"Fargo" becomes a minii-series

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

First, I like the movie quite a lot. It's my favorite Coen Brothers film. However, I o think both it and the Coen Brothers are very overrated. My mother, who can appreciate a good film, slammed Fargo into her VCR years ago while home one day, and came out thinking it was at best, okay. Nothing that couldn't have been done on television. I liked it got it, and by far the most interesting thing to me was not the pregnant cop, buut Jerry Lundergaard as a character. He was in way over his head, and William H. Macy really did a fantastic job playing this conflicted character. He was the movie to me. Buscemi did what he always does. I don't think the female cop was as brilliant a character as everyone thinks. My main reason for thinking this is that a lot of people think it's fantastic that she picks up on clues and was able to solve this little mystery by herself. True, but everyone who was involved in the case, from Lundergaard to Chepp Proudfoot to the kidnappers - they were all morons. The Coen Brothers took a lot out of the satisfaction of the film by making the people in the film stupid as hell. I like films about smart people. That's just my opinion.

Anyway, the teaser trailer for the miniseries is at this link:

HERE

 

[JirinPanthosa]

First of all, Fargo was based on true events.

Second of all, you're approaching the film as a crime procedural. The point isn't that the pregnant cop was a brilliant detective. She was just a competent professional doing her job correctly. The point of the film is that the events escalated to multiple murders over a relatively small amount of money by individuals who were only plotting an extortion scam and believed that they were so clever that they could beat the system and plausibly get away with it.


The Coens are responsible for about six of my hundred favorite films. But if you judge Fargo the same way you would judge CSI you're missing the point. The Coens expect their viewers to be detached from the characters.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

First of all, Fargo was based on true events.

Absolutely.

 

[Velocity]

Yah!

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

First of all, Fargo was based on true events.

Second of all, you're approaching the film as a crime procedural. The point isn't that the pregnant cop was a brilliant detective. She was just a competent professional doing her job correctly. The point of the film is that the events escalated to multiple murders over a relatively small amount of money by individuals who were only plotting an extortion scam and believed that they were so clever that they could beat the system and plausibly get away with it.


The Coens are responsible for about six of my hundred favorite films. But if you judge Fargo the same way you would judge CSI you're missing the point. The Coens expect their viewers to be detached from the characters.

I liked the film. I did. I just thought it was overrated. To hear Siskel and Ebert talk about it is just proving my point. So the Coens put dialogue about the kid going to hang out at McDonald's because it makes the character seem more realistic - that didn't make the screenplay any better. The film gets heaps of praise for simply being good. I got the fact that it was about the escalation in death toll, and all of that. The acting was good. But it just wasn't a great film. It wasn't challenging. It wasn't all that powerful. It was just good. We live in a time where so many films are cinematic diarrhea (or just guilty pleasures) that a merely solid film is given heaps of praise. Now every time I watch it, I can only notice its flaws. How shallow and unchallenging it actually is. There is no brilliance in the scene where Buscemi is merely making conversation talking about the Twin Cities, or that his partner "has peed twice." You want to see a good Buscemi performance that you might not have seen before, check out "Twenty Bucks" where he has similar (but much better scenes) with Christopher Lloyd. The other thing is that, for all the praise Fargo gets, it really didn't say anything. I didn't have to watch it to know that the world basically sucks, that there are more scumbags on this planet than decent people. It examined these things by "not" examining them, and it left me cold. The aforementioned Twenty Bucks had some neat things to say about what each person values, and how they can change.

And I'll say this about No Country... that film sucks. I guarantee that if anyone else in Hollywood delivered that film other than the Coens, it would be considered trash.

 

[Reverend]

Yah!

Sure!

 

[J.T.B.]

There is no overrated or underrated, individuals just like movies or don't like them. Some people like to watch movies about characters, and if the character are interesting enough don't care so much about the plot. The Coens have specialized in focusing on characters, especially odd, off-beat or unlikeable characters, and often depict them in ordinary, incongruous or non-plot-related moments. Personally, I've liked most of their movies a lot, but it's not a taste everyone has.

A lot of people liked Fargo, it has 94% at RT (as does "No Country"). But if it's not for you, it's not.

ETA: Even though I love Fargo, I've always thought it was a little weak in explaining where all of Jerry's embezzled money went.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

If I recall correctly, it's still hiding in a snowbank next to that long fence.

Let me clarify I liked Fargo. It's, overall a solid movie. But it has been heaped with praise to make it seem like more than that. It's not a great film. It's a compentantly-made film that runs the clock through 90 minutes. I would give it the praise Siskel and Ebert had given it if it was a student film, maybe.

No Country for Old Men was awful. Don't let anyone fool you into falling for how "philosophically profound" it is. It's just bad. I mean Chigur couldn't find the guy but somehow Woody Harrellson (who does nothing in the film and serves no purpose) shows up at his hospital bed with flowers. What?

 

[UUS Contrarian]

No Country for Old Men was awful.

For that it would need bad acting and cinematography.

 

[J.T.B.]

No Country for Old Men was awful. Don't let anyone fool you into falling for how "philosophically profound" it is. It's just bad. I mean Chigur couldn't find the guy but somehow Woody Harrellson (who does nothing in the film and serves no purpose) shows up at his hospital bed with flowers. What?

I get that you think it was awful, but I wasn't "fooled" into thinking it was a brilliant film. It is quite obvious that it has a fairly substantial figurative/allegorical dimension; I appreciated it, you didn't, but one POV is not foolish.

Carson Wells (Harrelson) got lucky because Chigurh had to break off pursuit after he had been shot. The purpose of the character IMO was, first, to show the complexity of the forces trying to find the money. Second, the fact that he seemed quite competent but was fairly easily dispatched by Chigurh served to heighten the danger of Sheriff Bell going up against Chigurh.

 

[Shik]

First of all, Fargo was based on true events.

EXTREMELY loosely. It was the murder of Helle Crafts that did it. It's important because it signaled a use of DNA evidence before OJ & its current use today; Richard Crafts was convicted on tiny chips of bone & tooth near man-made reservoir Lake Zoar. This happened in Newtown, where the school shootings were a little over ayear ago (sort of; Sandy Hook is a southern section of Newtown) & is the area I grew up in. I remember all the press, & the dad of a friend of mine knew Richard Crafts well; he'd done a magic show for their kids at a birthday party when he (the friend's dad) first set up his business.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

danger of Sheriff Bell going up against Chigurh.

Please! Didn't happen! Bell did not go against him. At no point in the film was one of the three mains on screen with another one of the three mains in the same frame. In this case, Bell walked into a room where Chiguhr was hiding, but that barely counts.

This film was so wrapped up in being so "daring" that it wound up being just plain being boring, stupid, and nonsensical, where stupid characters have stupid conversations (green hair) and make stupid decisions while taking part in a series of events that barely qualify to be labelled a story.

 

[J.T.B.]

Please! Didn't happen! Bell did not go against him. At no point in the film was one of the three mains on screen with another one of the three mains in the same frame.

No kidding. But at the point in the movie you were talking about, the viewer does not know that.

This film was so wrapped up in being so "daring" that it wound up being just plain being boring, stupid, and nonsensical, where stupid characters have stupid conversations (green hair) and make stupid decisions while taking part in a series of events that barely qualify to be labelled a story.

We get it. You don't like the movie, and love to let people know it.

 

[HIjol]

"...boy, that tru-coat...!!!"

 

[CorporalClegg]

Go Bears.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I'm... cooperating. I'm cooperating here!

 

[HIjol]

"

 

[HIjol]

Go Bears.

...not sure if that was it...

...how about,

"...sad faces, painted over with those magazine smiles...headed out for somewhere...won't be back...for awhile...

Ann and Nancy Wilson, twins on the Pleasure Planet Risa...

...deleted scenes: content...

 

[Starkers]

I’m not the greatest Cohen Brothers fan in the world. I’ve never understood the hoo-hah about the Big Lebowski, and The Man Who Wasn’t There did such a good job of creating a man with no personality that I ended up not caring. Fargo though, Fargo’s brilliant on just about every level. Funny, unique, heartrending, touching, disturbing, and the fact that so many people die pointlessly just makes the story all the sadder. From people who just happen to be driving along the wrong bit of road at the wrong time, to Buscemi who’s killed because he argues about a fucking car when he’s got a shed load of money stashed somewhere else... I’m not sure Macy or McDormand have ever been better.

No Country For Old Men I’m less sure of. It’s a very good film, but I found it jarring when the focus shifted from Brolin to Tommy Lee Jones, in particular the fact we don’t see Brolin’s final shootout caught me off guard. Of course in hindsight I realise the film isn’t about Brolin, it’s about Sheriff Bell all along, but it did leave me feeling a little short changed. That said it has three stand out scenes, all involving Bardem. The scene with Chigurh in the gas station is one of the tensest things I’ve ever seen, even though the gas station attendant gets lucky, and the scene with Chigurh and Woody Harlson is almost as good, because we know he’s going to kill him, but waiting for him to do it is agonizing. Then there’s the final scene with Kelly Macdonald where she refuses to play his game.

I’m vaguely interested in the FX series now I realise it’s only loosely based on the film.

 

[Shik]

I’ve never understood the hoo-hah about the Big Lebowski

Never understood? Fuuuck ME. ...I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos.