I hate him.

The Big Lebowski

From the directors studied in class the one's that I wanted to continue study on, was the Coen Brothers. I enjoyed their unit a lot during class and couldn't wait to see more. So I rented The Big Lebowski. The Big Lebowski was a very interesting, sometimes confusing, tale of a man with the same last name.  "The Dude" as he likes to be called, finds himself being forced to dunk his head into a toilet and trying to stop another man from urination on his rug. When he asks the men to stop they just say "Where's the money Lebowski?". Extremely confused, "The Dude" decides to do some investigating so he can have his now dirty rug replaced. This is where the story really begins to get interesting. 

Before watching this film, I already knew that it had a very big following from my generation and a few years above, but I had no idea that even critics enjoyed it so much. I agree with critic James Berardinelli from ReelViews when he says "The Big Lebowski is a mess. But what a glorious, wonderfully-entertaining mess it is." 

After watching The Big Lebowski and thinking about the Coen Brothers as a whole, I realized how much more their movies have in common than I thought. I think their casting is great, although Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski have strengthened my dislike for John Goodman. I think Raising Arizona is the best performance I've ever seen out of Nicholas Cage, which I can also say for Steve Buscemi in Fargo and Jeff Bridges as "The Dude". 

I heard that the Coen's are in process of making a movie in St. Louis Park about a Jewish family. I think it sounds interesting, and I'm hoping that after making the masterpeice of "No Country for Old Men" they will still have something left in em'!

Wes Anderson

I also really liked the Wes Anderson unit. I really like how you can tell that he puts so much thought into every single camera shot. Even though we didn't get to finish it, I think I liked The Royal Tenenbaums the most. Rushmore and Bottle Rocket were both solid films as well. I had never scene the entire Rushmore or Bottle Rocket before so it was nice to get the chance to do that during school. One similarity that I saw throughout all of the films was the slow-motion montage scene flavored with loud recognizable music. Wes Anderson really has this technique down. The only thing that I can think of that I dislike about him is how sometimes the films seem to drag on. A few times during Rushmore I caught myself thinking about other things which left me completely lost from the plot, but I always seemed to get myself back on track after some witty banter.