Posts matching tags 'fargo'
2004/4/13
Videos/DVDs recently seen:
- Adaptation. A slyly self-referential treatment of the process of adapting a not particularly filmable book into a film script. It does, at one point, descend deliberately into Hollywood cliché, in a transparently blatant way. Though I wonder whether Donald Kaufman actually existed, or whether he's just a representation of Charlie Kaufman's non-neurotic side.
- Fargo. Perhaps my favourite Coen Brothers film so far, probably due to the cinematography (I like sparse white landscapes) and relative lack of folksy sentimentality. The Scandinavian character of Minnesota comes through; if one were to watch it with the sound off, one could (for most of it) believe oneself to be watching a film from Norway or somewhere.
- Get Carter (the original one). A classic, though the obviously fake fight sequences do date a bit. Using angry-young-man author John Osbourne to play the pornographer was a nice touch.
- Hotel Splendide. A pastiche of elements borrowed from Gormenghast, Edward Gorey and Jeunet & Caro (in particular, Delicatessen), set in a run-down hotel/Victorian health spa specialising in bizarre and outdated therapies on a remote British island. The sets and some of the costumes are fabulous. However, the film doesn't cohere well, and seems more like a bunch of appropriated elements lumped together, with little regard for plausibility. Also, Toni Colette's spunky, Australian-accented character seems a bit too irritatingly perfect, making it like a Mary Sue fan-fiction treatment of the setting.