Hello, lovelies: Beau here, searching for distractions from the onslaught of crap coming our way in the next few months, and the fact that I still haven't seen Before Midnight. (insert vicious, hyperbolic rant here.) Luckily for me, the trailer for the new Coen Bros. is just the ticket.
YES:
Carey? Carey... are you in there?
- Coen Brothers. Duh.
- Carey Mulligan. Duh.
- The folk music scene in New York underscored by Bob Dylan, easily one of if not my very favorite musical artist of all time? Duh.
ASSHOLE!
- There's something completely delicious about seeing Mulligan seething, and relishing the opportunity to do so. I grinned from ear to ear.
NO: I'm sorry, but I will not jump on this Justin Timberlake bandwagon. I just don't get it. He was serviceable in The Social Network, but when Aaron Sorkin isn't going on about Bigfoot, his material elevates the performance(s) of everyone and everything involved with the project. If Sean Parker is meant to be this flood of enthusiasm, energy and effusive patronage, why isn't there more of a sense of his serpentine deception?
As you can tell, I still haven't forgiven him for Black Snake Moan...
RICCI! SAMMY! ...NO ONE IMPORTANT!
In any case, I'm not impressed by his filmography thus far, and I'm just grateful that his participation will be offset with the adorable Garrett Hedlund who has, incidentally, already treaded this territory before, albeit in a fairly unremarkable film...
Maybe So:
...which is still playing in theatres. Seriously, what's up with the influx of films about this subject matter all of a sudden? (Howl, the aforementioned On the Road, the upcoming Sundance feature Kill Your Darlings, which was recently picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, and now this?) Granted, the film only claims to be loosely based on the memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk, so it has more artistic license with the atmosphere and the zeitgeist of New York in the 1960's than the others, but it is peculiar that we should be inundated with so many perspectives of such a tumultuous and, sad to say, bygone era.
Is there something we're searching for, culturally, that filmmakers think they may find here? Hard to say. If so, I don't want anyone other than the Coens taking it on.
I am a RESOUNDING YES. What about you?