INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, the new Coens joint set in the early '60s Village folk scene, starring Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan

The alleged Dave Van Ronk basis seems unofficial at best.

http://nymag.com/movies/features/joel-ethan-coen-2012-3/

lol will watch the shit out of this

lol will watch the shit out of this

― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Someone made a coen bros just for ME

awesome

Even if this is bad I will like it

huh, cool

i have a feeling my mother will hate everything about this

you say that about everything

Someone made a coen bros just for ME

― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:09 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can tell it's 1961, bcz we don't have snow on Christopher Street anymore.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/first-look-oscar-isaac-carey-mulligan-justin-timberlake-on-set-of-the-coens-inside-llewyn-davis

god i hate ledes like this

Last year was bittersweet for fans of the Coen Brothers. While it was the first time in four years the prolific duo didn't have a film released, it was announced that they'd be returning to the music world in 2012 for their next feature "Inside Llewyn Davis" which would focus on the '60's Greenwich Village scene that included names like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Joni Mitchell among others.

"yes... 2011 was a bittersweet year for me... no new coen bros movie... but they announced a new one... what a year!"

learn to skip such ledes

you should have warned us

why bittersweet? there wasn't a coen brothers movie at all! surely the REAL fans would just be bitter, full stop

"goddamn these coen brothers"

ya but they announced a NEW one, adding just a tinge of sweetness to an otherwise bitter, bitter year

that's just soft

ashamed of beard?

http://www.indiewire.com/static/dims4/INDIEWIRE/1e4fa38/4102462740/thumbnail/680x478/http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/0b/3a8da05eaf11e19987123138165f92/file/timberlake-llewyn-davis.JPG

I did not know who Oscar Isaac was til I looked up the resume

as excited as i am to learn about this, i am slightly concerned about the timberlake. is he the lead role? the beard & hairdo are pretty great! but idk... timberlake. hm.

no, O.I. is presumably the lead. Timbo/Mulligan are a folk rivas of Davis's.

I'm glad JT looks diff enough that I can pretend it's not him.

ashamed of beard?

too easy

y'all JT haters are crazy, although I'm not sure the folk scene suits him very well. do love that he is biting my beard and peacoat look though.

not hating! just... unsure. i'm sure my concerns will prove unfounded because i really want this to be an awesome movie, but i've never seen JT act in a dramatic role. i have expectations that must me maintained!

I did not know who Oscar Isaac was til I looked up the resume

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:39 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

he's been the best thing about almost every movie ive seen him in (damning w/faint praise in some cases). i dunno where he came from but he seems to have a lot of promise

going to go ahead and assume you're talking about this: "Lenny the Wonder Dog - Fartman (as Oscar Isaac Hernandez)"

am wondering if F Murray Abraham's role is as folk club owner or Beat poet

also if title is Inside Daisy Clover hommage

beardo timbo does have a "young dave van ronk" look going on.

van ronk has an album called "Inside Dave Van Ronk", soooo...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GVKH99SKL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

likely just an allusion rather than some roman a clef bio tho

oh yeah, i doubt that the coens would do that kinda movie, but i'm assuming that's where they got the title...

great album btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5ngyALMRR4

yup

hey all right

yes yes yes

Hmmm. I hope this is one of those instances where the actual film is much, much better than the trailer, b/c this doesn't look so hot.

i didnt watch it but im already sold on the combo of subject and filmmakers

I'm honestly amazed at how much Oscar Isaac looks like my friend Jesse Poe of Tanakh.

dylan in the trailer, hmmm

It says Joel & Ethan Coen on the trailer, that's good enough for me.

i didnt watch it but im already sold on the combo of subject and filmmakers
yeah, me too.

dylan in the trailer, hmmm

I know. Why??

wiki sez: It is loosely based on Dave Van Ronk's posthumously published memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street. which is a good enough reason for me, coens an added bonus imho

so maybe tylerw was even more on the nose upthread than we thought

ya but they announced a NEW one, adding just a tinge of sweetness to an otherwise bitter, bitter year

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Monday, March 12, 2012 1:31 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark

lol

xp yeah, looks like they even pretty much re-created that van ronk album cover

f murray!

abraham!

if you didn't put Dylan in the trailer, how would the mass audience (or maybe a third of them) know what this was about?

why wouldnt you put dylan in the trailer

psyched

xp just seems kinda corny i guess

why wouldnt you put dylan in the trailer

― zero dark (s1ocki), Thursday, January 24, 2013 12:56 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well when you put it that way

i meant "hmmm" as in i wonder what it means re: the relationship between fictionalization and history in the film's scenario, not that it's nec bad.

yeah i think morbs has the right idea. tbh i hope the dylan's just in the trailer and the soundtrack is different

Soundtrack by Skrillex

idk dylan's stature kind of weighs down on the rest of that scene too heavily to honestly ignore him

watch the shit out of this why yes yes I will

Isaacs played Prince John in the Ridley/Crowe Robin Hood, he was v good imo

isaacs had the best bit in robin hood, the 'i declare him to be an outlawwwwwww' soundbyte that got stuck in my head after playing in every commercial

Hah yes! Plus he got to bone down with the French chick for the whole movie, tough life

curious abt whose analogue JT is s'posed to be

Phil Ochs?

based on isaac / van ronk i guess we can't go by physical resemblance but i do think JT could make a passable paul clayton

the trailer makes this look so horrible

whaaaa

I think JT & CM are possibly versions of Richard & Mimi Farina

scraggly lonely young white man wanderer beard scrubs subway train floor as he chases pet cat

I <3 the cohens and all but idk this looks really phoned in, hope it isn't

good call morbs

Looks great.

well it's no A Serious Man trailer

can't believe the coens directed this by phone, this is gonna be a bittersweet year

Instagram Llewyn Davis

Anyone who loves hair will love this movie.

also: beards and winter coats

Going to have to rewatch this to get reacquainted with that scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUVb8VvaMI0&hd=1

thinking how long it's been since I've seen John Goodman in anything

he was in like 4 movies in 2012... big year for the goodsman

sweet year for goodman fans

I immediately thought of Peter, Paul and Mary when they showed Mulligan, Timberlake and the other guy in the studio. Though it's probably foolish to identify a real life analogue for every character.

nah I thought the same

I assume they'll need someone to play Sonny Bono.

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/anton_zps0e2c5680.jpg http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/sonny_zps2f154c2d.jpg

Inside Daivisy cLlover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN1zgtMAF3w

For the record Llewyn Davis doesn’t really resemble, or sound like, Dave Van Ronk, whose posthumous 2005 memoir, “The Mayor of Macdougal Street,” written with Elijah Wald, served as source material for the film.

“The character is not at all Dave, but the music is,” said Mr. Wald, who spoke by telephone last week after having been given an early look at the film with Van Ronk’s widow, Andrea Vuocolo Van Ronk.

He said he did not know for years that the Coens were behind an option for film rights to the book, which he based on Van Ronk’s reminiscences, compiling them after his death in 2002. (Mr. Wald had spent years listening to Van Ronk’s stories and got some pages from him before he died but otherwise did the writing.)

Mr. Wald said he “thoroughly enjoyed” the movie.

But he cautioned that the world of “Inside Llewyn Davis,” having been devised by the Coens, is “less innocent” than one inhabited by Van Ronk, Mr. Dylan, Paul Clayton, the Rev. Reverend Gary Davis, Joni Mitchell, Tom Paxton and the myriad other singers who are invoked in the film. Its story bounces through actual places like Gerde’s, the Gaslight Café and the Gate of Horn in Chicago without explicitly portraying real artists or folk music powers like the impresario Albert Grossman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/movies/joel-coen-on-inside-llewyn-davis.html

crazy that they don't have a distributor for this yet

have you had a look at what studios put out these days?

you'd think oscars count for something

that's the road to Heaven's Gate, babe

I guess, but what was the last huge Coen Bros budget

Huge not the issue here (tho it's period and I assume the cast got more than scale), but I can see Hollywooders thinking this won't make a penny so why bother?

I know it's not the same, but A Mighty Wind, with a $6 million budget...

The film had a moderate intake for its opening day in April 2003, grossing $307,931 in total. It went on to gross $2,112,140 in 133 theatres for an average of $15,880 per theatre.[3] With a domestic total of $17,583,468 and a foreign total of $969,240, the film brought in a total of $18,750,246 during its theatrical run

I bet this cost way more than $6 M.

Budget of 'A Serious Man' was $7 M all other things being equal I'd expect this to be similar. Having marquee names like Timberlake and Mulligan will bump up the cost quite a bit.

A Mighty Wind also probably an easier sell as a comedy

They seriously need to change the title.

is being a marquee name diff from being a movie star, cuz I don't think Carey Mulligan sells tickets.

I'd bet she sells more tickets than Fred Melamed or Richard Kind.

I've never heard of her. not that that means anything

she's good and has stage chops, but she aint box office, and seemingly JT isn't re movies either.

(and the Coens know this)

well i guess we'll see won't we

coens have an established audience, this subject matter is near-oldsploitation boomer-bait, and on first glance is quite a bit closer to the 'o brother' sweet spot instead of the heavy theological meditations of their last 3

ya this is far from unreleasable

carve up the rights & home video and i'm sure they'd make their money back before even releasing it

Sure, but not enough of an upside to interest a contemporary big studio, perhaps. xp

this subject matter is near-oldsploitation boomer-bait

right -- ppl who don't go to movie theaters!

why are you grinding this axe?

i have no clue what the backstage money politics are but the idea of a coens project never seeing the light of day is kind of fanciful to me

just a-splainin' to Shakey why it's not "crazy" that they don't have a distributor yet. They wouldn't have it for O Brother if they made it today w/ Oscar Isaac.

my use of the word "crazy" was as much a lamentation as an expression of surprise fwiw

also that Times story says it has "less plot than usual" and I can't think of anything that would scare the suits off more.

Despite the "Heavy Theological Meditations" of their last one (True Grit), it still did 250 mil worldwide.

According to imdb, one of the production companies was Studio Canal, and funding came from them and the Weinstein Co. I guess part of the US distribution problem is they didn't involve a proper US studio during the production stage. Altough perhaps the latter will pick it up after they're finished beating Django...'s meat.

O Brother soundtrack sold 8 million copies. Guessing that's why they're screening this one for music execs this week. We'll be hearing JT folk songs in Starbucks all through fall and winter.

well TG was a true genre picture w/ stars... sufficiently weird around the edges, but maybe not to everybody.

also boring

you mean amazing

from Cannes: "Generously dimensional," "heartfelt." Due in December.

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-cannes-2013-joel-and-ethan-coens-inside-llewyn-davis

planning on waiitng in line for 2 hours tomorrow to catch the "séance de lendemain"

nice

i am often frustrated by the coens' "smaller" movies (still resent having spent time/money on 'man who wasn't there') but somehow am very psyched for this

also john goodman role (however minor) boosts expectations a fair bit, does that guy ever do wrong?

now is not the time to bring up king ralph IMO

In conjunction w/ NYFF screening

Titled Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of 'Inside Llewyn Davis,' cast members are set to perform at the (September 29th) event along with a cross-section of artists including The Avett Brothers, Joan Baez, Rhiannon Giddens of Carolina Chocolate Drops, Lake Street Dive, Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, Milk Carton Kids, Marcus Mumford, Conor Oberst, Punch Brothers, Secret Sisters, Patti Smith, Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings, Willie Watson, and Jack White....

Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman and Stark Sands are slated for the concert, which will sell tickets to the public beginning Wednesday, August 21. A portion of the proceeds from the concert will benefit the National Recording Preservation Foundation.

The soundtrack from Inside Llewyn Davis will be released November 12 via Nonesuch Records. Produced by T Bone Burnett, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen, with Marcus Mumford as its associate producer, the album features 12 new recordings created especially for the film and soundtrack. Also included is a never-before-released recording of Bob Dylan performing his song "Farewell," which was originally recorded during the sessions for his album The Times They Are A-Changin', and is available exclusively on this soundtrack.

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/artists-and-stars-set-for-inside-llewyn-davis-benefit-concert-in-new-york

A portion of the proceeds from the concert will benefit the National Recording Preservation Foundation.

that's cool. the lineup is not to my tastes at all tho.

yeah that's like a line-up of ilx punching bags (save joan baez patti smith etc)

gillian welch is pretty awesome too

has anyone on ilx actually personally punched Colin Meloy tho

Don't be so literal

not into gillian welch or patti smith :(

i think the carolina chocolate drops are great musicians but something about their schtick and their recent music doesn't really ring my bell

i went to a show of theirs once, the music was pretty good but somehow the whole experience made me feel like i was at a summer camp hootenanny. which is not necessarily the worst thing to be at, but you know.

neglected to link this interview 3 weeks ago

After we wrote the movie and we started casting it, we knew that there was going to be a lot of performance in the movie, and that actually when you heard a song in the movie, we really wanted to hear the whole song. And it’s also a story where we felt like there’s got to be something about the character that you only know through his performance and his music — you know, like a real musician. So we only auditioned real musicians.

You know, that was not so great. It’s often possible — sometimes it’s even easy — to get somebody like that through a scene or two scenes or three scenes or whatever, and it’s great, it’s fine. But this character’s literally in every scene in the movie, so we realized we were going the wrong direction, and we just started seeing actors who could play, as opposed to musicians who could act. And there are more of those, by the way...

We were one of the last people to stop cutting on film. And when we stopped, people would say, “Why?” Honestly, the answer was because we couldn’t find assistants who knew how to work on film. They didn’t exist anymore. I mean, it was — I remember being in Ken Loach’s cutting room around then, and I said — he was cutting on a Steenbeck back then — and I said, “How do you do this?” And he pointed like that [points] and there was this, like, 96-year-old guy on the rewinds.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/movies/the-coen-brothers-look-wryly-at-their-films.html

makes sense that joel's the older one, he seems more mature

thats like the most transparent interview ive ever seen w/them. they're usually super cagey in any kind of interview, even about mundane stuff

the Ken Loach part made me lol

came out of the interview a little unclear on why they're going to start shooting digital though, whether it's for money or aesthetics

is he implying that it wasn't easy to get good acting out of Oscar Isaac?

basically film is too hard to do at this point, it seems. xp

22-min NYFF press conference:

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/nyff51-video-alan-partridge-captain-phillips-llewyn-davis

Oscar Isaac is splendid in this. Film is a solid, bleak comedy of failure. And minor.

F Murray Abraham's initial response to Llewyn's audition is a classic.

I do agree it's important to put the least sexy member of a trio in the center:

http://corecanvas.s3.amazonaws.com/afifestpress-96a966db/gallery/original/521fc33332b72_ILD-01359-ct%20copy.jpg

oscar isaac is ridic handsome

btw Timbo is in the film for less than 10 minutes, and his character is a credulous cuckold.

and I am eager to hear if Eric makes it through the opening 3 minutes.

"Please Mr Kennedy" is just a cute parody of bad novelty records, but it will get a lot of attention just because it's the best track Timberlake has ever sung on.

http://www.npr.org/2013/11/03/242103173/first-listen-soundtrack-inside-llewyn-davis

I just read the Van Ronk book, which is hilarious and insightful btw, and it's only a loose inspiration - Van Ronk was tougher, funnier and more successful than Llewyn - but a handful of anecdotes makes it straight into the movie, almost as written. I hope it sells some copies off the back of the movie because it's great.

xp provide a comprehensive ranking or no cred

I hate this music, but I'd be fine if the entire presentation of the best song Oscar was just a bearded Oscar Issac singing five songs in a row on a blank stage for 18 minutes.

eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius)
Posted: November 5, 2013 at 12:52:33 PM
"Please Mr Kennedy" is just a cute parody of bad novelty records, but it will get a lot of attention just because it's the best track Timberlake has ever sung on.

oh morbs

I loved this. I've always argued (with difficulty) that the Coens are more sincere and hopeful than people give them credit for, but I think it's undeniable with this one - it's a beautiful movie. I don't actually find it bleak at the core - though characters have a bleak time of it, the themes aren't bleak; this is a tribute to stories that live on and are re-told, re-interpreted, re-lived; as well as a meditation on legacy. Then again, my take on it is different than others... This link is fascinating - I can't think of the last movie that had such varied and opposing interpretations from major critics:

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-cannes-2013-joel-and-ethan-coens-inside-llewyn-davis

Also, I never knew of Mumford and Sons outside of them being a short-cut punchline/punching bag, but if the music in this is anything to go on, I have no problem with them - they've done a great job with it.

"The man goes to a lot of funerals."
"He likes people."

please mr. kennedy sounds kind of like a bad holy modal rounders outtake

Well, I’ve already had two beers
I’m ready for the broom
Please, Mr Kennedy
Take me to the Lincoln Bedroom
I’m a good ol’girl

I understand Kennedy liked boobs a lot.

I made it through. After sleeping on it, though, I do think this is sort of second-tier Coens, and a less compelling variation on themes already perfected in A Serious Man. Still, there can't be much doubt now that the Coens are frontrunners for the title of America's greatest working filmmakers, et al.

I'll take second-tier over third-tier (ie, the '90s).

All the cat people seem to be crazy about the cat(s).

Comparing '90s Coens with '10s Coens is like comparing '30s Hitchcock with '50s Hitchcock. Both periods have different rewards.

thirties Hitch had a number of good films whereas nineties Coen Bros has Fargo, The Big Lebowski and Judy Davis and John Mahoney in BF.

(I mean, '30s Hitch had some dogs too.)

http://kottke.org/13/12/coen-brothers-next-film-set-in-ancient-rome

Jeff Bridges as Vespasian!

00s coens has o brother where art thou, the man who wasnt there, intolerable cruelty, the ladykillers

ranking them by decade is pretty meaningless

That reminds me, '40s Hitchcock had Notorious, Foreign Correspondent and Rebecca.

their '90s is like Hitchcock's '00s. Robyn's.

decades are dumb

^

Centuries are where it's at.

decades are fun. Ask Motley Crue.

decades are dumb

― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, December 5, 2013 5:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if it's the '90s and you're the Coens, more boringly misanthropic than dumb

would it be so hard to make a movie without music?

irie.

yall dont like fargo? big lebro? millers crossing? damn

ugh there's probably some gross IPA called Big Lebro

im the big lebro street team tbh

Barton Fink is still their best.

and this is where I say "worst" and we repeat every post we've made on the dozen Coen threads til flyover country gets the movie

So 14 days of fighting. Tis the season.

is Ulysses the cat ineligible awards cuz it's like 5 cats?

That cat's good, but no Uggie.

flyover country

ppl still say this

I only say it as a member of flyover country taking potshots at the first people to go under when the oceans rise.

I was bein' parodic really, like "Please Mr Kennedy."

when do screeners start leaking gdamn it i like to watch oscarbait in the comfort of my own home

Not all movies that come out in December are "oscarbait" and I'd tell you it demands bigscreen viewing but then you'd be looking for an asteroid to hit Cafe Reggio.

There’s another interesting part of that whole scene, which is that Llewyn is a member of a labor union and all that. There’s this whole scene in Union Square on 14th Street, where a guy that I know who was involved in that scene said you used to have guys like Ewan MacColl in the union halls, trying to teach the guys in the labor unions how to sing these labor songs and folk songs. What was actually happening at the time, of course, was that all the kids downstairs were listening to Elvis.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/05/joel_and_ethan_coen_my_god_we_dont_watch_our_own_movies/

i wld ordinarily go see a coen brothers in the theater but the 60 village folk scene is like my least favorite thing in the world

that's not what it's *about* tho

whats it about

It's sort of about that, yeah.

But without any sense of collectivity.

anyway fwiw i was pining generally for leaked oscarbait

i wanna see that country gangster movie w christian bale

and Saving Mr Banks?

Appalachian Scream

it does look magical xp

i wanna see that country gangster movie w christian bale

― lag∞n, Friday, December 6, 2013 10:13 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i reacted v badly to that trailer but i'll probably go

also the new david o russell but maybe ill see that at the theatere

wives of Van Ronk, Kupferberg on authenticity

http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/inside-llewyn-davis-reflect-folk-scene-dave-van-ronk-wife.html

^ oh, spoilers

a bit of a spoiler to follow....

I gather that the appearance of You Know Who at the end was meant to signal that Llewyn was a product of/trapped in something like the past and about to be rendered irrelevant by the future?

in any case, I found this really affecting in ways I didn't expect. possibly for personal reasons and ambitious which do not have to do with music. but I think to the extent you find yourself (to your own chagrin) in Llewyn is gonna dictate how much you like this. I liked it a lot.

ambitions, that is

I want to see it for the cat. I hear it gets a lot of play.

the cat(s) is(are) awesome

This was great

many have mentioned the ending's resemblance to The Wanderers'

Check this out if you get a chance - some really great music..

Another Day, Another Time

ya this was fairly devastating

dude couldnt even get it together to ship himself off to his own personal hell

Like this piece on it: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/dec/16/coen-llewyn-davis-sante/

confirms eric's "no sense of collectivity"

this is great

nybooks article makes the unfounded claim that the Gorfeins (sp?) are Mike's parents. at least it seems unfounded to Glenn Kenny and I agree with him for now.

I was trying to figure that out during the film and found it interesting that Sante just assumed it

The really HD-looking image bothered me at times

the nature of their relationship is definitely a pointed omission, but I wonder what is gained and lost if they are Mike's parents. Assuming the ambiguity is intentional.

my main reason for thinking they are not Mike's parents is that not even Llewyn would get that angry with a bereaved mother.

I don't know if I agree with that, the absence of mike is pretty central to his character and if we do assume they are his parents, the mother's consoling of him later in the film feels very different

perhaps. I tended to read Llewyn in that scene as "this is my grief not yours" which would of course be very strange if she was Mike's mother. I need to see it again but I wasn't thinking they were Mike's parents at all until some reviewers suggested it.

it sort of made sense to me that they would see him as another son and be gentle and forgiving with him

my main reason for thinking they are not Mike's parents is that it would have been mentioned or even hinted at in some way if they were

I mean maybe Bob Dylan is Mike's brother now that we're making up our own plots

i wanna see this movie but it has the worrrrrst most unappealing TV ad

throw yr TV out the window

my dad got mad at me today for not fastforwarding the tivo through a commercial for this because "now i want to see it less"

Saw this earlier this evening. Enjoyed it very much, but am sort of perplexed as to why this is considered top-drawer Coens and topping year-end polls. I guess they are in an another Imperial Phase atm, and anyway I've been waiting for this one so long I was bound to be somewhat disappointed. It helps going in if you have some familiarity with that period of music, and the scene it came out of. I had to school some friends at dinner afterwards.

Some notes:

• Esoteria in extermis, but finally a film has attempted to harness the destructive power of a '58 Buick (The car Llewyn drives/rides back from Chicago in, and...you know). All the car stuff was A+.
• Classic Coen Moment: Llewyn trying to stash his box of unsold vinyl at Adam Driver's, and finding that his host is in the same boat. Something tells me whatever recognition the eventually reissues of these guys stuff from the Tompkin's Square/Light In The Attic/Drag City labels of this film's universe will come way too late.
• Are the Coens closet "Girls" fans? Knew going in about Driver, but Alex Karpovsky appearing was a pleasant surprise.

All the car stuff was A+.

i loved how awful the road trip was. it never lightens up, just relentless greyness and ennui

Ya and the arrest scene was so great

am sort of perplexed as to why this is considered top-drawer Coens and topping year-end polls.

Because they've always been overcelebrated, and "big" American films get worse every year.

i don't think they've been always overcelbrated (burn after reading, ladykillers..)

didn't see this movie yet, though

A serious man was totally ignored

is this good y/n

y

A serious man was totally ignored

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Sunday, December 22, 2013 2:54 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally. stop armonding morbs

cool thx gonna see it tonight

The way that one was passes over really baffled me. I didnt even here about it at all until well after its lone screen weeklong run in sf had passed, and saw zero reviews/press for it at the time. And this was the follow up to their big oscar winner. Xp

a serious man was nominated for best picture

and burn after reading was the followup to ncfom, which is probably how it ended up that rarest of things - the underrated coen bros movie

A serious man was totally ignored

A film like A Serious Man is never going to play on a ton of screens, even if it is a Coen Bros film. A story of middle class Midwestern jews undergoing a very mild existential crisis doesn't sell as a popcorn movie or a date movie; it can only be sold as an arthouse movie. It was a critical success, though, and widely reviewed, so not ignored in that sense.

and a college professor, at that.

if there's one thing america loves, it's movies about tenure review

fine, A Serious Man ie one of the 3 actual excellent films they've made was ignored, u win win win

The Chicago road trip stuff reminded me of something out of Roberto Bolaño. So sad and haunting. The look Llewyn gives as he drives past the Akron sign is heartbreaking.

Lots of Coen films don't get all that much attention -- I don't remember Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, Ladykillers, or Burn After Reading being big deals either.

They've moved into the "greatest filmmakers currently working" phase of their careers now.

yeah, that crap quote (Travers?) was uppermost in my mind when abswering Grisso's question.

man who wasn't there got some hype at the time (probably more than lebowski in the moment at least), intolerable cruelty is kinda crazy underrated imo, ladykillers should've never been attempted in the first place and i'm glad it was a failure, burn after reading has found i's audience as evidenced by everyone referencing it during the petraeus scandal last year.

The Chicago road trip stuff reminded me of something out of Roberto Bolaño. So sad and haunting. The look Llewyn gives as he drives past the Akron sign is heartbreaking.

― Walter Galt, Monday, December 23, 2013 9:04 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea this was well done. also his song for his father. i do like that theres a decent amt of humor but it doesnt pull punches @ all. also agree it's prob 2nd-tier coens but thats better than 98% of everyone else

couldn't get past the boyzIImen level inexplicably well-maintained beards & thick pancake.
JG was ace, but the whole thing? meh.

This defines "minor"

Sorry but the car stuff to Chicago dragged (the trip home better and becomingly eerie).

I'd agree with you in theory if John Goodman didn't mop the floor with the rest of the cast in that stretch.

what defines "minor" is Miller's Crossing through O Brother Where Art Thou

btw did anyone think Garrett Hedlund was John Goodman's boytoy?

Yep!

I laughed out loud at the Gaslight owner's self-congratulatory remark about plenty of guys wanting to sleep with Timberlake.

Much to say about the film, but holy shit @ this bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Aq4a7g_wdU

the real-life jim and jean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFANftfYNbs

I think the secret weapon in "Please Mr. Kennedy" is the elderly bass player rockin' out behind Timberlake.

yeah the please mr kennedy part was incredible

feel like it isn't getting mentioned enough that this is actually a really funny movie

UH OH

grimly funny. It's much more serious than, say, Fargo.

grim funny's the best kind... f murray abraham's big line killed me

has abraham been in a coens movie before? he feels like he should be a regular of theirs

The cutaway to Abraham as he listens to Davis is the most devastating moment this season.

Has anyone read the stuff on the official website by John Jeremiah Sullivan/Christgau/etc.? It's under the "About" section. It's actually some of the best writing I've read on the film, which is weird saying so, since it's on the official website and I'd expect more PR churn.

i enjoyed this (sometimes a lot) but on reflection the not-quite-pervasive-but-still-very-present coen bros cynicism definitely kind of soured it for me. yeah, i get it, the folk revival was mostly a bunch of sanitized pap (except it wasn't), promoters and club owners are all deeply craven and corrupt (except not really), the world is largely populated with blowhards and fuckups and phoneys of one kind or another. i mean, it's a worldview for sure, and neither the dumbest nor the least interesting one out there by any means, but i always end up feeling like the horizons of their imaginations are just a little too familiar and comfortable.

i know this is a common, and to some clichéd, criticism of the coens but i'm OK w/ it.

all that said this is one of the better new american movies i've seen in a few months.

The cutaway to Abraham as he listens to Davis is the most devastating moment this season.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, December 26, 2013 12:06 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what does he say? "i don't hear any money in it"?

it's not even trying to be an aesthetic judgment, it's a purely commercial one. it's like abraham's character couldn't even fathom an aesthetic response. it's a sad/hilarious moment and beautifully executed but it also seems really patly cynical.

it's hilarious (in the "please mr kennedy" scene) how adam driver's vocalizations make no sense musically or in any other way.

i enjoyed this (sometimes a lot) but on reflection the not-quite-pervasive-but-still-very-present coen bros cynicism definitely kind of soured it for me. yeah, i get it, the folk revival was mostly a bunch of sanitized pap (except it wasn't), promoters and club owners are all deeply craven and corrupt (except not really), the world is largely populated with blowhards and fuckups and phoneys of one kind or another. i mean, it's a worldview for sure, and neither the dumbest nor the least interesting one out there by any means, but i always end up feeling like the horizons of their imaginations are just a little too familiar and comfortable.

i know this is a common, and to some clichéd, criticism of the coens but i'm OK w/ it.

― ★feminist parties i have attended (amateurist), Saturday, 28 December 2013 07:21 (2 minutes ago) Permalink

I mean, I'll give you that the Coens are cynical people, but the rest of this post makes me feel like we watched different movies.

I get their brand of cynicism though. It never feels malicious to me; just elemental.

^^ otm

i dunno there's just no sense of the productive cross-currents of the folk scene at all; anything that might be optimistic or collective or even glorious has been painstakingly sapped from their portrayal.

i "get" their cynicism and i find it a little seductive sometimes, mostly i just find that it makes the movies a kind of mental dead end for me. i find that i like them less and less as the months and years pass by. i can't think of one of their movies that got better for me, maybe true grit.

also, if Oscar Isaac doesn't become a second/third-tier lust object a la Fassbender/Cumberbatch/etc., then there is no…uhh, justice

Optimism usually doesn't stick to my bones ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

what cynicism? the human race is a mistake.

ws Isaac a thousand times before Cumberbatch/Fassbender/fucking Hiddleston

adam driver's vocalizations make no sense musically or in any other way.

have you heard novelty records from the '50s and '60s?

what cynicism? the human race is a mistake.

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Saturday, December 28, 2013 1:34 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure, goth boy, but the formal correlates of their cynicism are kind of predictable, though? it's not so much the cynicism I mind as the lack of imagination in how they dish it out. and they make a milieu so much less interesting by fitting it into their mold.

oscar isaac is crazy hot, it is true.

adam driver's vocalizations make no sense musically or in any other way.

have you heard novelty records from the '50s and '60s?

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Saturday, December 28, 2013 1:37 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i think they got that about right!

xpost he was v wsmashable in Robin Hood -- even more so in this with all that curly hair/beardo etc

i think other folks might have made it a little less ridiculous. it's to the coens credit that they didn't.

xpost

btw i hope this doesn't devolve into a cynicism vs. optimism thing b/c that's not my point at all.

and if you frame it in those terms the terrorists have won

xpost he was v wsmashable in Robin Hood -- even more so in this with all that curly hair/beardo etc

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, December 28, 2013 12:40 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't seen Robin Hood but he is equally hot irl without all the facial hair and whatnot.

not to derail but he gets his gear off in Robin Hood, worth a look if yr inclined :D

he is also kind of muscly in "drive"

but yeah somehow he is hotter in press conferences than in his movies

btw about the john goodman character

- he's a jazz musician, correct? do we know what his axe is? or is he a singer?

- any guesses as to who he is modeled on? the bulk and the facial hair got me thinking burl ives, but that makes no sense. doc pomus? long john baldry? just every smack-addict jazz musician?

i enjoyed the scene in the overpass w/ goodman, isaac, and hedlund

Am perfectly willing to withdraw from the cynicism conversation I didn't start to discuss how hot he is in Drive.

Goodman was the reason I didn't check out of the road trip section completely the first time around.

oh i forgot about him in Drive - yes to that

i saw this tonight and it was mostly very good but something about it felt a little, idk, unfinished? i feel like i definitely need to see it again but idk it wasn't very satisfying "as a narrative" or something on first glance.

ws Isaac a thousand times before Cumberbatch/Fassbender/fucking Hiddleston

― Alfre, Lord Woodard (Eric H.)

amateurist, I wrote that ILD is about a mediocre man who nevertheless doesn't deserve the bad luck. It's a better movie than Barton Fink because Isaac's performance is lived-in and we can plainly see he's good enough to understand folk but not great enough to transform it. One of the movie's good jokes: when we see You Know Who performing at the end he sounds more tentative and average than Davis, which is about right if you've heard his 1960-1961 recordings.

dontcha think Diane was Mike's girlfriend & Llewyn homewrecked his way through that relationship hence Mike's suicide? That'd be kinda "deserving" of bad luck or the sort of self-purgatory he allots himself, but I didn't buy Llewyn as self-saboteur, homewrecker, or in thrall to his own desires, or a klutz, or an arrogant prick, or a depressive, or anything at all. I don't know what I was supposed to get from that performance.

it wasn't very satisfying "as a narrative" or something

one of the Coens said it's "an odyssey about a man who goes nowhere"

one reason this movie didn't feel cynical to me, or not all-the-way cynical, is that I've rarely seen something that seeks to accentuate the beauty and worth of slightly-above-average art. they don't pretend LD is an amazing talent, but neither do they denigrate the talent that he has, even if the world does. I found that very moving and sorta anti-cynical.

llewyn's the first coens protag i can think of who is actually aware that he's causing all these shitty things to happen to himself - he feels like a guy with choices, not just a clueless pawn of fate

One of the movie's good jokes: when we see You Know Who performing at the end he sounds more tentative and average than Davis, which is about right if you've heard his 1960-1961 recordings.

that actually WAS one of dylan's recordings in the film

one reason this movie didn't feel cynical to me, or not all-the-way cynical, is that I've rarely seen something that seeks to accentuate the beauty and worth of slightly-above-average art. they don't pretend LD is an amazing talent, but neither do they denigrate the talent that he has, even if the world does. I found that very moving and sorta anti-cynical.

― ryan, Saturday, December 28, 2013 11:42 AM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

that actually WAS one of dylan's recordings in the film

― ★feminist parties i have attended (amateurist), Saturday, December 28, 2013 12:31 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha ya, that didnt really seem like a joke to me

I found that very moving and sorta anti-cynical.

i agree, but he's surrounded by a bunch of craven assholes, fools, blowhards, etc. so his authentic talent, however limited it's implied that it is (sorry bad phrasing), stands out against a rather uncharitable and uninteresting backdrop of familiar coen-ness.

"uninteresting" is relative of course

"not terribly interesting" might be a better way to put it

i actually thought most of the characters in the film were pretty sympathetic, bar owner notwithstanding

timbo seems sweet and helpful, if a cuckold, "uh oh" guy is particularly nice, the older couple are parental (if not actually parents), forgiving and warm

manager > guy in seamen's union office

bar owner forgives llewyn for meltdown, which presumably also happened before the beginning of the film & would happen again. seemed accommodating.
so bar owner, despite peccadilloes, isn't partic nasty

i actually thought most of the characters in the film were pretty sympathetic, bar owner notwithstanding

― socki (s1ocki), Saturday, December 28, 2013 2:13 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah llewyn's the one who's kind of a piece of shit surrounded by decent people who he takes advantage of over and over... thats like the main thing people who didnt like the movie complain about

(have not seen this yet but) luc sante's observation (linked somewhere above i think) that llewyn is not really a '60s folk person at all but a '10s one is already sticking in my head, i wonder if that will ring true when i get around to this.

oh so he's Cass McCombs -- explains a lot

More plusses than minuses for me, but still a bit of a mixed bag. “Please Mr. Kennedy” excellent, credit to Adam Driver. Great ending, which I basically knew in advance--I think the film is really helped by the fact you leave the theatre with that in your head. (They hint at it 10 minutes beforehand; would have taken courage to leave it at that, but I’m glad they spelled it out--without overdoing it, though.) Grossman’s response to Llewyn’s song was chilling. (Embarrassed to say I didn’t recognize F. Murray Abraham; I was thinking of Mitch Miller.) The scene with his father reminded me of Nicholson’s great scene with his father in Five Easy Pieces. Early on, when Llewyn rides the subway with the cat, that was really nice. In some ways, that was the high point of the film for me.

The two or three times Llewyn flipped out, that felt kind of forced to me. I’m glad they let Jean smile towards the end; found her exceedingly one-dimensional and shrill up to that point. And the John Goodman detour...when I do figure out what that was all about, I still won't think it was worth 20 minutes.

Oscar Isaac really looked like Pacino in the late ‘70s.

Second time I saw it, the impact of (SPOILER POTENTIAL) passing Akron and crippling that cat back-to-back was devastating.

The Akron sign and the cat at the end of the Goodman detour, yes, they were great; it was a long way to get there.

I should have mentioned Mel's secretary--loved her.

the cat was very cute

The scene with his father reminded me of Nicholson’s great scene with his father in Five Easy Pieces.

yeah me too

why don't men ever get called shrill?

they're not women?

When I referred to "three long, shrill scenes" in The Wolf of Wall Street the other day--and might just as well have said hours instead of scenes--that was 95% in reference to men, director included.

I can't help but think of Network when I think of shouting scenes -- and the use of "shrill."

https://www.google.ca/search?q=al+pacino+screaming&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=RJi_UtfwGaTgyQHHqYHACw&sqi=2&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1025&bih=473

I guess I've read Doc Pomus re inspiration for Goodman, but he was famously hetero and certainly no music snob. So it's down to the canes?

Something odd is that F. Murray Abraham's Albert Grossman, but it's actually Goodman who looks like Albert Grossman (haircut aside).

I can't help but think of Network when I think of shouting scenes -- and the use of "shrill."

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, December 28, 2013 10:32 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

i inevitably think of like a dozen sidney lumet movies

So it's down to the canes?

yeah, canes, heft, white-hipster thing... but not a pomus type in any other way really

I'm still not 100 percent sold on the whole Goodman-as-sugar daddy-to-Hedlund read, but mostly because I like that it was left beautifully opaque.

I enjoyed this.

I also enjoyed this. It reminded me of Girls.

I enjoyed it too. I liked that the only Coen-esque "look what we did there" thing was the circularity of the beginning and ending, and it worked for the story. Llewyn's ultimately just a guy like his father, existing from day to day, and (I think) he eventually realizes that. Which doesn't promise any big redemption for him, probably just more of the same, because that's who he is.

https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/544162_10152244505201874_1722952415_n.jpg

Long live the Uptown marquee.

also this one

http://i.imgur.com/FndSBCQ.jpg

Missing you, Uptown (my mother lives two miles from this marquee).

lol

Can't remember exactly where you see this--must have been on an album cover--but Llewyn's ex-partner was named Mike Timlin.

http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mWrS-W6mMRPEwte9PDUVbPg.jpg

David Ehrenstein prefers Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me:

http://www.fandor.com/blog/a-reflection-of-film-folk-singers-past

one of the Coens said it's "an odyssey about a man who goes nowhere"

Adam Nayman ponders the Coens' attitude toward Jews (per Hoberman's grousing):

http://cinema-scope.com/currency/inside-llewyn-davis-joel-ethan-coen-us/

really enjoyed that take.

Nayman's one of my favorite film writers right now.

I'm a little jeal he got out a Showgirls monograph before I could get my shit together, but yeah, he's good.

I hafta say both the Gorfeins and Alex Karpovsky rang my 'Jewish caricature' bells.

Maybe, but it's not like we're talking Almodovar's latest here.

Almodovar could've kept ringing that one until the bell hit Kim Novak.

good link morbs

i'm still not sure how to interpret the Coens' takes on Jewish caricature and cryto-conservatism as mentioned. i think they're there, but not sure what to make of it

most of those managers and a lot of the folk singers were Jewish?

the movie goes just short of saying Davis was just too Jewish, too "dark", to be a success, in light of the ultra whitebread acts and CBS Studios, as he's surrounded by ugly Jewish music industry huckster-types who are keeping him down. and as the review mentions it ends with Bob Dylan about to break out, so... yeah, i don't know

Davis is def cuter than Dylan, no question.

Davis is cuter than Prince tbh.

Davis is world-champion cuteness. Especially with that mop of curly hair

wait, isn't LD described as a Welsh-Italian goy?

yah Prince isn't cute at all and he reeks of lavender

Figured Goodman harping on his name was maybe reflective of his character's skepticism.

xpost yr so banned for that

Nayman praise makes me very happy

saw a little 30 second spot on cable and apparently this movie is 100% about a man's relationship with his cat

Well, you wouldn't be wrong since [SPOILER REDACTED].

wow this was so good

the dialog slayed me

the woman holding up the cat hysterically & repeating her line slayed me

all the scenes of carey mulligan yelling at him

would like to be yelled at by carey mulligan

not about paying for her abortion though

it's probably because I've been on a dylan kick lately but I think about this movie at least once a day.

You know who else has a goatee and a cane? The devil

the woman holding up the cat hysterically & repeating her line slayed me

i pointed at that one as the choice for fanboys to fixate on.

like literally with yr finger

i hope on the dvd there are five bonus hours of carey mulligan yelling

morbz stands up in theater, outstretches arm, points at screen.

enthusiastically yells, "ONE FOR FANBOYS TO FIXATE ON!"

then sits back down.

a goatee and a cane? The devil

If you had to stand upright on cloven hoofs you want a bit of assistance hobbling around on them, too.

ya cuz goats have so much trouble balancing on things

try getting them to do it on two legs and see where it gets you.

I don't think this was perfect but I found it deeply satisfying, sad, and very funny. And goddamn Oscar Isaacs is adorable.

his agent & the wife oh i loved them so much

whoever compared this to A Serious Man = otm

a goatee and a cane? The devil

If you had to stand upright on cloven hoofs you want a bit of assistance hobbling around on them, too.

― Aimless, Sunday, January 12, 2014 11:50 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya cuz goats have so much trouble balancing on things

― socki (s1ocki), Sunday, January 12, 2014 11:53 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

try getting them to do it on two legs and see where it gets you.

― Aimless, Sunday, January 12, 2014 11:54 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

surely this discussion calls for its own thread

"what would it take for goats to be able to walk upright"

I don't think it's been said yet, but hearing Timberlake's version of "A Hundred Miles" I'm struck by how well he sings it.

*Five Hundred

yeah i love him singing in that higher register, he sounds so good!!

yeah i was all wow jt finally learned how to sing

just to BE the MAN

nice

Actually, was gonna just

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--3obkKMu1PM/Unrh_f5W9qI/AAAAAAAAIRo/N14o0S8O7aU/s1600/nashville_5.jpg

This was excellent. Reminded me a lot of Barton Fink, with its claustrophobic spaces, self-thwarting, integrity obsessed anti-hero and deeply weird Goodman character.

Everything involving the cat was A+

Much better than Barton Fink.

Alfred, no

yeah i can see those similarities but this was so much more animated and human

out of all their movies this one leaned less on weirdness and has characters with more depth

This movie perfects what BF tried and failed to do. That movie soured me on the bros for years.

yep

Interesting reactions. I didn't like Barton Fink and I didn't like this one either - they felt very similar to me in tone - though I will grant that this one was a little more interesting.

Huh, I like the inscrutable coldness of BF.

This is BF minus all the Jewish stuff

For some reason (wait, I know, I'm dumb), I confused BF with Miller's Crossing and was just wondering why Barton Fink's "look into your heart" scene isn't on YouTube.

My favorite Coens, it devastated me.

…and I got the quote wrong too

ok, this movie was fucking A+.

probably their best movie imo as far as i can remember. Yeah, similiarity to BF but this one is better because it's smooth and more nuanced. comes with experience i guess.

the bros figured out it's okay to present Llewyn Davis as a minor talent.

yeah, it was less pretentious.
except maybe for the cat being called Ulysses.

And the John Goodman detour...when I do figure out what that was all about, I still won't think it was worth 20 minutes.

think that section is v. important to the film for a number of reasons, but chiefly because it allows us to see Llewyn and his art judged by people outside his enclosed nyc folkie bubble, and to reinforce the idea that he's a man outside of time, career-wise and metaphysically-wise - when he returns from the trip, he thinks that the abortion has already happened, but is told that it hasn't, yet - adding to the sense that he's now under some kind of temporal curse - an endless repeating cycle of torment - placed on him by the devil in the back seat.

the section is important,no doubt, but maybe it could have been edited just a little

Also when he returns from Chicago, having been told "there is no green here", he switches on the radio and there's doo-wop - type tune => further confirmation that outside the village its not gonna happen.

The other thing I felt is Dylan's ugly nihilistic drawl is basically a counterpoint to how Llewyn Davis behaves to people throughout this film, but the story arc is clever enough as people behave badly towards him too, so you don't feel Llewyn Davis is that unsympathetic either. Its hard to know exactly what to make of him, either way. He is v blank - but its as if he is not able - or clever enough to see - that if only he could channel that blank-ness towards himself and others could be the way toward glory and recognition.

i watched this again, legit love this movie for real now

soundtrack is slowly burrowing into the cockles of my heart, may have to purchase despite my concern that i will appear complicit in its mumfordness :(

I've listened to the Timberlake-Muligan cover more than any other JT this year.

imo the songs work only within watching the movie.

John Goodman was otm. I didn't like the music. Dylan was the only thing that came out of it that was any good, and I see the film as being about him even if he only appears in the last min of it.

Ultimately the road trip and cats as a light relief device were best.

there's so much gentle humor throughout it, idk the more I watch it the more I find it strangely comforting and kinda dreamlike. or maybe it's just oscar that's dreamy and the movie is not that great, I can't tell anymore

you have a crush on oscar, admit it.

it's not a crush HE TOLD ME HE LOVED ME

I keep getting him mixed up with James Frain who does look very similar, they could pass as siblings.

so glad they played the van ronk rocky road over the credits. that version is unfuckwithable.

Dylan was the only thing that came out of it that was any good

"It" meaning Greenwich Village? I'd say a lot of good people came out of there: Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, David Blue, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Mamas & the Papas, etc. Maybe it depends on how literally you mean "came out of"--some had to leave first.

Yeah, Greenwich village. No love for any of these people.

Van Ronk's got some nice stuff himself, if you like that sort of thing, check out Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger.

surprised at the love this is getting here

Has anyone read the stuff on the official website by John Jeremiah Sullivan/Christgau/etc.? It's under the "About" section. It's actually some of the best writing I've read on the film, which is weird saying so, since it's on the official website and I'd expect more PR churn.

― Murgatroid, Saturday, 28 December 2013 06:57 (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is great, but for some moronic reason it's not available in the UK unless you use a proxy server to make the website think you're in the US! Elijah Wald's essay is the only one available otherwise.

surprised at the love this is getting here

― hang son doong (am0n),

ILE attracted to failure

yup

anyone read Van Ronk's autobio? is it worth reading if you don't care about the music itself but enjoy reading about musicians and artistic struggle/failure?

xp lol

yup

and cats

Van Ronk's book is great. It's not really about failure though - that's just the strand the Coens teased out. Mainly it's funny, raucous and opinionated. I liked it so much that I blogged some of the best lines to entice people to read it. http://33revolutionsperminute.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/in-praise-of-dave-van-ronk/

Typical line:

The whole debate was a tempest in a teapot, generated by critics who needed something to write about… Forty years later, on somber reflection, having fully studied the arguments on both sides, I have reached what I believe to be a measured and definitive judgment on the matter: Who cares?

this film is seriously overrated. not that it's bad, it isnt, but the reviews have made it seem much more than it actually is, which is basically a really small movie with a really tiny focus. its also a massive downer of a movie, which is fine, but it never really shows enough of why the guy is fucking up, or how hes 'blowing it' - i couldnt tell if he is just a loser, or just someone with bad luck. its fine to make a film about someone not going anywhere, someone who doesnt seem to know how to go where he wants to go (or someone who perhaps doesnt want to get to where he seems to think he does) but i never understood if this was cos he was blowing his chances, or that he just had bad fortune (cos from what i could see, he was still trying, though maybe not hard enough). the whole movie was too understated. there were no peaks or troughs in the narrative, it all seemed to be stuck at the same level of misfortune, with some typically smug coen moments. i think the coens are a bit average when trying too hard to be 'serious' (eg no country for old men). this needed a bit of humour like a simple man or barton fink even. and the last scene with a CGI dylan was unnecessary and a bit too 'this is a film with important connections to history'. the film was doing just fine without that.

i think justin timberlake could be a perfect coens actor btw with that slightly smug ironic manner he has. though i really think adam diver could be the new nic cage, if used correctly (it seemed like he started off basically playing adam from girls before getting into his new character here)

though saying all that, i liked that this didnt seem to glamourise failure, in that it was about a guy failing, but you felt how sad and dissapointing that can be, rather than showing that its great or that its good just for not being a typical how to succeed narrative (though im sure this is why the film was so samey in tone, it was trying so hard to make sure nothing good could happen to the guy)

this needed a bit of humour like a simple man or barton fink even.

Er... There were loads of jokes in it! Very funny film.

Also it was good how the film allowed you to draw your own conclusions as to whether Llewyn was a misunderstood genius or an arrogant, disagreeable chancer.

Or both or neither or nothing at all.

and the last scene with a CGI dylan was unnecessary and a bit too 'this is a film with important connections to history'.

You think that's why it was there?!

Surprised in general by how divisive this has been. Most of the music critics I know seem to hate it and I can't work out why. "Cold" and "cruel" seem to be the big complaints but I've seen it twice and I don't think either of those apply. Second time around, I was more struck by the temporal loop/anti-odyssey/nightmare/limbo quality - his resigned "au revoir" at the end suggests that his decision to play the Gaslight again, having been helped out by a semi-conciliatory Jean in one of the warmest scenes, isn't a second chance but the beginning of another doomed cycle. If you see it as a kind of dream-parable, contra the relatively naturalistic first third, then the Chicago road trip is fundamental instead of an overlong detour.

Have we done the Gate of Horn symbolism itt? From the Odyssey: "For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them." (I know the Gate of Horn was a real Chicago folk club but it's chosen here for a reason.)

The Coens sure are great at bringing a mythic resonance to the mundane.

the reviews have made it seem much more than it actually is

Alternatively, some people just saw more in it than you did.

i couldnt tell if he is just a loser, or just someone with bad luck.

That's the clever bit.

there were no peaks or troughs in the narrative, it all seemed to be stuck at the same level of misfortune

That's the point of the loop - the purgatorial quality.

this needed a bit of humour like a simple man or barton fink even.

Paging Please Mr Kennedy and "Where's his scrotum, Llewyn?"

huh thx for that Gate of Horn detail, I didn't catch that

the "cruelty" thing is funny to me because the film feels far less potentially nihilistic than some of their other movies. but then maybe it's the fact that llewyn is relatively human and motivated that makes the familiar Coen Bros follies feel even harsher.

Most of the music critics I know seem to hate it and I can't work out why

well i think the music performances in the film are its most problematic part, so i can see that. there's something slightly ersatz abt oscar isaac's singing, esp, and other period details that don't entirely ring true. so the film starts to feel in places like a fantasy (which of course it is), or even a parody of the thing it seemingly sets out to celebrate and elevate - another example of coen bros bad conscience, or sneery ironic distance.

but in fact i loved this film, and wanted to inhabit its fantasy world, even when it turns out to be a circle of hell.

yeah I've read some critics -- film critics even -- claim the music is subpar, and my question is how can you tell?

(just channelling Eric there)

not being able to see this is driving me fucking crazy

have you gone blind are you ok

no Coen films allowed to play in Hawaii iirc

they give em to the smartypants city folk on oahu but not to rubes like me

i thought the music was all fine (though im not exactly a huge folk fan). i had more of an issue with the colour palette they seemed to be using - all seemed a bit too stuck in grey wintry filters. im fine with consistency or a certain visual aesthetic and i dont know if it was because of the budget, the results of certain kinds of digital tech or what, but combined with the 'loser on loop' narrative, it seemed a little too obvious (though im sure you could equally make the point that it was just another great part of the film's design consistency).

i should say i did like the film, it got to me, but it seems like a modest addition to the coens work, not an out and out masterpiece. though im sure it could appear like that when everything else out right now seems to be crap like jack ryan or grudge match.

Ha, yes I am going to make the point that the colour palette is part of the purgatorial vibe - the wet socks, the punishing snow, the pervasive sense of cold.

I don't see anything wrong with the music personally. In fact, the songs are where Llewyn gets to express parts of him that he can't otherwise let out. (Being shellshocked by grief is a big reason why I can't be too hard on his behaviour btw) Isaac gives some beautiful performances (Shoals of Herring especially) but it's essential to the narrative that he can only do straight folk, in contrast to Dylan, whose voice in the final scenes is a kind of rejoinder to everything Llewyn does: a here-comes-the-future moment, even if the Gaslight crowd don't immediately recognise it as such. I think we're meant to believe that he's talented but only as talented as dozens of other hopefuls in Greenwich Village, and he lacks the spark that would make a difference. Grossman's suggestion that he play third-fiddle in a Peter, Paul & Mary-style act is OTM.

"i need someone who can connect with people" was tragically OTM

the colour palette just looked a bit cheap tbh - at times i was wondering if they used a lot of Red Digital trickery (im sure the cat's perfect movements early on in the movie were CGI)

background scenery exiting the Christopher St subway station most def CG

Dylan wasn't CGI tho

^^uncredited Blanchett cameo iirc

not that it's bad, it isnt, but the reviews have made it seem much more than it actually is, which is basically a really small movie with a really tiny focus

no, yer talking about Fargo there

the hell is wrong with small movies, you want this to be transformers or something

small movies > big movies

well that's just mathematically incorrect

I don't understand the tiny focus argument. It looks at a big theme through a specific character and mileu, like films do. Unless you think that the ideas explored are only relative to aspiring folk musicians in Greenwich Village in January 1961.

There really is something small about it though. It just doesn't feel fully realised. Watched The Man Who Wasn't There recently for the first time in years, and although I wasn't a fan of it when in it came out in comparison to Llewyn it seemed much more richly imagined

depends on yr definition of ">"

xp agreed, though i did like TMWWT at the time, it felt more compelling in general. i guess it helped that it had a little more plot going on? not sure how i'd like it today tbh

tmwwt felt like pure pastiche to me. i enjoyed it a bunch, but have a very hard time seeing it in the same light as ild.

I didn't know anything about van Ronk going into it and thus assumed the story was entirely fictional, and Davis was an allegorical representation of emo

TMWWT had the worst use of music in a movie that I can remember :(

well acc to the former Mrs van Ronk, aside from his repertoire it is fictional

the hell is wrong with small movies, you want this to be transformers or something

― socki (s1ocki), Monday, February 3, 2014 5:16 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo this movie was small but... more than meets the eye

when i say small, its cos this is a movie about a guy failing in life and fucking up and... thats pretty much it. i dont see it opening up to much else thematically, or opening up to any other ideas or even challenging the audience that much about this character beyond their patience for unremitting misery. is it a moving character study? yes. is it a complex character study? im not sure. it doesnt really go much further than 'here is a guy having a shitty time of it, and it might be cos hes a loser, or it might be cos he isnt' - its pretty single minded, almost dirge-like. its not exactly 5 easy pieces as far as movies about a character having an existential crisis. its not that rich. its pretty monotone. its too blatant about its desire to be miserable.

Five Easy Pieces, a movie about a guy failing in life and fucking up

(don't get me wrong, 5EP is better)

life a life about a guy failing in life and fucking up

Thought the big picture was something along the lines of 60s not being all about peace and love, sometimes they probably sucked pretty bad

when i say small, its cos this is a movie about a guy failing in life and fucking up and... thats pretty much it. i dont see it opening up to much else thematically, or opening up to any other ideas or even challenging the audience that much about this character beyond their patience for unremitting misery. is it a moving character study? yes. is it a complex character study? im not sure. it doesnt really go much further than 'here is a guy having a shitty time of it, and it might be cos hes a loser, or it might be cos he isnt' - its pretty single minded, almost dirge-like. its not exactly 5 easy pieces as far as movies about a character having an existential crisis. its not that rich. its pretty monotone. its too blatant about its desire to be miserable.

― StillAdvance, Tuesday, February 4, 2014 1:37 PM (1 hour ago)

otm. was asked by a friend what inside LD was about (meaning thematically), and i couldn't come up with much but "failure". standing outside your moment and watching it pass you by. walling yourself off from the chance at anything better, perhaps without even knowing it. at the time i felt a bit stumped, as though i'd been seduced by a film that didn't really have much to say, but "having something to say" is crazy fucking overrated, right?

i loved this movie. more than anything else, it reminded me of john huston's fat city, another wonderfully miserable movie about a guy failing in life and fucking up. neither addresses concerns much larger than the protagonist's day-to-day life, and both make that tight and rather modest focus a strength.

felt really lousy abt the cat abandoned in the car tho. did he really hit it on returning? or was that a raccoon or something? i want there to be a movie where that cat is okay.

what train are you waiting for?

I really liked this one.

I kind of find myself with a rebuttal when I've read some stuff written above, but in general, there are a lot of good comments and insight from people here.

Some stuff I can contribute to this thread:

The cat! Llewyn owns very little. So, every thing he does own seems to be much more significant. I'm surprised there is not more talk of the cat. Someone said above that naming the cat Ulysses is kind of pretentious. I think that might've been the case, but, and I think the Coens do this often, they actually don't make the reference obvious til the very end (much later in other films). E.g., we actually don't find out the cat's name is Ulysses till the very end, and then his relationship to the cat is magnified. I know people tend to be put off by academic references in pop culture, unless it's some in-depth study with obvious and strong correlations, but I liked this part of the movie. Anyway. Ulysses, of course, based on Odysseus, tried to find his way back home. Of course, the joke is that Llewyn was never carrying the real Ulysses, but another ordinary cat. So, even if there was a pretentious reference, and I think the Coens have done this often (at least with the literary/academic references I've been able to pinpoint), they make fun of it by kind of being subversive or undermining the importance of Great Literary Allusions (a la Euripedes focusing on the 'everday man'). What's more, if you look closely, they make Llewyn's cat mimic some of his movements (I'm thinking the roadtrip, when Llewyn has the cat on his lap and they both turn; then the hallway scenes), so as to make it more obvious that they really want us to see a connection between the two; as if the cat is kind of like Llewyn's soul. The dark humour in it is that Llewyn never was great. He was an ordinary guitarist and singer. Just like thousands back then and now, as my experience has shown as a (folk) guitarist. He never went on a great adventure like Ulysses did. Ulysses the cat went on his own, far better adventure, but the Coens did not show us that, and they might not have even wanted to. They showed us what it's like to be ordinary, and mediocre, and how there are so many people like this and how sad it is. There is a lot of humour in this movie, but most of it is, 'Hehehe, fuck that's so sad'. I don't know. That's how I see, but maybe because I know so many musicians who are good like Llewyn, because he is good (amongst a sea of good players, where that's not enough). But there's an element of luck to it, which he never finds. And a sense that he was always on the brink of giving up, but I got this probably from the really down-and-out emotional state he was constantly in.

It's one of those films where I've probably read too much into it, so one starts to have a lot of opinions and interpretations about it all.

There is another thing I wanted to point out but I won't to cut this short. But basically, it is the character's obsession with failure. There was a Brazilian writer who wrote a book on how he purposely wanted to fail and ruin his life. It was loosely based on the real life of a political activist who was sent to prison, I believe.

Anyway, good movie.

Also, the obvious 'Llewyn is the cat' phrase.

That reminds me of something I wanted to bring up. Was the authorial intent that Llewyn was supposed to be merely a mediocre folk singer - the movie implies that it's either his lack of will and discipline, or possibly his attitude about "selling out" as the reason he hasn't reached a higher level of success. Or maybe it's just supposed to be a mystery. I wasn't sure about this as I was watching the film. The Coens always have a certain level of detachment in their POV, but I'm less sure about what this movie was doing than their other films.

Besides the end run-around loop where it's revealed that he created the mess he ended up in, how do we know he's actually NOT supposed to be some kind of overlooked talent who had a bunch of bad breaks, was too uncommercial, etc.? Or that you know, he sabotaged his own career by being such an asshole? Your interpretation about his journey being one of mediocrity is certainly reasonable, I will say.

i honestly mainly took the cat (not ulysses, the unnamed one) to simply be a tangible tracker of his ineptitude and general failing

ulysses had a pretty sweet deal getting the hell away from him

i liked it because you can't really tell, like he can't tell, why he can't succeed. he's too serious to do please mr kennedy and too ordinary to be dylan, but i thought he was pretty good. he thinks he's pretty good too but he's in purgatory and can't tell why it isn't ending, whose fault it is; his behavior contributes to his failure which contributes to his behavior which contributes to his failure and he feels like john goodman threatened he'd feel: i don't remember making this bowl of shit.

Was the authorial intent that Llewyn was supposed to be merely a mediocre folk singer - the movie implies that it's either his lack of will and discipline, or possibly his attitude about "selling out" as the reason he hasn't reached a higher level of success.

authorial intent doesn't matter tbh

I forgot to mention The Incredible Journey movie poster in the movie, which, incidentally, was released in 1963, but it takes place in ... 1961?

I'm just recently reading reviews and people's opinions/write-ups on this movie and I guess there are a few theories out there.

With regard to Llewyn's music, I saw him as being a good folk singer, but, like I said above, in a sea of good folk singers where 'good' isn't good enough, especially to sell records and to win over the majority of your audience. There are things such as looks, which we know he doesn't have because industry guy tells him he needs to stay away from the sun, and how he relates to the audience, which we are told he can't, because his songs are too personal. I guess we don't really hear his own music, since he mostly just plays traditional folk songs in the circuit, but that was how you got started back then, and how you built a following until you branched out to your own stuff.

I felt the Coen brothers were having a go at the whole 'white middle-class people singing folk songs is cute' thing by bringing in the group with the matching sweaters on stage. Obviously, this was a real discussion that was had back then; how authentic middle-class kids living comfortably could actually sing about the 'real' troubles of life.

It's funny how people who didn't seem so stressed out about their music were so accepted by the audience, whilst Llewyn, who struggled his entire life and is understood to have sacrificed everything for his music, is not. I think this was just an artistic choice by the Cocen brothers to add more tension and depth to the main character.

Was the authorial intent that Llewyn was supposed to be merely a mediocre folk singer - the movie implies that it's either his lack of will and discipline, or possibly his attitude about "selling out" as the reason he hasn't reached a higher level of success. Or maybe it's just supposed to be a mystery. I wasn't sure about this as I was watching the film.

i think perhaps the authorial intent was that the authorial intent be inscrutable! (see also: most coen bros. films.) or put another way, the intent was to offer a bunch of mostly non-exclusive possibilities and, yes, leave it a mystery. in this case i think the ambiguity grew out of the scenario and wasn't just a pretentious (post?)modernist overlay. i mean, it's often the case that it's hard to say why one musician is successful and another isn't. many many pages of liner notes have been printed pondering just this problem.

the film is warming in my memory, i should see it again.

although i do think the power of the lead actor's musical performances might have closed down some of that ambiguity: we perceive llewyn as an (ack!) "genuine talent," inspired, thoughtful—probably not brilliantly original, but by no means a mediocrity.

i think jackson c. frank might be as apposite a reference as dave van ronk. van ronk was, in fact, an unusually well-known "also run." frank was a genuine obscurity, who wrote one beautiful song with a cult reputation and put out a (let's face it) so-so album before almost legit disappearing.

also RAN

@amateurist

I don't agree that Jackson C Frank's album was so-so. The original 10 tracks on it are solid and really good. He has an amazing voice.

I think what happened is they released his other tunes and that second disc, which he probably wrote in a short time frame and when money and drugs had already taken much of his creativity. You have to remember that he released one album in 1965, then his mental health declined already in 1966. His tragedy was that there was no one to help him and he couldn't help himself. I guess we shouldn't have this conversation on this thread, but I think his weakening mental health was compounded by several factors, though...

I mean, when Joan Baez was doing her renditions of traditional folk songs, most thought her finger-picking was too delicate. People's thoughts on musical aesthetics change, right?

And to make my post relevant, it's like when Llewyn says no one should hear his outtakes and practices. I feel a lot of those Frank tunes released posthumously were that and really shouldn't have been released, especially when all he had was one album out.

Talent, ability and success are not always unconnected, but they are all three entirely separable.

I don't agree that Jackson C Frank's album was so-so. The original 10 tracks on it are solid and really good. He has an amazing voice.

ok, sure. whatever. i don't like it much, but it's not terrible. the one song stands head and shoulders above the rest.

my point was just that llewyn seems headed for an obscurity more pervasive than the obscurity that faced van ronk, who after all released quite a few albums over the years to a loyal if small base of fans.

although i do think the power of the lead actor's musical performances might have closed down some of that ambiguity: we perceive llewyn as an (ack!) "genuine talent," inspired, thoughtful—probably not brilliantly original, but by no means a mediocrity.

Agreed, but the movie's informed by What We Know, and judging Davis means judging him against a certain frizzy-haired guy who, it must be said, sings a perfectly average composition at the end. The film suggests Davis and the embryonic Dylan are a similar state, with possibilities for both, yet Dylan surpasses him.

@amateurist, fair point.

I felt the Coen brothers were having a go at the whole 'white middle-class people singing folk songs is cute' thing by bringing in the group with the matching sweaters on stage.

You mean the Lleywyn-world Clancy Brothers with the Aran jumpers?

^Ugh. Yes! I swear at one point I knew they were based off The Clancy Brothers when I was watching the movie, then somehow the name didn't come to me when I wanted to refer to them. Were The Clancy Brothers mentioned in the movie? I don't remember now.

Don't think the Clancys were named - in dialogue anyway, maybe there were posters or something. Are any real musicians mentioned by name though?

I think when he goes to see that producer in Chicago, I think it's mentioned that he should be in a group or duo act like Peter, Paul and Mary.... or maybe I imagined that

Pretty sure Dylan was named at the beginning?

Clancy Borthers weren't of "middle class" origin so far as I know. they were undoubtedly revivalists, but they were a lot closer to the traditions they revived/revised for a mass audience than was, say, dylan (or llewyn in the film).

i think the fun the coens are having w/ the ersatz clancy brothers is mostly visual—at first it appears like there's a guy with two heads in one sweater. that was one of the funniest things in the movie to me, actually.

they're singing "the grey funnel line," no? amazing song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO3ggC-o6w4

The film suggests Davis and the embryonic Dylan are a similar state, with possibilities for both, yet Dylan surpasses him.

The film suggested that Dylan by that point had already surpassed him. It was the look he gave; I read a fear onto it, and he was exiting the stage for his beating.

@∞ - agree the cat was great, appreciate you looking more closely though the joke does sound laborious!

Rewatching, I think his final cry of his "Grandma Moses" heckle is the key to LD's character: "I HATE FOLK MUSIC!" He hates what it's done to him and his place in it, wants out the whole week the film chronicles, but he has to leave bloody and battered (while the new boy king plays).

The making-of on the DVD is mostly about the music, but some interesting production design etc (they built the big green bathroom Goodman ODs in cuz they couldn't find anything satisfactory).

I'm reading "The Mayor of Macdougal Street" (which is great) and it's pretty fun seeing which parts were adapted into the movie and what the Coens added/subtracted.

I want to see this movie again. My wife won't watch it with me because I told her something bad happens to a cat in it.

I think about this film a lot

I didn't know anything about van Ronk going into it and thus assumed the story was entirely fictional, and Davis was an allegorical representation of emo

TMWWT had the worst use of music in a movie that I can remember :(

― flamboyant goon tie included, Monday, February 3, 2014 6:48 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well acc to the former Mrs van Ronk, aside from his repertoire it is fictional

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, February 3, 2014 6:54 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well that's not true, the whole "going to Chicago to audition uninvited" plot and the Merchant Marines work come from the book. The movie is clearly "based on" the book though they added and changed a significant amount.

The record label guy giving him the nice coat instead of money came from the book too. Not to mention:

http://www.nextmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Van-Ronk.jpg

what i meant was that the former Mrs van Ronk said "my husband was not such a miserable prick"

Oh yeah Llewyn is way more miserable, Von Ronk generally comes across as pretty happy-go-lucky.

Criterion came out last week, seems like the supps are worth it for fans

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/inside-llewyn-davis

Christgau!? wtf

hang me o hang me

i think i could happily rewatch this for the rest of my life and enjoy it every time

"Tell him 'Llewyn has the cat'"
"'Llewyn is the cat'"
...
>:(

bought the regular bluray a long time ago but might just get this again.

anybody want a non-criterion bluray of this in excellent quality?

i think i could happily rewatch this for the rest of my life and enjoy it every time

luckier than llewyn

I dunno, I felt that in other spins of the wheel, things would work out ok for Llewyn - and that darn cat

Noticed the last time I dipped into Shakey that the real Jean (of Jim &...) was one of the inspirations behind "Cinnamon Girl".

i just watched this on saturday! i really liked it. maybe i'm a sap but i felt like llewyn was one lucky break away.

i was flummoxed by "dipped into Shakey" for about 15 seconds

Mo Mo Mo

I contain multitudes

is that what you say in the gar bars

maybe i'm a sap but i felt like llewyn was one lucky break away.

like fusion

rented the Criterion the other day and watched the making of doc last night - all the music stuff was p interesting, looked like it was a lot of fun to make. T-Bone and F. Murray Abraham are entertaining.

Rewatched this last month with my wife, who hadn't seen it (and had become intrigued by Oscar Isaac via Ex Machina and Star Wars). Really enjoyed it, maybe even more the second time. It is very well calibrated, nails a specific mood and tone all the way through. Many good scenes, but I think my favorite is with Jean in the park when she tells him she's pregnant. Her anger and his total failure to disarm it somehow make both of them more sympathetic.

kinda undercut by the end when he realizes it might not have been his kid after all

I did a rewatch recently too, mostly because it didn't really grab me the first time though. Sad to say that it still mostly doesn't; I appreciate and even enjoy it as an evocation of the time and place, but I Llewyn and Jean remain such unpleasant characters throughout that I have a hard time caring. At least John Goodman's character was funny unpleasant.

jean is the best

if Llewyn was straightforwardly sympathetic in any way, this movie would have been AWFUL

If he was sympathetic in any way at all, it might have been better.

He tries to take care of a cat!

I see what you're saying. I'll note it.

still probably my favorite film of the past 10 years

A Serious Man is 10x the movie this is

I mean it's fine but it's a lot of window dressing really

Ya

Liked the trailer better than the film.

Xpost Weeeell... Maybe 5x but, yeah, I feel ya. This was still great fun, though, on second viewing. However, It was a toss up between this and "The American Friend" as a purchase on Blu during this last Criterion sale and Wim won.

by NYC showbiz standards, LD is not all that unpleasant

He's nice enough

for some reason it's Adam Driver's short appearance in this that seems to have stuck with me with this flick.

I liked just about every supporting character and performance--Driver, Goodman, Neelix from Star Trek Voyager--just not Isaac and Mulligan.

I finally did see this and it was the sort of film where I could agree with both a good and a bad review. Ultimately my biggest problem was that it felt weird to make such a joyless movie about such an energetic time and subject. Dave Van Ronk's widow agrees

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/dave-van-ronks-ex-wife-takes-us-inside-inside-llewyn-davis-6440396

I guess maybe if the film was in some more well-trodden setting to begin with, they could get away with making a sort of alternate, purgatorial version of it (like films that take place in the"seedy underbelly of the hippie era" or whatever). But here it just seemed bizarre. The film is barren - it's as though there barely even is such a thing as the "folk scene." Where are all the buskers and late night hootenannies and people going to each other's gigs in succession?

I dont look to the coens for versimilitude

Yeah for sure. But usually I feel like they are more working within some kind of period/genre expectations and playing with them, and Greenwich Village 1961 seems like a weird place to do that and I didn't get any sense of what they were playing with. In fact the whole thing felt unusually dreary and not playful by their standards. The deadpan humor didn't really land.

coens have been joyless for so long

idk, the joylessness fit with llewyn's cynical beaten-down character, since he's our guide through this world. he's not gonna go mix it up where the fun & action is, he would hate that scene (and would have burned all his bridges there anyway) . he can barely tolerate the open mikes at the Gaslight!

but i am a huge stan for this movie so :)

it's thru a Coens prism, and i'm sure there was misery in folk cuz showbiz

Phil ochs seemed p miserable

Its a movie about authenticity

The Wanderers also closes with a young relatively unknown Bob Dylan playing (I think) the gaslight, but it has sort of an opposite significance to it - suggesting that the character may leave behind the greaser gang life and become a folkie or something more expressive. Whereas for Davis I guess it signals, idk missed opportunity or the fading of his dim star or something. Wonder if maybe it was deliberate given The Coens tendency to reference other cinema.

Dylan in this = the Tornado in "A Serious Man"

(xpost) Wow, that's a film I'd completely forgotten about--saw it on release, never since.

I'm kind of a Stan of that movie, actually.

Dylan in this = the Tornado in "A Serious Man"

haha yes, awesome

^^^

Yeah that's great

For some reason it took me a while to think of what "Please Mr. Kennedy" was a reference to, but I'm almost sure it was this, at least in part (although it didn't come out til 1964):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZGr6nQRLNc

finally watched this film and yeah, Dylan was the tornado for sure

I think the underlying cynicism made me really believe that the Coens don't really give a shit about folk music and it was just the backdrop for their story -- how cynical is it to do that, when a lot of the scenes involve performance!

also Eric was otm about the one-two punch of passing Akron and then the cat magically reappearing

I felt bad for the cat, but really, it was more of Llewyn grasping for a way to help followed by a "fuck you, Llewyn" as the cat kind of limps off into the woods. That cat was fine. Llewyn doesn't help anyone, and everyone gets by just fine without him.

I kinda doubt they wd've immersed themselves in the milieu to the degree of making this film w/out significant interest in it.

there's a different between interest and enjoyment imo

I feel like coen bros enjoy folk music more than paul thomas anderson enjoys fashion or scientology.

fair

Just watched this again, because it rules, and I could not help but view it as like a quasi-Buddhist companion piece to A Serious Man's Jewish absurdism/existentialism.

In ASM, all the misfortunes that befall Gopnik are random vicissitudes, but in this, almost everything bad that happens to Llewyn is karmic, the results of his own bad choices. There are so many specific little setups/payoffs with this--telling his sister to throw out the box of stuff and losing his seaman's license as a result, waiving royalties for the Mr. Kennedy record and being told later that it will probably be a hit, and of course getting the shit beat out of him for heckling that dude's wife. The circular structure = the wheel of samsara.

I love how many scenes there are of him just sitting down and performing an entire song. It never feels like an interruption, and it meshes with the themes above: each time this happens, he gets outside his own head and experiences a little moment of transcendence and mercy.

Inside Llewyn Davis is one of those films where every time I read a post like zchrys', I get an itch to rewatch it again.

otm

Included in a haul of albums given to me a couple of months ago--a co-worker's father died; they go way back--were a lot a folk albums, a few of them quite obscure. This one, from 1963, made me think of Llewyn's solo album.

https://img.discogs.com/jxuRmLJkvrGjwlZ_7QNnS1gzxBs=/fit-in/600x586/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4851226-1586188264-1089.jpeg.jpg

Required a bit of detective work, but same guy! So in case you were wondering, Llewyn quit the business and went on to write action/adventure thrillers.

http://www.amazon.com/Alex-Lukeman/e/B000APYA0G%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

The Amazon link led me to Alex Lukeman's website, which had a contact e-mail, so I figured "Why not?"--thought he'd enjoy hearing that someone had stumbled onto his album 57 years later. He e-mailed back this morning, very polite, but with an aside that "Just to be clear, I'm not Llewyn, thank God. You might want to correct the impression left in the thread." He mentioned an article written by Terri Thal, Dave Van Ronk's wife, who also was his manager.

https://www.villagevoice.com/2013/12/13/dave-van-ronks-ex-wife-takes-us-inside-inside-llewyn-davis-2/

Missed that at the time--sounds like the movie is not a favourite with contemporaneous participants.

Which I can understand but doesn't affect my own enthusiasm for the film; I don't think I ever thought much about its accuracy, or placed much importance on that.

thanks clemenza - fascinating read.

rewatched today

def one of my favorite cold weather movies: whenever i think i’d like to go somewhere where it snows i watch this & remember that cold snowy weather sucks when you have to drive in it & walk around in it

that voice piece is interesting but most of her issues with the movie (too depressing, everyone is mean, no one seems to love music) seem to be coming from a place not understanding that its all being reflected through the POV of the main character, a mean depressed person whos sick of music. also this:

The music? It’s done well, but the movie never shows how it comes about. The inept Llewyn Davis arranged some of those songs? Sang them as well as Oscar Isaacs does? I don’t believe it. That schmuck couldn’t make that music.

she really never met anyone in the music business who was talented but also a dumb jerk?

to think this was our first taste of Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren's rivalry

This surely can't be coming up for nine years old, fuck that.

Now I think on it Llewyn's bleak odyssey to nowhere resonated a lot with my own personal wilderness era which I was still very much in at the time. Trudging around to places I didn't particularly want to go in order to try and feel like I was doing something to dig myself out of a rut I'd been trapped in for years at that point, listening to Bookends on a loop while waiting for trains in the bitter cold in that horrible winter of 2013.

I can't find it after all this time but I'm sure I read the weirdest wrong take where someone thought the woman in the folk club Llewyn heckles was supposed to be June Carter-Cash(!) based on the fact the guy in the alley that beats him up looks a bit like Johnny(!!).

I can't even begin to get my head round the sheer impossibility of that being the case even in the context of largely fictionalised narrative, the idea that a well-known country singer, who had that point had always played with either her family group or as part of her husband's band, would for some reason be schlepping round doing solo spots on the New York folk scene, looking about twenty years older than she would've been at that point, is so absurd it's honestly bothered me for years. I kind-of want to find that person and ask them what they were thinking.