Yesterday the Toronto Film Critics Association chose Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis as their Best Film of 2013 and handed their Best Actor award to Oscar Isaac. In so doing the TFCA behaved like mature, reasoning adults who don’t fart around with industry politics or callow, fly-by-night sentiment…unlike those greatly respected members of … Read more
The National Society of Film critics has given its Best Picture prize to Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis — the second reputable group (after the Toronto Film Critics Association) to see through the melancholia and stand up for this brilliantly sardonic mood-trip whatever. At the same time the NSFC blew off Martin Scorsese‘s … Read more
Writers Guild nominees were announced today, and once more (in the wake of yesterday’s Producers Guild nominations) the screenplay for Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis got the back of the hand. Original Screenplay noms: American Hustle, Blue Jasmine, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Nebraska. Adapted Screenplay noms: August: Osage County, Before Midnight, Captain Phillips, … Read more
The Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced their feature film and long-form TV nominees about an hour ago, and most of their ten movie noms are right-on. They actually included the brilliant but heavily besieged Wolf of Wall Street! Cojones! But there’s a problem with (a) Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis being blown … Read more
Eight days ago The Atlantic‘s Tim Wainwright delivered the most arresting and insightful analysis of the Inside Llewyn Davis cat dynamic that I’ve read so far. “The theory that the cat is an extension of Llewyn also helps put the ending of the movie in context. When Llewyn leaves the Gorfeins’ for the second time … Read more
For nearly two years I’ve been arguing against the thesis that Oscar Isaac‘s hapless folk singer in Inside Llewyn Davis is more or less based on old-time Greenwich Village folk singer Dave Van Ronk. And yet pretty much every movie journalist on the planet has gone along with the party line, largely because director-writers Joel … Read more
If the members of the New York Film Critics Circle have any balls at all (which of course they don’t), they’ll follow the lead of the Gotham Awards and give their Best Film of the Year trophy to Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis, a desaturated, somewhat morose but note-perfect, chiselled-to-perfection masterpiece that people … Read more
For a good portion of ’81 I was living in a sublet on Bank Street west of Hudson, almost exactly opposite HB Studios. The rent was around $350 per month. (Or so I recall.) The sublessor was a 40something guy who lived in Boca Raton, Florida. The landlord, who knew nothing of this arrangement, was … Read more
I for one can’t wait to see the Showtime airing of “Another Day/Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis” on Friday, 12.13 at 10 pm eastern, 7 pm Pacific. The original taping was at Manhattan’s Town Hall on 9.29. Produced by T Bone Burnett, Inside Llewyn Davis director-writers Joel and Ethan Coen and … Read more
Today’s announcement of the full 2013 Toronto Film Festival slate confirms what I was told and reported on 8.5, which is that three presumed Telluride Film Festival headliners — J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis and Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska — will not make the trek to Toronto. No one … Read more
This film gets better and better the more I think about it. A legendary work always does this. Initial viewing yields high pleasure and satisfaction but you’re not quite levitating. Then it kicks up the next day. Two weeks later you’re telling everyone you meet about it (even cab drivers). Two months later it’s really … Read more
I did a 25-minute interview with Seduced and Abandoned James Toback in his Carlton hotel room this morning (to be posted later), and around 12:45 pm I attended a fairly exclusive Inside Llewyn Davis luncheon and round-table session. Joel and Ethan Coen, Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, musical director T-Bone Burnett, director of photography … Read more