No country for old men is a mesmerizing new thriller from academy award ® winning filmmakers
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.
Based on the acclaimed novel by pulitzer prize winning american master Cormac
Mccarthy.
The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones.
Featuring a cast that includes academy award ® -winner Tommy Lee Jones, Josh
Brolin, academy award ®-nominee Javier Bardem, academy award ®-nominee Woody
Harrelson and Kelly Macdonald, no country for old men is written for the screen and directed by
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, produced by Scott Rudin, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen and executive produced by
Robert Graf and Mark Roybal.
Segment 1: A discussion about the film NoCountryforOldMen with filmmakers and brothers Joel and Ethan Coen and actors Josh
Brolin & Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee
Jones. The film
follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Moss, Chigurh,
and Bell) set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the
Mexican-American border in southwest Texas.
Excellent movie, great Charlie Rose interview..
Segment 2: A conversation with author Michael Korda about his book Ike: An
American Hero
Suspense and tension are often executed badly in movies. Many films that claim
to be suspenseful are obvious exercises in cliché, signposting their moves long
before they happen. The music swells, you see a shadow in the background, and
you know what is coming. So when a film like No Country for Old Men
comes along, with its sheer mastery of form and style, it's something to be
cherished and celebrated. This is one film that will shred your nerves and have
you biting your nails to the quick, through the skin and right down to the bone.
Directed and written by film making brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, and based on
the book by Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men is a tale of greed
and violence stretching across the state of Texas. It's 1980, and Llewelyn Moss,
an average down-on-his-luck good ol boy (played by Josh Brolin), has stumbled
across the remains of a drug deal gone bad on the American-Mexican border. He
finds dead bodies, lots of heroin, one barely alive Mexican, and two million
dollars. He takes the cash, but little does he know, two men are on his trail.
One is grizzled and weary sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a man who's
seen it all, and wonders what he's still doing the job for. But the other is
hired hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). He strides across the Texas
landscape like the devil incarnate, forcing strangers to gamble with their lives
in the toss of a coin, and dispatching victims with a shot from a gas powered
captive bolt pistol. He is determined to get both the money, and his man.
For twenty years Joel and Ethan Coen have been praised as imaginative, original
film makers who have made an indelible contribution to cinema. Consider films
like Barton Fink, Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou and
The Big Lebowski and you have some idea of what a unique voice they
have in American cinema. But as great as all of those past efforts are, nothing
compares to No Country for Old Men. Everything the brothers have
learned in the past comes beautifully together in this elegant, simple but
stunning masterpiece. The shading and complexity they've given their characters
is truly awesome, never has so much been said with a breath, a turn of the head
or the chewing of nuts. The Coens have given the story such weight and power.
Every scene is essential, and plays like a mini-work of art. Top praise to their
longtime cinematographer Roger Deakins. Fresh from doing incredible work on The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, he goes one better
here, capturing the widespread vistas of the plain, as well as the cramped,
claustrophobic interiors of a run down motel room. No inch of the screen is
wasted. It looks perfect.
But this is not just a movie to be admired intellectually. No Country for
Old Men is one of the sharpest suspense films to have ever been made. The
Coens can stand proudly with other cinematic masters who have had us on the edge
of our seats throughout the years. Suddenly everything is silent and dark, a
character lurks outside a doorway...waiting. It's like your nerves are being
tickled with razor wire. It's a bloody and confronting film, harking back to
their early classics like Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing,
but it's also a thoughtful meditation on life, greed and consequence.
Tommy Lee Jones is perfectly cast as the weary sheriff, Josh Brolin does
wonderful things with his none-too-bright thief, but it's Javier Bardem who
steals the show as the most cold-blooded, calculating and charming killer to hit
the screen since Hannibal Lecter. His character is described at one stage as a
ghost, and it's a pretty apt description for him and for a film that seems to
have an almost supernatural quality. No Country for Old Men is so good,
it's scary.
Director/Producer/Editor: Joel and Ethan Coen Classification: MA We rate it:
Coen brothers win directors' award
Boosting their chances in the Oscars, Joel and Ethan Coen were named the
best directors of 2007 for their film No Country for Old Men by The Directors
Guild of America Saturday night. EPA/JOSHUA GATES WEISBERG
Los Angeles - Boosting their chances in the Oscars, Joel and Ethan Coen were
named the best directors of 2007 for their film No Country for Old Men by The
Directors Guild of America Saturday night.
The Coen brothers have received numerous critics' awards for best director,
and are nominated for Oscars for best director and for adapted screenplay for
their gritty contemporary Western based on the Cormac McCarthy novel.
The guild's film awards are considered pointers for the Academy Awards,
scheduled for February 24 since there is a large overlap in the voting body.
The Directors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have
disagreed only six times on their selections in the last 59 years.
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