coen bros vs. tarantino

This is a pretty tough poll. Coens' highs are probably higher, but Tarantino is awfully consistent. Crimewave >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From Dusk Til Dawn or True Romance though.

Much prefer the Coens just in terms of their basic sensibility. (I suppose I'm one of those people who finds Tarantino's sensibility a bit garish and hollow.)

that's a weird criticism - both could conceivable be accused of opting for "style over substance", and both make ridiculously reverential genre excercises that are filled with film trivia nudge-nudge-wink-wink sorta stuff.

conceivably

I thought that was a pretty common criticism of Tarantino's sensibility!

coens, by a mile

also I assume we're talking strictly about films both have written AND directed...?

in that case the Coens' probably win just by virtue of having written and directed more movies. altho Tarantino hasn't written/directed anything half as shitty as The Man Who Wasn't There or that stupid divorce movie or Burn After Reading

I thought that was a pretty common criticism of Tarantino's sensibility!

I know I'm just sayin you could level it at the Coens too - particularly for stuff like Hudsucker Proxy or Miller's Crossing

also, while there are some examples of hollywood directors who still have that auteur thing going (woody allen, lynch, etc.) - I think what puts tarantino and the coens in their own category is that they're the only ones who have done it in the 90s/00s w/ a pretty constant level of mainstream popularity

I'd pick Lynch over everyone tbf

Oh man I loved the Man Who Wasn't There! And you love the Hudsucker Proxy?!?!

also I assume we're talking strictly about films both have written AND directed...?

no - vote on their entire filmographies

i vote for the tarantino bros

Oh man I loved the Man Who Wasn't There! And you love the Hudsucker Proxy?!?!

haha yes

QT 4ever

also I assume we're talking strictly about films both have written AND directed...?

so... we're including Natural Born Killers and Destiy Turns on the Radio...?

sure

xpost - Oh, and to address the other half of that point: maybe I'm not enough of a film buff to really pick up all the winks, nudges, and references in the Coen's movies, but they don't really scan as super-formal to me, or so insistent on a certain aesthetic; stylized, yes, but they seem significantly more varied and human, the style feels more flexible and curious and less attracted to garishness. I dunno, that's just my feeling as someone who doesn't know a ton about film. So I don't really locate that issue with both Coens/Tarantino -- it feels really pronounced in the latter and I don't much notice it in the former.

I really liked Burn After Reading, actually, partly for reasons having to do with that "human" thing

i think brad pitts best performances have all come in movies written and/or directed by these dudes

What else has Pitt been in other than Burn After Reading and Inglourius Basterds?

i think these dudes find it easier to get financing for their movies if they call up brad pitt and ask him to be in it and he's never been the best thing in any of their movies (xpost)

apparently he was in true romance!

xp

What else has Pitt been in other than Burn After Reading and Inglourius Basterds?

True Romance

true romance!!!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxp

d'oh!

Morbz favorite Pitt role, iirc

i think these dudes find it easier to get financing for their movies if they call up brad pitt and ask him to be in it and he's never been the best thing in any of their movies (xpost)

― batch-posting microscope-toting joyless rock critic motherfucker (some dude), Friday, August 21, 2009 4:15 PM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i buy this--but even so hes great in burn after reading and IB and true romance, and otherwise i pretty rarely dig him

coulda used a none of the above option tbh

the 'none of the above' option is 'go play in another thread'

i like him in 12 monkeys, fight club, assassination of jesse james...come to think of it he's usually really funny and good

Anyway I think Coen's reference points are pretty bludgeon-y too, they just have a slightly less exhuberant way of bludgeoning you with them (nerds vs. dorks, amirite.)

Pitt is v v funny in BBR, i'll give you that, but there are soooo many actors who the Coens have brought out the best in more frequently

er BAR -- thought of it as "burn before reading" for a sec haha

sure but pitt comes to mind as a guy whos worked well with BOTH subjects of this thread

which is why i brought it up

u feel me

Still thing the best thing about BAR is Sledgehammer and Schillinger trying to figure out WTF is going on.

felt (xpost haha yes totally)

trying to think who else has worked with both --- Buscemi, definitely

one of the things I like about the Coen films is the balance between character as genre reference/signifier and character as person, such that when the bad things happen to them that are genre conventions, you also feel bad for the character. I don't get that from Tarantino films. They just feel so pre-digested, with their strong points being lines one can quote with one's friends.

James Gandolfini was in TR and TMWT

one of the things I like about the Coen films is the balance between character as genre reference/signifier and character as person, such that when the bad things happen to them that are genre conventions, you also feel bad for the character. I don't get that from Tarantino films. They just feel so pre-digested, with their strong points being lines one can quote with one's friends.

I think that this is true - but at the same time I feel like PF/RD/KB would actually be worse movies if he actually made them more...humanist?

Jackie Brown doesn't fit this trend, also...

Paul Thomas Anderson shoulda been in here, too, for the writer/director edition of the Mexican Standoff.

I really love both QT and the Co.Bros. Together, they've put out some of my favorite movies of all time. And each time I think "No, definitely _______" I think of another part of another movie and I can't make up my mind.

The Coens take it, based on Miller's Crossing, Lebowski, Fargo, O Brother, and No Country for Old Men.

xp iatee: they'd definitely be different movies ... I think Jackie Brown is probably the film of his I like best, though most of them don't do much for me.

yeah I was actually thinking PTA would probably be the closest thing to a 3rd '90s/00s hollywood auteur w/ mainstream success'

but nobody was gonna vote for him anyway, so

Certainly no one should have.

Glad someone else said this ^^^

wouldve voted paul w.s. anderson

i like a lot of the coen bros movies but i never really love them theyre probably more "consistent" than qt but i like his best movies a lot more

The only Coen brothers movies I really "love" are Raising Arizona and Barton Fink.

yah miller's crossing cums pretty close 4 me but qt seems way better @ crafting imgs that settle inside me and stick around esp w/ jackie brown and res dogs

I've only seen half of the Coen Brothers movies. I've seen most all of the Tarantino films

Much prefer the Coens just in terms of their basic sensibility. (I suppose I'm one of those people who finds Tarantino's sensibility a bit garish and hollow.)
― Isabella Cup (nabisco), Friday, August 21, 2009 7:58 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark

Hollow in that his garishness has become a one trick pony who hasn't changed but instead has found new ways to specialize in his one trick. The word I use to describe all his movies is pulp. Pulp like the majority of designs on threadless.com that might look good as clipart but I wouldn't be caught dead wearing them. Coen brothers gets my vote.

it boils down to tarantino not being my thang

I think he's just overgeneralizing.

the coens dont have contempt for all of their characters but they certainly have contempt for a lot of them. tarantino seems to like everyone in his movies.

i'm not convinced. plenty of their characters come across as unsympathetic, but their flaws are recognizably human. a lot tarantino's characters are more recognizable as archetypes than as humans.

The Dardenne brothers. Furriners don't count right?

James Gray.

Wes Anderson. PT Anderson. Roy Andersson (damn, there I go again).

as I said upthread: they're the only ones who have done it in the 90s/00s w/ a pretty constant level of mainstream popularity (and PT Anderson comes closest but not really)

The Dardenne brothers. Furriners don't count right?

L'enfant had a script?

Seriously ppl, ALMODOVAR

Claire Denis

Manoel de Oliveira (at age 102 or whatever)

tempted to go with tarantino even though the coens' career is richer because the coens have already (occasionally) moved into the joyless nihilism of late-period auteurs and I have a hard time imagining Tarantino ever getting that sour.

would definitely take the coens first six movies over qt's, though. and i'd be surprised if i liked inglorious more than lebowski.

and putting frances mcdormand in everything >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> putting quentin tarantino in everything

woah sorry for the ee cummings homage

(IB SPOILERS)

quote from other tarantino thread got me thinking w/r/t the earlier conversation here about tarantino and violence

The other moment in the movie that I'm probably the most cinematically satisfied, where it's exactly the way it was in my head, and I almost can't believe that it got nailed to such a degree was the sequence in the projection booth, between Shosanna [Melanie Laurent] and Frederick, the music, the slow motion, the effect of the camera coming up and seeing this almost twisted Romeo And Juliet tableau on the floor, as the film reel continues to go on and they manage to still be alive, even though we see they're dead and they live on in film, I... - I'm sorry, I don't mean to get enraptured in my own fucking work, but (laughs)... That is the moment that I go 'Oh my god!'.

vs.

this is just an explanation of exactly what I'm talking about, so I'm not sure what your thrust is. One movie does something as a kind of offhand joke, the other uses something similar as a much more human/meaningful point. (I can't think of much violence in a Tarantino film that seems meaningful or human, as opposed to just a formal point, a convention of violence.)

first quote summarizes tarantino's perspective on movie death/violence super-well, I think! which is, basically: 'these are characters in a film - as such, they are more immortal than real life people. if they happen to die in the movie, you don't have to get emotionally involved...' - this happens a lot in IB - most of the hero Basterds get killed and the movie gives practically zero weight to that.

the emotional weight / humanism of the films is always in the dialogue rather than what physically happens to the characters. like, first scene in IB - the moment where they actually shoot at the floor is possibly the least affecting part of the scene.

'meaningful' violence/death is the cheapest/easiest narrative tool. (wanna make a movie sadder? have a good guy die at the end.) so it seems weird to critique him for toying w/ alternative paths.

i did think that in IB it was interesting how most of the tension and pathos revolved around whether the nazis were going to get what they deserved, and not what happens to the protagonists. pretty much every one of the good guys was on a suicide mission at the end and that was never even discussed.

(sorry, more spoilers i guess)

these are characters in a film - as such, they are more immortal than real life people. if they happen to die in the movie, you don't have to get emotionally involved...

yeah, this is precisely what I mean about violence in his films seeming like a formal point -- a convention of the medium, to be played with -- more often than it seems to refer to the world or to violence itself, or even to have a sort of purely narrative weight. I don't object to that on any huge moral grounds, and it's not uninteresting, but it does often present to me as garish, in his hands. I don't know how articulate I can be about it, but it winds up feeling (to me) a bit like a comedy built entirely on antic mugging and slapstick. (which is probably not the best analogy, given that Coen films do so much stylized antic mugging and near-slapstick!)

in that case I think we're on the same boat w/ your first sentence and w/r/t *what* tarantino's doing, we just have different responses to it

yes, totally -- that's why my first post was like "I'm one of those people who don't go for it," etc.

btw I'm not super-deep in the Coens' catalog but I have never read their style or writing (or their love of stagy, stylized goons and grotesques) as being misanthropic or contemptuous toward the characters; it usually feels more to me like they're genuinely (maybe even generously?) interested in these very-exaggerated types, and enjoy peopling a world with them alone. (I would feel different if the films tended to present a straightforward good/normal type wandering around among goons and fools, but they seem pretty egalitarian on this front.)

also: I'm surprised so much of the talk in this thread is about BAR (I guess cause it's the most recent)

imo the best comparison point would be Big Lebowski

w/ the Coens I really think it depends on the character/film. BL is a good example of them genuinely liking basically all their crazy characters, BAR is a pretty good example of the opposite.

^^^ otm

yeah, but its not like the crazy characters are jerks or at least they're not defined as crazy against the more relatable norm characters, in BAR, the general assholishness of all the characters doesn't grow out of their oddness but both are symptomatic of the world they're interested in creating. maybe?

actually I think BAR is the perfect example of crazy characters 'defined as crazy against the relatable norm characters' w/ the CIA guys shaking their heads and wtf-ing

CIA guys were kinda crazy too iirc

crazy in the 'lol CIA so serious' sense, but they were clearly the perspective that you were supposed to relate to, no?

they were casually and off-handedly disposing of bodies and sorting through murders like it was watercooler conversation -- I don't think we were meant to experience that as good or normal or super-relatable!

No choice for Sylvia Plath?

or, well, let's not even get into the "meant to" part -- I'll just say I certainly didn't. possibly I had a minority reaction to that movie in general, but I didn't find it to be contemptuous toward those characters at all; they all have their charms, and I think there's a scene somewhere where the viewer is probably going to empathize pretty deeply with each of them.

unless that viewer is Shakey Mo

the only guy I really felt any empathy for was the hapless gym owner that gets shot at the end. since he was the only character who wasn't a completely self-absorbed, dangerous moron. I guess there was a bit of empathy for Malkovich as well but his insane bitterness made that a little difficult.

it's true, the Jenkins character is the one who's a huge cut above in decency, which in this context makes him seem practically saintly.

there's a larger thing I want to say about how characters like these operate, but I'm not sure how to get at it. I guess I do find it somehow human and sympathetic to take certain types of characters and exaggerate them in this way -- e.g., yes, the way you relate to Malkovich's predicament but he takes it to this grotesque level of insanity, or the way you can really relate to the fact that McDormand wants her surgeries, but her single-minded determination goes from seeming kinda admirable to being this small-minded shallow thing that brings down everyone she meets. so I never feel like the characters are being played as awful, contemptible human beings, just ... highly exaggerated ones.

a lot of their characters (Coens) seem like people out of weird-but-true news stories, like the Taco Bell finger lady.

xpost - (which seems like a common thing with Coens -- people with these small human needs or characteristics, stylized and exaggerated, that come into conflict in ways more dramatic than the smallness of the original thing would suggest. I usually like that, especially in some of the common types they use, like the small determined person who plods around single-mindedly after one specific thing, or their whole love of happy-go-lucky charming smooth-talking types.)

imo the only way I feel tarantino "loves" all his characters is the way a imaginitive 8 year old "loves" his action figures

is that supposed to be a critique?

elmo otm.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

sheesh.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cXJpYUj3CY8/RoFODYxIrkI/AAAAAAAAAp4/p42I2IFqjT4/s400/0626_tarantino_toes.jpg

I think I forgot to vote, but I guess it didn't make much a difference.

how many minnesota natives are on this site again?

784

today we are all minnesotans

Saw the new Coen trailer today, looked promising, ie nothing like the work of a puerile foot-fetishizing masturbator.

oh man, not a masturbator!!!

on film, I mean.

haha

'a serious man' v 'inglorious basterds'?

serious basterds

good question. the big jew movies.