No Country For Old Men

[modage]

I like Josh Brolin.  He's got a freakishly large head, which I respect in an actor.

i dont know if i mentioned this already but during the Coens Q&A they said that everybody in this movie has a very large head. 

[hedwig]

i have a very large head.

[MacGuffin]

Spain's Bardem Surprises Himself in Film

Javier Bardem is one of Europe's hottest actors. But the Spanish star is astonished to find himself feted at Cannes for starring in a modern-day Western set under the big skies of west Texas.

Bardem plays a psychopath who dishes out death without reason or remorse in "No Country for Old Men" from filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen ("Fargo," "The Big Lebowski").

It isn't a typical movie, or a typical role for Bardem. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001 for playing persecuted Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in "Before Night Falls," and gained more plaudits for "The Sea Inside," the Oscar-winning Spanish film about a paralyzed man fighting for the right to die. 

"I'm a European actor, and I have some problems with violence," Bardem said Sunday. "Violence is something I haven't really played very much in movies."

Meeting the Coen brothers and reading their script eased his worries. Adapted from a novel by Cormac McCarthy, the film is a taut thriller that explores the meaning of violence and the nature of good and evil.

"Our first talk with Javier was about his qualms," said Ethan Coen, half of the writing/producing/directing partnership. "He wanted to make sure we felt the same way (as he did) and that we weren't doing a Chuck Norris movie."

Bardem, 38, supplies much of the film's humor and horror as Anton Chigurh, a mysterious killer trying to retrieve a briefcase of stolen drug money. Josh Brolin is the laconic Vietnam vet who unwisely attempts to make off with the cash, while Tommy Lee Jones is the old-fashioned sheriff trying to stop a tide of carnage he can scarcely comprehend.

The film has been warmly received at Cannes, where it is contending for the Palme d'Or. It is slated for a November opening in North America.

A member of a Spanish acting family, Bardem became a sex symbol in the early 1990s in the surreal, steamy Spanish comedy "Jamon, Jamon."

He is cast against type in the Coens' movie: His character is jowly and deadpan, with a helmet-like hairdo and pasty skin. Chigurh is unrecognizable in the tanned, T-shirt-clad Bardem, who devours breadrolls during lunch with journalists at a beachside restaurant.

Bardem said he had wanted to work with the Coens for years, but doubted it would happen because they make "deeply American movies" with a strong sense of place.

"No Country for Old Men" is rooted in the unforgiving Texas terrain. But Chigurh is an outsider, an enigmatic stranger who comes to town with murder on his mind. Bardem says that made the character easier to play.

"All the work I usually do: imagining the past, the circumstances of the character in this case I didn't do it," he said.

"We all saw him as a force of nature the embodiment of violence."

The film is sure to raise Bardem's profile with English-language audiences. He'll soon be seen in an adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera" directed by Mike Newell ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.") This summer, he shoots Woody Allen's new movie in Barcelona, alongside Scarlett Johansson and his old friend Penelope Cruz.

Bardem said acting in English is getting easier.

"I'm getting more comfortable now, but it will never get to the point as if you are doing it in your own language," he said. "When I say 'I love you' or 'I hate you' in Spanish, many things come to my mind, aspects of my own life. When I say it in English, I don't have the memories."

[modage]

Cannes Press Raving Over New Coen Brothers Thriller
Source: Cinematical

I don't know about you, but the arrival of a new Coen Brothers movie is a really big deal to me. (Yes, even after Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, both of which I enjoy more than most people seem to.) Their latest is a return to the old-school film noir form a la Blood Simple or The Man Who Wasn't There. Miramax won't be releasing No Country for Old Men until November 21*, but we've got a handful of very enthusiastic reactions from that big French film festival.

Our pals over at Rotten Tomatoes say: "not only does No Country deliver another excellent Coen Brothers film, it also delves thematically deeper than your average crime thriller with its sprawling saga of a drug deal gone wrong, a bag of cash, a hunter on the run (Josh Brolin), and the philosophizing psychopath on his trail (Javier Bardem)." The Tomato gang also mentions that the flick "created an audible buzz in the Debussy theater lobby as members of the press spilled out of the aisles after tonight's press screening." Cool! (Also in the cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and the adorable Kelly Macdonald.)

Our own James Rocchi shares his thoughts: "A brilliant example of how plot devices as simple as murder and money can be used to explore larger sweeping themes of mortality, morality and more -- while still delivering rousing, intelligent pure entertainment." Over at Variety, Todd McCarthy was in agreement: "Cormac McCarthy's bracing and brilliant novel is gold for the Coen brothers, who have handled it respectfully but not slavishly, using its built-in cinematic values while cutting for brevity and infusing it with their own touch. Result is one of the their very best films, a bloody classic of its type destined for acclaim and potentially robust B.O. returns upon release later in the year." Argh, who wants to wait until November?? Then again, only a fool would release a Coen film in the middle of the summer.

* mark yer calendars.

[I Don't Believe in Beatles]

ADMIN WARNING: VERY SPOILERY CLIPS

Some more clips here.

[Ghostboy]

God, this looks great. I kinda wish I hadn't watched those clips, though. I've read the book and the material is already familiar to me, but I wish I'd seen everything in the proper context.

That shot of the blood creeping towards Bardem's boots is classic Coen Bros.

[martinthewarrior]

From msn movies

"The buzz machine slammed the French Riviera this weekend. Its target was one film: The Coen Brothers' noir-tinged, darkly comical and meditative Western, "No Country for Old Men." Critics and audiences have gone berserk over the film, and the Coens and their cast of Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin are already fielding Oscar questions (Tommy Lee Jones would be as well, but the notoriously testy actor steered clear of Cannes). A colleague wrote me late last night and asked whether the hype was justified, whether the Oscar talk could possibly be true. I can't predict anything about the Oscars, because Miramax won't release the film until November. But I can answer the first question.

Yes, it's that good and, no, it's not overhyped. I'm a rabid Coen Brothers fan, and for me, this near masterpiece is their best, most mature and beautiful work since 1990's "Miller's Crossing" ("The Big Lebowski" is on another plane, so I can't even compare the two). But I won't use the M word until I've seen it again — which I almost did this morning (I've never seen a film twice at the same festival) — until I saw the line around the block.

For those unaware, "No Country for Old Men" is the Coens' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2003 novel (if you haven't read it, you should; I think it's better than his recent Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Road"). In retrospect, the pair seems perfect. "Country" is McCarthy's most accessible novel, a genre blur loaded with the type of colorful, local characters (West Texas, in this case) and the sharp, pitch-black funny dialogue that the Coens have written for more than two decades. It starts when ex-'Nam vet Llewlyn Moss (Brolin, in the type of rugged performance for which the word "breakthrough" was created) blindly stumbles upon a horrific desert scene while hunting: dead bodies and shot-up pickup trucks littering the sand. Inside one of the trucks, Moss finds enough heroin to keep a city on the nod for years and a case full of $2 million. When he decides to grab the money, he sets off a chain reaction of cataclysmic events for everyone involved. And there are a lot of everyones in "Country." There is Moss's wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), whose unquestioning trust of her husband drives his insane ambition; there's Sheriff Bell (Jones, born to play this role), who knows Moss is in over his head and tries to chase him down; there's bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), who's simply tracking Moss and the money as another paid gig; and most importantly, there is Chigurh (Bardem ... sure, start the Oscar talk), a Mexican assassin with a page-boy haircut, a ghost-white face, pink eyes and a coin he likes to flip for human lives. Chigurh is death and violence embodied; rarely has there been a badass like this on the big screen, one who kills for pure pleasure, without conscience and just because, well, as Nick Cave once sang, "All God's creatures, they all gotta die."

The plot is labyrinthine and ambiguous, but the Coens handle it with ease. It's bloody and messy, but also laugh-out-loud funny ("I laugh to myself sometimes," says Bell. "It's all you can do") and startlingly creepy. Good chunks of the film are shot in silence, with little, if no music, and only the Texas wind on the soundtrack. It's the sound of a country withering and dying, where money is worth any sacrifice, where violence has escalated to the point of inane hysteria and a simple, aging sheriff like Bell muses about "dismal tides" that he can no longer contain. And this is, at its core, what "No Country for Old Men" is about: an America now without logic, reason or conscience.

We're only halfway through the festival, but it looks like a two-horse race between "No Country" and "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" for the Palme d'Or. And win or not, prepare yourself for "No Country": It'll floor you."

[squints]

thats it. no more reading this thread til November

[Pubrick]

yep this is pretty much the best movie of the year (so far).

intoleradykillers who???

[Pozer]

looking forward to GT's review 

[Gold Trumpet]

Haha, I read the novel and didn't like it. But I like the actors and the Coens could have made significant edits so I'm hopeful.

[RegularKarate]

God, this looks great. I kinda wish I hadn't watched those clips, though. I've read the book and the material is already familiar to me, but I wish I'd seen everything in the proper context.

That shot of the blood creeping towards Bardem's boots is classic Coen Bros.

Yeah, I don't recomend people watch all those clips... spoilers for sure.

I loved the book for what it was... sounds like they're taking the majority of the dialogue directly from the book... almost word for word, which the movie will definitely benefit from.

[modage]

i havent watched the clips, and i wont, and i'm so thrilled at this news.

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

[Pubrick]

still holding out on clips, but thanks for the offer.

i want to give this movie every possible chance to succeed. kinda like my sig.