Fuckin' hell. Had a whole post just vaporize and I don't feel like recapping. Ah well, later.

The main thing was this, a conversation between Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers. I was hoping it'd be longer, it's pretty brief, but interesting because McCarthy rarely participates in interviews.

K

Yeah, that was short, but much appreciated.

Charles,

Oh, yeah, I saw Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I don't share any of your complaints with the film -- and certainly not with Mr. Hawke's hindside.

Matthew

Finished No Country for Old Men today (the book.) For me to say it's well worth reading is probably pointless since I'd most likely say that of any McCarthy (and there are better places to begin with McCarthy's body of work than this) but here are some observations off the top of my head. (Some possible minor spoilers ahead -- I won't give away anything real important, but just a heads up.)

There are some differences from the movie, although by and large it is an astonishingly faithful adaptation. This is made possible by how prosaic McCarthy is with No Country, eschewing the mind-bending descriptive expulsions of earlier novels. Maybe this is how the Border Trilogy is too, I've not read those. It may not be Blood Meridian, or even Child of God, but there's nothing wrong with it, it's a powerful book. Finishing a McCarthy novel, even a relatively short one like this, always leaves me feeling dizzy, defeated, renewed. Maybe a bit weirded out. Given that I'd heard he'd been losing his touch, I'm hardly disappointed. But this one's probably closer to Camus or Hemingway, where earlier efforts had more in common with maybe Faulkner, Melville, Crane, Poe. Many scenes are translated into the movie word for word, detail for detail.

What's different: you get more downtime with the Sheriff in the book, and more frequently; so, while the cat-and-mouse aspect is still effective enough to give it the effect of a page-turner at times, the themes feel a little more balanced. Of course I'd also seen the movie first, so it's hard to be totally objective about that. But the Sheriff's pontifications and ultimate resignation are a more established sort of insulation to the proceedings here, and are given a bit more personal context.

What impresses me in retrospect about the movie is how, when the Coens did change or add something of their own, it was often brilliant in its own right. Particularly I think of the scene where the pitbull chases Moss through the river. The whole flow of that sequence, the kinetic energy of it, the subtle absurdity, blew me away, and I remember that specifically as the point at which I said to myself "this is going to be a really good movie." Well, that isn't in the book. In the book his escape is a much more protracted affair. And no pitbull. They also reconfigured the scene where Moss retrieves the money from the air duct to let events happen closer together, and thus generate greater tension.

Chigurh seems well cast in a Coensy way, most of his dialogue is verbatim from the novel. In the novel McCarthy describes him as having blue eyes, though, almost opaque. That's really about the only concrete physical detail he gives about Chigurh, come to think about it, so it's interesting it was omitted. You get a little more detail about Chigurh in the book, but I'm still not 100% clear on exactly who he is or how he became involved. Maybe that's intentional, or maybe I'm just slow.

Moss's final moments in the novel do involve running into a woman that he chums around with a bit -- but it's completely different in the book. A young girl he picks up hitchhiking, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and there's a couple scenes between them before the shoot-out at the motel.

There's more resolution to what happens to the money, so if you left the movie wondering who had it and where it went, the book will tell you. I'm not sure why the Coens' left that info and resolution out. They're already dealing with a story that lacks satisfying dramatic closure; seeing this one aspect resolved at least gives you some basic sense of resolution about that particular plot-thread.

I still have no idea, after both the movie and the book, how the Mexicans find Moss at that motel. Maybe you're not supposed to. Maybe the point is just that you'll be found. They seem to have tapped somebody's phoneline in the book, the Sheriff I think, but I still don't see how that leads them to Moss.

The encounter between the Sheriff and Chigurh at said motel happens a little differently in the book.

Things differ the most towards the very end. The scene between Chigurh and Moss's wife plays out a little different, and I wonder why the Coens' changed it in the way they did. They aren't major changes, but there's a little more dialogue that makes the implications feel different. There's also more follow-up after Chigurh gets injured in the car, which the Sheriff finds out about, eventually talking to the two boys who were the last to see him.

The end of the novel gets a bit long-winded in the form of the Sheriff's monologues, which the Coens sort of pick and choose from and recontextualize slightly. Still strong stuff, and the closing monologue is even more powerful in the book, because there's more preceding it which was left out in the movie. Those who found the movie too much of a downer probably would hate the book, as the book is even more melancholy when all's said and done. But it gives you a hell of a lot to think about.

K

Saw the Bourne Identity. Was ok.

I'm thinking about it over coffee but I'm not sure what you can really say about a movie like Bourne Identity except just that.

K

I finally got to see Butterfly Sword (starring Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Tony Leung).

The story doesn't always make sense, but the wu xia stuff is a hoot. Michelle Yeoh's trademark move is to behead people with a piece of silk. Tony Leung can fly for short distances and do this crazy attack where he crashes through people, scattering guts everywhere. Donnie Yen's character is slightly less awesome due to a drinking problem, but he can also fly (better than Tony Leung) and do other crazy stuff when necessary.

The movie is loosely based on a book set during the Ming dynasty and it's pretty fun except for a couple of frustrating plot twists near the end.

Recommended.

I also watched Capote. It's an interesting character study. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, and the guy who plays the more sympathetic one of the two killers is excellent. But I feel like I would be better off just reading the book about Truman Capote that it was based on.

There is another Capote movie I saw part of that must have been based on the same source material, because the plots of both films are awfully similar. The other one just takes longer to get into the juicy murder stuff because it explains more about Capote's boyfriend and Capote's friendship with Harper Lee through a series of "interviews" where the actors are explaining stuff in character. The guy playing Capote in the other one isn't as good as Hoffman... but overall, that one's probably better for people who don't feel like researching all the stuff alluded to in the Hoffman movie.

So... Capote is good, but the merely okay knock off (I think it's called In Cold Blood, like Capote's book) is a lot more informative. Go with the one that suits your needs the most, I guess.

The "Other Capote Movie" co-starring Daniel Craig and Sandra Bullock is called Infamous.

Matthew

Thanks, Matthew.

Sandra Bullock is suprisingly good in that as Harper Lee.

I suggest that you read the novels. Much MUCH better!

Oo ... Charlie Rose talks with the Coens, Brolin, and Bardem about No Country for Old Men. I just fired it up but it appears to be the whole hour.

Edit: finished, only a half-hour actually. Not as meaty as I'd hoped, but worth watching if you liked the movie.

Also, snippets and links to a bunch of analysis and criticism on the movie, one of which tries to answer this, which I'd been wondering about myself:

In the book, Chigurh is outside in a truck. But I don't think that's where he's supposed to be in the movie.

K