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I’m a huge Coen Brothers fan and I count at least three of their movies (Fargo, The Big Lebowski and True Grit) among my top 20 of all time. That being said, I spent a really long time avoiding O Brother Where Art Thou because as a rule I just don’t enjoy Great Depression era movies, I find a lot of them to be very meandering, I don’t really dig the time period outside of crime movies, and I was worried this movie would be basically Of Mice and Men with ironic humor.
I was pleasantly surprised by it. I really enjoyed it every step of the way and it reminded me that anything can be great in the hands of good writers and directors. The music is beautiful, the scenes are genuinely quite captivating, the comedy is funny.
I’m watching Hail, Caesar soon as it’s one of like two Coen Brothers movies I haven’t seen yet alongside Burn After Reading.
It’s bona-fide!
He’s a suitor!
I don't want FOP, Goddammit. I'm a Dapper Dan man!
Ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere.
I say this (and it applies) an awful lot. Notably, I am 11 minutes from 3 Arby’s.
John Goodman crushed and the soundtrack was legit
John Goodman is brilliant in it
I don't get it, Big Dan.
It's all about the money, boys!
Literally crushed.
I can't watch that particular few seconds of that movie, the rest is pure gold.
Mrs Hogwallop done r-u-n-n-o-f-t.
I slaughtered this horse last week. I believe it's starting to turn.
It was last Tews-dy
I've seen people avoid specific genres because they don't prefer them for whatever reason, but you're the first I've ever seen who avoids specific time periods that films are set it.
I'd assume because that era is...well...depressing?
The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men aren't exactly uplifting.
Steinbeck wasn’t writing fairy tales that’s for sure
Ok, this rankles and it isn't your fault bc Steinbeck isn't taught properly in school.
He LITERALLY wrote a post WW1/slinking toward Depress era retelling of King Arthur called Tortilla Flat and it is funny AF. Like yeah, spoiler alert it's got a tragic ending , but you knew that bc it's re-envisioning King Arthur and his story always ends sad. Travels with Charley --road trip with his dog! Also funny! also about the same era! Cannery Row! DARK ASS DEPRESSION HUMOR! Steinbeck understood the poor, and one way poor people deal with the crush of day to day life is humor. He was actually really renowned for his humor when he was alive/it's listed as one of the reasons he won the pulitzer .
Sorry for the rant. Tortilla Flat is one of my favorite books. It's old, and written with an Arthurian grandiose style, but like ...apply that Arthurian voice to the great heroism of a bunch of lovable but objectively pretty terrible conmen piasanos doing ONE WHOLE DAY of an honest, paying job while townsfolk cheer them on. That's just funny, man. (it begs mention Steinbeck doesn't punch down--they are complete fuck ups, but he loves them and writes the characters so you have no choice but to love them too. He finds SOME nobility in every character in that book... usually to humorous effect, but nobility nonetheless.)
Fairy tales aren't the most uplifting stories to begin with.
I love Grapes of Wrath soooo much. It led me into Steinbeck and now I can't get enough! Need to finish East of Eden but I was definitely loving it. Just finished Travels with Charley, which is a travelogue of him rolling around America in a custom made caravan with his dog Charley, reflecting on shit. If someone asked me, right now, who my favourite writer is I'd probably say John Steinbeck.
Agreed, his writing is absolutely superb.
Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday are waiting for you.
Cannery Row is funny, evocative and uplifting.
If you think the movie version of The Grapes of Wrath was depressing, you should read the book.
Oh yeah, I have, both that and Of Mice and Men. That era really is depressing.
I kind of hate Victorian era movies. I find it all really bland and boring.
I know Pride and Prejudice is supposed to be really good so I might give it another shot but I’m not that excited about it.
Pride and prejudice is set before the Victorian era in the regency era.
Haha Oh, well in that case maybe I’ll love it
I know lol. I love crime and gangster movies from this period, but in terms of dramas, romances, comedies, etc, I find them pretty tedious. Happy to watch a movie about Al Capone or something like The Highwaymen.
Baby Face Nelson is in O Brother.
Aww George, not the livestock
I'm full-on "follow the director" these days. Coens, Villeneuve, Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Fincher, Lean, Wilder. More often than not, it works out for me.
Yup. Tarantino, Guillermo Del Toro, Edgar Wright, Damien Chazelle. It's a cyclical example, but find the creators you like and they'll keep giving you what you like.
Ironically a couple of my favorites/greatest are a little more "hit and miss": Spielberg and Coppola. At the top of their game, they're as good as they come, but....they've both had some disappointments, I'll put it that way. tbf, so has Scorsese, but he and Spielberg are so prolific, they can't all be great.
Hmm. Looking at Spielberg's body of work, he does appear to have fallen off in the 2000's. From Schindler's List, to Jurassic Park, and then to Saving Private Ryan...followed by A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, and Catch Me If You Can.
War of the Worlds. All, at worst, good films, just not his best. To his credit, he makes a lot movies, a lot of different types of movies, and changes up his style from project to project. sometimes it's Schindler's List, sometimes it's Hook. That he can change gears like that is, in itself, pretty bad ass.
But AI, minority report and catch me if you can are all fantastic movies
I had Wes Anderson on there forever.. but he has fallen off hard for me. I could not have hated French Dispatch more.
have you seen his Roald Dahl shorts on Netflix? Washed off the stink of Asteroid City for me. Haven't seen French Dispatch yet.
Oh really? I will have to give it a go. I have been pretty sad about the Wes Anderson fall off for me. Asteroid city was another one. Except the aliens in that were pretty funny.
just for reference, the shorts are:
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
The Swan
The Rat Catcher
Poison
Henry Sugar's the longest at 40 minutes. the rest are about 15 minutes each. Same cast for all of them (Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend, Richard Ayoade).
I still love him. Generally, he makes me feel a lot of different things over the course of a film, which I can't say about most film makers...at least, not to the same degree. That he accomplishes this in a sort of absurdist/surrealist way is kind of amazing.
By far the best part of the French dispatch is Owen Wilson’s 2 minutes.
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--Mark Twain's preface to Huckleberry Finn
Coens also seem to have that mentality. Miyazaki, too. Kind of a "please just roll with this and don't miss it by assessing it" approach.
Between that and The Big Lebowski, the Coens make the best pointless movies.
I got that but I just didn't like it. I like movies but the film making part itself is best left to the documentary style IMO.
Don’t forget Raising Arizona.
Such a classic!!!!
Burn After Reading is my favorite Coen brothers film and that is a hill I will die on.
The way John Malkovich pronounces memoir will forever be burned in my brain
Mem-WAH
I personally don’t put it among their best, but the two meetings in JK Simmons’ office are some of my favorite scenes.
What did we learn from all this?
Nobody’s mentioned’The Man who wasn’t there’ so I’ll mention it: my favorite
My favorite is True Grit, but when someone says theirs is a different Coen Brothers film all I can think is, I can see that. It’s not my favorite, but I’m happy to see Miller’s Crossing is getting more attention these days. I feel like if you weren’t watching movies when it came out then it got buried to time for a little while.
My favorite Coens work
Least favorite?
Tough question. Hail Ceasar maybe? Still a real good movie though.
I haven’t seen that one! A Serious Man for me, I just didn’t get it
Serious man is my second favorite. Love that movie
Intolerable Cruelty for me. Only Coen Brothers movie I've actively disliked.
'My hair!'
'Two weeks from everywhere'
Clooney has never been known to play deep charcter roles. He's the same character in pretty much every film minus a different shirt. But, he he really killed it as Ulysses and I don't think he's stretched as far out since.
Saw the film in a very high end home theater and the music score is incredible with a good sound system.
Not blown away by later Cohen films, but when they are in the zone it's bliss along with their world building.
Trivia: Stephen Root played the radio station guy in 'Brother' and stapler guy in 'Office Space'
Root also voices Bill in King of the Hill. Among other miscellaneous characters in the show.
He's also Jimmy James, the crazy billionaire owner of the station on Newsradio.
Rewatching it now that we're more familiar with crazy billionaire owners could be interesting.
Stephen Root shows up everywhere. Yesterday I remembered he shows up in No Country for Old Men as the businessman in the office building.
He's great in The Wire.
He's not in The Wire. Great in Barry though.
OoooOOOOhhh, hya, hya, hya, hya. GOTTA beat that here competition!
Please tell me you have seen Millers Crossing?
I haven’t but it’s on my list
One of if not their Best.You will never hear the song “Oh Danny Boy” the same again. Gabriel Byrne is magnificent. Best Wishes.
Fantastic music and hilarious
I recommend Down From The Mountain, a documentary on the soundtrack
Watch Burn After Reading!! It’s great
Watching it right now actually — just started five minutes ago
Good huh?
It was great :)
"HA, you think thats a schwinn."
I saw O Brother Where Art Thou sitting in my best friends' truck bed at a drive-in in EXTREMELY rural WV when I was in highschool. I have yet to have a more perfect movie going experience -- the natural surroundings/near perfect dark punctuated with shooting stars around the very backwoods-heavy set pieces was just chef's kiss
I don't want Fop, I'm a Dapper Dan man!!
Mama says he’s Bona Fide.
Every Coen Brothers film is great. Oh Brother might just be their magnum opus. Such a fun film. Such great music. Such great visuals. So quotable.
“We’re in a tight spot!”
Burn After Reading is so good. I'm jealous you get to see it for the first time.
Its basically just Odysseus in a more modern setting. The main character is named Ulysses, theres sirens, a cyclops, and the main character's pride keeps getting him in trouble (he's a dapper dan man.)
I'm also a huge fan, but the rule is flawed. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was a bit disappointing for me. I think if another director's name was attached, it would have received far worse reviews.
I think anthology films always have the drawback of feeling only as strong as the weakest short, so I was prepared to be a bit underwhelmed. But all the shorts are at least good, and a few are great. Plus it’s neat how there are some recurring themes (death in particular), and each short evokes a different era of cinematic Westerns.
All in all, I’d put it somewhere in the middle of my personal ranking of Coen Bros films, which puts it pretty damn high overall.
"I think anthology films always have the drawback of feeling only as strong as the weakest short" - that's so true! I never really thought about it in that light.
Do you have a problem with anthology films in general? I really enjoyed it but I also love the idea of anthology films.
No, I just didnt enjoy this particular film.
Look up how the movie is based on the Odyssey and it goes next level on its awesomeness.
I picked up on that pretty early on haha
It took me a while to realize that it was a contemporary retelling of The Odyssey by Homer.
Dude, the movie opens with a title card that says based on the odyssey by Homer
The way Clooney says he’s a dapper Dan man makes me smile every time
o brother is just a retelling of the odyssey before anything else
Oh brother where art thou is a retelling of the Odyssey
I have entire friendships that have consisted of quoting this movies lines back and forth with each other. We have not said unique sentences in decades. Just variations of 'Gopher Everett?' and 'We thought they turned you into a toad' etc for hours.