is a return to form for the Coens, which is to say it's an excellent movie, but is at the same time completely different in tone than almost any other movie they have made. This movie affected me, and I really recommend it. Unique, suprising, original, yet using standard genre conventions so it feels familiar in many ways. The greatest accomplishments of the film are the character of Chigur (played by Javier Bardem), the breathtaking cinematography by the incomparable Roger Deakins, and the momentum and efficiency of the script.
This movie is unsettling and deliberate... and for most viewers, I would imagine, unsatisfying. But I can't think of a movie that I've seen in the last year that I would recommend more. Go see this movie.
kara [email] said at 8:41 PM 11-18-2007: did you go to landmark?
I wanted to go see this Saturday but also kind of wanted to "get out" so went to White Marsh and saw Lions for Lambs instead (corny, preachy, not as bad as I expected)
I'll hopefully go see this jonx in the next few days though.
Landmark ruled.. the staff was friendly, the popcorn was delicious.
josh [email] said at 8:46 PM 11-18-2007: i have not made it to landmark yet... i saw it at e street in dc. which i think is also a landmark, so i guess i did go to landmark. i also at at that ollie's trolley place i have always wanted to try. good fries, sorta crappy in all other aspects.
reggie [email] said at 10:05 PM 11-18-2007: I can't wait to see this movie. I'd have seen it by now but I've been a little broke. I can't believe the scores for it though on Metacritic, last I checked it had an AVERAGE rating of 95. That's pretty remarkable.
brandonA [email] said at 10:59 PM 11-18-2007: it's been a very long time since I anticipated a movie this much - I can't wait til in opens this week here.
andrew [email] said at 7:47 PM 11-20-2007: i saw the coens give a lecture about two months ago and they were two of the most boring, mumbling dudes ever. but i also want to see this.
josh [email] said at 9:07 AM 11-21-2007: yeah they are also terrible in interviews... but i that's obviously because their talents lie elsewhere than public speaking
reggie [email] said at 6:47 PM 11-21-2007: Not all directors like talking about themselves or their work the Coens especially. They even went so far as to have a completely bogus audio commentary recorded for the DVD of Blood Simple.
julie [email] said at 12:06 PM 11-23-2007: The Coens & Javier B were on Charlie Rose the other day. The hot/arrogant Coen (the one married to Frances McDormand I think?) did most of the talking, while the dorky/nicer one was more articulate when he did get a word in edgewise, but he also giggled a lot.
I'm really looking forward to seeing this, I'll probably go today.
julie [email] said at 2:44 PM 11-24-2007: I saw this last night, it was amazing. Then today, I read this little bit of timely humor in the New Yorker. Heh. "The mother!?!?"
julie [email] said at 11:42 AM 12-03-2007: Okay, WTF, I swear I tested that link, but now it's wrong. THIS is the link: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/11/26/071126sh_shouts_ephron
reggie [email] said at 11:15 PM 11-25-2007: Just saw this tonight. It's pretty remarkable. I read some reviews in which the reviewer thought the Coens ruined the end but I think if you're paying attention then the ending makes perfect sense. It is a little bit of an emotional letdown but the payoff is deeper than that.
anthony [email] said at 1:18 AM 11-26-2007: By far one of the best movies I've seen in a good while.
"All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it. "
reggie [email] said at 10:18 AM 11-26-2007: Was thinking some more about this flick. I was thinking that Tommy Lee Jones' character really reminds me of Morgan Freeman's in Seven. There are also little touches throughout the film that add so much depth. Like towards the end when Chigurh checks his feet after leaving the house (I'll say no more than that.) Or the part when after Moss has been chased by the dog in the river. When he climbs out he doesn't just pull out his gun and start blasting away as would probably be the case in most action movies. Instead he stops, takes out the clip, empties the chamber, blows out any water that may be in the gun and then reloads and fires away. I mean it was done to add suspense but it's also just more logical.
One question but before I ask the question here's a brief disclaimer:
[THIS QUESTION AND THE RESPONSES IT GENERATES MAY CONTAIN POSSIBLE SPOILERS READ AT YOUR OWN RISK]
Okay here goes:
At the very end when Chigurh confronts Moss's wife and presents her with the opportunity to live by tossing the coin, do you all think he would have let her or was she right in believing that he would kill her no matter the results? We've seen him flip the coin once before with the gas station attendant and he won the toss so maybe he would have. At the same time I thought it was great that she was so defiant to Chigurh in the first place, it's just about the only time in the movie where somebody gets the upper hand on him (psychologically.)
josh [email] said at 10:38 AM 11-26-2007: i think he would have let her, he was obsessed with his own code of ethics, so he probably would have let her, had she won the coin toss.
also kelly macdonald was pretty decent in this, hard to believe she is the same lil scottish lass from trainspotting!
max [email] said at 11:14 AM 11-26-2007: I just saw this last night, and it's all still settling. I firmly believe that he would have let her live if she won. However, I also fully see her resistance to play the game. I might have refused also. In a way, I thought her efforts to talk some logic into a psychopath were the best yet. But in a way it was nice to see that he couldn't be broken down by one of his victims. It makes him all the more impressive.
I loved, loved, loved the scene where the dog was swimming after him in the river.
mason said at 12:56 PM 11-26-2007: I think the the question is why didnt she flip the coin since she knew he was a psychopath?
(i suspect she didnt want to live in a world where evil people exist).
josh [email] said at 2:07 PM 11-26-2007: i think thats a possibility but also i think its possible she just wouldn't submit to him... her husband was also a pretty ornery guy who didn't take the easy way out, so maybe she was as well.
mason said at 5:25 PM 11-26-2007: she is more than stubborn and ornery, she's crazy...he's an ultra-violent psycopath, she knows he is going to kill her and she gets ornery? huh?
reggie [email] said at 11:28 PM 11-26-2007: Well she's already lost her husband and was returning from her mother's funeral, "ornery" is a nice way of putting it.
josh [email] said at 1:58 PM 11-27-2007: a lot of people die because they take stands in situations where they know they might get killed. how many people dont give their wallets to muggers and get shot/stabbed/beat up?
julie [email] said at 8:33 PM 11-27-2007: Also, she acknowledges that she's kind of been waiting for him to show up. Or waiting for the other shoe to drop, ever since all the shit hit the fan. She might even have been sort of relieved that Death has finally come for her. No more living in fear...
max [email] said at 11:18 AM 11-26-2007: I'm very excited to see this movie again. I have to say that I was a little disappointed with the end of the movie. I felt like it peaked in the first half, and then was a slow decline to the end. I'm just not used to it. But like all Coen films, I believe they need to be watched a couple times.
reggie [email] said at 5:27 PM 11-27-2007: They just moved very weirdly. Not that it matters one bit. I also think the dead dogs at the shootout site were CGI as well.
josh [email] said at 5:43 PM 11-27-2007: Really? I assumed they were props... why would someone do those with CGI? Seems cheaper to make a fake dead dog.
reggie [email] said at 8:34 PM 11-27-2007: I don't know, they just didn't look like fake dogs. And is it really cheaper? The only thing I can think is that you can just shoot the scene and add the dogs in post. And maybe since they were shooting out in the desert perhaps the heat and sun would affect the fake dogs. I don't know, just guessing. I'm going to see it again probably tommorrow I'll take a closer look.
josh [email] said at 10:29 PM 11-27-2007: it would be incredibly cheaper to make a fake dog than create a CGI fake dog. yes. you could probably make a amazingly badass fake dead dog for like $10 grand and there is no way that you could create a CGI shot for anywhere near that cheaply.
reggie [email] said at 8:04 PM 11-28-2007: From Wikipedia: CGI is used for visual effects because effects are more controllable than other more physically based processes, such as constructing miniatures for effects shots or hiring extras for crowd scenes, and because it allows the creation of images that would not be feasible using any other technology. It can also allow a single artist to produce content without the use of actors, expensive set pieces, or props.
josh [email] said at 12:54 PM 12-02-2007: It would be more expensive to make a CGI dead dog than a prop dead dog. Do you really want to argue this point? It's cheaper to use CGI to blow up the empire state building, but not cheaper to make a single prop.
reggie [email] said at 3:08 PM 12-02-2007: Soooo, it clearly is something that has diminished in importance in the days since I first made that comment. Your response is two days after I stopped caring.
reggie [email] said at 3:56 PM 12-02-2007: No I said I don't care. But if you insist on being a douche, Luma Pictures was the name of the company that did the visual effects for the film. The following quote is from an article about their work:
Luma Pictures helped recreate the brutal, untamed landscape of the New American West in providing visual effects for the new Coen Brothers film NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (which opened Nov. 9 through Miramax). The studio was the sole vfx supplier for the film, delivering more than 60 shots, including stunningly real CG wildlife and difficult action sequences.
Also, I wrote an e-mail to the company themselves. We'll see how they respond. After seeing the movie twice, though, the dogs still looked like they were CGI and it's not really out of the question for this firm to have created some CGI fake dead dogs.
josh [email] said at 4:29 PM 12-02-2007: Several antelope stand in an open field. Llewelyn (Brolin) shoots at them and one is hit and falls. The others run off. He follows a trail of blood and finds a dog limping in the field. This scene was created using a combination of stock footage of the antelope running, computer-generated imagery (CGI) of the antelope being shot and a stuffed prop for the fallen antelope. As for the dog, a lightweight strap was gently placed around the dog’s paw and raised slightly to give the appearance that it was injured and limping. A trainer placed the dog on its mark and another trainer stood off-camera using a combination of verbal cues and hand signals to get the dog to run and look in different directions.
A dog chases Llewelyn down a hill and into a stream. As the dog exits the stream, it lunges into the air toward the man, who shoots it in mid-air. The dog lands dead near the man. This scene was filmed in separate shots. For the first part, in which the dog jumps into the stream, one trainer placed
the dog on its starting mark on shore and another trainer, who stood in the water holding a raft, called the dog. The dog, who loves to swim, jumped in the water and swam to the awaiting trainer, who retrieved it and placed it on the raft to rest. Toys were used to excite and encourage the dog to swim to the trainer. Whenever multiple takes were needed, trainers carried the dog to shore to prepare it for retakes. The carrying of the dog and the use of the raft both helped ensure that the dog would not be overworked or become too tired. For the second part of the scene, in which the dog comes out of the stream, the trainer held the dog at its mid-stream mark on the raft, and a second trainer on shore near the actor called the dog. The dog swam off the raft to the shore, where it was cued to jump at the actor. The dog was not on set for the gunfire. A safety crew was stationed on a raft in the stream as an extra precaution.
Ed (Tommy Lee Jones) leads a horse into a horse trailer. Later, he and another man ride and walk horses through an open field of dead people and a dead dog. Wranglers instructed and prepared the actors to ride the horses and to load them into the trailer. The actors and animals were introduced to each other before filming and were comfortable with the actions. Production provided documentation that the dead dog was fake.
they used a fake prop antelope, they probably also used a fake prop dog.
like i said, it's cheaper to use a prop than CGI for things like that, because one person can make a fake dog that looks bad ass in a few days and then you just shoot it, whereas to add a CGI fake dog would require a team of people and a multi step process. every second of CGI in a movie is $$$. the only reason to use a CGI fake dog would have been if they had a problem with a prop and it looked too fake and they didnt want to go back and reshoot - not because it's cheaper. that's all i'm saying. CGI effects are almost more expensive than practical effects for small scale things. it's the large scale things where practical effects would be, well, impractical, that CGI becomes super cost effective.
josh [email] said at 4:32 PM 12-02-2007: So, Josh, you broke your collarbone — and then [in one of the film’s most terrifying and absurd sequences] you jump in that river with that insane dog.
Bardem: That fucking dog!
Brolin: So when I was in the river with the dog, this freaking dog, the dog is so fuckin’ scary it’s not even funny. All that swimming, frantically, that I was doing, all that looking terrified out of my fucking mind? All that was real! There was no acting there. I was sitting there with a freaking collarbone broken, this dog chasing after me. In the river.
That dog was terrifying.
Bardem: Josh was like “Where is the water? Where is the river? Where is the dog? Let’s do this.” Then he sees that dog. And he goes “Fuck, I don’t want to do that with my sling! My arm’s in a sling!”
Brolin: Even if my arm wasn’t broken, I wouldn’t want to go into that river with that dog. That dog looked so rabid the whole time. All he wanted was the toy. He loved this toy. So the dog’s name is Scooby, and I was like, “Here Scooby!” It was just the gayest thing. And they’d go, “Okay action!” and he’d follow the toy. But I’m swimming in the water. What do I do with the dog toy? I don’t want it in the shot. So I stuck the toy between my legs and started swimming. Anyway, they let the dog go way before they should have, so by the time we passed the camera, the dog was literally almost on top of me and I was, “No, Scooby! No, Scooby!” So I get out of the water and I go to pull out the toy from between my legs and it gets stuck in my pants. And here’s Scooby with his yellow eyes and the teeth and the gums and all that, and finally, literally just as the dog was on top of me, I pulled up the toy out — and the dog was just all mouth and teeth around the toy. It was close. That kind of shit was happening all the time. Me and Javier, it was just one thing after the other.link
reggie [email] said at 4:59 PM 12-02-2007: A) I'm not talking about the walking limping dog (I read the same article) and I'm not talking about the swimming dog I'm talking about the dead dog. The dead dog ONLY. I AM TALKING ABOUT THE DEAD DOG.
Stop being so argumentative, normally i'm game for this but right here I'm pretty much fed up with. I DON'T REALLY FREAKING CARE THAT FREAKING MUCH. I'm going to wait until I get my response from Luma (if I get one) and then I'll be satisfied with what they tell me (if anything.)
That's the end of it.
It's like we both agree the movie is great so you need something else to argue about.
josh [email] said at 5:15 PM 12-02-2007: hey man, i think you obviously care more than me, you went to the trouble of contacting the production company! (i never even would have concieved of that, but it would be sweet if they wrote you back)
also you are seemingly getting worked up about it, i am just passing the time at the coffee shop which doing some freelance coding.
also i think it's a long-established tradition that if you respond to me on killoggs, i will generally always respond back with my viewpoint/a clarification. 7 years on, it's not really worth frustration or suprise, i would think. you do the same thing, honestly, if i ever respond to any point you make, you respond even if you have said you are done with the topic.
im also not debating the movie really at this point - perhaps you are. i am discussing the point i made about CGI vs practical pricing. you replied above that you weren't sure about that. thats what i am talking about, because i think it's an interesting subject and i am very interest in practical effects and their role in the CGI-crazy world that is hollywood today.
reggie [email] said at 5:50 PM 12-02-2007: Whatever man. All I'm saying is that I had already stated that I didn't care one way or the other DAYS AGO. My main point, also, was in the era of Sin City that it's highly conceivable that the dog could be CGI. I don't care if it's not the most cost effective thing to do, I'm just saying what it looked like. Maybe they used a fake dog but it didn't look good so they touched it up digitally (which is something that you yourself suggested.) Whatever the case may be, the dog looks CGI fake and not stuffed animal fake. Sometimes in the heat, props don't hold up so well so maybe THAT'S why it might be CGI. Who know? I don't. You don't. The Coens know and the folks at Luma know.
Also, you caught me right after the Redskins blew a close game (the first after Sean Taylor's death.) So I was heated.
Bendependent [email] said at 11:35 PM 11-28-2007: Everything you could ever want to know about the animal scenes in No Country for Old Men: click me!!!!
reggie [email] said at 7:41 AM 11-29-2007: Maybe they digitally enhanced the dead fake dog to make it look like it's decayed over time. I don't know, don't care.
rick [email] said at 11:43 AM 12-02-2007: I would rank this among the five greatest films ever made had a dead Scooby-Doo actually been the dead dog. Bonus points if Shaggy had been the dead guy under the tree.
milky [email] said at 5:54 PM 12-09-2007: Reg...now when I have the (dis)pleasure of seeing the film, all I'm going to be doing is watching for the dead animals!
julie [email] said at 8:35 PM 11-27-2007: There is an interview with Javier Bardem on EW.com where he's asked if he thinks viewers will get more out of watching the film if they stop taking it literally and look for more allegorical/deep stuff. Javier says that he came to think of his character as a physical embodiment of "violence" in a karmic way... like, he shows up in your life if you've been living in a way that you're just asking for trouble. He puts it more eloquently, but that's the gist.
reggie [email] said at 9:51 PM 11-27-2007: Well this did feel like an unofficial sequel to A History of Violence. Covers the same territory but is a lot more obvious (but not heavy-handed) about its metaphors. I think the conversation between Tommy Lee Jones and his brother(?) towards the end pretty much sums everything up. Actually, most of Tommy Lee Jones' lines pretty much sum everything up.
josh [email] said at 10:27 PM 11-27-2007: i feel like that is not really what the movie implies about him, or at all what cormac mccarthy thought, though...
angelel said at 12:14 AM 11-28-2007: I agree. I didn't interpret the movie or its characters as depicting a bad begets bad / good begets good karmic sort of message. To me, the overall theme of the film is that you can never see what's coming. This gets repeated lots in different monologues. The main thing about Javier Bardem's character isn't so much that he's a psychopathic killer - it's that he strictly adheres to his mind's set of rules of how that world works. His personal code and set of rules serve him well, but the world doesn't really operate under a transparent set of rules. I like the part when he passes through the intersection during a green light toward the end of the movie. Even he couldn't see what's coming.
reggie [email] said at 8:54 AM 11-28-2007: I read him as not so much showing up in your life if you've done something bad, it's more like showing up in your life to -- for lack of a better way to put it -- add the bad that may or may not have been there in the first place.
Like the gas station attendant, in his conversation with Chigurh in a very twisted way you can see a demented reasoning for why Chigurh would kill him. The way he ridicules him for marrying into a job managing a dumpy gas station in the middle of nowhere. Who would miss this schlub if he did die? That's who Chigurh is. He is inevitability. He's aware of the fact that all of us will meet our ends eventually so what does it matter if we die of natural causes, disease, murder or a car accident. He kills just as many "innocent" people as he does "bad" ones (if not more.) It's almost like he punishes some people for being complacent and not doing something -- anything -- of note with their lives.
[MORE SPOILERS AHEAD BUT HONESTLY IF YOU'VE READ THIS MUCH AND HAVEN'T YET SEEN THE FILM THEN YOU'RE JUST PLAYING WITH FIRE]
To me, the overall theme of the film is that you can never see what's coming
I think that's kind of oversimplifiying things though. And I also don't think it's really accurate. As far as Chigurh's car accident, you're right he couldn't see what was coming but dig deeper. Look at his reaction. He's largely unaffected by it. Why? Because he's accepted that all of us could go at any minute, in fact he's made sure of that fact for who knows how many people. He also doesn't seem to recognize when someone does something genuinely kind. The kid literally gives him the shirt off his back and refuses, at first, to take the money. The kid does it because it's the right thing to do but that hardly registers with Chigurh.
kara [email] said at 3:02 PM 12-02-2007: asked if he thinks viewers will get more out of watching the film if they stop taking it literally and look for more allegorical/deep stuff.
reggie [email] said at 3:13 PM 12-02-2007: I think for some movies the people making the movie -- specifically the director(s) and/or screenwriter(s) -- they've invested a great deal of time, effort, thought and energy to at least give them a second thought.
But to each his/her own that's the beauty of perspectives.
brianbibbly [email] said at 3:35 PM 11-28-2007: This was a great movie. I don't disagree really with any intrepretation. I've actually been resisting the urge to over-analyze the film and am letting it lie as is. A truely good film. I need to go see it again.
neilbert said at 10:46 PM 12-03-2007: The best "dead or dying dogs" in a movie goes to Rob Bottin, for "The Thing."
Chigurh's shotgun is beyond badass and it's twangy sound effect was genius. Easily the best movie I have seen all year. Now if only "The living Wake" would come out...
