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Haven't seen it yet and DIDN'T read what you just wrote

Atonement Brilliant! 5 / 5

Michael Clayton Mel got it out so I finally got to see it all the way through, not bad 3 / 5....JNH score is almost a non-entity, how the hell did it get a nomination?

Eastern Promises Good! 4 / 5

It's true, when you take all the film-making prowess out of the equation, the subtext (which you didn't seem to notice), the language and the textures, summed up in 200 words, it doesn't sound very impressive.

Different strokes for different folks. I know how you must feel, because I've also had moments where a film has come across incredibly overrated after seeing it long after everyone else - TRAFFIC, THE FOUNTAIN, PAN'S LABYRINTH and CROUCHING TIGER all come to mind. For me, NO COUNTRY was a rare film that survived the 'hype'. But I will say this: people don't always kiss the ass of the Coen Brothers. I saw THE LADYKILLERS and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, and particularly after the former, I didn't think I'd ever bother to see one of their films again. You'd have to go back to 1994's HUDSUCKER PROXY to find a Coen film I thought came close to the masterful technique of this McCarthy adaptation.


Now I saw MICHAEL CLAYTON again, and I think it plays better when you know the overall shape of it. I still wonder whether it would work better without the flashback structure, but much like SYRIANA, it's a strong effort from a new film-maker with a social conscience. Strange as it may be to say, James Newton Howard's score is not the worst music ever written for a film. It actually does fit, and the choice of totally electronic textures is appropriate. My objection to it was always about what the music would have sounded like away from the film, and how basic a composition it was. But would a more structured underscore have worked any better? I can't really teach a class where I tell young composers that the film is all that matters, and then slap a major composer for thinking along those lines also. I heard many scores that were worse last year in the sense that they didn't even begin to mesh with the drama.

Even with my more sympathetic thoughts here, I couldn't swing Howard an Oscar nomination for the score. That's going a bit far. It's a good film, but there are better ways to award that. (How about a SCREENPLAY Oscar, instead of that JUNO newbie screenwriter?)

I think it was all about the hopelessness of trying to defeat evil. Evil is something that will always be there, how random it even can be. But don't ask me what the last scene was about.

To me it's about how people encounter death and whom it chooses to take.

For some, it's the random outcome of a coin flop that hardly seems fair, even though the odds were 50/50. The petrol station man was lucky. Who knows whether Chigurh ended up flipping a coin before his last killing in the film, but if so, Moss's wife was not so lucky.

For some, it's a consequence of the life they choose to lead - the dangers they court, the business they involve themselves with. Llewellyn is one of these men, caught up in the thrill of the chase, reliving the sensation of being at war in Vietnam. But he thinks of it as too much of a game, and forgets that it can come from more than one place.

Some forget that death is a possible outcome. Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) is one of these, his pride getting the better of him. He thinks he has bargaining chips, but he can't bargain with death.

Neither can the man in the office whom Chigurh kills. Neither can the middle management. These are men who deal with death as part of their business, trying to weaponise it, forgetting that it can turn on them. As Wells says of Chigurh: 'He's a peculiar man. You could even say that he has principles. Principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that. He's not like you. He's not even like me.'

At the end, the Tommy Lee Jones character is in something of a fix. Because he was not ready for death (nor was it waiting for him - though he thought it was in that hotel room), but neither is he prepared to continue living in the world in any effective way. He has conversations with others, one with an old law man who persuades him not to think that the way things have gone with Chigurh are a reflection on him ('It's not all waiting on you. That's just vanity.'); another with an old law man who equates Chigurh with the changing of the times (speaking of kids with 'green hair' as somehow equivalent!); one with a younger law man (the scene where he reads the stories from the newspaper); and finally, he shares his thoughts with his wife.

I think Bregt asked about the meaning of the dreams in the last scene. That's a bit of a longer discussion, but I recommend googling it and reading some of the blog interpretations if you're interested. Here's the text of his final speech:



For me, part of the significance of it is not so much the dreams in particular, but the content, and the way the audience hears the words. The content is totally about him and his father - withdrawn from the problems of the rest of the film - and that has some significance, I suspect. Reconsider the film's opening voice over, which is also about the relationship of him to his forebears, but in the context of the work he does - the nihilistic nature of the criminals he's coming across more and more. At the end, he's doesn't meditate on those things any more.

As for the way the audience hears the words, cinematically speaking a disembodied voice tends to be more powerful than a voice nailed to a body. Narrators, acousmetres (characters who exist only as voices - the Wizard of Oz, Hal 9000 from 2001), and characters whose words carry over other images tend to be more powerful than characters whose words are visualised. And so NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN begins with a voice over from Tommy Lee Jones, weary but still resonant, declaring his concept of the world over the imagery of Texas. As a narrator, introducing a tale, he has a certain power as a presence. The character doesn't actually appear until 22 mins or so into the film, but his familiar voice has already been set up as the 'voice of wisdom'.

The way the audience hears his words is very different in that final scene. He speaks in a medium shot, slightly right of centre frame, his words 'nailed' to a form that is a shadow of the strength the same voice conveyed at the film's opening. It's very suitable for the way the character has lost credibility for us as a defence against evil.

All of this may sound irrelevant, but it was a decision the film-makers made, and I appreciate the subtle aesthetic arc of the way Tommy Lee Jones' voice is heard throughout the film. There are other subtle arcs - of photography, of sound design (the use of that dry breeze in some scene is quite chilling), of performance (Bardem is numbingly consistent throughout, but there are these little moments that are very telling), but I think my favourite has to be the arc of the narrator's voice.

I never have seen Medicine Man, but I should like to some time. My recent tour of Jerry films crossed a handful of films off the list (Hollow Man, Tora Tora Tora, Capricorn One, Sand Pebbles, Boys from Brazil, Chinatown and Papillon again, Star Trek The Motion Picture for the first time in years), but Medicine Man remains to be seen. Russia House is another one from the same period I'd like to see again.

Last night I saw one of the best films I've ever seen - After Life by Hirokazu Koreeda. I heard about the idea seven years ago, and strangely enough it's lived up to my expectations all these years later. Such a simple story based on beautiful characters, which was open to being made very simply. If this one ever pops up on cable wherever you live, well worth the two hours.

Koreeda also made Nobody Knows, a Japanese family drama.

Does anyone else just have the TV on while listening to scores? It's really funny watching movies and seeing how other scores somehow fit in with certain scenes (not particularly well though!). Last night Sahara was on while I was listening to Blades Of Glory....oh man, did that not work well!

And what a glorious piece of scoring that is!

Yeah, it was VERY enjoyable indeed. Lots and Lots of fun, if you switch off your brain

VANTAGE POINT is the multiple perspectives film? (You should see RASHOMON, if you haven't, the grandaddy of all such films! DePalma's SNAKE EYES has some good scenes too.)

Why mate? Did you expect something else perhaps? I mean when you went to see it? Personally, I read reviews prior and i knew exactly what i went to watch, that's why i enjoyed it to the utmost.

I knew it wasn't going to be anything amazing. In fact, it fulfilled all my expectations (which weren't many to start with), but the fact it treated the audience like they were stupid...

rewind...blank screen...that stupid 12pm chime...then they tell us it's 12pm again...we needed that once! Not each time. It made me feel like I wanted to say ''shut up!'' to the movie.

Forest Whittaker and that girl...OMG. BAD!

Wohoow. Let I just keep it with how good I found this movie in my own head. But it's great to read about what could all behind it.