Beautiful Shiloh Doesn't Care

Anton Chigurh: What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: Sir?
Anton Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: I don't know. I couldn't say.
[Chigurh flips a quarter from the change on the counter and covers it with his hand]
Anton Chigurh: Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Call it?
Anton Chigurh: Yes.
Gas Station Proprietor: For what?
Anton Chigurh: Just call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Well, we need to know what we're calling it for here.
Anton Chigurh: You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.
Gas Station Proprietor: I didn't put nothin' up.
Anton Chigurh: Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?
Gas Station Proprietor: No.
Anton Chigurh: 1958. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
Anton Chigurh: Everything.
Gas Station Proprietor: How's that?
Anton Chigurh: You stand to win everything. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Alright. Heads then.
[Chigurh removes his hand, revealing the coin is indeed heads]
Anton Chigurh: Well done.
[the gas station proprietor nervously takes the quarter with the small pile of change he's apparently won while Chigurh starts out]
Anton Chigurh: Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.
Gas Station Proprietor: Where do you want me to put it?
Anton Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.
[Chigurh leaves and the gas station proprietor stares at him as he walks out]


What's going on in the Coen Brother's "No Country for Old Men" (A) is an exploration of moral codes. Well, firstly, it's a Western in the classical sense, because it's set in a time and place (Texas in 1980) where the landscape was starting to change, both physically and morally. Secondly, it's a Horror film in the sense that Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is as unstoppable as Jason from Friday the 13th-he even looks like him. And it's a Horror film in that the new world that Chigurh inhabits and thrives in is not a world that Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by no one other than Tommy Lee Jones.) wants to maintain order in.

The story, in brief: Llewelyn Moss,(Josh Brolin) a man less polite company than I would be tempted to call, "Tornado Bait", stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug exchange gone bad near the Texas-Mexico border in 1980. (Trust me, the date is important.) He tracks down the last man standing and recovers two million dollars from this fellow's dead body. That night, worried about leaving any loose ends, he heads back to the badness to make sure no one else saw him. (And in an act of -guilt, perhaps? He brings a jug of water with him to quench the thirst of a Mexican man dying in one of the trucks.) Sure as shit, Moss' conscious trumps his common sense, and a 4x4 with a couple of gunmen show up right when he does. This sets a chain of events in motion which brings up Chigurh in search of the money that Moss has taken.

Where it differs from your standard "Where's the money?" type thriller is in the way the characters interact, and behave according to their values. Moss' values not only destroy him, they destroy his wife. Sheriff Bell comes to realize that a world with people like Chigurh in it has no place for him. Or, to be more precise, given that his values dictate that he place his life in defense of others, death at the hands of someone like Chigurh would make his sacrifice worthless. Then there's Chigurh...

Chigurh is not evil: he's a person who knows that eventually the choices he makes will kill him, and until then, he will continue to live and to take risks until such a time as his choices lead to death. That he is a killer is secondary to the fact that he allows chance to bring him to his destinations, and allows the universe to guide him. He is the ultimate bad ass in that he is incapable of stopping because that would limit his choices. He is a killer because no one can stop him until they stop him forever (illustrated by the random car crash at the end of the movie), and at that point it hardly matters.

He is a human being without fear, who makes choices without fear and lives through their consequences. He is alive because it is not his time to die. Moss doesn't understand this, and pays the price: his initial survival should have been enough to prove to him that the gift Chigurh offered wasn't idle: he respected Moss' ability to choose enough to allow him to save his wife's life, and rejecting that was essentially making the wrong call on the coin. When Chigurh came for the wife, she died most likely because of her refusal to choose. "I got here just like the coin," he says when she tells him that he doesn't have to do a thing he'll do - he lets chance guide him, and his actions are the call of the toss. He may never lose, but he always chooses.



Stardust (B+) It's a fantasy adventure for people (and by people) who hate fantasy adventures. Which puts it closer into 'The Princess Bride' territory than 'Harry Potter' territory. There's a Terry Gilliamesque 'Time Bandits' feel to it as well. On paper, it's got the all the standard fantasy tropes; schlub (Charlie Cox) wanders into magical world, finds Pixie Dream Girl (Claire Danes, sportin' a pretty good British accent), goes on trip through magical world with her back to England. Meanwhile, both an evil witch, sorry, I mean, Evil Witch played by Michelle Pfeffer, and three Evil Princes are on the warpath for the Dream Girl.

Pretty good, especially since director Matthew Vaughn keeps original writer Neil Gaiman's Very British Whimsy in check with the asides and throwaway gags. ( Transformed girl looking in awe at her new cleavage, dead princes popping up to groan in disbelief, etc.) Robert DeNiro has a cameo as an effete flying ship captain which is okay, but I can't help thinking someone like Stephen Fry would've been a better casting choice.



Hot Rod (C+) Affable dumb comedy by the 'Lazy Sunday' guys. It works only because of the random bits of business they throw into the film. (Deliberately cheesy 80's soundtrack, random Asian guy-named Anderson?- throwing flyers around, then dancing for the camera.) Mindless and fun.

Sadness pile in a Failure Bowl...

Patton Oswalt -Feelin' Kinda Patton/Werewolves and Lollipops -(B) Geez, is it weird hearing the voice of Remy, the cute little rat from that Pixar movie utter the phrase, "Chapped, Battered Pussy"...or is that just me? He's in the class of stand-up comedians that perform in music clubs, like David Cross and Zack Galifianakis. Y'know, "Edgy" comedians. (On a tangent here, why is it all those guys wind up at some point in their set, have to deal with a drunk, giggling female audience member? Why is that, ladies? Why do you feel the need to throw back a couple o' cosmopolitans and start screeching at the comedian? We came to see them, not you.)

Anyway, this review is gonna be kind of useless if you're not familiar with David Cross' standup act. (He's that bald dude in Arrested Development and that chipmunk movie, about which horrible things are about to be said, but enough digressing...) Him and Oswalt (and Galifianakis, and Chris Rock, and-oh, shit. Did I say enough with the digressing? Oh, well.) are influenced by Bill Hicks, the current saint of stand-up. That is, they put some genuine social commentary in their act. This is opposed to dimwits like Larry the Cable Guy ('Ah hates them sand niggers!') and Dane Cook ('I fucked me a drunk sorority girl!'), who just aren't funny.

Oswalt's pretty close to Cross in terms of his standup, except Oswalt doesn't come across as snide as Cross does. This is kinda important, as one of the rules of standup, even if you're Andy Kaufman, is that in order for the audience to like you, you've got to let them know that you like them. Cross tends to come across as sneering as a defense mechanism, which tends to alienate him from an audience. Case in point, on his website with Bob Odenkirk from Mr. Show, he wrote a defensive screed about his recent appearance in 'Alvin and the Chipmunks'. (Here you go.)

Cross' tirade is annoying, simply because he's responding to a concern that only affects him. Does he hate himself this much? Does Cross think we care about where his next job is coming from? We might, if he was crass enough to use his white-trash 'Ronnie Dobbs' character to pimp out Popeye's Fried Chicken. But that's not gonna happen. Actually, the original impetus for that blog was an offhand comment by Patton Oswalt about turning down the role on 'Alvin', and having Cross 'intercept' it. It's more a case of a social faux-pax of airing your private business in public by both Oswalt and Cross than a test of one's artistic integrity.

But back to Oswalt. His main strength is in surfing along the tide of the entertainment machine, and pointing out the absurdities in being part of the system. He manages to do this without descending to Cross' level of bitterness, and actually finding some good cheer in the most bizarre of circumstances. ('As I stared mournfully at the meal table at the Batman Begins premier, not eating because I wanted to be trim and thin like the stars are, Brian Dennehy, like an avenging angel, appeared at my side. 'Character actors, huh?', he exclaimed, tucking into the tasty fare. 'No one gives a fuck if we're fat!')

Bonus feature: America has spoken!

On 'Werewolves and Lollipops', Oswalt has a bit on KFC's 'Famous Bowls', where he points out how degrading it is that a major fast food chain's most popular feature is their 'Famous Bowl'. That is, a bowl with chicken bits, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cheese...all piled into a single bowl. He even went so far as to review it for The Onion's A.V. Club, here. Intrigued by his scathing review, I proceeded to try one of these things for myself. At first, no luck. We don't seem to have 'em here in Canada- most KFC's are paired up with Taco Bell, and the menu seems to be limited. Finally, on a trip to Edmonton, I lucked out. Sunday, I had me one of those things, chuckling to myself as I ordered, in Patton Oswalt's words, "The failure pile in a Sadness bowl". What, you may ask, is my take on it? Was Oswalt spoiled by all those years of fine dining? Would it beat out Curry Chicken with rice as my new favorite hot meal in a hurry?

People, it was so bad, I couldn't finish it. It is the literal definition of the word, "Glop".

This easily ties the Swanson's Hungry Man Breakfast as the worst thing I have ever eaten. For starters, the food in the bowl was grey. Grey potatoes, grey gravy, grey chicken, grey corn, grey cheese. Grey! It was hot, salty, and greasy. Like Oswalt, my cheese all melted together in a great, greasy, grey lump. I took one bite and put it aside. I got about a third of the way in and had to throw it away. Even the smell started to gross me out. If I had eaten it at home, that smell would've lingered around my place for about a week like a messy suicide. It was the type of meal that if you had fed it to a child molester/murderer in prison, he would've sued for 'cruel and unusual punishment'. And won. I guess my earlier prediction about 'fifty-nine cent Crudburgers' isn't too far off, then.

Guns 'n Drugs...

The Brave One (C-) It stars Jodie Foster, and it's directed by Neil Jordan-the 'Crying Game' and 'Michael Collins' guy, so you'd think you're getting an adult look at Foster's character dealing with the overwhelming emotions that come with being a victim of a brutal random assault. What you're actually getting is "Death Wish" for the NPR crowd. There's the shred of a good movie buried in here, esp. with Terence Howard's portrayal of a detective with a strong moral core, but in the end, it just pusses out. I realize that's an odd statement regarding a movie which shows a tiny, middle-aged woman coldly shooting young men, but there you go.



Breaking Bad (A) I didn't want to write about this series on AMC until I'd seen enough of it to figure out whether it was going to stay on the tightrope or fall off. I've maintained earlier that black comedy is the hardest genre to work in, as if you go far enough in one direction, and you're too distanced from the story to invest any further interest - like the movie, 'Wag The Dog', for instance. Head too far in the other direction, and you fall into the same pit the final third of 'Fight Club', did. (In that case, by the time the Narrator had come to his senses, so to speak, his attempt to redeem the actions of Tyler came across as fake as a death-row inmate's twelfth-hour confession...)

Breaking Bad (the not-great title refers to the American Southwest phrase of going off your rocker.) is the story of Walt White, (Bryan Cranston, the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) meek New Mexico high-school chemistry teacher who has what could be called the worst. mid-life. crisis. ever. See, not only is Walt having to work at a car-wash to make ends meet, and having his former triumph as part of a Nobel Prize-winning research team mock him, and factor in the fact that his much-younger pregnant wife and cerebral-palsy stricken son regard him as kind of like a bigger version of the family cat, but as the series starts, Walt, a life-long non-smoker, has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Well. Where your average show would handle this plot point with tearful speeches from friends and family members, poignant piano solos on the soundtrack whilst Walt gazes meaningfully into the distance, and warm-hearted reassurances from the screenwriters, Breaking Bad is not that show. Our boy Walt proceeds to 'Break Bad', and quit his job at the car wash, meet up with an old student whom he failed, and begin a partnership with the young lad that involves cooking and selling meth. And who better, you may well ask,to turn this stuff out than a Nobel Prize winning chemist. As the series progresses, schlubby Walt goes from repressed nerd to bald-headed bad ass who uses mercury fulminate to gain the upper hand in negotiating with a local big-time drug dealer. (I especially love how the show treats Walt's understanding of chemistry like a comic book hero's super power.)

Where it works the best in maintaining that balance I mentioned earlier, is in it's even-handed treatment of Walt, especially the restrained performance that Bryan Cranston gives. He goes from awkwardly begging the cashier at the oncology clinic he's being treated to not cash his check until Monday, to gleefully pounding his fists on his steering wheel over intimidating the above drug dealer to his fifty-thousand dollar payout. Actually, the series is full of awesome moments of dark comedy:

-Walt's new 'business partner' Jesse attempting to reconcile with his estranged parents, only to get kicked out again after his mom's maid discovers a joint in his room. (The joint actually belongs to Jesse's over-achieving younger brother, who thanks the outed Jesse for taking the rap.)

-Walt's hyper-macho brother-in-law Hank, a DEA agent, taking Walt's son, Walt Jr. to a hotel parking lot to show off the low-lifes and give Jr. the old nostrum about how 'Dope is for dopes'. Walt Jr. is truly bewildered at Hank, as neither one knows it was a joint from Walt which prompted this intervention.

-The White family meeting where Walt's family confront him about his reticence regarding his dealing with his cancer. It devolves into Walt's wife taking over the meeting and nagging him to get chemo. (I should point out that Anna Gunn, who plays Walt's wife Skylar, pulls off her role without becoming bitchy or shrewish.)

-Walt's giddy fantasies about seducing a college student with his masterful lecture on bonding molecules. He even imagines himself with the flowing locks of a paperback romance hero. (We later see this dream student is in fact, his former partner's wife, and the series hints at a previous affair between the two. She'll be back...)

-Walt's family car, a Pontiac Aztek, the setup and punchline when it makes an appearance.

On whether the series can maintain a consistent tone, my prognosis is good. My only worry is that with Hank sniffing around closer and closer to Walt, what'll happen if Walt's cancer goes into remission?