Hell yeah, I could tell you some stories.

February 25, 2016 1:13 PM

MeFi fave Tony Zhou (now with co-writer Taylor Ramos) examines how the Coen Brothers use Shot / Reverse Shot.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker (14 comments total)

Oh holy beans this is good.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:48 PM on February 25, 2016

Bravo!
posted by Mr.Me at 1:56 PM on February 25, 2016

I liked this, just as I like all of Tony Zhou's work, but I did think it was a little less focused than most of his other stuff. He really only talks about Shot / Reverse Shot at the beginning and end, and spends the rest of the time riffing on the Coens' techniques in general. Still a very cool video, but perhaps misnamed.
posted by Aizkolari at 2:03 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

According to my Letterboxd profile, I've seen almost 2000 films and I never fail to learn something new from Zhou's videos. I never really realized how different the over-the-shoulder reverse shots felt compared to the "inbetween" shots that the Coens use. Now that I think about it, the style that they use seems very much like the way that dialog scenes were usually shot in silent films.
posted by octothorpe at 2:04 PM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

that movie he mentions they wrote but didn't direct IS fascinating as a comparison. It has all the hallmarks of a Coen Brothers movie but almost non of the technique so it's like this uncanny valley Coen Brothers movie where you can clearly see their signature stuff not work in the wrong hands. (Also the casting of Cameon Diaz is just, bizarre)
posted by The Whelk at 2:32 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Love Tony Zhou's work with Every Frame a Painting, love film commentary in general, and really love Coen Brothers movies. That last one is frustrating though, because the only feature commentaries that I know of are 1) Fake, droning, boring, willfully stupid (I'm looking at YOU Kenneth Loring) and 2) a cinematographer analyzing his work in a whiteout snow storm.

I'll add digging for more Coen Bros. video/audio film commentary to my ever-lengthening list of things to research, but you know, if you know of something maybe you could share? There's gotta be more out there...
posted by carsonb at 6:26 PM on February 25, 2016

The non-Coen directed film seems to be Gambit which must be terrible if it stars Firth, Diaz, Tucci and Alan Rickman but wasn't even released and went straight to DVD.
posted by octothorpe at 6:49 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

How do you take a cast like that and a script by the Coens and fuck it up that bad?
posted by octothorpe at 7:42 PM on February 25, 2016

For the people that haven't checked but are about to go do so, the only two Coen films on US Netflix are Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers.

I'm as sad as you are.
posted by flatluigi at 8:21 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Love it.
posted by zardoz at 8:30 PM on February 25, 2016

For the people that haven't checked but are about to go do so, the only two Coen films on US Netflix are Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers.

I'm as sad as you are.

That is so odd, because Canadian Netflix is heinous, to say the least, but it has Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona, Inside Llewyn Davis, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

That might be the only category in which CDN Netflix beats US Netflix.

I loved the video essay, by the way, and one thing I wished he touched on a bit more was the ambivalence generated by the Coen's use of this particular technique.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 8:47 PM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

which must be terrible if it stars Firth, Diaz, Tucci and Alan Rickman but wasn't even released and went straight to DVD.

It's not ...okay it's not TERRIBLE but it is REALLY MISGUIDED.

Let me explain. I found GAMBIT to be fascinating cause it's SUCH a Coen Brothers script. Like . Almost stereotypically. It has everything they do, the zippy genre riff, the woman whose smarter than all the men, the man in the wrong genre, the middle class snob who overestimates his abilities, the broad physical comedy, the use of unfashionable old music, the obsession with rural bygone Americana, the weird race stuff, the oddly retro TONE and throwback to an earlier Hollywood model, the insane all powerful boss. Like it was like if you wanted to parody the Coen Brothers you'd do this.

BUT it doesn't have any of thier directorial skill, so the pacing is terrible, the rhythm is all over, it a horrible slog and rather than feeling winkingly retro it feels clunky . Like Firth is fine but Diaz is ...amazingly poorly cast and there is zero chemistry between her and anyone, Rickman is fine but he's basically playing The biggest Asshole In The World , and without that touch the Coen's have, the humanizing touch, it comes off as a really nasty, sour little movie - and that's super frustrating cause you can see how it COULD have been thier version of "How To Steal A Million" , the joke this time is it's a guy from a fancy heist movie whose stuck in a 60s sex farce , but it's not, and it's pretty much all the direction and your can just see it go wrong. The Not-getting-it

It's fascinating, for me anyway, as an object lesson.
posted by The Whelk at 9:02 PM on February 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

There's also this werid strain of crude gross out jokes in the movie that feels really tacked on from an outside source and ...does not help.
posted by The Whelk at 9:08 PM on February 25, 2016

for those looking to see what Netflix offers Coen-wise (or other-wise...) around the world, you should look at smartflix.io
posted by alchemist at 12:35 AM on February 26, 2016