Hail, Caesar!

    This last spring I was lucky enough to sit in for a Q&A with Joel Coen. The Coen Brothers are one of my favorite directors and I reference them often in this blog. So when asked about his next project and Joel described a movie called Hail, Caesar! about George Clooney being abducted by a group of extras, I was thrilled. I finally saw Hail, Ceasar! last weekend on a Valentine's date with my Mom. I was not thrilled.

    So let's get this clear. The movie is not awful. It's not Battleship or some other Hasbro garbage. But is not a good movie for them and is one of my least favorites by them. I like the visuals, the jokes, and the acting. But there were some key story elements that did not happen. For example, there's a plot line that involves a dastardly act George Clooney's character did on his first Hollywood film. The act was revealed at the end of the movie in an offscreen conversation and written out quickly. Additionally a lot of the characters don't have purpose or a desire, other than create work for Josh Brolin's character Eddie Mannix.

                                                            Mannix is the protagonist of this twisty, seemingly meaningless comedy-drama. That description in itself shows how scattered the characters are. Huge stars like Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, and Scarlett Johansson pop in and out of the story with very little to do and loose ends that get tied up by a simple walk and talk with Eddie Mannix in the last five minutes.

The only actor who is given any other meaningful screen time is Alden Ehrenreich who gives a marvelous performance as country good ole boy Hobie Doyle. Hobie is a stud with horses but is brought into a adapted play directed by Ralph Fiennes' Lawrence Lawrence. The scene provides the only true moment of comedy of the whole film with an endearing Hobie and the artist Lawrence. 

  

     Now at the Q&A I learned about Hail, Caesar! before while it was shooting. This could be me only hearing what I wanted to hear but I could have sworn that Joel Coen said that Hail, Caesar! was going to be a musical.

     It fits with the current cut of the movie. There are large musical interludes with Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, and Alden Ehrenreich and music and old Hollywood is a big theme. Additionally the explanation of major off screen plot points through dialogue would make sense if these were originally supposed to be shown in a musical number. Channing Tatum's character is given a full length musical number and then has no dialogue until what seems to be the climactic scene. And this climactic scene has absolutely no context. 

     I think Hail, Caesar! was supposed to be in a musical and somewhere in the production that was cut. What was left was a hodge podge of actors, characters, and story lines tied together by Eddie Mannix and Roger Deakins.

The Dude Who Abides

    The Big Lebowski, labeled a cult classic, is a comedy crime film written and directed by the Coen Brothers team.

    The film centers around a character known as The Dude. The Dude doesn't do much. When police ask him what he does for a living he responds that he's currently unemployed. He mostly lays in the bath tub and gets high. And he goes bowling.

 Jeff Bridges' character, who gets confused with a businessman also named Lebowski, is given a desire. He wants to fix his rug. It's one little want. It's one little need. The Dude is mostly propelled through the movie by the plans and schemes from business men to nihilist. But the promise of the rug, the one that pulled the room together, that keeps The Dude moving. It's relatable. Viewers are lazy. We don't want to do things.

    I added The Big Lebowski to my lookbook for a few different reasons. Firstly I love Roger Deakins and think he creates beautiful images out of simple character placements. Secondly, The Dude doesn't do a whole lot. Rather, like Andrew, things are mostly done to him. And for whatever reason this tires him out. Even though he's along for the ride he hates the journey. 

     Plus the Dude learns from his surroundings. He repeats the things other characters say. And he the solution to his problems come in a drug laced dreamed sequence. Which is an effective form of visual storytelling.

The Big Lebowski is a cult classic because each time you watch it there's a new joke. The high stakes create a lot of tension and juxtaposition of the calmness that often follows. The Coen Brothers show us a dramatic money hand off that failed. They ostensibly cut from John Goodman jumping out of a moving car to Steve Buscemi bowling. The Dude's enemies include nihilists and Jesus the bowler. The movie sets up and deceives are expectations, the hallmark of comedy.

    The Big Lebowski is about a man just trying to get vengeance for his rug. He's The Dude.

The Dude Abides

I've waited an abnormally long time to watch The Big Lebowski. I saw my first Coen Brothers movies in 2007 when I had to watch O Brother Where Art Thou for an english class, and then again when No Country for Old Men came out and convinced me that Javier Bardem was the thing that nightmares are made of. I've seen - and enjoyed - a lot of their films, both the critically acclaimed (Fargo, True Grit) and the not so critically acclaimed (Burn After Reading). Recently, it's started to feel like Lebowski was intentionally avoiding me; my parents decided to rent it on Netflix when I was at school and the library hasn't had it every time that I've gone in to check. So I was thrilled when my roommate spontaneously sat me down earlier tonight and insisted that he rent it on his Xbox for us all to enjoy. The next two hours were perfect.

I had heard most of the famous quotes from the movie, but I really had no idea what I was in for. The plot itself is almost too complex to describe, especially after just one viewing. For those that haven't seen it, however, Jeff Bridges plays "the Dude," an unemployed stoner who loves bowling and just happens to get caught up in a kidnapping conspiracy. Knowing the Coen Brothers, I was expecting the film to be a fairly dark dramady, so I was surprised when I found myself laughing throughout the entire film. Lebowski is, through and through, a comedy.

I've always been fascinated by writing - it's something I'm hoping to make a career in - so Lebowski was really a treat for me. Lately, I've been working on ways to make dialogue seem really authentic, and this film was a breath of fresh air for me. The character of the Dude is just so incredibly natural and believable that while watching it, I was consistently torn between taking mental notes of things and just letting his Dudeness wash over me and take control. This is in part due to Bridges' Oscar nominated performance, but you have to give Joel and Ethan Coen so much credit for writing an incredibly believable sounding (while over-the-top in every way) screenplay.

On the other side of things, I was totally blown away with the cinematography and was both surprised and not at all surprised when I found out that it was the work of master DP Roger Deakins. Deakins has worked with the Coen Bros on numerous occasions (including Fargo and No Country For Old Men) and his style really shone through in Lebowski. Deakins used cuts sparingly, and this immediately reminded me of the video we watched in class the other day about how filmmakers are starting to believe that cuts are always necessary all the time. Deakins seems to abide by the old-school method of longer, lingering shots; these, along with some really cool POV shots (inside a bowling ball? Come on. That's awesome.) made for a film that was always visually interesting.

With an incredible supporting cast lead by John Goodman as the Dude's Vietnam war-ravaged, psychotic pal Walter ("shut the fuck up, Donny") The Big Lebowski holds up perfectly well, even on the 15th anniversary of its release. I loved everything about it; from the trippy bowling/porno sequence to the three nazi-nihilists to the rug, which really tied the room together. It was a great piece of comedy filmed with the utmost precision, something you rarely see. I'm excited to rewatch it and pick up a little more of the dense plot, but until then, I'm just going to sit back, chill, and let the dude abide.

A new way of looking at films

I recently discovered a new tumblr, which is often dangerous to my productivity, but I've found this one particularly interesting as it offers an interesting new way of looking at films.  It is called moviebarcode, and it posts single images, or barcodes, representing the entire course of a movie.  These images are made up of a number of still frames, evenly distributed throughout the movie, which are then stretched upward so that only the main color information remains.  It offers a very nice, birds-eye view of the art direction and overall color tones and moods of a film.  There is also an index so that you can easily look up movies you are interested in.

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

For example, this is the barcode from the 2000 film "O Brother, Where Art Thou".  This was the first film to be digitally color graded in order to make an artistic choice.  In this case, much of the footage was tweaked to make the landscapes look drier and more golden, to fit the setting of the Dust Bowl in the midwest.  This is easily apparent in the barcode, which is overwhelmingly gold and beige.  You can also see, right at the very beginning, how the film starts out in black and white, before the saturation is added back in to produce the color.

The Matrix (1999)

Here's another example: The Matrix.  Almost every scene in The Matrix has a distinctive green tint to it, which is easily apparent in this image.

Harry Potter: Complete Series (2001-2011)

This is one of my favorite examples, because it shows some of the applications that these images could have.  This is all eight Harry Potter movies, sequentially, which means we can see some interesting trends.  First of all, we can see that the mood of the series gets progressively darker, until the last installment is almost entirely black.  This visual trend clearly follows the tone of the films and the stories themselves.  It also shows the differences in the styles of the directors; for instance, Chris Columbus filmed the first ones primarily inside, which is shown by all the warm tones at the beginning of the image.  When directing the third installment, Alfonso Cuarón made the conscious decision to shift to a more outdoors, location based film, which is shown in the abrupt transition to blues and greens.

By looking at multiple films at once like this, we can observe patterns, similarities, and differences that are both interesting and useful.  Using these images could be an easy way to examine multiple films by broad categories such as genre or time period, which might expose some of the stereotypes or tropes that are used in different types of filmmaking.

Coen Brothers

     I recently watched No Country For Old Men (2007), directed by the Coen Brothers, for the first time. This movie was on my list of movies to watch so I sat down by myself and enjoyed the film. There is mostly natural sound throughout the movie and no music to accompany the characters. The sounds of wind and the environment reflect the main character's motives and convey a feeling of isolation and loneliness. Javier Bardem plays the 'villian' in the movie and is truly insane and dynamic. After seeing Skyfall (2012) last weekend, I respect Bardem for playing such diverse characters and being able to become the character he is casted as. The movie is now on my list of favorite movies and accompanied by it are many other Coen Brothers movies. Ethan and Joel Coen are two of my favorite directors and I've been making an attempt to watch all of their movies. Thus far, I've seen No Country For Old Men, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski. I plan to watch True Grit and Burn After Reading. Why do I like their movies? The Coen brothers direct movies with the most unusual characters and unlikely stories. The cinematography is amazing and the actors featured in the movies are some of my favorite actors (John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, Steve Buscemi, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and many more). Below are Coen Brothers trailers for movies I've seen. Watch their movies.

                                                     No Country For Old Men

                                                          The Big Lebowski

                                                 O Brother,Where Art Thou?

                                                              Fargo

Watching More Movies

         I spent my entire summer working as a camp counselor and had no time to watch television or movies. When I had free time at camp, I would often sit with my friends and talk about movies. I soon found it hard to engage in conversation because I realized I hadn't seen many movies. For example, a thirty minute conversation about No Country For Old Men came about and I just sat there awkwardly because I was the only one that hadn't seen the movie. I compiled a list of movies I wanted to see which includes No Country for Old Men, but I never took the time to watch the movies. Some other movies on the list include True Grit, There Will Be Blood, Tree of Life, The Birds, Deer Hunter, Children of Men, Silence of the Lambs, and many others. Recently I watched The Big Lebowski for the first time and thought that everything about the movie was excellent. I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers and the cinematography and writing was excellent. The all star cast made the movie amazing and the absurd characters give you a view into the strange world of bowling. I also saw Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom last week in an indie movie theater near my house. The film was truly amazing in all aspects. Wes Anderson's unique cinematography was unlike any movie I've ever seen and it made me want to go out and film something in a way that has never been done before. Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, and Bill Murray put on a great performance as well. Like The Big Lebowski, the characters in Moonrise Kingdom were absurd and nontraditional by any means. The child actors in the film were amazing and when I searched for some of them on IMDB, I learned that many of the actors hadn't had much past acting experience in movies. Two more movies are off the list and I plan to watch a movie every day after I finish my school work. Over the years, I re-watch movies that I own on DVD but I need to expand my interests and make an effort to watch the classics and learn more about movies. I plan to create a never ending list of movies gradually watch as many movies as possible. In my film analysis class, we watch movies that break the norm and classic movies that every film student should watch. I'm exciting to see those movies and expand my knowledge in the world of cinema. I'm open to any suggestions as well.

-Matthew Clifford Hadley