Shocktober Revisited: Theory, Audiences, and Horror

 This critical essay originally appeared in 2009.

Greetings, Blogorium readers! Tonight I thought I'd share with you part of a large-ish paper I've been working on.

The paper is on movie-going as a ritual activity, which in and of itself was fun researching, but a healthy section is devoted to Horror films and the role they play in group catharsis, so I'll drop that knowledge on you, followed by a section devoted to the question: "Why do horror fans like $1.50 movie theatres?", in which I think you'll find the Cap'n comes to a reasonable conclusion.

Just a tiny forewarning: this is from a first draft, so if anything reads as dodgy or the sentences are awkward, I'll be adjusting them in ensuing drafts.

Horror Films

“Each of us experiences a film individually, and our different tastes in films demonstrate how unique our individual reactions are. Yet, what are we to make of those films that seem to have tapped in the collective fears of an entire generation?” (Phillips, 3)

Horror films repulse and terrify us, yet they remain financially, if not critically, successful. Noel Carroll poses the question “But – and this is the question of ‘Why horror?’ in its primary form – if horror necessarily has something repulsive about it, how can audiences be attracted to it?” (33) The answer may be that the genre presents us with escapist variations of real life anxieties. The genre of horror taps into our deepest primal fears, and coupled with the venue (total darkness), collectively audiences must overcome individual terrors.

Consider the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, which tapped into mounting tensions about race relations and the Vietnam War through the lens of a zombie film. Kendall Phillips describes the reaction to Night thusly, “for many contemporary critics, the film was ‘cathartic for us, who forget about the horrors around us that aren’t, alas, movies’” (93). Similarly, films like The Exorcist or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre tapped into apocalyptic concerns of the mid-1970s, though less literally than atomic holocaust films. “Apocalyptic visions… need not express a literal end of the world but may entail a sense of the inevitable decay and demise of broad social structures and order” (Phillips, 111).

Horror manages to, in the words of critic Robin Wood, “respond to interpretation as at once the personal dreams of their makers and the collective dreams of their audiences, the fusion made possible by the shared structures of a common ideology” (30). Its role as a societal release is a more extreme version of cathartic theatre, one designed to explicitly face our fears in dark spaces, with the comfort of being able to safely walk away when we choose to. Linda Williams, in learning to scream, identifies a similar mechanism in horror films designed to help audiences gasp and scream together:

Anyone who has gone to the movies in the last 20 years cannot help but notice how entrenched this rollercoaster sensibility of repeated tension and release, assault and escape has become. While narrative is not abandoned, it often takes second place to a succession of visual and auditory shocks and thrills.” (163)

Despite its role in tapping into our collective experience, the horror film is not highly regarded by critics. Robin Wood describes the phenomenon:

The horror film has consistently been one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres. The popularity itself has a peculiar characteristic that sets it apart from other genres: it is restricted to aficionados and complemented by total rejection, people tending to go to horror films either obsessively or not at all. They are dismissed with contempt by the majority of reviewer-critics, or simply ignored. (30)

Horror is regarded as a “lesser” form of cinema, one that is frequently associated with “low culture” and is beneath contempt for cultural critics. Audiences, however, flock to this ritual of being scared half to death and walking out at the end. The ways that horror films function as a dual ritual of “movie-going” and “date” are also related to cultural norms. In her discussion of horror marketing during the “classic” monster-movie era, Rhona Berenstein notes the ways that male / female reactions during this ritual are performative:

Just as social mandates invited women in the 1930s to cling to men while screening horror movies, thus encouraging them to display conventionally feminine behavior as a means of garnering male attention, so, too, did the male viewer… use female fear, as well as his own traditional display of bravery, to disguise his terror behind a socially prescribed behavior. (137)

In fact, women were frequently the target audience during the “classic” monster movie era, for reasons that solidified gender roles in American society. Berenstein continues, “women were classic horror’s central stunt participants because they were thought to personify the genre’s favored artifact: fear. The upshot was that if women could survive the viewing or a horror film, and moreover, if they could respond bravely, then other patrons, meaning men could do the same” (143).

The horror film provides a number of valuable roles in maintaining the movie-going ritual: in addition to reinforcing cultural norms, it taps into collective fears and faces taboos, even at the chagrin of most critics. At the end of a horror film, no matter how traumatic or cathartic the experience, the collective returns to the daylight, capable of functioning as members of society. As we will see, the horror film provides for a different kind of engagement in the movie-going ritual based on what theatre an individual chooses to visit.

[...]

For many critics, the reputation of Horror as a “low culture” genre comes from these second run houses. Conversely, many Horror aficionados will also attend the Sedgefield of Blue Ridge Road theatres because they replicate the “Grindhouse” experience, based on one-screen cinemas in large cities, most of which no longer exist. The Grindhouse theaters were permissive of rowdier behavior, much of which is considered by aficionados as “augmenting” an otherwise marginal film. The most famous example of a Grindhouse film or “Midnight Movie” turned ritual experience is The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[...]

Blogorium Review: Rubber

 There's no way of tiptoeing around the fact that Rubber is a weird movie. A profoundly weird, often silly, and sometimes stupid movie with one of those great "what the hell was that" premise: a tire comes to life, rolls around the desert, and causes bottles, animals, and people to explode with psycho-kinetic powers. That is, in essence, what Rubber is about. Except when it isn't at all.

 Yes, it's true that at the heart of Quentin Dupieux's Rubber, we have a tire that causes Scanners-like head exploding for people (and more generalized explosions of rabbits and crows), but the movie is mostly about the relationship between the audience (us) and the film we're watching (Rubber in this case). The film begins with a car driving down a long desert road, arbitrarily hitting chairs arbitrarily placed along the way. The car comes to a stop, and Lieutenant Chad (Stephen Spinella) climbs out of the trunk, grabs a glass of water, and addresses the audience directly. He asks us why so many movies have things that happen for "no reason," like why E.T. is brown or why Kennedy is assassinated in JFK. It's because life is filled with things that happen for "no reason." He pours the water onto the ground, gets back in the car, and drives away.

 The camera pulls back and reveals the audience. Well, not us, but our literal surrogates in the film: a pair of film geeks, some teenage girls, a father and son, a middle-aged woman, and a guy in a wheelchair. The Accountant (Jack Plotnick) provides them with binoculars so they can watch "the movie." This movie. With their binoculars, they see what we see, which is a tire that comes to life, learns to steady itself, and begins to roll around. They impatiently comment on the action, bicker amongst themselves, and one guy is recording the whole thing because his "wife couldn't make it." He stops when one of the geeks explains that's definitely piracy. Makes sense.

 Meanwhile, the tire is learning; it rolls over a plastic bottle and a scorpion and enjoys crushing them. It gets angry when it can't crush a glass bottle, so it uses its powers to make the bottle explode. The tire is happy, so when it finds a bunny, there's no reason not to test this out again. It works. When the tire goes to sleep, the boy in the audience goes to get part of the rabbit. The audience is hungry - the Accountant and Lieutenant Chad aren't feeding them and they have to sleep in the desert. The geek points out that the rabbit is fake, and nobody is happy. That makes sense too.

 I could go further, because this is prior to the actual plot, involving a French girl named Sheila (Roxane Mesquida) that the tire either falls in love with or just wants to kill. It follows her to a motel, rents a room, and kills some more people. Lieutenant Chad arrives to solve this bizarre crime spree, but gives up when the audience is poisoned and dies. Well, almost all of the audience. In fact, Lieutenant Chad's speech about how all of his other deputies and EMTs are really just characters in a movie fails when the Accountant informs him the Man in the wheelchair (Wings Hauser) didn't eat the poisoned turkey and is still watching. The film goes on as long as there's an audience...

 Rubber may be a bizarre damn film, but it does comment frequently on the relationship between audiences and movies - our expectations, the way a plot unfolds, what the audience knows that the characters don't. Dupieux blurs the line between audience and character in Rubber more than once - it isn't just that we don't know Lieutenant Chad isn't directly addressing us at the beginning (and something that happens during the credits might indicate that there is no "audience"), the surrogate audience become characters during the film. In the case of the Man in the wheelchair, it might be against his will, leading to what I took to be a jab at "trick" endings to horror films and what the viewer expects in a sequel-laden cinematic landscape. The final image, involving a gaggle of tires and a tricycle bearing down on Hollywood, seems to be a direct message: "no reason" is descending upon you.

 In fact, I could probably turn my reaction to Rubber into a treatise on the necessity of "unreason," a concept suggested by Foucault in History of Madness - the premise of Rubber, both a film and as film-within-film-but-not-exactly are rooted in "unreason." No explanation is provided for the tire, Lieutenant Chad's "experiment," or anything else that happens during Rubber. There doesn't need to be one: a little "unreason" helps balance out a world addicted to the idea that unreasonable things should be locked away. I could write about this for three more paragraphs easily, but I'm going to stop here. Why? No reason.

Coen Brothers Final Day Five: Uncertainty

6. The theme of uncertainty or unreliability of human knowledge is central to the Coen Brothers' films. It is articulated prominently in The Man Who Wasn't There and A Serious Man by invoking concepts of theoretical physics - The Heisenberg Principle and Schrodinger's Cat. Explain these concepts and show how the Coens integrate them with the larger theme of uncertainty - not only in A Serious Man and The Man Who Wasn't There, but in their other films as well.

Despite introducing the concepts of uncertainty and Schrödinger’s Cat scientifically late into their careers, it is possible to trace the application of these theoretical models into their earlier work. In fact, uncertainty figures so prominently into the Coen brothers’ body of work that it is slightly surprising they waited until The Man Who Wasn’t There to comment on the theory and A Serious Man to introduce the exercise.

Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was developed in 1927 while he was studying ability to measure the movement of atoms. In Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, the discovery is described as such:

What Heisenberg conceived that night came to be called the uncertainty principle, and it meant the end of strict determinism in physics: because if atomic events are inherently blurred, if it is impossible to assemble complete information about the location of individual particles in time and space, then predictions of their future behavior can only be statistical. (130)

Heisenberg realized that in attempting to examine the movement of a particle by shining a light on it, the light affected the particle and vice versa, changing both. Accordingly, it would be impossible to empirically observe something without changing both the observer and the observed. The Uncertainty Principle has been appropriated by philosophers in order to suggest that we cannot ever understand what is happening in the world because our engagement with the world changes us and the object of observation. To a much more simplistic degree, Freddy Riedenschneider applies it to law in The Man Who Wasn’t There in order to construct a legal defense that confuses the jury into reasonable doubt.

Schrödinger’s Cat, a thought exercise developed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, expanding the ideas of the observer and the observed from Heisenberg. The exercise involves sealing a cat into a box with a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, and a radioactive source. When the Geiger counter registers an increased radiation level, a mechanism attached to the counter breaks the vial, killing the cat. Based on theory, it should be impossible for a being to be in two states at the same time (the exercise’s ability to theoretically disprove this is the basis for Quantum theory), so the cat must be dead. However, until an observer opens the box and sees the dead cat (and hence changes the state of the cat by observance); it must be possible that the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously. This paradoxical state reinforces the idea that we can never quite be sure of the status of unobservable phenomena / data / et al.

The theme of uncertainty figures prominently – albeit in a broader sense – throughout the Coen brothers cinematic output. In Raising Arizona, it is not until H.I. and Ed encounter Leonard Smalls that they mutually influence (and change) each other. Up until that point, Smalls impact on their lives is minimal as a character. After their confrontation – which ends fatally for Smalls – H.I. and Ed have a change of heart and return Nathan Jr. to the Arizona’s home. The film ends ambiguously, with H.I. explaining a dream that may or may not be the future of each character in Raising Arizona, including his own hazy future.

Uncertainty in motives is prevalent throughout films like Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, and even The Big Lebowski. The Coen brothers rarely end their films definitively, preferring ambiguity over explanations, but beyond that, character arcs are seldom brought to completion. The relationship between Tom Reagan and Leo, or why Tom behaved the way he did at any point during Miller’s Crossing remains uncertain at the end of the film, and perhaps the question is whether knowing Tom’s scheme was even the purpose of the film. While the story of The Dude that The Stranger is relaying to us ends during The Big Lebowski, it is clear that life goes on for Walter, The Dude, Maude, Jackie Treehorn, Bunny, and Jeffrey Lebowski that we cannot and will not know. Why or how the Big Lebowski’s kidnapping scheme came to be remains nebulous, despite Walter’s theories.

Which brings us back to The Man Who Wasn’t There, where the nature of Ed Crane remains uncertain; is Crane telling the truth about any of his dry cleaning murder scheme? If Crane is writing this story of The Man Who Wasn’t There for a men’s magazine, there is no guarantee that any part of Ed Crane reflects the man in prison. The Coen brothers present a film predicated on mistruths and uncertainty, only to add the final layer of subterfuge near the end; our narrator is potentially unreliable, rendering the plot uncertain, let alone the dream sequence that follows or Crane’s subsequent execution.

A Serious Man poses uncertainty as the only possible knowledge; from the opening parable, which introduces an Old World Jewish couple to a man that may or may not be a Dybbuk. The consequences of the wife’s actions (stabbing Treitle Groshkover) are unclear, and the parable’s bearing on the story of Lawrence Gopnik are comparably uncertain. While Gopnik stresses uncertainty to his students, his insistence that mathematics are reliable and can be counted on fail him repeatedly – including in answering the questions surround his doppelganger / brother Arthur, creator of the Mentaculus.

At the end of A Serious Man, Larry’s predicament is no clearer, and in fact closes with the implication that his “sin” of changing Clive’s grade is somehow causally linked to a call from his doctor regarding something serious. Nothing is resolved in A Serious Man; only uncertainty looms, a potent expansion of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, made all the more appropriate by Gopnik’s demonstration of Schrödinger’s Cat as the means by which to fully understand the uncertainty of the universe.

Coen Brothers Final Day Four: No Country for Old Men

5. Of all the films by the Coen Brothers, No Country for Old Men seems to be the most "serious." It lacks the characteristic irony or ironic detachment (expressed through forms of comedic parody and satire) that we have come to expect from the Coens. Comparing No Country with other Coen films, describe this difference and provide possible explanation for this apparent departure from their usual approach.


While No Country for Old Men certainly lacks the pervasive sense of ironic detachment consistent in other films by the Coen brothers, there are elements of the film that provide a degree of comedic relief for audiences. In part, the removal of the typical “Coen-esque” removal of seriousness is done with respect for Cormac McCarthy’s novel, and may also reflect a fundamental shift in Joel and Ethan Coen’s world-view between O Brother Where Art Thou and their more recent efforts. With that in mind, there are two consistent portrayals of character “types” in the Coens’ films that provide some modicum of humor in No Country for Old Men.

The Coen brothers have consistently navigated towards atypical portrayals of law enforcement agents in their films; as early as Raising Arizona, Joel and Ethan create a dubious distinction between what it means to be “good” and what it means to be “evil.” No sooner has H.I. McDunnough met Ed than they begin a protracted courtship, one that ends with marriage. And yet, Edwina (the police officer) is the one who suggests that H.I. (the recidivist criminal) kidnap one of Nathan Arizona’s quintuplets. Despite being the representative of all that’s “good”, Ed instigates a crime that sets the narrative to Raising Arizona on its course. Similarly, the police in Miller’s Crossing are as complicit in the mob dealings as the criminals, the police officers in Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn’t There are alternately autocratic and bullying, and scenes involving the police in The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading, Fargo, and A Serious Man are designed to be more humorous than sincere.

Similarly, the Coen brothers have a great difficulty in conceiving characters that represent “pure evil” seriously. Whether the loathsome Loren Visser, the ultra-violent Leonard Smalls, the psychotic Charlie Mundt, The effeminate Dane, the devil incarnate Sheriff Cooley, the frog crushing Big Dan, the nefarious Professor G.H. Dorr, or the silent hit man Gaer Grimsrud, the Coens are incapable of playing evil as anything other than ironic. Despite their horrific actions, each incarnation of “evil” that the Coen brothers include in their films is undercut by some exaggerated aspect of their character, rendering them slightly comical, be it Smalls’ free market capitalist dealing, Mundt’s glee as he literally brings hell to Barton Fink, or Grimsrud’s fascination with soap operas.

When considering this, No Country for Old Men’s portrayals of “good”, epitomized by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, and “evil”, embodied in Anton Chigurh, are both played less than seriously during the middle of the film. While it is true that the lasting images of Bell come from his narration at the beginning and the recollection of his dream that close the film, both underscoring his dread of a future devoid of the morals of “the good old days,” for much of the film Bell is the source of many chuckles, delivered with deadpan by Tommy Lee Jones. His own fear of Chigurh is hidden early in the film by humor, either delivered in action (entering Moss’ trailer behind his deputy) or in lines like “Alright. What do we circulate? Lookin’ for a man who recently drank milk?” Bell is also willing to bend the truth in order to scare Carla Jean into contacting Llewelyn on his behalf. When she asks if Bell’s story about the cattle slaughter is true, Bell responds “Who's Charlie Walser? Oh! Well... uh... a true story? I couldn't swear to every detail but it's certainly true that it is a story.”

Comparably, Anton Chigurh is not able to completely escape the Coen brothers’ tendency to undermine pure evil, even if Chigurh has an almost Jason Vorhees ability to transcend pain. The moves are subtle, but giving Chigurh a Prince Valiant haircut and asking Javier Bardem to deliver the lines as softly as possible simultaneously provide quiet laughter at his behavior and underscore the threat he poses when Anton stops speaking and begins killing. That being said, certain behavioral patterns in Chigurh – his insistence on the coin toss, a fear of dirtying his feet, his overly courteous demeanor to his victims – are accentuated by the Coen brothers in the film in order to undercut him ever so slightly. In this way, Joel and Ethan are able to retain their ability to gently mock forces of evil without deviating greatly from McCarthy’s novel.

The serious nature of No Country for Old Men is, however, telling of some undisclosed shift in perspective about human nature the Coens have undergone. O Brother Where Art Thou? reaffirmed a basic faith in goodness (with some sarcastic underpinnings about politicians) and is the clearest “happy” ending this side of The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona. While The Man Who Wasn’t There ends suggesting that Ed Crane might not be untrustworthy, there is still an affinity for the protagonist to the end. Even Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers end with good ultimately triumphing over evil, but No Country for Old Men presents a world when evil is coming from every angle, and no hope is in sight.

Subsequently, the Coens revisited the “crime committed by idiots” motif in Burn After Reading, a film that reasserted their ironic detachment and sarcastic attitude towards authority figures. On the other hand, the film also brutally murders the only two genuinely “good” characters, Chad (Brad Pitt) and Ted (Richard Jenkins) and affirms the selfish wishes of Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand). The film is fundamentally cynical about human nature in a way that is consistent with No Country for Old Men’s encroaching evil, and the film was met with a cool response from critics, who found it to be too mean spirited.

A Serious Man also seems to question the validity of living a “good” life, suggesting that because Lawrence Gopnik questions his series of unfortunate events, he deserves the punishment to follow even more. Although A Serious Man is far more ambiguous than Burn After Reading, there is nevertheless an underlying distrust in the “fellow man” that goes deeper even than in Miller’s Crossing. There is no relish in Gopnik’s dilemma, no detachment that allows us to laugh with or at him. The humor instead comes from the various sources of authority he turns to, which are unreliable (a consistent theme with the Coens). It remains to be seen if True Grit will reflect this “new” direction of the Coen Brothers, but it appears that the failure of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers may have impacted Joel and Ethan in ways only apparent onscreen.

Coen Brothers Final Day Two: Music and the Coens

2. Music is an important element in Coen films. More than background score, the songs and their lyrics are carefully selected and integrated to comment, create humor, and / or to underscore themes and motifs. Isolate and explicated examples of the use of music in several Coen films. In conjunction with their use of music / sound, it would also be interesting to consider the films that are marked by the absence (or minimal use) of music.


Music plays a supplementary role in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen, although in a very different way that it is conceived for most Hollywood features. While many studios are content to package songs for a soundtrack and haphazardly insert them into films where they (vaguely) see fit, and other directors (Quentin Tarantino for example) use music to augment the mood, the Coens integrate songs into their films in order to comment on the themes or underlying narrative. As they continue to make movies, the Coens have shifted the use of music (or, occasionally, the lack thereof) to include the score as commentary.

As early as Blood Simple, music is used in a discursive manner. The Coens use “It’s the Same Old Song,” by The Four Tops, repeatedly within the movie. It functions both to accentuate the decisions made by characters (the love triangle / murder angle), but one could also argue that the Coen brothers are using the lyrics to comment on their own decision to begin moviemaking with a neo-noir. Indeed, it is “the same old song / but with a different beat since you’ve been gone…” The Coens announce to audiences, critics, and the film community that, while their neo-noir is “the same old song,” narrative-wise, their technique distinguishes itself from previous instances of film noir revision. Their incorporation of unorthodox camera techniques (some borrowed from Sam Raimi) and willingness to ironically comment on the admitted un-originality of Blood Simple’s narrative provides a “different beat” needed to distinguish their debut from other first time filmmakers.

In Raising Arizona, Joel and Ethan begin using music to juxtapose styles and themes. The film’s score is primarily a southern / western combination of banjo music and “roots” flavored vocalizations, punctuated by a bluegrass version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Interspersed with these lighthearted musical excursions are Ennio Morricone-esque “Spaghetti Western” cues (attached to the “apocalyptic” biker Leonard Smalls) and a synthesizer score reminiscent of Goblin’s score for Suspiria. These darker elements create a contrast to the otherwise upbeat tone of Raising Arizona.

The Big Lebowski continues the juxtaposition of music and setting, although the Coens opt to let songs provide much of the commentary. Much of Lebowski’s soundtrack is designed to distinguish the Dude’s mindset from the film’s actual 1991 setting; songs like Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me” or Kenny Rogers “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” roots Lebowski in the late 60s / early 70s, where the Dude peaked mentally and likely remains, regardless of the year. The inclusion of The Sons of the Pioneers “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” as The Stranger’s theme not only creates a juxtaposition between The Dude and Sam Elliot’s mysterious “fourth wall breaking” narrator, but also comments on their shared ability to keep “drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.”

The Man Who Wasn’t There includes a primarily classical score, commenting on a tendency of classic noir films to use the more contemporary jazz set pieces – strange for a movement that priding itself on a fascination with the past. Similarly, The Ladykillers uses its songs to intensify the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, alternating between hymns like “Come, Let Us Go Back to God” and Nappy Roots’ “Another Day, Another Dollar.”

Later in their career, the Coen brothers make a bold choice with No Country for Old Men by removing a musical score altogether. The most noticeable song in No Country is used to punctuate the seriousness of Llewelyn Moss’ injuries as a cheerful Mariachi band plays over his collapsed body. The film is otherwise barren of music, perhaps a result of the Coen brothers unwillingness to dilute Cormac McCarthy’s source material with their ironic detachment. Although credited with the score, Carter Burwell has only one musical cue, and that appears during the closing credits.

A Serious Man alternates between traditional Jewish music and psychedelic rock music, creating a juxtaposition of the Old world and the shift in American consciousness in the late 1960s. The recurring musical message, that of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love”, asks “when the truth is found / to be lies / and all the joy / within you dies / don’t you want somebody to love”, the question underlying much of Lawrence Gopnik’s existential crisis. There is an interesting side note to A Serious Man’s use of Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Credence Clearwater Revival: the former both reflect the age at which Joel (born 1954) would be 13 and having a Bar Mitzvah, and accordingly the film’s setting of 1967. The latter reflect Ethan (born 1957)’s 13^th birthday and Bar Mitzvah. Danny Gopnik, the 13 year old son of Lawrence could then be considered an amalgam of Joel and Ethan Coen, and the film’s music reflects an autobiographical aspect of A Serious Man.

Coen Brothers Final Day One: Auteur Theory

1. The categorical designation of MST 527 - Authorship (Auteur) - reminds us that the main focus of the course is the notion of filmmaker as author - the origin of a central voice or vision that leaves its traces ("signature") on every film. Furthermore, this singular and recognizable mark (or brand) should be traceable throughout the body of work produced by a given auteur. Obviously, the question for us is: How do the Coen Brothers fit into the rubric of auteur? To answer this question, address the following points, then add any others you consider important:

• Give a brief summary of the development of the term "auteur"
• Discuss the basic elements that comprise our contemporary understanding of the film author (e.g. likes to work in a particular genre, writes the screenplay, etc.)
• Compare / contrast the Coens and their films with other well-known auteurs.

• Decide whether or not the Coens qualify as auteurs and justify your decision.

The term Auteur remains linked with film theory to this day, despite a concerted effort to refute its meaning near the turn of the century. Its meaning shifted in the 1980s, but the original conception of “Auteur” came from French criticism in the 1940s and 50s. Cahiers du Cinema, a critically oriented magazine that spawned many of the French “New Wave” filmmakers, developed Alexandre Astruc’s theory of the “camera-pen”, a term that likened the director to a novelist as a reaction to the “cinema de papa.” Francois Truffaut objected to the formalism of the France’s cinema, one based in a “tradition of quality”, and instead advocated the “new” film. This new style of film would “resemble the person who made it, not so much through autobiographical content but rather through the style, which impregnates the film with personality of its director” (Stam 84). This “auteur” would “exhibit over the years a recognizable stylistic and thematic personality, even when they work in Hollywood studios” (84).

The early Auteur theory was applied to directors like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, John Huston, and John Ford, who were considered to have an authorship that extended beyond their individual films and create a body of work. Their tendency to work with a consistent creative team, engage in every aspect of filmmaking (directing, writing, editing, etc) and tendency to cast the same actors from film to film lent a consistency across their films that identified their films. A tendency to work within a particular genre (such as Ford’s tendency to work in Westerns, or Hitchcock’s fascination with crime thrillers) also lent credence to a directorial “voice” that instantly linked the audience with its Auteur. The French critics, interestingly, then became a “New Wave” of Auteurs, as Truffaut, Claude Chabrol. Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Malle moved from writing about American films to create their own distinct styles in the 1960s.

As the Auteur theory moved across the Atlantic, returning to Hollywood, it shifted, all the while coming under criticism. Before long, any successful director capable of amassing a critically praised body of work was “Auteur”-worthy. Meanwhile, writers like Harlan Ellison decried the theory as giving directors the power to declare “the script is merely the ‘floor plan’, the ‘blueprint’, the rough materials from which they, in their photomontagic godhood, fashion the dreams that enoble” (302). Reflecting this critical approach, many directors in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century abandoned the term or openly disassociated themselves from Auteur Theory, even if they their style reflected the original conception. As a result, filmmakers like David Lynch, Steven Soderbergh, Tim Burton, David Cronenberg, and the Coen brothers avoid being called Auteurs whenever possible.

Joel and Ethan Coen, under a “post-modern” representation Auteur (one that embraces the Cahiers du Cinema theory but also acknowledges some of the American adjustments made to include American New Wave directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola) resemble Steve Soderbergh as “author” model: like Soderbergh, the Coens write, direct, and edit their own films, among other roles (often using pseudonyms). The Coens and Soderbergh choose to make films that vary in genre and structure, borrowing loosely from previous cinematic texts as they see fit. Soderbergh once argued that being called an “Auteur” was funny, because “I think you can only know this once a filmmaker has made twenty films. A Huston or a Hawks were never fashionable, and they expressed themselves through a variety of genres… I am not trying to impose my style” (Kaufman, 60). However, Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers have shaped a body of work separately that can be immediately identified as in their own “voice”. Soderbergh relies heavily on fractured narrative structures; Joel and Ethan Coen punctuate their source appropriations with a sardonic wit, alternately working within a genre and simultaneously commenting on it.

But are the Coen brothers auteurs? By both versions of the Auteur Theory, one could argue that they fit, despite their unwillingness to be identified as such. Not only do Joel and Ethan direct and edit their films, with only a handful of exceptions, they also write their films. Their creative team remains consistent; the only noticeable change was a shift in cinematographers from Barry Sonnenfeld to Roger Deakins. They freely adapt material in such a way their films defy categorization, with the exception of a recent development that began to classify the “Coen style” as its own genre classification. All of their films subsequent to Blood Simple have at least one returning actor (most frequently John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, or Frances McDormand). Their relationship with Sam Raimi ripples throughout their body of work; if not in “borrowed” camera angles than with the inclusion of Bruce Campbell in cameos (see Fargo, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers). Their collaborations with Carter Burwell, T. Bone Burnett, and the Coens consistent use of music as an extension of their themes would also qualify under the Auteur Theory.

In the newer conception of Auteur, the Coen brothers have also demonstrated a “fashionable” quality that Soderbergh noted lacking in Howard Hawks and John Huston. Joel and Ethan Coen, despite making films that straddle mass entertainment and intertextually loaded, have managed to repeatedly to capture the zeitgeist of American culture (if not help craft it). The fascination with Midwestern culture in the mid-Nineties is due in no small part to the success of Fargo, as was the comparable obsession with “roots” music in the wake of O Brother Where Art Thou? The Big Lebowski, despite its relatively amorphous script (an homage to Raymond Chandler) and its lukewarm reception in 1998, has evolved into a full blown cult phenomenon with yearly Lebowski Fests, books, and the Church of Dude-ism. Their adaptation of No Country for Old Men created a newfound fascination with author Cormac McCarthy and earned Joel and Ethan Coen best Director and Best Picture in 2008. Nominated again for A Serious Man, the Coen brothers have found mainstream success – almost in spite of their intentions – in addition to cultivating a consistent body of work, not to mention a host of “Coen-esque” imitators. By this standard, one could argue that Joel and Ethan Coen are auteurs - whether or not they claim to be.

Announcement.

Platinum Dunes is not making a sequel to Shit Coffin. I suppose this is good news.


To be perfectly honest with you, readers, I've lost the heart to do this. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and there are better things I should be doing with my time than spending a week writing about bad movies. I have no income, no prospects, and I'll be out of school - probably permanently - in two weeks.

In order to get through the summer, I'm going to sell of most, if not all, of my movies. It's time to stop chasing the dream of being "the movie guy" and to grow up. It was fun while it lasted, but I've already decided there won't be any more Summer Fests or Horror Fests. I need to buckle down and shore up the impending debt that I accrued when I went back to school, and I don't feel there's room to be the Cap'n anymore.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. In the future I'll try to get older stuff up so there's a better back catalog, but I just don't see the point in pushing forward with blogging right now.

(in)Frequently Asked Questions (part 1)

A good Monday to all Blogorium readers. I thought I'd take some time out today to address ten of the most frequent questions that come up. The Cap'n isn't above doing more Q&A's, so if I leave something out, feel free to ask for future posts of this kind.

In the interest of keeping this from going on forever, I'm going to break up the questions over two days. For today, enjoy questions 1-5.


1. I have to ask, what the hell is that picture on the top of the Blogorium?

The picture that greets you every time you come to Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium is Doctor Re-Animator. It's a screen grab from "Move Your Dead Bones," which is this strange techno-dance video that's an extra on Beyond Re-Animator, which is the second sequel to Re-Animator and was (as best I can tell) never released theatrically in the U.S. It is not directly tied to the film, but I find it to be both hilarious and dangerously catchy.

See for yourself:

Two hours from now, that chorus will still be in your head. I promise.

2. Do you really post every day?

Whenever possible. There have been a few circumstances, usually tied to moving or unforeseeable circumstances, where I've missed the "chronological" or calendar version of "day" and had to post a little late, but I do try to have something new up every single day. Periodically you'll see a "From the Vaults" or I'll hand things over to a Guest Blogger if I know I won't be able to make good on this self-imposed productivity.

3. Are you Grampa J?

No, I am not Grampa J. For those of you new to the site, Grampa J is a blogger who runs @Josh@Themovies, a site that really seems hell bent on parodying the Cap'n by using my real name and pilfered photo. I don't know exactly where he came from, but I do have some idea who "he" is. Since Grampa won't go away, I will periodically point you in his direction for a particularly insipid review, and I've decided to hound him until he gives up this embarrassing ruse of identity theft.

4. Why do you do "theme" posts, and why are some of them so infrequent?

I do the theme posts to keep things interesting, both for me and for you. It's true that I watch enough that I could easily do reviews every day, and there's enough news going on that I could also constantly link and react to the goings on in Hollywood, but after the first year or two, that got a little dull. So I decided to spice it up.

For new readers, I'll break them down for you:

There are two "theme" posts that will appear every week - Video Daily Doubles on Wednesday and Trailer Sundays on, well, Sunday. Video Daily Doubles are devoted to short films, random clips, or movie related ephemera I find during the week, and Trailer Sundays are devoted to introducing you to movies you may have never heard of and might not otherwise. The VDD's are a little newer, but I find it breaks the week up in an entertaining way.

As for the rest, they're broken down thusly:

Five Movies - It's exactly what it sounds like. Five movies that fit into some theme, designed to give you new titles to look into or to remind you of films that you saw and maybe forgot about.

Four Reasons - Here I'll try to take one movie or series and reconsider or revisit aspects that may not have occurred to me (or you) before. It's a much more specific post than Five Movies, and I use it to distinguish from longer Reviews.

So You Won't Have To - When the Cap'n is feeling particularly masochistic, I'll sometimes sit down and watch a movie that no one in their right mind would endure otherwise. I do so typically because I have some lingering interest in one aspect of the film or another, and the subsequent review (almost always a pan) is done so that you won't have to watch what I just finished. I'll always try to address the morbid fascination I had coming to the movie, in the hopes that it will satisfy any questions you had. Consider it an occupational hazard and a courtesy rolled into one.

From the Vault - I haven't always been here at Blogspot. For years I wrote on Livejournal and Myspace, and while both of those accounts have been abandoned, I did like some of the writing I did there, and will periodically re-post it for people who haven't been aware of the Cap'n. There's around 10 years worth of writing out there, and some of it is even good, so you can expect more every now and then.

Guest Blogger - There actually aren't that many of these. Typically I like to generate all of the content here at the Blogorium (it is, after all, my moniker attached to the top of the page), but every now and then I'll have a contest or ask somebody to be my DH for a day. It could even be you (more details tomorrow).

As to why some appear more frequently than others, I can say that Five Movies and Four Reasons take more time to put together than a review, so I do them less often. I enjoy them, but the preparation time is a little more involved. The So You Won't Have To's have been a little lax lately because, well, I haven't seen too many bad movies. If there's something particularly heinous you're interested in that's not Twilight, let me know.

5. How do you pick the movies you watch?

I have a pretty extensive collection of films here at Blogorium Central, many of which I haven't seen or have not seen in years. I also have a Netflix account and shop frequently at Edward McKay's Used Books and More, where I can find all kinds of movies I've never heard of. It's generally a combination of those three elements, interspersed with recommendations from you (the readers), films I watch in class, or screenings around town.


Questions 6-10 will appear tomorrow afternoon. Stay frosty, everybody!

Coen Brothers Midterm - Day Three: Social Commentary

3. The Coen films are sometimes considered "ahistorical" or out of touch with contemporary social reality, more interested in providing "entertainment" rather than serious commentary on political and social problems. On closer investigation, however, a case can be made that there is social commentary in their films, but presented in a way that is inconspicuous, hidden among the layers of detail in their filmic worlds. Expand on this idea.

While it is true that of the Coen brothers fourteen films (to date), nine of them are not contemporaneous with the year they were shot. In fact, even ones that can easily be mistaken – like Fargo and The Big Lebowski – are actually “period” films. This does not mean, however, that they reflect an “ahistorical” perspective. In fact, it could be argued that Blood Simple and Raising Arizona (two of the five non-“period” films which also include Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and Burn After Reading) have less overt social commentary than does O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? could easily be excused as providing escapist “entertainment” over serious social commentary; the film is essentially an “old timey” musical, and on the surface appears to be Homer’s The Odyssey filtered through a nostalgic look at a bygone era of chain gangs, bank robbers, and slapstick violence. What one misses, in part because Joel and Ethan Coen are adept at hiding their messages, is a continued fascination and cynicism for politicians and religious figures, coupled with the dueling power of mysticism and technological advancement in the early stages of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Although it is never clearly stated why he felt the need to do so, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) is not a common criminal, but instead a man illegally practicing law during the Great Depression. His gift of gab is matched only by the oratory trickery of Big Dan Teague (John Goodman), who tricks Everett and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) out of their money. Like Goodman’s Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink, Big Dan is a violent psychopath who presents himself as a salesman, a voice for the common man. But instead of selling insurance, the Coen’s present Teague as a Bible Salesman, peddling hope to the hopeless. Alternately, he robs the hopeful – in this case Delmar and Everett – of their funds and possibly of Pete (John Turturro), who they believe to be a literal “horny toad.” That this supposedly religious paragon is also a member of the Ku Klux Klan is an indicator of the level of trust Joel and Ethan have in religion as “non-practicing Jews.”

If Big Dan Teague is corruption in disguise, Pappy O’Daniel (Charles Durning) is the crooked politician personified. Not only are his opponent, Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall)’s claims of “nepotism” and “crony-ism” true, but every appearance of Pappy onscreen is involves scheming to win the Governor’s election by hook or by crook, even if it means stealing away Stokes’ campaign manager. Like David Huddleston’s “Big” Lebowski, the Coen’s display with Pappy O’Daniel a fondness for overweight, corrupt officials who speak out of both sides of their mouths without fear of the consequences. When Stokes is revealed to be the leader of the local Klan – a jab at so-called “reform” candidates – Pappy is quick to capitalize on the popularity of the Soggy Bottom Boys. The Coens cement the irony of political opportunism when Pappy offers Peter, Delmar, Tommy, and Everett positions in his cabinet, holding the camera on Delmar’s face, who clearly does not understand the concept of “power behind the throne, so to speak.”

At the same time, the brothers Coen juxtapose the mystical elements of The Odyssey with a light-hearted take on the “social realism” John Lloyd Sullivan is hoping to capture in Preston Sturges Sullivan’s Travels. His proposed film-within-a-film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? was co-opted by the Coen brothers and could be read as their take on the film Sullivan might have ended up with. While the looming poverty is always in the background of O Brother, so too is an optimism for the future. The cavalier attitude of George “Babyface” Nelson, like that of the openly corrupt local politicians, is only a precursor of true advancement. Everett’s faith that flooding the valley to create hydroelectric energy – part of FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority – stands in stark contrast to Pete and Delmar’s quick fix baptisms and the blind prophet’s visions. However, the two invariably collide at the end of the film when progress meets prophecy: Everett, explaining that their apparent salvation from death was practical and not spiritual is nevertheless surprised to see a “cow on roof of a cotton house,” as the blind seer predicted. Despite their cynicism for spiritual figures and politicians, the Coen brothers nevertheless do not dismiss both out of hat in their social commentary.

Coen Brothers Midterm - Day Two: Incongruities

4. Discuss the use of incongruity in the Coen Brothers' films - for example (in Barton Palmer's words), the "incongruity between revelation and reaction" in Fargo, or the opposition of the depraved and stupid crimes committed by the thugs and the bewildered reaction of the "normal" folks. Film scholar Douglas MacFarland suggests that there is a "generic incongruity" in the Coen films - for example, the frequent juxtaposition of horror and comedy... There are numerous examples in the films we have viewed so far. Choose several and explicate them.

The incongruity of characters, plots, and locations are a consistent motif in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Much of the humor in their films is derived from the juxtaposition of a conventional narrative and unorthodox locations or characters that seem inconsistent with the “reality” that governs other films.

Take, for example, the fascination of juxtaposing “genre” pictures – notably film noir – into locales for which they appear wholly unsuited. Miller’s Crossing, like The Man Who Wasn’t There after it, takes film noir to the suburbs, where the conventions audiences are accustomed to come under closer scrutiny. On top of this, the film is also punctuated with violence more at home in “gangster” pictures of the 1930s, which further compounds the black humor of the film. During on an assault at Leo’s suburban home, Albert Finney fires an impossibly high amount of ammunition as his would-be assailants without ever reloading. At a certain point, the coupling of the story’s overly serious tone with cartoonish violence in a typically “quiet” setting serves as a point of release for the audience. The ludicrous nature of this incongruity is cause for laughter at exactly the point Miller’s Crossing needs it.

Raising Arizona, on the other hand, creates an incongruity of character type with story: H.I. McDunnough and Ed are basically good people who go out of their way not to harm anyone, and yet the Coen brothers place them at the center of a kidnapping scheme. While they fail to reflect the ideals of a greed-driven 1980s culture, the “apocalyptic biker” Leonard Smalls represents a different kind of incongruity. A Leone-esque warrior of the wastelands, the Coen brothers present Smalls as an articulate and knowledgeable reflection of the “Free Market” capitalist. Despite his appearance, Smalls is better at negotiating the terms of Nathan Arizona’s ransom than Arizona is.

The Big Lebowski is constructed of incongruities, each designed to comment in one way or another on the “plot” (if there is one to speak of). The Chandler-esque narrative is transposed to the Los Angeles of 1991, carrying on a revisionist shift made by Robert Altman in The Long Goodbye, but none of the characters reflect a post-Reagan mentality. The Dude is a relic of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s; Walter Sobchak is his hawkish counterpart, a Vietnam enthusiast. The “Big” Lebowski is a throwback to the morally bankrupt “millionaires” Phillip Marlowe dealt with; his daughter Maude seems stuck in the avant-garde 1970s and his wife Bunny a precursor for the Valley Girl revival of the late 1990s. Donny is a man out of time and context; the Nihilists don’t quite seem to know when they came from; and our narrator seems to be a cowboy plucked out of a John Ford film. And yet, Sam Elliot insists that “Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there,” even though The Dude – and for that matter any other character – does not.

Admittedly, it is not merely the characters that are incongruous with the story in The Big Lebowski; the Los Angeles of 1991 that Joel and Ethan Coen fixate upon is not the same Los Angeles of Barton Fink. The mansions are somehow always just out of reach for most of the characters, and when visited are somehow always filled with the scurrilous and untrustworthy. While The Dude seems perfectly at home bowling or driving around in his perpetually damaged Gran Torino, he sticks out like a sore thumb in the back of a limousine or spread out on Jackie Treehorn’s couch. The appeal of the film is built around the anachronistic qualities of a character like The Dude ever being involved in a Chandler-esque kidnapping scheme. The film therefore becomes a perfect storm of incongruities.

Coen Brothers Midterm - Day One: Doppelgangers

Greetings, Blogorium readers. As the Cap'n decides exactly how he wants to move forward with life, film, and the blogorium in general, I'm going to share my freshly written answers for a midterm exam in the Coen Brothers class. Since the Blogorium's been lacking in "Critical Essays" for a while, I figure this is apropos.

6. The contemporary figure of the doppelganger (double, alter-ego, shadow self) derives from both literary and cinematic models. Give brief examples of previous models, then compare them with the various manifestations of the doppelganger in the Coens' films. What particular meaning do the Coens attach to these figures?

The Coen brothers have a tendency to use the idea of doubling, or the doppelganger, in subversive ways. Even when they create a set of doubles who must clash – as is the case in Raising Arizona – the doppelganger must always deviate from the classic definition. While steeped in literary and theoretical history, the impish Joel and Ethan Coen cannot resist twisting our expectations of recognizable psychological tropes.

In his essay “The Uncanny”, Sigmund Freud describes the doppelganger as “originally an insurance against destruction of the ego,” in the primitive mind, but manifests itself in the developed ego as “the ghastly harbinger of death” (387). The doppelganger is littered throughout film history, appearing in its most explicit – and possibly literal – form in the expressionistic classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, where Cesare the somnambulist carries out the murderous wishes of the title character after dark. Fritz Lang uses a metaphoric representation of the doppelganger in M, where mirrors and reflections stand in for a direct double of Peter Lorre. When the child murderer’s madness takes over, a reflection – or shadow – is never far behind, the manifestation of his “dark self.”

The doppelganger also appears in “the language of dreams, which it is fond of representing castration by a doubling or multiplication of the genital symbol” (387). It should come as no surprise then that in Raising Arizona, H.I. McDunnough’s doppelganger, the apocalyptic rider Leonard Smalls, first appears in a dream. Smalls is the hyper-masculine expression of manhood that H.I. lacks, as a father and husband. His proclivity for destruction of “little things” expresses Thanatos, the death drive that H.I. lacks (all H.I.M’s guns are unloaded), and he wields dual shotguns, a doubling of the phallic image. Smalls is anything but. H.I. must, in order to prove his manhood, destroy his doppelganger – with literally explosive force – and assert himself as potent.

A more interesting form of “doubling” – a word that frequently appears instead of doppelganger in “The Uncanny” – occurs in The Big Lebowski. To be sure, there are many instances of characters doubling for each other: the two Jeffrey Lebowski’s, the Dude, Walter, and Donny and the Nihilists, amateur detectives The Dude and Da Fino, and the polar opposite Lebowski women (Bunny and Maude). However, the most interesting case of doppelganger comes from two characters that never actually meet.

Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) and Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) form a curious set of doppelgangers in The Big Lebowski. Both make their trade in the objectification of sexuality: Jackie is a purveyor of “smut”, and Maude’s art is described as “vaginal”. Treehorn and Lebowski both send goons to The Dude’s apartment, appropriately mixed in ethnic variety.

Were it not for Treehorn, The Dude’s relationship with the “other” Jeffrey Lebowski would not be possible; without Maude, he would be a patsy for a non-existent kidnapping scheme. The doubles each invite The Dude to their homes under false pretenses, and his visits invariably begin with nudity and end with violence. It should hardly be considered a coincidence that the doppelganger’s worlds collapse when The Dude is drugged; his Busby-Berkley influenced dream sequence is at once a parody of Treehorn’s porn films and wish fulfillment involving Maude.

Without these dueling alter-egos driving The Dude’s search for a rug that “really ties the room together,” The Big Lebowski would have no catalyst for its story – such as it is.

Critical Synopsis: Barton Fink

(editor's note: as promised - just before I have to turn it in...)


After exploring variations on neo-noir, cartoonishly violent screwball comedy, and the “gangster” film, Joel and Ethan Coen set their sights on Hollywood for their fourth film, Barton Fink. While the story – about a socially conscious playwright chewed up by the Hollywood studio system – is not unique in cinematic lore, the Coen Brothers bring a unique spin to this cautionary tale.

Barton Fink (John Turturro) is a “serious” playwright in the Clifford Odets / proto-Arthur Miller vein living in New York City. A “man of the people,” Fink’s subject matter is the exclusive domain of dock workers and fishmongers, and his latest play makes Barton a cause-celeb in Hollywood. Against his better judgments, Fink arrives in Hollywood on the payroll of Capital Pictures, run by “the smartest kike in town,” Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner).

Assigned to write a “Wallace Beery wrestling picture”, Fink comes down with a serious case of writers block. His troubles are compounded by choosing to live with the common people of The Hotel Earle, a seemingly deserted building populated only by Fink, his neighbor Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), and Chet (Steve Buscemi), the shoe shining desk clerk.

The Earle itself is a juxtaposition of various cinematic references by the Coen Brothers. The ominous sound design and seemingly endless hallways are reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and the interminably poorly lit rooms and lobbies resemble nothing so much as the apartment of Henry Spencer in David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Peeling wallpaper in Fink’s room, both comical and disturbingly viscous with glue remind audiences of the gooey and porous film of David Cronenberg.

Fink’s story alternates between The Earle and Hollywood proper, although one is never less surreal than the other. Barton falls under the mentorship of W.P. Mayhew, a Faulkner-ian writer so disgusted with his plight that alcohol is his only refuge. His assistant / lover, Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis) becomes the object of Barton’s obsession, as well as a thwarted muse to the both of them. His inability to produce a simple “wrestling picture” raises the ire of both Lipnick and his producer, Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub).

The target for Joel and Ethan Coen is not merely Hollywood. For a “man of the people”, Barton Fink is curiously disinterested in the stories Charlie has to tell. Meadows, a jovial insurance salesman, is also not who he seems. After his sexual liaison with Audrey ends fatally, Fink discovers that Charlie Meadows is actually Karl Mundt, a serial killer with a proclivity for decapitation. As Mundt, Goodman becomes an outlandish caricature of absolute evil the Coens frequently use in their films; at one point, he literally brings hell into the Earle as fire follows Karl down the hallway.

But Mundt will not kill Barton Fink. Fink “doesn’t listen”, and so he is consigned to live next to Karl for eternity. Fittingly, his “wrestling picture”, a rip-off of the play we’re introduced to Fink through, has also enraged Lipnick to the point that Fink is doomed to live out his contract in perpetuity, continually writing scripts that Capital Pictures will never make. Alone with Audrey’s head in a box, Barton Fink is left in the eternal purgatory of Los Angeles.

For the Benefit of All of Us.

Okay, my Snickerdoodles, the Cap'n has to watch something new this weekend. It's non-negotiable. I have entirely too many new movies here at Blogorium Central that I haven't seen yet, and not enough time to watch them all, so I'm putting the decision making in your hands.

To your right, you'll see a new Poll, with four movies on it. Four movies I've mentioned repeatedly but have not yet seen:

A Serious Man

Bronson

The House of the Devil

Black Dynamite

You have until Saturday morning, and on Saturday night I'll watch the winner and give it the first honest to goodness Blogorium Review there's been since the 14th of January. For real this time. I'm entirely too far behind, and before I get to The Brothers Bloom, The Hurt Locker, Universal Soldier: Regeneration, or the dozen other "to watch" movies in my pile, I want to get one of those four "must see"'s out of the way. They're all roughly the same length, I'm really looking forward to seeing all of them, so help me out here. What do you want me to review first?

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Not to sweeten the pot in any way, but the sooner I've seen The House of the Devil, the sooner I'll feel kosher about giving away a copy of the film on DVD as part of a yet-determined contest. And by that I mean I don't know what the contest will be so I can't give you details. Since many of you don't like doing stuff, it'll probably involve writing something. There hasn't been a "so you won't have to" in a while, so keep that in mind...

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Bad Movie Night just keeps growing contenders, gang; in addition to Bionic Ninja (jump a few Trailer Sunday's back and watch "Rage of the Ninja"), I'm eye-ing Deadfall, Evil Roy Slade, Wrong Side of Town, Basket Case 3, and if we're lucky enough for a quick home video turnaround, The Wolf Man. Currently the consensus on The Wolf Man is one vote "don't see it" and one vote "it rules." Guess which one of them drinks Budweiser with Clamato?

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I'd be remiss if I didn't link to this fantastic article in Esquire about Roger Ebert. If you haven't kept up with what's been happening, it could be quite a shock, but the story is so good that keep on past the opening photo. To follow it up, please read Ebert's piece on the profile. Fantastic stuff.

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Okay, I'm off to bed. Schoolwork awaits at all times, and the sooner I go to sleep, the sooner I can continue the Sisyphusian struggle to graduate in three months...

Me can turn brain off too!

I wanted to take a moment to clear up something. Over the last week or so, it's been suggested to me that people feel I can't just watch a movie for its own sake; that I'm too critically inclined to watch a movie and enjoy it with "going into theory" mode.

While I admit that I do tend to work through a movie when I'm writing about it, the actual process of dissecting a film and getting "critical" doesn't usually occur until after I've finished the movie. For the most part, I try to go into every film I see without too many preconceived notions. It's true that positive and negative reviews do influence me a bit (I am only human, or a human-like robot programmed to pretend he's human), but for the most part, I like being entertained. I really like being surprised by something, and I always thought of myself as awfully forgiving of movies that others have been harsh to.

There are the odd occasions where something in a film makes me switch over into "theory" mode, but it's not actually that common. I don't take notes when I'm watching movies, not even during class screenings. It takes away from the experience for me. When I sit down to write about movies, then the critic / theorist takes over, even during "So You Don't Have To"'s. It takes a special kind of movie (good or bad) to really pull me out of the experience and turn on the critic in the Cap'n.

I only ever try to watch something critically the third or fourth time I've seen it. The first time is purely about experience. The second time I'll try to pick up things I missed, although I'm pretty good at catching narrative tropes (it's kinda hard for me not to see a "twist" coming, so I really like movies that can do that) so I'm looking for details I didn't catch beforehand. For example, Moon is full of recurring visual motifs that make more sense once you know what GERTY is trying to warn Sam Bell about. When I watched it the second time, it's pretty clear exactly what's going on from the get-go, and Duncan Jones puts it all right out there for you to see.

So does this mean that things only occur to me after I finish a movie? Not really. Like I said, I'll catch things and make a mental note of it for later, but I am actually trying to watch any given movie on its own terms. I don't always succeed, but I am not so steeped in theory that I can't just "enjoy a movie without dissecting it."

Glad I could clear that up for you folks.

Flim-Flammers Yammer

Greetings, my little Katzenjammer Kids! Hope you didn't mind the Cap'n taking the night off out of laziness giving you a blast from the past last night. Actually, considering how long it's been since You're All Doomed magazine actually existed, it might have been brand new for 90% of you. Those reviews are totally legit, by the way. The Cap'n wouldn't lie to you, would he?

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I know, I know; The House of the Devil. I so promised a review shortly after the disc arrived, and then... life happened. It has a nasty habit of doing that, and my plans to set aside 95 minutes for a movie I've been assured I'm going to dig the hell out of have kinda been put on the back burner. But soon, I promise. Like, on the other side of a paper due on Thursday.

By then, A Serious Man should also be here (it would already be here, but UPS has a curious policy of sometimes leaving packages and sometimes leaving notice for "signature confirmation") and I'd like to see Bronson soon. If you'd like to play a fun game, put bets down on how many of them I actually see between now and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" on Saturday*.

Oh, and Black Dynamite comes out next week on DVD and Blu-satility-Ray-Disc.

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To follow up a smidge on that "Criterion Out of Print" business, I noticed that next week brings two Blu-Ray releases from Lionsgate of former Spine Numbers: Contempt and Ran. They're being released under the Studio Canal banner, which I suppose is a fancy way of distinguishing them from the likes of Cabin Fever and Frailty. The extras seem to be pretty close to their Criterion dvd counterparts, save for conspicuously missing commentary tracks.

I suppose that this bodes well for some of the "marquee" titles leaving Criterion, like Grand Illusion; there's a reasonably good chance we'll see Blu-Rays after all, and possibly with most of their original supplements. It's not radically different from Disney's release of The Rock, which carried over all of the Criterion extras. The question that remains is if there's somebody out there who is willing to make new covers to put in the BD sleeves so we can pretend they're still part of the collection?

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Finally, I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty sure that the pill Jack tried to swallow was totally a Velociraptor egg, thus proving my theory that they don't call it Dinosaur Island for no reason!


* Hint, I could just show Bronson and A Serious Man on Saturday, so hedge those bets, folks...

O Cap'n, where art thou?

Tis true, dear readers, that your Cap'n has been mentally absent from the last round of posts. I could whisper sweet nothings in your ears and pretend that it was all some misunderstanding, but the truth is I've had Scheiße zu machen.


I had shit to do. But, as I remain dearly devoted Dexter to my readers, I shall endeavor to be less "absent father figure" today and make with the cinematic chatter, which I assume is why you folks keep coming back.

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In the past three days, I watched Raising Arizona twice (the second time quite by accident; my industrious nature as a student foolishly led me down the path of assuming everyone else would independently view the film, and you know what they say about assumptions...) To wit, the second time was a bit better than the first, as I was predominantly occupied in a strange and unseemly head space on Monday, of which I will say no more.

Dr. Adams made his best effort to pitch Raising Arizona as the Some Like It Hot to Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, but there's very little doubt in my mind the brothers Coen were making a live action cartoon. The second go-around in seventy two hours bore out this theory, as the film is largely bloodless, despite innumerable rounds of ammunition spent, broken noses, and exploding Randal "Tex" Cobb's.

I'm still formulating a good point of reference for the film, as it loosely borrows from the Looney Tunes and Tex Avery catalog, and much of the set pieces clearly inform what they would make later (take, for example, the gas station scene in Raising Arizona and juxtapose it with No Country for Old Men, or the obsession George Clooney has for Pomade in O Brother Where Art Thou?). At any rate, the Cap'n is quite certain I'll have a working thesis for Raising Arizona by Saturday or something to that effect*.

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I hope folks don't mind that "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer" is more likely than not going to be on February 13th. The whole Valentine's Day Weekend thing doesn't really mean much here at Blogorium central, and if I need to pitch it thusly, look at it as a cheap excuse to drink your romantic woes away. Just don't expect yr master of ceremonies to join in; I have to stay sober enough to keep you from talking me into Teenage Mother again.

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On that note, I'm 60% certain I can get this German homework done and still watch some Doctor Who. It's about time to say goodbye to David Tennant, even if I don't share the overwhelming disdain for new Doctor Matt Smith. Please refrain from passing judgment on the new Doctor, folks. He could be just what the Cap'n ordered...


* I mean, I'd better. Discussion is on Monday and there's some business about papers to be sussed out.

The Oscar's Destiny Fulfilled.

It's the Dinosaur Island season premiere tonight. I think you can understand if I keep things short and to the point. This show is the only vice I'm allowing myself during the school year.

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Let's do a quick once-over on the Academy Award Nominations, some of which were pretty surprising (in a good way):

Best Picture for 2009:

Okay, I'm still on the record that the "bumping the nominees from 5 to 10" doesn't really change anything. More exposure? Maybe. Does it make it harder to guess the "front runners"? I don't think so. Still, it did allow for one genuinely unexpected nomination:

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

I'm very happy to see District 9 on that list. I can't imagine in a million years that it's going to be the Best Picture, but if Moon's not going to be anywhere come March, it's good to have another excellent science fiction film that's not the Highest Grossing Movie of All Time on the list. I don't necessarily get nominating Up when it's the front-runner in Best Animated Film, the category created so that this sort of thing didn't have to happen. Forgive me for not understanding The Blind Side's inclusion, as it is so not the kind of movie I'm going to watch.

What do I think is going to win? No idea.

Sorry gang, but I don't do the Acting Categories. That's total Neil territory.

Best Direction:

Avatar - James Cameron
The Hurt Locker - Kathryn Bigelow
Inglourious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino
Precious - Lee Daniels
Up in the Air - Jason Reitman

Look, I don't know anything about Precious, but it certainly seems like the odds-on favorite if Bigelow doesn't win for The Hurt Locker.

Best Original Screenplay:

The Hurt Locker - Mark Boal
Inglourious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino
The Messenger - Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman
A Serious Man - Joel and Ethan Coen
Up - Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

I haven't watched The Hurt Locker yet, but I'm planning on getting to it soon. Inglourious Basterds was a very well written film, and I've heard nothing but good things about A Serious Man. Still, Up does manage to entertain, enthuse, and tug the heart strings effortlessly. Hard to say...

Best Documentary:

Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home

Don't know. I haven't seen any of these documentaries, but I notice that none of my favorite docs from last year are even mentioned near this list.

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There are more categories, but Avatar seems to have many (if not all) of the technical categories locked up, and I don't much care about the adapted screenplay (either Up in the Air or Precious), short subjects category, or even the Animated Picture (as I've said, I thought Coraline was very good but it's no Up, and I didn't see The Fantastic Mr. Fox). Over the last few years I've been increasingly off when it comes to predictions, but award season isn't really what I focus on. If there's an Oscar Party, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I desperately need to convince myself to do homework and not watch Doctor Who: The End of Time or The House of the Devil.

Edu-ma-brain-drain

The Cap'n would like to apologize for the sudden lack of Blogorium Reviews. If this week is any indication, there won't be much time to watch entire movies outside of Monday afternoons. I've seen pieces of movies, digested in bite-sized portions: the first thirty minutes of Moon, twenty minutes of Steven Soderbergh and Sasha Grey's The Girlfriend Experience Commentary, the opening of Che. (Did you know that Weeds' Demián Bichir plays Fidel Castro? I missed that somehow...)

I know that much - if any at all - of the appeal of this blog is the promise of new material six days a week, with trailers on Sunday, so I'm really going to try to keep that up. It's going to be very hard though. Whenever possible, I try to keep this blog strictly about film and occasionally television, so I'm going to limit this school update to just tonight. I had what sounded like a reasonable number of classes with a heavy, if oddly split up, work load. And then I went and did a stupid thing, which was to add an extra class. A class I don't need, because I already took it.

The course material was too interesting to pass up. Yes, I'd been in Senior Seminar last year, and slogged through it, but this year was about religion and gender. Three books are on the agenda: The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology, Omnigender, and Judith Butler's Undoing Gender. I wanted to just sit in and read the books, but the ruling came down from high that in order to get the Senior Seminar experience again, I'd have to take the class as an independent study. And do all of the work, again. Facilitate in-class and online discussions, deliver two oral presentations and three written critiques. Again.

Okay, so that's a pain, but worth the price of admission for source material like that. I did not ask to take over the Religious Studies Club. I said I'd help, but I'm not looking to organize field trips, guest lecturers, and help put the next generation of club leadership in place. That's not my bag, kids. I get worn out organizing Horror Fest. I didn't mind having people over every Thursday night to shoot the breeze and wax religiosophically, but responsibility... mrm.

I don't feel quite as horrible because I manage to cram in far more reviews over the holidays than I'd anticipated, and even got the recaps done before 2010 hit. That's good. I still have a half dozen or so movies that need seeing, and I'd really like to catch The Road before it leaves theatres. I just don't know when that's going to happen. Aside from the Coen Brothers class and next week's triple feature, I don't know when I'll be able to provide you with the kind of regular exposure to new movies that dominated most of December and January.

But I'm going to try. It's a tricky thing, walking away from a project I've been adhering to for the last six years. I apologize in advance if the recaps and reaction to news dominates entries. I'll make a concerted effort to get more "Four Reasons" and "Five Movies" out, and there's a chance you'll see a dry run of a Coen brothers paper I'm mulling over. However, it could get bumpy for a little bit, so bear with the Cap'n.

For the Record: I was NOT scared of Sherlock Holmes!

Happy Birthday to David Lynch! While I have your attention, Mr. Lynch, please make another movie, or nudge the folks airing INLAND EMPIRE in HD to release a Blu-Ray. Please?

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The Cap'n is now pleased to present the first (of many) notes on The Auteur(s) - Joel and Ethan Coen:

If nothing else, this class is going to be interesting because Dr. Adams decided to focus on the German and Film Noir influences within the Coen Brothers' films. I'm particularly curious how this is going to reflect on A Serious Man, but all signs look promising for this course. We are not covering Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, or Burn After Reading. The first two don't surprise me, considering the professor's tastes, but the third is a bummer. I really think there's a lot more going on in that film that people just aren't tuned into.

(This doesn't fit anywhere in particular, but it was announced today that the Coen Brothers' re-adaptation/remake of True Grit will come out on Christmas. Guess I know what movie we'll be seeing on Christmas...)

Also, it's nice to again be in the presence of tons of film geeks with varying opinions. That I don't know, of course. Because I know most of you, and it's nothing personal or anything, but we're usually on the same level when it comes to tastes.

For example, I finally had people who had never heard of Moon, Big Fan, or Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans to pitch the movies to. I guess I've been kinda spoiled being online with such knowledgeable geeks, but that was nice.

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Speaking of which, Moon finally arrived. I give full credit to Amazon for responding to the problem once I sent them an email, and they rushed another copy over, Next Day Delivery. They're a class act, I have to say. Once I get done with the considerable amount of homework I have for week one, the Cap'n is going to pop that sucker in for a second viewing. This time I might even be able to hear the whole movie!

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There are early screening reviews for Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and while I ought to know better than to doubt the director of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz, I cannot get myself excited for this movie. But that's not why I added this tidbit. Oh no. I'm including this because apparently the test audiences were told the movie they'd be seeing was "a mix between Juno and Mortal Kombat"...

Um. Yeah.

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The Cap'n can't leave you on a sour note, so here's Martin Scorsese on the soon to be former Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien:

Land of Confusion

The Cap'n has been trying all day to decide if there's enough I want to say about Monsters vs. Aliens to merit a full review, and to be honest with you folks I'm not sure that I have much to add. It's a fun enough movie; a considerably better version of what Igor was trying to do. Igor tried very hard to be a kid-friendly movie set in the world of Universal Classic Monsters and ended up being a mostly stillborn affair. Monsters vs. Aliens is operating on the Classic Science Fiction template, and to be sure it succeeds in putting together variations of The Fly, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla/Mothra, the Blob, and the 50 foot Woman together to fight alien invaders and giant robots. Throw in a riff on Dr. Strangelove and you have some idea of what to expect, which they reasonably succeed at.

As computer animated films go, Monsters vs. Aliens looks very good, and it has a nice cast. The theme is a tried and true kiddie-trope: an "ugly duckling" variation about learning to accept that you're okay the way you are, and on top of that what you wanted to be may not be so great after all. The movie is amusing and is hampered only with a few truly groan-inducing pop culture references (the ones that spring to mind involve "Axel F" and Dance Dance Revolution), and I guess I had fun watching it.

That being said, I didn't really want to proclaim from the mountain tops that everyone should see Monsters vs. Aliens. It's a perfectly agreeable film from Dreamworks Animation, sitting comfortably between the instantly dated Shrek films and the considerably better Kung Fu Panda. And that's about what I have to say.

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Speaking of "having nothing to say", I keep thinking that I want to weigh in on the NBC Jay Leno / Conan O'Brien situation, or the Spider-man 4 debacle, or even the wildly varying reactions to The Lovely Bones or The Book of Eli, but when it comes to putting pen to paper (or the digital equivalent thereof), I really don't. All of these situations are fascinating to watch and read about as they develop, but there's not much to bring to the table that every other blogger hasn't with greater aplomb. Since those aren't hard to find, I suggest you seek them out, especially if you haven't heard that Sony is re-booting the Spider-Man series after three films (without Sam Raimi), or for some reason don't watch any late night television.

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A final update, one with as much bearing on your lives as anything else today: Moon still hasn't arrived, and according to the UPS tracking code that's because the Blu-Ray was either stolen or irreparably damaged the day they tried to deliver it. I've heard nothing from Amazon (or UPS, for that matter), but since I paid for the movie, it would be nice if there was some indication that another copy would be shipped in the near future.

Okay, I'm off to finish a "personal narrative" for Boston University which is, appropriately, a narrative of my life with film. While I think there are some very good pieces, it's not the kind of thing that makes for Blogorium reading, so if you'd like to be one of proof/quality testers, please provide me with an email address and I'll happily send you the finished draft tomorrow.

Cheers.