. But it is savage and brutal and makes the old gift economies impossible.
How'd I do? Still awake?
Edited for grammar and typos
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"There is no such thing as a county law."
Don't know where you get this idea; it's certainly not true in most of the south, where there is frequently a city government and a county government, with separate legal systems. I know it's true in at least some Texas counties; my assumption would have been it was true for all.
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"There is no such thing as a county law."
Don't know where you get this idea; it's certainly not true in most of the south, where there is frequently a city government and a county government, with separate legal systems. I know it's true in at least some Texas counties; my assumption would have been it was true for all.
It's true within the reality of the book.
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Oh. Well, Cormac ought to know better, he spent significant time right here in Knoxville. Maybe Cormac from Knoxville will call in one week!
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From imdb (http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2007-12-26/#celeb3), looks like the Coens are continuing the Cormac McLovin'... sorta:
Coen Brothers to Make Spaghetti Western
Filmmaking siblings Joel and Ethan Coen are set to make their goriest film ever - a Spaghetti Western featuring scenes of primitive torture methods. The brothers, whose notoriously gory new film No Country for Old Men has been tipped for Oscar glory, are desperate to make a film about the days of cowboys and Indians battling it out in the Wild West of America. But - as Joel warns - it won't be one for the faint-hearted. He says, "We've written a western with a lot of violence in it. There's scalping and hanging ... it's good. Indians torturing people with ants, cutting their eyelids off." Ethan adds, "It's a proper western, a real western, set in the 1870s. It's got a scene that no one will ever forget because of one particular chicken."
First of all, methinks this writer used the term "spaghetti western" very loosely here. Second, this already sounds like a better adaption of Blood Meridian than whatever abomination Ridley Scott no doubt has lined up. And check out that last sentence... the lessons of STROSZEK clearly continue to inspire filmmakers everywhere.