We watched it tonight, too. I loved it, but the wife had some trouble with the darker chapters (If you've seen it, you'll know just what ones I mean).
Those scenes of Nelson on horseback, though, just reeked to me of green screen. Well-done green screen and (more than likely) B-roll/second unit footage of Monument Valley, but it felt hinky, even down to the (very good) dust kicked up by the horse's hooves. --Dave Sikula On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 4:36:28 PM UTC-8, Tom Wolper wrote: > > On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 2:06 PM Steve Timko <[email protected] > <javascript:>> 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.
