|  Oh
Brother, Where Arth Thou?
Starring:
George
Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Chris Thomas
King, and Charles Durning
Directed By: Joel Coen screenplay
Ethan Coen
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The Soundtrack OLD
REVIEW OF FILM (NO DVD CONTENT) Bluntly
speaking? Oh Brother is no general crowd pleaser. I think
maybe 100 people, including the casts' families, saw the darn thing. But for the
few who like Indie, small, dare I say different films, without conjuring up thoughts
of that whack-job Eraserhead, OBWAT is a must see. OBWAT
is a throwback to the old days of filmmaking. There's not one special effects
blow-em-up scene, no glamorous high - faluten sets, and the cast is far from pretty
or handsome (even George Clooney - a thought till now - unthinkable). It's just
a few good old interesting, calm, characters portrayed by expert actors tossed
into an intelligent script based on a classic, The Odyssey. The ironic part is,
for all its simplistic looking scenes, the film's cinematography has been completely
altered via a new fandangled procedure so it'll "look" like the "Dustbowl
Era" - brilliantly brownish (Sepia) - almost surreal.... The
story is simple... Loosely based on the "blind" prophet/poet
Homer's Odyssey. You know that one...The journey with the mythical creatures,
The Cyclops, those beautiful sirens etc. The same, yet updated, fable is our premise
and is thrown right smack in the way of our hero, Ulysses Everett (George "Aging
like a 600.00 bottle of wine" Clooney), on his off-beat path home. Three
chain-gang bound prison men, the silver tongued, hair-out-of-place phobic U.Everrett,
(Clooney), simple angry Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and plain old simple, Delmar
(Tim Blake Nelson) bust out in search for treasure buried in a valley that's to
be flooded in a couple days time. If
they make it there's enough bounty buried in the muck to change their mediocre
lives forever. Each has their own motive for financial redemption. But, before
they can sail into these stashed funds they'll have to get past some dapper, dandy
characters. Would be foils, friends, and chance meetings, that list like my niece
and nephews Christmas list. There's a traveling musician hell-bent on success,
hoodwinking politicians even a political midget - pre Bush era! The boys even
brush up with bonifide public enemy with the flat-footed cops on his trail. A
real loon. Don't want to forget the less-than-holy bible salesman, large and cycloptic
(John Goodman). They
have one hell of a journey... The
cast is made up of some of our finest acting talents adrift in smallsville movieland.
George Clooney, who besides being one of the finest looking mansteaks in the window,
is a real "movie star." The Clark Cable kind. I'd be his Carol Lombard
in a nano-second! He is at once sell-your-soul-to-the-devil handsome and razor
sharp with the wit. A perfect manly combo, if you ask me. That fella just gets
sweeter with age. I would love to lick till I got to his center- just once! Then
they've added the actor's actor John "never do wrong" Turturro.This
man is truly a chameleon. He's always sporting that madman intensity, can't see
him at high tea...But that's just his "look." The
third stooge in the OBWAT pot is Tim Blake Nelson, a relative "new
comer" to the fore mentioned heavy hitters - and he does mighty fine. Tim's
a writer and director to boot...no dumknee. Sure,
OBWAT is completely surreal at times, unbelievable at others. But, these
actors breath such life into the people they inhabit, you'll barely be able to
look away. It's thoroughly enjoyable. So
don't get all scared it's a PBS mini-series-bore-a-thon that's going to brow-beat
Greek history into you, with references to the seventeen letter God's and so forth,
let me just remind you of the men (screenwriter and director) behind it - The
Coen Brothers, Ethan and Joe, famous for Fargo. They gave the three boys
caught up in all the mayhem their words; especially the quick versed Ulysses Everett
(Clooney). His banter is filled with clever enthralling words delivered with seemless
ability. Not
everyone's going to enjoy this slower paced character driven story think Grapes
of Wrath (Henry Fonda version) meets It Happened One Night, meets the
Three Stooges - and they're all looped up on Prozac. Snack
Recommendation: BBQ Gopher, carefully sautéed in Dapper Dan hair creme
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