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Saturday, March 28

It was all leading up to this: 'No Country For Old Men'



No Country For Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen) is a brilliant film with one of those maddening non-endings that can go either way with me: when John Sayles abruptly cut to black in Limbo (1999) it took my breath away, but the final scene of No Country felt unsatisfying. Perhaps I just didn't "get it". No matter - I love the film to bits, it's not like the ending ruined it for me. What I adored so much about the film was that, for the first time in what seemed liked forever, I was sitting in the theatre excitedly wondering "what happens next?" - happily twisted around the Coens' little fingers. After years of "plot developments" eliciting bored moans it was delightful to feel like I was really being told a story. The other thing I loved about the film was that it seemed the perfect distillation of everything that was once great about the Coen brothers before they really went Hollywood and started making films like Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and The Ladykillers (2004). Truth be told, I think the rot was setting in before these sell-out low points - I enjoy The Big Lebowski (1998) enough but certainly not as much as its fans do, and found the highly acclaimed The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) to be an empty experience.

No for me, the Coens are all about their first six films, each one perfect in its own way: Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and Fargo (1996). I know I am a rare Coens fan who will put Hudsucker on the good list over Lebowski, but so be it. I've just always really dug The Hudsucker Proxy.

And so No Country For Old Men really felt like a return to form for me. It was like they'd made a new Blood Simple, only this time with the best technical team given enough money and a dream cast. Like Blood Simple, No Country For Old Men is a twisty thriller set in the wastelands of Texas, and the films have almost identical openings, with a world weary voice over (M. Emmet Walsh in Blood Simple, Tommy Lee Jones in No Country) speaking over desolate shots of Texan plains. The critical difference - one which is not immediately apparent to the viewer - is who is behind the laconic voice over. Walsh is a sleazy private investigator out to double cross his employer, Jones is a morally upstanding lawman who looks on with increasing disbelief at the violent crime scenes he is faced with. Both films concern bungled crimes, red herrings, and vital clues hidden away in cheap motel rooms. But where Blood Simple is an intricate clockwork mechanism that invites the audience to watch the characters scurry around like rats in a maze, No Country eschews explanations and takes the senseless violence of its world as a given. A deputy examining the aftermath of a drug deal turned shootout remarks "they even shot the dog!" and then a few scenes later we are shown Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) - at that stage the main audience identification figure - put into a situation where he has to do exactly that, in a climax of a terrific chase sequence which begins with him being pursued across the plains in the dead of night by two armed men in a truck and ends with the wounded Moss desperately swimming down a swiftly running stream by the pre-dawn light, the soon to be dead hound in hot pursuit.

No Country even manages to recall Raising Arizona - the famous scene where the murderous Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) challenges a gas station proprietor to a high stakes coin toss resembles the black flip side of the scene in Arizona where two bumbling prison escapees turned kidnappers hold up a small grocery store, with the classic dialogue exchange:

 EVELLE
(re: balloons) 
These blow up into funny shapes at all?

CASHIER
Well no. Unless round is funny.

But if No Country For Old Men has a true sibling in the Coens' body of work, it must surely be Fargo. Both films feature a canny, moral law enforcement officer tracking criminals across desolate landscapes by the frequently bloody aftermath of their crimes. The snowbound Minnesota of Fargo is as harsh and unforgiving as the dusty plains of No Country - Fargo discovers a beautiful contrast between the vast landscape and the warm places humans huddle inside, as well as making maximum usage of the clue concealing properties of snow. But the real connection between the films are the police officers played by Frances McDormand (Fargo's Marge Gunderson) and Tommy Lee Jones (No Country's Sheriff Bell). Marge and Sherrif Bell are not the focus at the beginning of the films, which both set up other protagonists and conflicts, allowing McDormand and Jones to slowly creep into the story (Marge Gunderson doesn't appear until about half an hour into Fargo) before they eventually become the emotional core of their respective films. The characters are also an interesting study in contrasts, from the most obvious difference (that of gender) to the fact that Marge eventually finds and overcomes her quarry, whereas Bell never comes face to face with Chigurh, and the film makes it pretty clear that he would be unlikely to emerge the victor from such a confrontation: Chigurh is as unknowable and implacable a force of evil as Michael Myers in Halloween (1978, John Carpenter).  Marge Gunderson also has a more optimistic outlook than Sheriff Bell - No Country ends with Bell looking forward (at least subconsciously) to being released from this world, where the heavily pregnant Marge is in the process of creating a new life herself.

The remarkable thing about how heavily No Country For Old Men draws from the Coens' earlier work is that it is adapted with extraordinary fidelity (to a fault - the last page of the novel is a great ending to a book, but I'd argue it doesn't work as the final scene to a film) from Cormac McCarthy's novel. All the elements discussed above come directly - and in many cases, just about word-for-word - from the novel. Was McCarthy watching Blood Simple and Raising Arizona when outlining his story, perhaps?

No Country For Old Men, I believe, marks the beginning of a true second wind for the Coens. They're no longer trying to fit in to Hollywood, rather Hollywood is giving them the resources to make films exactly how they want to, only now with the very best actors (and stars, even) and the sort of marketing campaigns which films like Miller's Crossing (still their most perfect film as far as I'm concerned) never got to benefit by. If No Country For Old Men is Blood Simple 2.0, I found that watching their next film, Burn After Reading (2008) expecting Raising Arizona 2.0 is a very good way to have expectations confounded. Which of course is what the Coens like to do best - confound expectations. I need to see Burn After Reading again, this time without looking for the patterns I saw in No Country For Old Men, to fully appreciate it, I think. And how heartening that the boys are still making films that are worth going back to see a second time - very rare these days.

Saturday, March 21

On the sequels to 'The Exorcist'



The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin) was a huge sensation when released - it was banned in places, discussed in talk shows and the media, and walked out on. It came along at a time when big theological questions were in the public eye, and as such almost inadvertently became a sensationalist phenomenon that was concerned with Big Issues. It is of course an entirely fabulous film, still riveting after all this time. Hollywood wasn't as prone to sequels back then, but the huge success, both artistically and commercially, of The Godfather II in 1974 had proved that a sequel needn't mean cheapening the storyline. And so in due course along came Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman) with Linda Blair joined by great actor/ham combos such as Richard Burton and Louise Fletcher. It was a troubled production that was fitfully released, hauled back to the edit suite, and finally abandoned by both Warner Bros and the director and dumped into theatres to the jeering of the crowds. The Razzies hadn't been invented then but you can be sure Exorcist II would have been a contender.

1983 saw the publication of William Peter Blatty's follow up to his original novel, Legion. It's weighty, meditative, and theological, and when production company Morgan Creek allowed Blatty to write and direct an adaptation for them, it should have come as no surprise that he delivered a weighty, meditative, and theological film. Shocked to discover - after the film was completed - that Legion did not contain any sequences of exorcism, Morgan Creek insisted on having one shot for the film. Although Blatty disagreed, he was a good enough sport to shoot the new sequences, hoping to still do the best job possible. The film, The Exorcist III: Legion (1990) is creepy and well made and leaves an impression despite the completely visible join between Blatty's story and the studio imposed exorcism. And it has one of the best shock scare moments of the last couple of decades.

The final sequel to date had the most torturous post production of all - fearing Paul Schrader's film Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist would be unsuccessful, Morgan Creek hired director Renny Harlin to completely reshoot the film. Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning was released to poor box office and negative reviews in 2004, and Schrader's film was eventually released as well in 2005, to a slightly better reaction.

Has there ever been a cinematic franchise with such a troubled production history? The fourth film especially being completely reshot, never mind Paul Schrader - a promising match for the material - being dumped in favour of Renny Harlin, of all people. A clear sign that the studio really had no idea what sort of film they really wanted.

Of course, the original film has not been without after the fact tinkering either. In this case, a long standing dispute between author/screenwriter William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin was re-ignited when the film was re-released for a short theatrical run and then on DVD for its 25th anniversary. At that time Friedkin stood his ground, but a couple of years later he relented and the ridiculously yclept The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen was released in 2000. The new version re-instates some character material which Blatty had always missed, as well as the infamous "spider walk" scene which doesn't really fit - coming before the film has taken its shocks to that kind of level, it both steals the thunder from later scenes and disrupts the slow build of tension. Freidkin also adds a couple of ill-advised new visual effects, particularly an image of the demon's face appearing in the range-hood which is completely meaningless within the story. It ultimately doesn't matter, it's still pretty much the same film, and some of the extended sequences help what seem like big narrative leaps in the shorter version. My preference, however, is definitely for the original version, although truth be told, you can't even get that these days: the closest being the first (now out of circulation) DVD release, which replaces the startling and effective jump cut from Jason Miller playing Father Karras to the same actor in demon makeup with a more subtle digital morph, but is otherwise the same as the 1973 release.

Saturday, March 14

Score of the week



The first film score I owned was the cassette of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Hooked on scores immediately, I quickly moved on to vinyl, and had a pretty decent collection by the mid 80s. At that time, CDs were only bought if I really, really loved the score. Once, I bought a soundtrack on LP - it was Willow by James Horner - and loved it so much that after one listen I took it back to the store and begged them to allow me to return the listened-to-once LP and exchange it for the CD. Of course, eventually I replaced most of my LPs with CDs, but I never got around to getting the CD of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and in my last house move (which came with a very severe cull of possessions) I got rid of all but a couple of my LPs, as I no longer owned a record player. There were some real gems in there, too - including a few scores which have since become rare and much sought after. Who knew that I would one day miss The Serpent and the Rainbow? Whenever I'm in a music store I fondle the CD of Willy Wonka, but always end up putting it back, thinking to myself 'It's a novelty item which would only be in your collection for nostalgic reasons.' Last week I decided to see if it was on iTunes, found it (bizarrely, it's title is censored to W***y Wonka... - I mean, wtf?), and seconds later was listening to it for the first time in years.

This score - which earned the film it's single Oscar nomination -  is a bit too musically straight forward and conventional to be counted amongst the great achievements in the history of film scores. And the film has a strange, scattershot approach to the use of songs - it's not quite a musical. Initially, the songs are connected to Charlie Bucket's story, through songs such as 'Cheer up Charlie' and 'I've Got a Golden Ticket'. Then, once Charlie and the other Golden Ticket holders are inside the factory, the songs are limited to a number by Willy Wonka (the wonderful and slightly unsettling 'Pure Imagination'), Veruca Salt's big tantrum in 'I Want it Now,' and the memorable Oompa-Loompa songs, one for each unfortunate child who ends up leaving the tour, with no big finale musical number and no musical continuation of songs about Charlie. It doesn't seem to matter - the film works whether the characters are singing or not, finding the right blend between being charming and scary, a balance which eluded Tim Burton. The album is only 37 minutes but it's a sheer delight, the music is gorgeous and the album is spiced up by the inclusion of a couple of dialogue snippets and some brief tracks featuring the bizarre and hilarious sound effects from the factory machinery. It's as much fun as watching the film again!

Sunday, March 8

An obsessive phase...


I think I'm having one at the moment. They are periods in my life where I focus my viewing and reading on one particular thing. They vary from a more casual three or four week kind of thing before I move on (which is what the current one is) to a complete obsession that I spend months on. Previous subjects have included spending all my spare time re-reading my favourite Clive Barker novels (which means pretty much all of them), or re-watching my favourite Brian DePalma films one after the other. Yes, I'm a big re-watcher of films - I've seen a lot of my favourites dozens of times. Anyway, currently I'm going through a vampire phase. Sparked of course, by my re-reading of Dracula. Since picking that book up again, I've watched the 1979 film, the 1977 mini-series, and many clips from both 1922 and 1979 versions of Nosferatu as well as Francis Coppola's 1992 film on YouTube. I've also watched bits of Interview With the Vampire.

My reading was sent in a different direction - after Dracula, I've had a hankering for Victorian gothic, which had me re-reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and now H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man. Reading these could send me back to the early films of Angela Lansbury, 1930s Universal horror films, or Paul Verhoeven's film Hollow Man. Which will in turn, send my reading in another direction, and the circle of life keeps turning.

Anyway, my vampire phase intersected with my brief interest in James Mason and I inevitably ended up pulling out the DVD of Tobe Hooper's 1979 mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot. A theatrical cut down of the film was distributed to international territories in 1979, and I loved the look of it and wanted to go see it. Of course, I was nine years old and it would have scared the crap out of me and scarred me for life, so my mother quite sensibly did not allow me to go see it. I was, however, allowed to read the book. I remember finishing reading it and immediately turning back to page one and starting again. I devoured that book. It was funny, I gave it to mum to read when I was done and then my teacher at school, and no one really said anything about my tender brain being exposed to Stephen King at his very best.

I had two years of recurring vampire nightmares from reading 'Salem's Lot, but I was kind of hooked on the primal thrill of a really good scare by then. When the mini-series in it's complete form aired on Australian television in (I think) 1983, I loved it. It had all the kids at school talking about it - lots of "did you see?" and "what about..." 

It was a big ratings hit in Australia - the network broadcasting it ran a repeat screening the following year, and again the year after that. It was a period of two years where I was pleading with my parents to buy a VCR, as I wanted to start taping stuff. When our first VCR finally arrived (it's funny, I remember that VCR as clearly as if I'd seen it this morning) we were too late to miss the repeats of Salem's Lot. I had to wait until it became available to buy from Warner Home Video on VHS, which was sometime in the 1990s, before I got to see it again. I remember the first time I saw this film as an adult, I found it cheesy and dated. I never really watched it again until the price of the DVD dropped enough for to finally say "oh, alright". I blame the highbrow and dismissive company I was in when I first re-watched it for my former judgement, as this time I found Salem's Lot to be extremely effective. I used to dislike the lack of fidelity to the novel, but now I enjoy the way the screenplay by Paul Monash plays fast and loose with the novel, conflating characters and re-ordering events in a similar fashion to many of the various stage and screen adaptations of Dracula.

I won't go into comparing the mini-series and the novel even though I've done a bit of that sort of thing on this blog. I actually do believe a film should stand apart from any source text, and be judged on it's own merits. That said, this small town of 'Salem's Lot, with petty, grasping characters played by the likes of Kenneth McMillan, Fred Willard, and George Dzundza, is recognisably the world Stephen King created. I fell in love with Bonnie Bedelia, girl-next-door pretty until the final scene, where she is transformed into a vision of Gothic seduction. James Mason's sneering and disdainful Richard K. Straker and Reggie Nalder's growling Nosferatu faced monster leave strong impressions. And the sequences with the boy vampires floating outside the window, scratching at the glass and pleading to be let in, are unforgettable. It's strong stuff - I can't imagine anything being scarier than this for a 1979 television production. Special shoutouts to contact lens specialist Dr. Morton Greenspoon, Harry Sukman for his scary Emmy nominated score, and production designer Mort Rabinowitz for the Marsten house, represented by a Psycho inspired facade on location and a sensational interior set which easily gets my vote as the best ever decrepit old house of evil.

Tuesday, March 3

James Mason et al...


The other night I was doing some random internet searching - mainly on "living fossils" such as the Coelacanth - and ended up finding this superb page detailing scores of different designs for Captain Nemo's submarine the Nautilus from Jules Verne's prescient piece of speculative fiction 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Inspired, I dug out my region 1 DVD of the 1954 Walt Disney film, looking forward to revisiting it. Unfortunately, our old DVD player is becoming a little tempermental and refused to load the disc.

In desperation, I put it in the PS3, knowing full well that it is locked to region 4 and wouldn't play the disc, as was indeed the case. What to do? I'd developed a craving for a 1950s adaptation of a Jules Verne novel, preferably starring James Mason.


Fortunately, I have a region 4 disc of Henry Levin's 1959 film Journey to the Center of the Earth, another childhood favourite. While still fun, it's a poor substitute for 20,000 Leagues..., that's for sure. On the plus side, it's colourful, James Mason and Arlene Dahl have a terrific love/hate relationship, much of the effects work was terrific for the time (they sure had some cojones to shoot daytime scenes on a beach and then stick matte paintings on the top to place the location footage inside a gigantic subterranean cavern), and Bernard Herrmann provides a typically wonderful score, all thundering timpani and moody church organs.

It would have taken balls to even attempt
an effects shot like this in 1959.

On the minus side, Henry Levin's direction is static, the film takes a little too long to get going, some of the sets and effects work have not dated well, and James Mason's Oliver Lindenbrook lacks the magnetism and sex appeal of his Captain Nemo. Not to mention the terrible songs shoe-horned in to the film due to the presence of Pat Boone. I might be being a little harsh, but I was really in the mood for James Mason with a beard, Kirk Douglas singing to a friendly seal, Peter Lorre's shiftiness, and a fight with a giant squid. Some iguanas with rubber appendages stuck on to turn them into Dimetrodons just didn't do it for me tonight.

I followed up with another favourite of my youth, Jack Arnold's 1955 giant-spider-run-amok flick Tarantula. This one's full of classic 1950s stiffness, with characters stopping still to deliver exposition to each other, and a bizarre mix of progressive feminism and sexism in the character of of Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (Mara Corday), a clever scientist in her own right who quips "beauty must come before science" as she absents herself from the lab to keep a hair appointment. The giant spider itself is superbly realised for the most part through high speed photography of a real tarantula matted into location photography (often the shadows of the spider were also matted in, providing an extra kiss of realism), and it would be remiss of me not to mentioned an early uncredited role for Clint Eastwood, playing one of the fighter pilots who come in at the end to napalm the beast to oblivion.


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