Skip to main content

Now&Zen: The Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski

 Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Stece Buscemi, John Turturro, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Dir. Joel&Ethan Cohen, Polygram, 1998


What can I possibly say about one of the great cult classics ever, certainly among my favorite movies of all time? I can, and have, devoted New Yorker-length writeups to other favorites such as Do the Right Thing and The Godfather, but those movies are not the Coen Brothers' late-'90s slacker noir. In their usual genre-demolishing way, the Coens pay tribute to the spirit of Raymond Chandler with an LA-set mystery in which, at a certain point, neither the mystery nor its solution hold the least interest for an otherwise-rapt audience. If that solution seems obvious to some early on, by the time it arrives they may not even notice. In that moment, John Goodman's bodyslam of David Huddleston usually has me convulsed in mirth rather than resolution. Besides, what's resolved in the end is what was established at the beginning: The Dude is the man for his times. He fits right in there. The Dude abides. Just as zen simply is, what else can be said? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Junkie-fatigue: Taylor Hackford's Ray

 Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Terence Howard, Warwick Davis, Curtis Armstrong. Dir. Taylor Hackford, Bristol Bay/Universal, 2004 Jamie Foxx, nominated for both Supporting Actor and Best Actor at the 2004 Academy Awards, won Best Actor for Ray and, watching Ray tonight for the first time in about 15 years, I'm glad it went down that way. Tom Cruise gave a career-best performance in Collateral, for which Foxx received his Supporting Actor nod. It's a great performance, too, but no moreso than Cruise, ignored by the Academy, so it feels right to me that Foxx got his statuette for the movie where he didn't share the spotlight with a star of Cruise's magnitude. Not that it would make much difference if Foxx had some high-voltage costar in Ray, because the movie simply doesn't exist without Foxx and his essay of Ray Charles. Not unlike Coal Miner's Daughter, the other music biopic whose star picked up a Best Actor, Ray occurs from Ray's point of view, so ther...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cuck Fiction: Charles Vidor's GILDA

 Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George MacReady, Steven Geray. Dir. Charles Vidor, Columbia, 1946 My favorite erotic fiction deals with cuckolding. The stories fascinate me. As people, cuckolds don't seem to think they're worth nice things. Or happiness. On the other hand, the cuckolding partners and their multiple lovers don't come over as the clear victors, either. Part of the fascination - maybe most of it - lies in trying to decide which party comes out the MOST degraded.  Is it the submissive, sensitive husband and his unsatisfactory size/staying power? Is it the "slutwife" who finds satiety in being transformed into a fuckdoll to humilate her husband? Or is it the lover - often black - who gets to degrade the sexy white lady but who doesn't otherwise matter? As in bdsm scenes, if the cuck is most degraded, that means he also "wins," as his desires to see his wife turned into a promiscuous slut while he gets to be bi without shame are most fulfi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Obligatory TL;DR Statement of Purpose

 A not-so-brief explanatory note as to how this blog works: I can't recall a time when movies weren't my passion, my compulsion, my addiction. Ever since my parents took me to see Disney's Bedknobs&Broomsticks, I've been hopeless. Born in 1967, I grew up with free range parents. They took my brother and me to all kinds of movies, often using Hollywood as a babysitter. We saw movies about which many parents today would cluck their tongues (though nothing R-rated until I was 12. My first R-rated movie was MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN.) Though my parents were professionals and we grew up affluent, our home saw its share of dysfunction. Dad was in the house, but not often present. Mom, stressed and disappointed at discovering her marriage wasn't an equal partnership, took out her frustrations on me.  Without getting too far into the weeds, let me just say my adult life has been far from typical middle class stability. I've never had a career. Never finished ...
3 comments
Read more