On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:06 PM Steve Timko <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The movie is a series of vignettes. Apparently the Coen Brothers wanted to > serialize it on Netflix, but put it into one movie. One IMDB review said > the Coen brothers said they wrote these vignettes over about 25 years, but > just about everyone seems perfectly cast that I can’t believe it wasn’t > written specifically for them. Tim Blake Nelson, who had such a memorable > role with the Coen Brothers in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, opens as > Buster Scruggs, a cheerful singing cowboy dressed in white with a Coen > Brothers twist. James Franco is in the second vignette, which seems like a > Coen Brothers take on an O Henry short story with a Stephen Crane ending. I > can’t believe the third vignette wasn’t written with Henry Melling in mind. > I listened to the DVD commentary on “The Wire” and they pointed out how > powerful facial expressions can be in film, using Lance Reddick’s > performance as an example. There is a three-second segment with Melling and > Liam Neesom that almost knocked the wind out of me, the facial expressions > said so much. I guess I have to find something to nitpick. Tom Waits plays > a grizzled prospector but he doesn’t know how to pan for gold. Really, they > could have searched YouTube for a gold panning tutorial. I panned for gold > as a kid and those gold flakes the prospector tosses away are bigger than > 98 percent of the flakes I collected as a kid. Flakes that big come along > maybe once every 20 or 25 hours. The next vignette is a meditation on hope > and desperation with Zoe Kazan. The final is a blend of Elmore Leonard and > Rod Serling. > “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is one of the best movies I’ve seen this > year and I’m glad I got to see it only for the price of my Netflix > subscription, which I have anyway. Sadly, it probably don’t mean as much > financially to Netflix as an Adam Sandler movie. But this is a clear shot > across the bow of movie studios. The market is changing and maybe faster > than they expected. > I just watched this and recommend it as well. The Coen brothers may skip from genre to genre in their films but they make their priority to make every movie entertaining. I noticed that the first scene of Buster being a singing cowboy was shot in Monument Valley which was where John Ford shot his westerns. In the third story Henry Melling plays a traveling stage but his offstage scenes with Liam Neeson are close to mime - the French dramatic version, not the hacky American version - done as well as the best silent era dramas. I especially like that there are few name actors, when they are on screen they are often not recognizable, and the character actors really shine. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
