#August2017
Coen Brothers bringing Western anthology ‘The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs’ to Netflix. We are not worthy.
Holy tits, dude. The Coen Brothers are writing and directing a Western anthology for Netflix. The six-episode jam is titled The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, and again, holy tits.
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The Coen Brothers’ First TV Series Is A Western Called ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’
Man, I didn’t even know the Coen Brothers were fucking with TV! But they are! And their first show? The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I’m in. Sold.
The Coen Brothers writing a movie about the Silk Road and Dark Web
Fuck yeah! What’s cooler than a movie about the Dark Web? Cooler than a movie about the Silk Road, which was a haven for bitcoin boners and drug sales? A movie pertaining to all that good shit, which is being written by the Coen Brothers.
Coen Brothers’ ‘Hail, Caesar!’ gets new poster and TV spot
Caught Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight last night, and today I woke up to a couple of new promotional materials from two of my other favorite auteurs’ next movie.
‘Inherent Vice’ Trailer: A Glorious Drug-Fueled Detective Tale
I haven’t read Inherent Vice. Let me get that out of the way. I haven’t. I just haven’t. So if I’m way off on my upcoming assertion, yeah whatever. But watching the trailer for this flick, it seems like Paul Thomas Anderson by way of the Coen Brothers. And I mean that in the absolutely best way possible. Sign me up.
True Grit: One of the Greatest Westerns Ever, I Reckon.
With their take on True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen didn’t remake the 1969 John Wayne film of the same name. And they didn’t “update” the film’s 1968 source material by writer Charles Portis. What they’ve done is make the best damn western since 1992’s Unforgiven. But the Coen’s masterpiece isn’t filled with brooding and extraneous landscape shots. In true Coen fashion, the two hours are stocked with dark humor, bursts of violence, Roger Deakins‘ masterful cinematography, and characters so well-crafted that no time gets wasted on unnecessary background stories. In one of the great surprises of the year, one of these characters is played by 14-year-old newcomer Hailee Steinfeld.
Young Hailee effortlessly steals the show from acclaimed veterans Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. She plays Mattie Ross, a girl whose father is shot dead by drifter Tom Chaney (Brolin). Because Chaney flees into Indian territory, the local authorities will not pursue. Mattie hires Deputy U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Bridges), a man with a merciless reputation – a man with “true grit.” Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Damon) is also on Chaney’s trail, for a murder he committed months previous in TX. And the great adventure begins.
Bridges plays Cogburn hardboiled as hell, without the character devolving into a goofy, tough-guy brooder. He’s filled with interesting contradictions: gruff marshal with the heart of gold, drunk mess who’s a competent lawman, constant heckler with a sensitive spine. All of this makes up another classic, quotable character for Bridges. Damon’s La Boeuf is the all-American Texas Ranger swollen with pride. His boasting makes him sound foolish, but he’s got the gunslingin’ chops to back up all the touting. Out of the plethora of colorful characters the Coen’s have penned over the years, True Grit‘s cast makes up some of the best. They all deliver dated dialogue in an obsolete, contraction-less language that comes off Shakespearean at times. I left the theater wishing people still talked that way.
