February 25, 2008
Ask SFist: No Country for Old Men?
We received a curt Oscar-related message this morning:
Um, how the did No Country for Old Men win best picture?
Not sure. But if we had to pick our favorite lots-of-dust-and-blood film of the year, it would go to There Will Be Blood. But we (sort of) enjoyed the -- how do we say this delicately? -- East Coast-friendly Coen Brothers film. Are we missing something? Did it not deserve its crowning of best picture?
Also, more to the point, where was Sally Kirkland?
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Fucking Corman McWinfrey.
er, Cormac.
Whatever, Cormac was rad long before Oprah ever decided to help him sell a billion books.
aside for stripping away some indie cred, i don't see how oprah's book club has ever hurt anyone.
I love Cormac, but I didn't like No Counrty for Old Men. I didn't think it was a great book. I went to see No Country, in convenient movie form, and didn't think it was all that hot, either. I'm guessing it won best picture due to all of the buzz generated for Cormac by Oprah. Which is great for Cormac (and me. Even my mom read Blood Meridian. Now we can talk about literature instead of having the "when-are-you-getting-married" chat.)
I admit it's been weeks since I saw No Country, but what on Earth do you mean by "East-Coast friendly"?
Yeah, nothing flatters the bowtie-wearing Yankee blue-blood sensibilities more than a good Texas border-town thriller.
by that, pancakebreakfast, i mean it's not the most Hollywood-y film. a very chin-scratching kind of movie, one you might find at the Embarcadero Cinemas.
Blood was a good movie, to be sure. But I found No Country to be so much more interesting. Blood was really a very simple, straightforward movie about a crazy man. Good story, captivating performance, etc., etc., but that's really all it was. In addition to being a more compelling story, IMO, No Country also had more depth to it; it's story went beyond the individual characters portrayed in the movie. So I thought it deserved the best picture win over Blood. That's my $0.02.
More importsntly why were the Coen's such tards? Oh right, because they have so many Oscars that they are desensitized by the whole thing. They didn't even say anything when they were given their Best Picture one. What concieted tards.
*importantly
*conceited
..sorry.
i like to think of this as a long-belated "make-up call" (the sports kind) for not having given Fargo the BP award in 1997. had the Coens released something even remotely similar in tone to during the last 10 years, i think it too might have nabbed a BP. but they, instead, made The Man Who Wasn't There, which was way too stylized to be a BP, and then a handful of movies featuring zany, screwball antics. great movies, mind you, but way too silly for BP consideration. (ooh- i take that back. Intolerable Cruelty and that remake of The Ladykillers were terrible.)
No Country was definitely the safe vote this year - Coens are critical darlings, ditto for McCarthy, and both deserve every bit of it.
let's not forget, people, that any year in which the Coens are the "safe" vote means it was a f*cking great year for film!
P.S. for the record, i liked There Will Be Blood better too, but it was the opposite of 'No Country' in as much as TWBB was through the roof with the stylization: cinematography, dialogue, music, acting, you name it. NCFOM, on the other hand, looked like its wider, mellower older brother by comparison.
oops: "wiser" brother.
Maybe they were being considerate by letting the other producer talk when awarded best picture because they already had two chances to talk.
A quick trip to imdb.com shows they both have only won one Oscar previously for writing Fargo.
I dunno I thought the "sandbox" comment and the story about "Henry Kissinger - Man Of Action!" was pretty cool.
My favorite Cormac McCarthy is "Suttree". Very Beat. No psycho killer stuff. When Kerouac blathers on like "hey man we met this hep cat in a bar and he was real"; well Suttree was the guy in the bar who was way more "real".
So could anybody who only saw the movie follow the plot? I guess having a conventional plotline is too mainstream.
Funny piece by Nora Ephron about NCFOM:
Saw the Movie
Actually, There Will Be Blood is much more than just a story about a mean crazy oil man from the early 20th century.
I loved them both precisely because they required thought and inspired second viewing - like a good book does.
I'm totally bored by having every film tied up with a smiley face at the end.
Why is everyone complaining? It's about damn time the Academy gave an award to a Coen Brothers film. Besides, as long as Atonement didn't win Best Pic, it was a good night.