MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs -- I...

OT: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs -- Its Great (MINOR SPOILERS)

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
26 replies | jump to latest

Somewhat halfheartedly deciding that Mary Poppins Returns would end up my favorite of 2018, I've now seen the movie that might very well replace it. Another viewing or two probably will seal the deal...the other way.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Its from the Coen Brothers, and its on Netflix. (Having been placed in a few theaters for a few weeks to qualify for the Oscars --its got three nominations.)

This is my first "full confrontation" with the "Netflix movie: real movie?" phenomenon. This clearly IS a Coen Brothers production: direction, writing, editing(under their assumed name.) And it has a Carter Burwell score -- a GREAT Carter Burwell score. A Western score in all of the tones: soaring, robust, American(sorry)...and when necessary, heartbreaking.

If there is something a bit "Netflixy" about the film, it is that it is so slight and eccentric in parts as to suggest that it never would have REALLY been much of a success in theaters. But...its so classic in parts, majestic in parts, deeply moving in parts (and violent in parts)...that I think its a Coen Brothers MOVIE, all right.

And about those Coen Brothers movies. We know which one won the Best Picture Oscar(No Country for Old Men.) We know which one SHOULD have won the Best Picture Oscar(Fargo.) And we know the one that has outshadowed the other two, "irregardless" of whether or not it should: "The Big Lebowski."

We also know(I think) that sometimes the Coen Brothers "misfire." The Ladykillers seems to be the big bomb -- and yet I, personally love it -- as stylish as can be, great over-articulated dialogue for "Professor E. Higgenthon Dorr"(Tom Hanks in his only role for the Coens) and a great running gag about bodies falling from a bridge onto a garbage scow and being buried inadvertently on a "garbage island."

Another misfire, I think, was the fairly recent "Hail Caesar," which has a GREAT trailer(set to just the right music) but just sort of soldiers on as a movie.

In between on the "Coen Brothers scale," pick ''em. Some love their first "Blood Simple." Some love "Barton Fink." Some love Raising Arizona. Some love Brother Can You Spare a Dime.

OK, I'll stop. Except: "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" most often matches up to a Coen Brothers hit : True Grit. That was my favorite film of 2010, and much of the pleasure of THAT film comes right back in THIS film: the look of the Western sets, the look of the Western people, the gorgeous cinematography(though only SOME of this movie LOOKS like True Grit)...and that great Carter Burwell score. Also: a sort of "studied, contraction-free over-articulate quality" that makes much of the dialogue in this film a pleasure to hear (even as certain passages are near silent for a long time, and certain actors say very little.) I'd say that the Coens have proven themselves dialogue writers just this side of QT and Aaron Sorkin for distinctive style and delight in the tone.

I was confused, going in, as to whether or not Buster Scruggs was a series (ala The Kominsky Method with Douglas and Arkin) or a really long epic movie. Well, its a rather lengthy but not too long movie(about the length of North by Northwest, which I know to be 136 minutes; this is 133 minutes.)

And in those 133 minutes, 6 stories are told, each introduced via the turning pages of a tattered book, each landing on a painting of scenes from the story in question, and an important line that makes sense only once you SEE the story. Such as: "You seen 'em, you play 'em" or "Mr. Arthur had no idea what he was going to say to Billy Knapp."

The anthology nature of the presentation -- verbally and visually -- reminded me of two movies:

Creepshow(1982), which flipped through the pages of a horror comic to land on each tale, and froze each tale in a comic book frame at the end; and

O Henry's Full House(1952, I think), in which each story was introduced by John Steinbeck and ended in a flourish of music.

Both of those movies gave me pleasure and the connection of this one to those two was...palpable.

And what of the six stories? Well, they are certainly different, with different stars in each one(none of them particularly big, except, I guess, good ol' Liam Neeson, and the somewhat fading James Franco) and different tones to each one: comic, fantastic, talky, silent, grim, sad.

But all are tales of the West - and all sharing a theme of the West as a very dangerous place, where violent death by gun, Indian arrow, hangman's noose or other implements (a board in a table?) can come out of nowhere. Yep, even the hangman's noose(another connection to True Grit), can come out of nowhere.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

My favorite of the six is the fifth: "The Girl Who Got Rattled," which introduced me to a young actress name Zoe Kazan...granddaughter of Elia Kazan(On the Waterfront) and daughter of Nicholas Kazan(a screenwriter who seems to have sold scripts regularly enough, of movies I know, a few of which are really good.) Miss Kazan has a distinctive face -- somewhat homely, prominent nose....but capable of projecting great waif-like beauty. Its a "movie face," and wonderfully, wonderfully expressive. As a young girl on a wagon train journey to Oregon, Kazan captures our interest and sympathy immediately and holds it -- never better than in the scene where a young-but-getting older trail hand makes the young woman an interesting offer. It is beautifully written, beautifully acted by both of them...but what she does with that face charmed me as only really great actors can do. I do wish I can discuss the surprise -- in another character -- that so transforms this episode into something moving and classic. Maybe later with a SPOILER.

The opening episode is The Ballad of Buster Scruggs itself, and founds itself on a very funny idea: a goofy-looking stringbean straight arrow of a singing cowboy(Tim Nelson Blake, from Oh Brother) seems like a homespun harmless tinhorn -- unless and until any mean guy crosses him and then: watch out. He's a fast gun and he shoots to kill and he transforms in a second from goofball to killer...and then back again to sweet-faced goofball once the deed is done. Its a great black comic conceit and it leads to a few of the funniest killings I've ever seen on screen. (Plus a nod to another Coen Bros movie: The Hudsucker Proxy.)

Episode Two centers on James Franco as a bank robber and what happens to him. As with every single episode of this film, one watches as the story twists one way, then another, and then another still...until it all makes sense in the end.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Episode Three is a real bizarre one, with a Twilight Zone feel and great verbal poetry,not to mention gorgeous cinematography of snowy landscapes at night, and pine-lined rivers by day. Liam Neeson plays his role almost silently, as the "keeper" of a young armless, legless man who is Neeson's literal "Meal Ticket"(the title of the tale.) Neeson travels around the countryside with his circus freak find; carrying the man onto a small wagon stage where the "freak" orates in a great sonorous voice the works of Shakespeare, other poets...and Lincoln's Gettysburg address. The small town crowds are large, the applause for the weird orator true..the money collected from the audience by Neeson, not bad. And then things start to change. For some odd reason, this one reminded me not only of the Twilight Zone, but of that old Chuck Jones cartoon where a construction worker silently took around a "singing dancing frog" that only sang and dance for him. Its not the same plot at all here, but it is the same tone.

Episode Four is from a Jack London story(I recall having to read those in school.) It is perhaps the most visually gorgeous in the movie, with one lone prospector (Tom Waits) stumbling onto a pristine, untouched valley and commencing to commune with nature while seeking gold. This one is almost a silent movie, a one-man show.

Episode Five is "The Girl who Got Rattled," and, again, for my money, the best one.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And things wrap up with "The Mortal Remains," largely set in a stagecoach, with a TON of dialogue spoken among the passengers, and hence immediately reminiscent(almost an ode) to the first scenes of The Hateful Eight(bounty hunters are on board), to Hombre, and to any one of the versions of Stagecoach itself. But things are very allegorical and ominous on this late night ride. The passengers include some folks I know and like: Big Brendon Gleeson, White haired Tyne Daly(with memories of her dark-haired days in The Enforcer and on Cagney and Lacey), Saul Rubinek(the smarmy book writer from Unforgiven, 26 years older and pretty much the same, as an annoying Frenchman, getting some Clouseau mileage out of the accent, I was surpised); a bearded, grizzled trapper who seems like a re-do of the weird mountain man(with the bear head on his head) in True Grit but who turns out to be the guy who played Conrad Hilton on Mad Men..and one other actor, new to me but quite arresting in his dandy-ish, articulate manner.

This last episode is a feast of language and -- as with The Hateful Eight and Hombre -- takes off on the idea of stagecoach passsengers forcibly grouped together in a small space on the road, and revealing their dislike for one another.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

That's the six. But that's not really at all a summary of how this movie WORKS. With most of the gorgeous images, I'm reminded what some critic said in praise of Alfred Hitchcock: he knew that movies were to be LOOKED AT. The story is only part of the experience. How gorgeous the movie LOOKS is another. (I'd say that sounds in The Hateful Eight, too.) Indeed, in one of the stories, a big house/hotel is set up so as to summon up memories of the Bates House and the McKittick Hotel in Vertigo, and the image is GREAT.

Meanwhile, the Carter Burwell score is so great that I think it takes the movie way up there where very good films live. There are some standards in the film (Notably Mother MacCree, which was sung by Jeff Fahey in Psycho III as "Mother Bates" -- and hey, Psycho III was scored by Carter Burwell, too), and some of the music sounds like True Grit(in a very good way -- I'm already nostalgic for 2010!), and some of it sounds like "Fargo" in its portentious opening notes, but the score has a sweep and a majesty all of its own.

I dunno, its my own private list, but I think the reason Mary Poppins Returns is gonna get displaced in 2018 in favor of this is that, at heart, I'm a very big Coen Brothers fan and now they've been here for decades and carry a history with them. I don't know if this one is at the level of NCFOM, Fargo, or The Big Lebowski, but it is very, very special, and a Western(so few of them are made, this one even looks at times like that Magnificent Seven of three years ago), and I think its the one that got me the most from 2018. Even if, right now, its 2019.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I've watched this anthology film another time, and it really is good most of the time, and pretty damn great, three out of six.

But I ended up with a bit of a small obsession with this young actress, Zoe Kazan. I never really heard of her before, but after doing a little internet research, I see she's been working steadily for years. She's been in an unmarried relationship with Paul Dano(the guy whose milkshake DDL drinks in There Will Be Blood), since 2007. They've only recently had a baby girl together. That's a long, careful relationship.

Together, they are rather an "eccentric actor" couple. They don't have glamourous faces, but they have something going that makes them look compelling, particularly as a couple ("The Geek and the Waif."). And Zoe can put on make-up or pose from a particular angle and look quite pretty. Though in Buster Scruggs, she dares to look quite plain most of the time. No make-up.

Zoe's grandfather is, indeed, Elia Kazan(dead now, yes?) but both of her parents are screenwriters who seem to have made livings, but in that "intermittent" way that somehow supports households in Hollywood. The father wrote that movie about Claus Bulow that won Jeremy Irons an Oscar; the mother wrote the screenplays for Benjamin Button and Memoirs of a Geisha.

Zoe Kazan herself has written some plays and a film or two(indie), and tells funny anecdotes about her partner Paul Dano trying to adapt a book("Wildlife") and giving Zoe an incoherent treatment to work on . Zoe's parents being screenwriters, she had some definite ideas about how to write and even do the margins right. (Those Hollywood dollars evidently financed private school and Yale; these folks aren't pikers or dummies.)

Zoe evidently had her best role(pre-Buster Scruggs) in The Big Sick, so I guess other viewers knew her pretty well going into Buster Scruggs.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But I know Zoe Kazan first from "Buster Scruggs" and her tale, "The Gal Who Got Rattled," and both the piece itself and her performance are solid gold(along with that of the actor who plays the young wagon train guide who comes to care for her -- a very handsome man suddenly protective of a not terribly pretty woman, but it works, anyway.)

On a second viewing, I found myself smiling at one particular line reading by Zoe Kazan. When the cowboy asks her if she is familiar with a particular Oregon state law, how she says "No I am not," is the stuff of line reading at its most precise and entertaining. "No I am not" just about SINGS from this woman's voice, and its funny, too.

In short, on the basis of Buster Scruggs, I am quite taken with Zoe Kazan's quirky talent. I thought she was very good, I assume she is fairly successful, and I wish her and her real life beau Paul Dano continued success in Hollywood.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Thanks for all these interesting thoughts on Ballad of Buster Scruggs ecarle. I'll try to watch BOBS this weekend (some mental block has kept me from queuing it up on Netflix all this time).

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

I've watched BOBS now, and while I don't disagree with anything you say about it, at least first time through, I gather that I wasn't quite as enchanted by it as you. It found it pleasantly amusing rather than genuinely stirring. The central 'West as a Rube Goldberg Machine of Death' conceit got a little same-y (alternative title: Final Destination - The Western Years). The longest and most affecting segment by far, The Gal Who got Rattled, illustrates my problem such as it is: we seemed to be opening up a richer sense of character there (we even begin to anticipate a love scene) only for the Rube Goldberg machine of Death to instantly reassert itself. And there was some repetition in how the machine worked: people repeatedly play possum after receiving apparently mortal blows and each time are still able to move ultra-swiftly to overpower/kill their uninjured assailant and, in short, are fit as fiddles soon after. This was too cartoonish for me.

Put slightly differently, even though I liked and enjoyed all the sub-stories, no one of them achieved real lift-off the way the best segments in the great portmanteau movies do. I'm thinking of 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet' from The Twilight Zone Movie, 'The Ventriloquist's Dummy' from Dead of Night, Scorsese's 'Life Lessons' (w Nick Nolte) from NY Stories, 'The Model' from Ophuls' Le Plaisir. The same-y-ness of the stories in BOBS - that *all* feature convolutedly violent death (except the last where probably everyone's already dead) - probably prevents any one of them from getting the separation from the others hence achieving the kind of lift-off I desired.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

MAJOR SPOILERS IN RESPONSE

I've watched BOBS now, and while I don't disagree with anything you say about it, at least first time through, I gather that I wasn't quite as enchanted by it as you. It found it pleasantly amusing rather than genuinely stirring.

---

Oh, I rather expected that. I remain flattered to be responded to by you, swanstep, but I'm not sure our tastes run exactly the same way(its actually quite a big surprise on a given movie I offer up when we DO agree; but that's certainly OK.)

I think it goes like this: I elect to profess a feeling about a recent watch (usually a good feeling, I rarely report on films I don't like) to "the world" (however wide; maybe its only three or four people hah) and that's it. And if something comes back, great. You are good about "coming back," swanstep, and I appreciate that.

---

The central 'West as a Rube Goldberg Machine of Death' conceit got a little same-y (alternative title: Final Destination - The Western Years).

---

Hah. I see your point here, but I don't quite think the episodes were that "programmatic." The James Franco one certainly had that Final Destination/ "Appointment in Samurra"(sp?) aspect to it: death misses you here -- gets you there. Which made his final line to the other guy on the gallows quite funny: "first time?"

In the other stories (less the stagecoach one), death just seemed to be...death. Buster Scraggs dies(but gets the ol' cartoony angel wings and flight to heaven), after all his gunfighting foes save one dies; The Orator dies(offscreen), the gold miner's foe dies, the young woman dies. Add Franco's tale, that's five out of six where someone dies. And in the sixth(say the Coens themselves, I looked it up) everybody's already dead.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And there was some repetition in how the machine worked: people repeatedly play possum after receiving apparently mortal blows and each time are still able to move ultra-swiftly to overpower/kill their uninjured assailant and, in short, are fit as fiddles soon after.

---

Well, that played in two of them, right? The gold miner faked his death; the wagon train master faked his death...and both rose to kill their foes. Interesting: this took a long, long, LONG time with the gold miner, but it was in an instant with the wagon train master. Perhaps the Coens were toying with "time variations" of a theme.

---

This was too cartoonish for me.

---

The "cartoonish" nature of the whole enterprise seemed clear. The first one had cartoonish deaths(Buster's killings of his foes were, as some critic noted, like Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny cartoons). The Liam Neeson one indeed(to me) followed the "near silent black comedy" of the Chuck Jones cartoon(sans Bugs) about the singing/dancing frog and its silent owner.

The bank teller's gibberish and pots-and-pans suit of armor in the Franco one was cartoonish, too. (Note in passing, that was Stephen Root, who has been in a LOT of Coen Brothers movies, which reminds me: William H. Macy has only been in one. I always figured that, given how many Coen actors repeat, Macy must have really annoyed them somehow.)

The stagecoach episode wasn't so much cartoonish as surreal(and disappointing in its refusal to really state its meaning -- an art film attached to five "stories"?).

Which left The Gal Who Got Rattled to BE so affecting, I think, because it WASN'T cartoonish. We got a heartfelt, tough but honest little movie(at forty minutes, it actually did feel like a movie) which treated the Old West as very tough and unforgiving, and put very sympathetic people out in it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

What is "holding" for me about BOBS -- and why it may likely end up my favorite of 2018 -- is that the one story in it("Gal") was so affecting to me in all ways(acting, writing, cinematography and composition, music -- especially at the end) that "The Gal Who Got Rattled" is my favorite movie of 2018, and the other five are just window dressing around it.

That said, Meal Ticket is its own dark "food for thought" tale. One wonders about what led up to it: Liam Neeson's near-silent, rather grim-looking impresario SEEMS willing to take on the burden of his armless/legless meal ticket The Orator (carrying him about, feeding him, and toughest of all, attending to his toilet needs), but evidently this is true only as long as the attraction makes money for him. The idea that the Orator's high falutin' "speech show" could be replaced by a lower-brown magic chicken act is darkly funny(one is reminded of how PBS-type programming can never beat sitcoms.) "Meal Ticket" is a dark simile on show business ruthlessness and the tough choices of life itself. Very affecting in a negative way. "The Gal Who Got Rattled" speaks more to positive emotions even with a tragic end. (The wagon master's surprise display of bravery, heroism, and can-do action is bracing, and wonderful.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A bit more on "The Gal Who Got Rattled":

I'd say there is a Psycho connection here, structurally.

One thing that Psycho is about is how some wrong choices -- maybe only a couple, maybe quite a few in sequence -- can lead to death THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED had only some things gone the other way.

The quick one is Arbogast: if only he had not decided to go back to the Bates Motel alone and to try to meet the Mother. He had unwittingly escaped death there once(he knew too much), to go back was total folly...and he died for his choice.

The longer one is Marion: if only Cassidy hadn't turned up with forty thousand, if only Lila hadn't been gone for the weekend, if only Marion hadn't taken the money, if only Marion hadn't driven to see Sam; if only it hadn't rained, if only she hadn't taken the wrong turn, if only she hadn't decided to stay the night even AFTER Norman displayed weird behavior....but actually, "way at the beginning": if only Marion had not met and fallen in love with a man from 1000 miles away ...who lived 15 miles from the Bates Motel.

(And indeed for Arbogast: if only he hadn't been assigned the Marion Crane case.)

In "Gal," its a shorter bit of business: if only Billy had killed President Pierce(great name for a dog); if only President Pierce had not lived to be found on the open prarie by Alice; if only Alice hadn't strayed too far to find the dog; if only the prarie dogs hadn't amused Alice and delayed her leaving(very sad: how this now-happy girl is gigglng away at the prarie dogs one second, and then in immediate danger of losing her life the next); and -- most ironic of all -- if only Alice had not followed the wagon master's direction to kill herself.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The acceleration of action in this final sequence is, to me, the stuff of a great movie. The "old" wagon master has said very little in this movie, his younger charge is clearly the more articulate and feeling man, it seems. And yet, when the wagon master realizes the girl is too far from the wagon train, he leaps into action and becomes an entirely different man, and we realize: this is his calling. Action. Knowing the land (the prarie dog holes have cute creatures in them, but are dangerous to horses). Being able to outshoot the raiding Indians. Being able to spell out -- immediately -- to Alice the fate awaiting her if she is captured alive. And surviving.

As for Alice, we've spent enough time with this shy, timid yet surprisingly pragmatic young woman to like her very much -- maybe love her a little (as her beau does; once he realizes that "she has no people", he steps up to become such) The fact that the prairie dogs interaction with President Pierce gives her reason to giggle uncontrollably means in her final minutes before the horror intruded, she was very happy -- a new husband in hand, immediate pleasure giggling at the prairie dogs -- and then things went brutally wrong. The ever-changing facial expressions of Zoe Kazan provide us with every note of the story.

Its enormously affecting, and -- with an enormously affecting final suite of music -- closes out on an image of The Old West(a man on foot, a dog at his side, another man on horseback in the distance) that feels as classic as classic can be. And raises tears.

YouTube has about a minute-and-one-half clip that puts Carter Burwell's music over the entire "Gal" story (less what happens to her) and ends on that great final shot. Its the movie, for me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And this: whereas Meal Ticket has us wondering what happened before the story begins(how did Liam Neeson come into possession of this circus freak with an orator's silver tongue?) The Gal Who Got Rattled has us wondering about what happens after the story ends. The guess is that the young wagon hand will live out his days on that wagon train, through the older man's death...and will become the older man.

I do wonder if they let President Pierce live, this time.....

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And this about the entire anthology:

I think three out of the six shorts feature a character or two singing.

Its a big, "fake musical deal" in the Buster Scraggs story: Buster sings the old chestnut "Cool, Cool Water" at the beginning, and has a mocking big saloon number about his fallen foe "Curly Joe" in the middle(great shot of a poker player suddenly rising in cheery delight to sing along) and then that weird duet with his killer( a singer with a TRULY bizarre high-pitched voice)...when A Cowboy Trades His Spur for Wings(Oscar nommed,and rightly so.)

Meanwhile the (again) near-silent Liam Neeson in "Meal Ticket" drunkenly sings a rowdy, angry, ominous song about killing a woman near the end of his tale -- his limbless charge is clearly disturbed by the content.

And finally, each of the two "soul takers" on the stagecoach (the dandyish one and Brendan Gleeson's big one) takes a turn with a song. The affect, it seems, is to suggest that travelers on a long journey sing both to amuse themselves and their fellow travelers...and the fellow travelers better like the song. (They seem to; I guess this is like car radio before its time.)

I only watched the gold miner short once, but I know it uses Mother Macree as an instrumental theme. I'm trying to remember if the gold miner sang the song, too.

In any event, the singing of songs in BOBS is a motif, if not through all of them, through some of them.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

In sum, so far BOBS is good not great for me. After a first viewing, I'd rate it a little above Hail Caesar, maybe on a par with Inside LLewlyn Davis, but well below both A Serious Man and True Grit among recent Coens films. That said, I definitely need to see BOBS again. E.g. the passengers in the final story felt familiar, do they all correspond to prior characters or do they themselves appear in backgrounds of various earlier stories? I need to know! And in general the Coens' dry-ness can read very differently on rewatch.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In sum, so far BOBS is good not great for me. After a first viewing, I'd rate it a little above Hail Caesar, maybe on a par with Inside LLewlyn Davis, but well below both A Serious Man and True Grit among recent Coens films.

---

This begs the question, I think. Two, actually:

When was the last time that the Coens gave us a truly great film, a modern classic?

When was the last time that the Coens gave us a GOOD film?

My point here being that for as famous as they remain, the Coens may well be "creatures of their past." Their debut "Blood Simple" was highly praised, as was Raising Arizona. As was Miller's Crossing. They hit a peak of sorts(back to back) with Fargo and The Big Lebowski(though critics felt the latter was a comedown from the former, at the time.)

The 2000s were problematic. Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers were considered broad misfires. But then they came roaring back with the art film classic and Best Picture that was No Country for Old Men(a film which, I contend, isn't all that much of a Coen Brothers film at all. Its very serious, very much in support of the novel it was made from; no tricks; no "standard resolution" of any character's story.)

And right after No Country for Old Men....Burn After Reading. I watched that again the other night, I found it ridiculously slight (except for the fascinating use of Brad Pitt in a short role) and a total comedown after NCFOM . (I like Buster Scraggs AND The Ladykillers better than Burn After Reading.)

Then came A Serious Man with its Deep Art and Theme approach to things (and a marvelous opening credit sequence and a weird pre-credits story.)

True Grit is evidently their biggest hit, and that's in 2010. I think things have been problematic ever since.

So again to beg the question: are the Coens no longer to be worshipped? Does BOBS say their best days are behind them?

I think not, if only on the evidence of The Gal Who Got Rattled, possibly their most emotional work ever.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Personally, I haven't seen two key Coen Bros movies: Millers Crossing and Oh, Brother...something about the subject matter and/or the casting, as I recall. I really should catch them.

In the meantime, I've seen Fargo, Lebowski, True Grit and now BOBS multiple times. Even....The Ladykillers, multiple times.

About which: as a Hitchcock fan, I LOVE great matte painting work, and The Ladykillers posited a bridge, with a Gothic Hawk head staring out to sea towards a "garbage island" that was the stuff of Vertigo/NXNW heightened reality. Not to mention, the best POV-down shots of bodies falling FROM that bridge, in movie history. (They made the cop's fall in Vertigo and Valerian's fall in NXNW look fake in comparison, and those were pretty good for the time.) The Ladykillers featured ornate Gothic opening credits OVER those matte shots that gave the movie a great sense of mood.

For all of its great style, I think what upset critics was the substitution of a Big Black Mama figure for the little Tweedy Bird British old lady in the 1955 original. It was FUNNIER to see a bunch of crooks kill each other over a little tiny biddy than over a big righteous woman who could defend herself. The uncomfortable racial angle continued with the use of Marlon Wayons as the black member of the caper team -- laughing with him, or at him? Also: something we haven't seen in movies before , but I always wondered about: a member of the caper gang whose "irritable bowel syndrome" keeps kicking in , leading to his needing to use the bathroom, mid-caper. I always wondered how The Dirty Dozen or The Magnificent Seven or Ocean's Eleven might have dealt with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Now I know.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

No matter. I still like the central high concept black comedy conceit of The Ladykillers -- gang of crooks kill each other trying to kill and old lady -- and I think the remake has a visual flourish lacking in the realistic low budget original. Tom Hanks' murderous and over-articulate Southern professor was a hoot, too. And the gospel music coupled with the Deep South bayou setting was atmospheric. I don't get why this movie is so hated. A "critical pile on," I guess.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

The Ladykillers posited a bridge, with a Gothic Hawk head staring out to sea towards a "garbage island" that was the stuff of Vertigo/NXNW heightened reality. Not to mention, the best POV-down shots of bodies falling FROM that bridge, in movie history.

That technical stuff counts in my view, and there were a bunch of good technicals in Buster Scruggs, e.g., arrows through the neck etc. were done incredibly well, Hawks and Ford would be very envious! The prairie dog town holes were excellent and the accompanying horse-falls-CGI was seamless; I couldn't pick it. And even the cowboy's speech to Zoe Kazan about how she needs to shoot them both if it comes to that was making subtext text in a way that felt bold and refreshing. There was a lot of good stuff in BOBS! even if, for me, it fell short overall.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

I should perhaps add that I've seen a bunch of good-to-very-good westerns recently so perhaps I'm not in the best mood right now for the Coens' smirky takes on the genre.

The 'spaghetti western' was dominated by the three Sergio's (and Morricone who did all their soundtracks): Leone, Corbucci, and Sollima (in that assumed order of importance). Until recently I'd never checked out any of the least of the Sergio's, Sollima's films. His first Western was The Big Gundown (1966) w Lee Van Cleef in a roughly Eastwoodish-role. It's *fantastic* - incredibly entertaining, with a really well-structured twisty screenplay, beautifully shot, with a great trickster/Loki-ish character called 'Cuchillo' played by Tomas Milian. Cuchillo then became the lead in two fine sequels, Face to Face (1967) and Run, Man, Run (1968). Sollima is more political than and not as self-consciously poetic as Leone, and he's not as fashionably cynical as Corbucci, but he's a very fluent, natural, interesting film-maker. I recommend taking any chance you have to see The Big Gun-Down. From that you'll be able to decide whether Sollima's your cup of tea. For me, he definitely was, and I'm now trying to acquire his '70s gangster pictures and political thrillers.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The 'spaghetti western' was dominated by the three Sergio's (and Morricone who did all their soundtracks): Leone, Corbucci, and Sollima (in that assumed order of importance). Until recently I'd never checked out any of the least of the Sergio's, Sollima's films.

---

This is where "Mainstream Man" runs aground. I was pleased, frankly, to see the Coens giving us ANY kind of Western again with BOBS. They are so rare these days, and maybe that's why I gave the Coens' True Grit my top slot for 2010 and the not-bad remake of The Magnificent Seven my top slot for 2016.

Your knowledge of these spaghetti men is impressive and I will try to act on it. I have X number of years(decades hopefully) left...seeing a different class of movies is partially how I intend to use them. Reading classic books, too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I'll try to watch BOBS this weekend (some mental block has kept me from queuing it up on Netflix all this time).

--

I came to BOBS(what a nifty acronym, I wonder if on purpose) roughly the same way. Viewing it the February weekend of the Oscars(I had noted its nominations), I felt like I was seeing a new release.

And then I checked: it had been available since November! I think back then I was deep in my "Americans" binge(a long one; six seasons in a few weeks) and couldn't make the time.

Weird about this "streaming universe." You can binge a whole season of something the week it is released, or just "save it" til it comes in handy.

Also: I watched the hyped Netflix movie with Sandra Bullock..."Birdbox," and found it rather chintzy and derivative . It didn't strike me as a movie that would do well in theatrical for Ms. Bullock(our biggest female star right now, I'm sure she was paid zillions by Netflix to do this). BOBS had some of this feeling, too -- did the Coens "skimp" somewhere to make this for Netflix? But it was better overall(to me) than the Bullock "film."

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Also: I watched the hyped Netflix movie with Sandra Bullock..."Birdbox," and found it rather chintzy and derivative . It didn't strike me as a movie that would do well in theatrical for Ms. Bullock(our biggest female star right now, I'm sure she was paid zillions by Netflix to do this). BOBS had some of this feeling, too -- did the Coens "skimp" somewhere to make this for Netflix? But it was better overall(to me) than the Bullock "film."

I watched Birdbox when it dropped and thought it was what we used to call 'straight to video' quality. Netflix has dropped quite a few stinkers over the past year or two with lots of attendant hype, e.g., The Cloverfield Experience(?), was a godawful sci-fi sort-of-continuation of Cloverfield that was dropped right after the Superbowl last year. On the one hand, like cable channels of old, Netflix is a good place for sub-par genre films to end up. There's no marginal cost to me to see it apart from my time. On the other hand after being 'burned a few times' I now do due dilligence about reading reviews etc. especially in genres such as sci-fi and noir and horror for which I have a weakness. Old Cable and Video Store (personal) rules about how to avoid stinkers still apply, gravity still applies, but the vaunted slickess of Netflix fools almost everyone for a bit!

Update: Other Netflix sci-fi I count as basically godawful: Extinction, Europa Report. One goodie (even tho' I didn't like it as much as others tended to): Annihilation w. Natalie Portman. Definitely worth a look.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

did the Coens "skimp" somewhere to make this for Netflix?

I didn't notice any obvious short-changing. So far at least, Netflix seems to be giving prestige directors everything they want. How this is all working financially is still a bit mysterious - it's still not a true profit-making/paying-back-investors company - but for now the good times still roll.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I see where Steven Spielberg is going to go before the Academy soon to protest Netflix in particular (and streaming in general) so that the Academy will NOT in the future nominate Netflix-type films for Oscars. He says that these are primarily TV productions, and should be nominated for Emmys, not Oscars.

I guess Steve won't be making anything for Netflix anytime soon -- though Scorsese still has "The Irishman" coming from there. It got a commercial on -- the Oscars? the Super Bowl? I can't recall. Pacino, DeNiro, Pesci, Keitel...voices only. Release date sorta announced: "Fall." After the Brad/Leo QT summer Manson film.

I kind of wonder if Scorsese keeps putting off the release of The Irishman so as to nail down a theatrical release that will make it seem more like a movie than a Netflix TV production. (On the other hand, I've read the time is necessary to CGI the lead actors in some scenes into 30-something younger versions of themselves. Pacino gave a brief interview about the process; he had to ask Scorsese during certain scenes, "So am I 40 here or 65?"

Spielberg's got a point. Netflix movies are confusing enough AS movies(Birdbox didn't seem like a real movie; BOBS, though, did.) To confuse the hows and whys of a movie earning an Oscar is another problem entirely. There are plenty of awards shows; the trick is to get the award in the right medium.

Which reminds me: in the 00's, The Sopranos in any given year felt more like Oscar material than many of the movies which won. It was a matter of the quality of the production's writing and acting, I think. In "the olden days"(the 70's), it was a given that most TV scripts were sub-par and you had to pay money to get a good script to hear "at the movies"(like Chinatown.) But I would have paid to see a movie with the caliber of a Sopranos script (and I did -- Wolf of Wall Street was written by Sopranos guy Terrence Winter.)