This is the first time in at least 32 years that I have yet to see any of the nominated films... which is just plain weak on my partOriginally Posted by Danny Serafini
This is the first time in at least 32 years that I have yet to see any of the nominated films... which is just plain weak on my part
The big question is, will the Oscars just be announced or will there be a show.
go Juno! The only one I have seen and the only one I likely would have enjoyed...
Same here.
With all fairness, though, I believe only one has been released on DVD, which is basically the only way I can get a chance to watch a good movie in this dead end town. Unless I want to watch National Treasure for seven weeks in a row.
Glad to see No Country for Old Men receive so many nominations, though; one of greatest movies I've ever seen.
Another big Old Country fan here... the book was great, and I was most pleased with the movie when seeing it opening night. Great performances from Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson... but the real star turn was from Javier Bardem.
Well, you know how the Academy gives short shrift to comedies.
Here is Roger Ebert's review of "No Country for Old Men." I found it to be spot on. One of the best films I have ever seen.
No Country for Old Men
/ / / November 8, 2007
By Roger Ebert
The movie opens with the flat, confiding voice of Tommy Lee Jones. He describes a teenage killer he once sent to the chair. The boy had killed his 14-year-old girlfriend. The papers described it as a crime of passion, "but he tolt me there weren't nothin' passionate about it. Said he'd been fixin' to kill someone for as long as he could remember. Said if I let him out of there, he'd kill somebody again. Said he was goin' to hell. Reckoned he'd be there in about 15 minutes."
These words sounded verbatim to me from No Country for Old Men, the novel by Cormac McCarthy, but I find they are not quite. And their impact has been improved upon in the delivery. When I get the DVD of this film, I will listen to that stretch of narration several times; Jones delivers it with a vocal precision and contained emotion that is extraordinary, and it sets up the entire film, which regards a completely evil man with wonderment, as if astonished that that such a merciless creature could exist.
The man is named Anton Chigurh. No, I don't know how his last name is pronounced. Like many of the words McCarthy uses, particularly in his masterpiece Suttree, I think it is employed like an architectural detail: The point is not how it sounds or what it means, but the brushstroke it adds to the sentence. Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is a tall, slouching man with lank, black hair and a terrifying smile, who travels through Texas carrying a tank of compressed air and killing people with a cattle stungun. It propels a cylinder into their heads and whips it back again.
Chigurh is one strand in the twisted plot. Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff played by Jones, is another. The third major player is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a poor man who lives with his wife in a house trailer, and one day, while hunting, comes across a drug deal gone wrong in the desert. Vehicles range in a circle like an old wagon train. Almost everyone on the scene is dead. They even shot the dog. In the back of one pickup are neatly stacked bags of drugs. Llewelyn realizes one thing is missing: the money. He finds it in a briefcase next to a man who made it as far as a shade tree before dying.
The plot will involve Moss attempting to make this $2 million his own, Chigurh trying to take it away from him and Sheriff Bell trying to interrupt Chigurh's ruthless murder trail. We will also meet Moss' childlike wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald); a cocky bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson); the businessman (Stephen Root) who hires Carson to track the money after investing in the drug deal, and a series of hotel and store clerks who are unlucky enough to meet Chigurh.
"No Country for Old Men" is as good a film as the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have ever made, and they made "Fargo." It involves elements of the thriller and the chase but is essentially a character study, an examination of how its people meet and deal with a man so bad, cruel and unfeeling that there is simply no comprehending him. Chigurh is so evil, he is almost funny sometimes. "He has his principles," says the bounty hunter, who has knowledge of him.
Consider another scene in which the dialogue is as good as any you will hear this year. Chigurh enters a rundown gas station in the middle of wilderness and begins to play a word game with the old man (Gene Jones) behind the cash register, who becomes very nervous. It is clear they are talking about whether Chigurh will kill him. Chigurh has by no means made up his mind. Without explaining why, he asks the man to call the flip of a coin. Listen to what they say, how they say it, how they imply the stakes. Listen to their timing. You want to applaud the writing, which comes from the Coen brothers, out of McCarthy.
The $2 million turns out to be easier to obtain than to keep. Moss tries hiding in obscure hotels. Scenes are meticulously constructed in which each man knows the other is nearby. Moss can run but he can't hide. Chigurh always tracks him down. He shadows him like his doom, never hurrying, always moving at the same measured pace, like a pursuer in a nightmare.
This movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate. It is also, in the photography by Roger Deakins, the editing by the Coens and the music by Carter Burwell, startlingly beautiful, stark and lonely. As McCarthy does with the Judge, the hairless exterminator in his "Blood Meridian" (Ridley Scott's next film), and as in his "Suttree," especially in the scene where the riverbank caves in, the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice. The movie also loves some of its characters, and pities them, and has an ear for dialog not as it is spoken but as it is dreamed.
Many of the scenes in "No Country for Old Men" are so flawlessly constructed that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was "Fargo." To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another.
Last edited by Dom Heffner; 01-22-2008 at 05:25 PM.
I've only seen Michael Clayton and Juno. At the beginning of the movie Michael Clayton, before you even seen Tom Wilkinson, his dialogue was so incredible. I turned to my wife and said he would be nominated for this performance. I thought the movie overall was gripping, with good performances.
I was glad to see the song from the movie Once was nominated. I loved that movie too.
“In the same way that a baseball season never really begins, it never really ends either.” - Lonnie Wheeler, "Bleachers, A Summer in Wrigley Field"
The Baseball Emporium - Books & Things.
The Baseball Bookstore
http://tsc-sales.com/
http://tscsales.blogspot.com/
http://silverscreenbooks.com/
Get your act together, WOY.
You're better than that.
FWIW, this is the first time in 11 years for me I haven't seen any of them.
I think this movie falls into the Napolean Dynamite hype category. A below average movie that everyone says is really good because other people say its really good. The ending was poorly done. It doesn't flow well for much of the middle of the movie. Tommy Lee Jones character was just confusing. I didn't get Woody's character. Just way to many problems and I was truely dissapointed with this movie.
I loved Children of Men though.
The ending to it was awesome. It doesn't have to be cut and dry and fluffy like some people I know wanted it to be who disagreed with the ending. It was perfectly crafted for the story. I know I certainly don't think it's good just because "other people people say it's really good".
Last edited by Javy Pornstache; 01-23-2008 at 09:19 AM.
Hold the phone here...those were supposed to be comedies?
That changes everything.
In all seriousness, a coworker asked me a few weeks ago "Why all Oscar movies suck." He could not understand why movies like Old Country and There Will Be Blood were nominated "because they didn't make any money."
I pointed out that the top three movies last year were probably Pirates, Transformers and Spiderman. Yeah, I saw all three - but there were all simply fluff popcorn flicks. Sure Megan Fox is smoking hot - but she ain't Oscar worthy.
He simply could not understand why dollars did not equal best (though I did point out LOTR and Titanic were box office titans).
Unfortunately, this seems to be the point of view of many in the general public - and many do not get the Oscars simply because they do not get good movies.
If you didn't like it, you didn't like it, but it is nowhere near a Napolean Dynamite hype type movie.I think this movie falls into the Napolean Dynamite hype category. A below average movie that everyone says is really good because other people say its really good. The ending was poorly done. It doesn't flow well for much of the middle of the movie. Tommy Lee Jones character was just confusing. I didn't get Woody's character. Just way to many problems and I was truely dissapointed with this movie.
The critics loved No Country, Napolean's following was cult like. Big difference.
I'm not saying the movies were similar. I'm saying the way they gained popularity is similar.
Posting Permissions
|
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |
Reply With Quote