O Coen Brothers, Where Art Thou?

I apologize for my long silence. All my fingers were chopped off in a croquet accident this weekend and I had to wait for them to grow back. Or something. Also, I actually did write a long post, but it can't go up until Thursday for a very good reason.

There's another "long term blog project" that I've been working on - no, it isn't figuring out how to make the damn thing look decent. I am writing a post where I attempt to rank the top 50 Simpsons episodes. This is mainly just an excuse to make myself re-watch every Simpsons episode from seasons 2-10. In Season 4's "Brother From the Same Planet," Milhouse and his some other kids are planning to sneak into an R rated movie...

Milhouse: It's called Barton Fink!!


This is one of the better Milhouse episodes altogether (coupled with the "trab pu kcip!" bit later), but I haven't completed my ranking yet, so I'm not sure if it ends up in the top 50. Meanwhile, watching it did remind me that long ago I intended to see Barton Fink, but never got around to it. This quickly led to me looking up what the Coen Brothers are doing in the future - they've got some fantastic things coming out.

No Country for Old Men just showed at Cannes, and I like the reviews of it - if it is similar in tone to Blood Simple, then I'll be an excited man. Simple was the first Coen movie, which I saw in film class years back...huge fan of it, despite them not having developed their style yet (nor having yet discovered their "Steve Muse-chemi".


Burn After Reading....look at that cast! And we don't know anything yet about Serious Man or Hail Caesar...but I'm interested. Meanwhile, I just netflixed every Coen Bros film that I haven't seen yet - Barton Fink and Ladykillers.

I don't talk about movies much...largely because in general they mean less to me than music and TV shows, strangely. The way in which audio impacts me more strongly should be obvious from things I've said, and television speaks more to my collector's impulse...to either follow characters or a continuing grand narrative arc, to see every episode of a show I've decided to follow. Movies are just there...and I know a lot of people for whom the uniqueness of their experience makes them all the more cinephiles. But for me it just means that I don't feel like anything is missing if I don't go to the theatre to see the newest release. There's certainly a lot of movies that I'm very glad I have watched, but I don't have an itch that needs scratching if I don't. But remembering Fargo and Big Lebowski and Blood Simple and Hudsucker Proxy...I have an itch now.

Here's what music I've been listening to lately:

- Cee-lo Green Is The Soul Machine: To say I'm a Cee-lo fan would be an understatement. Especially after that turn on the Brak Show....The Art of Noise with Pharrell is an amazingly uplifting song, with more legs than anything off of Gnarles Barkley's debut album (although I fervently hope that he and Dangermouse keeps it going).

- Tio Bitar by Dungen. New release, Swedish psych/prog-rock. Listen to the song "Familj" on the avclub's review

- Mirrored by Battles. Crazy shit. I don't know how to describe it, read pitchfork.

Speaking of which, they have a new song available to download from the New Pornographer's upcoming album. I am not entranced by the song as I am most of their stuff, but I have a lot of faith in them, so we'll see.