Posterized: Coen Bros

An Asian remake of the Coen Bros' debut Blood Simple hit theaters this weekend. It's called A Woman a Gun and a Noodle Shop. So let's mark the occasion of their first remake (unless I missed one?) with a look back at the peaks and valleys of the Coen Bros. They're consistently interesting filmmakers and often inspired (see Robert's 'Directors of Decade' column) but have you seen their whole filmography?

Here we go...

Blood Simple (1984) | Raising Arizona (1987) | Miller's Crossing (1990)

Barton Fink (1991) | The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) | Fargo (1996)

The Big Lebowski (1998) | O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) |
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

Intolerable Cruelty (2003) | The Ladykillers (2004) | No Country For Old Men (2007)

Burn After Reading (2008) | A Serious Man (2009) | True Grit (2010)

How many have you seen? How would you rank them? It's a pretty consistently fascinating filmography, percentage wise. Well done, Joel and Ethan. Do you think Oscar was correct to focus mostly on Fargo for the 90s and No Country for the Aughts? And am I the sole person alive who wishes Holly Hunter were nominated for Best Actress for Raising Arizona in 1987 instead of Broadcast News?

I'm getting more curious about True Grit (2010) as we near its release. That Carter Burwell evening I attended helped stoke my interest and then of course there's the cast and general quality of their filmography to recommend it, trailer unseen. Perhaps I should read the novel. Have any of you read it?
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Posterized: Peter Pans

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. You remember it well, I'm sure. She was dragged from her bed to watch an intimately staged performance of the new play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. As the play ended and the music soared, she walked right onto the Neverland set filled with fairies and crocodiles and pirates which had miraculously sprung up in her own living room. And she kept on walking right into her own spotlit afterlife. Well that was how it happened to Kate Winslet as Sylvia in Finding Neverland at least. They took some liberties with the timeline for the movie.


Davies was survived by her five sons, who had of course served as inspiration for Peter Pan. The author JM Barrie, a close family friend, all but adopted the boys after her death, as they'd lost their father three years prior to her passing.

So for today's Posterized, in tribute to the Davies boys and their mum, let's glance at the various film incarnations of the story of that boy who never grew up.

Peter Pan (1924) | Peter Pan (1953)

Hook (1991) | Peter Pan (2003) | Return to Neverland (2004)

Those are the only five "authorized" screen versions of which P.J. Hogan's 2003 version is the winner (not that the silent feature and the Disney movie don't have their moments. The less said about Hook the better.) The 2003 version is so undervalued, appropriately fantastical and is also (relatively) true to the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy which was expanded from the stage play and is how most human beings knew the myth until Disney got a hold of it of course.

The Lost Boys (1978) | Finding Neverland (2004) | Neverland (2003)

There are numerous unauthorized versions and reinterpretrations (the most recent of which, Neverland, I included above), lots of animated version from other countries as well as two films specifically about JM Barrie and his relationship to the Davies family which star Ian Holm and Johnny Depp respectively. I wasn't a fan of Finding Neverland (2004) but someone sure was; it won 7 Oscar nominations including Best Picture.

I haven't seen that Ian Holm production but I'd love to hear from anyone who did. I had no idea that existed and I find it very odd that that means that Sir Ian Holm has played not one but two famous authors who had much discussed relationships with other people's children. He also played Alice in Wonderland scribe Lewis Carroll in Dreamchild (1985) which is about Alice as an older woman remembering her youth and her friendship with the author. I guess Ian Holm has been cast as an eccentric writer more often than that even. He's also Bilbo Baggins and played strange scribes in Joe Gould's Secret and Naked Lunch. Funny how actors get in those weird casting grooves.

How many versions of Peter Pan have you seen?
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Posterized: Dame Emma Thompson

Okay, so she's not a Dame yet. Shut up. It's only a matter of time!

Nanny McPhee costar Maggie Gyllenhaal at Emma's star ceremony
for Hollywood's Walk of Fame earlier this month.

Nanny McPhee Returns is on 2000+ of the nation's screens but I probably won't be seeing it. Remember two days back when we discussed what we were always looking for in a movie? One of my answers should have been beauty. I am not a beauty fascist in real life but I suppose I am at the movie theaters. Hollywood's great actresses should be immortalized with key lights, flawless makeup and evening gowns. Movie stars are supposed to be fantasies... our idealized selves. That's why Old Hollywood still has so much appeal. The studio system understood this. I like beauty on my silver screens so I really don't want to see Emma Thompson -- who can be just ravishing (see Much Ado About Nothing. I mean, my god. She's breathtaking in that movie) -- made to look purposefully hideous.

Anyway... her career in posters.

The Tall Guy (89) | Henry V (89) | Impromptu (91)

Dead Again (91) | Peter's Friends (92) | Howard's End (92)

Much Ado..., Remains of the Day, In the Name of the Father (93)

Junior (94) | Carrington (95) | Sense & Sensibility (95)

Intermission. In early 1996 after five Oscar noms and two wins (acting & screenplay) and several arthouse hits, the screen career seems to slow down. She was only 36. It's difficult to say what caused this. A listers sometimes just volunteer for that and if so who could blame her? Her first six years of fame were crazy huge and chaotic.

<--- Emma with her husband Greg Wise at the premiere of his most recent movie in 2009

Consider... She was 30 when fame hit. The first six years of fame were bookended with her wedding and then divorce from Kenneth Branagh (also often her director and co-star) and the movies were iconic arthouse titles. And then there's that stellar 1993 wherein she won the Oscar in the spring then appeared in three more arthouse smashes, two of which she was Oscar nominated for. [Tangent: If you ask me I think Much Ado... is the best of those three '93 performances -- even if it's the least of the three films -- so it figures it's the one she was snubbed for.]

Or maybe it wasn't an intentional break but maybe the offers just started to dry up? The cinema is sometimes nonsensical like that. This is also the time period in which she and Greg Wise, the dangerously good-looking man who breaks her screen sister Kate Winslet's heart in Sense & Sensibility, fall in love. They've been together ever since and were married in 2003.

The Winter Guest (97) | Primary Colors (98) | Judas Kiss (98)

Wit (01) | Angels in America (03) | Love Actually (03)

Mike Nichols to the rescue with two acclaimed pay cable movies that reminded fans what a sensational screen presence she is.

Imagining Argentina (03) | Nanny McPhee (05) | Stranger Than Fiction (06)

Brideshead Revisited (08) | Last Chance Harvey (08) | An Education (09)

not pictured: Pirate Radio (09), two Harry Potter films (04/07) the current Nanny McPhee sequel and a few cameo parts or voice roles.

How many have you seen? Is it odd that she's not in the last two-part Harry Potter film (I can't remember if that character is in the last book)... or if she is, that they aren't crediting her since she's not listed as being part of the cast? And don't you wish she'd have more plum parts again? She was so moving in Last Chance Harvey but it was one of those sacrificial December lambs needlessly disposed of during the year's busiest month. When I rewatched Angels in America a few weeks ago, I was reminded what a glorious comic personality she has. She's the best of both worlds, really, able to wear both of those iconic thespian masks. She sells comedy and tragedy with equal inspiration.
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Posterized: Michael Cera

I'm still giggling about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World which I saw this morning. I loved the comic book and I was pleased that Edgar Wright was so skilled at keeping the comedy zippy.

Wallace: The L Word
Scott: Lesbian?
Wallace: The other L Word
Scott: Lesbians ?

My review is coming soon but in the meantime, shall we discuss Michael Cera's movie career. This is it, in posters. Before he came to real fame with Arrested Development, he did have a few movie roles, usually as children such as in the Dennis Quaid /Jim Caviezel time travel piece Frequency (2000). But I'm picking up where the classic sitcom left off.

Arrested Development (tv, 03-06) | Superbad (2007) | Juno (2007)

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (08) | Extreme Movie (08) | Paper Heart (09)

Year One (09) | Youth in Revolt (09) | Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (10)

How many have you seen? And isn't it peculiar that the posters are almost all the full body type? I guess you need both arms and legs for maximum slapstick lolz. I thought he was pretty great in Juno (and thought he made a fine Scott Pilgrim) but I know he has many haters, too. Especially due to that Arrested Development Development Hell.

Posterized Sissies

Let's talk Sissy Spacek. My friend Matt has been highlighting her something fierce over at Pop Matters, but why should he have the Sissy all to himself?


The great actress, everyone's favorite telekinetic murderess, is finally in a buzzy film again (Get Low opens today). And though I don't much care for the new movie, it's always nice when a frequently absent major actress wins Oscar buzz and praise again.

She's a big name but what does that name mean to today's moviegoers? For people born in the late 80s or 1990s, maybe her stint on TV's Big Love comes immediately to mind (Emmy nominated this year). But I'm guessing if it's not the cross-generational popular Carrie, it's mainly In the Bedroom that takes over the imagination: Sissy breaking plates, Sissy slapping Marisa Tomei, Sissy taking weird drags on her cigarette that manage to be both furious and catatonic simultaneously. How can they be both at once? She's a mysterious but vivid actress in her best work.

For those who lived through the 70s or 80s, the name will probably conjure multiple associations. Her filmography has a smattering of daring side dish classics but the main course is an oversize portion of middlebrow Oscar bait. To extend the food metaphor, that stuff can often taste healthy but afterwards... where is the nutritional value? In the long run aren't so many "prestige films" filled with empty calories? Her filmography also has intermittent weird gaps. And, unless I've got my dates wrong those gaps don't really even coincide with the births of her daughters (which is when many actresses take their long breaks). What happens in these gaps? It's almost as if Sissy gets an enigmatic closeup and then bolts from the cinema as enigmatically as teenage "Holly" abandons home in Badlands.

Oscar nominations are in bold.

Prime Cut (72) | Badlands (73) | Ginger in the Morning (74)

Note: Sissy worked with the brilliant art director / production designer Jack Fisk on Badlands and they married the following year when they were both still in their 20s. She's one of those rare actresses, like Meryl Streep, who has been married for almost the entirety of her fame to the same man. Another association. The two actresses are but six months apart in age and both became essential screen icons in the 1970s and won their first Oscars just one year apart.

Carrie (76) | Welcome to LA (76) | Three Women (77)

The underseen Three Women is one of Robert Altman's very best films. It's completely mandatory viewing for fans of Ingmar Bergman's Persona (an influential before) and Mulholland Dr (an influenced after). It's the middle link in that brilliant women-fused-together dream chain. Sissy disappears for a few years right after. And then...

Coal Miner's Daughter (80) | Heartbeat (80) | Raggedy Man (81)

Missing (82) | The River (84) | Marie (85)

Note: Such a star in the 80s she gets top billing over... Mel Gibson.

Violets Are Blue (86) | 'night Mother (86) | Crimes of the Heart (86)

The pinkish tone of the last two posters. They're screaming "GIRL MOVIES!" Not that we don't love girl movies, mind you.

It's too depressing to continue from there. Sissy's last two characters in 1986 were suicidal. Maybe the actress saw the 90s coming? After Crimes of the Heart, for which she was Oscar nominated, she disappears for four years until a series of movies crop up in the early 90s like The Long Walk Home (1990) that are well intentioned but don't go anywhere or did go places (JFK, '91) but didn't need her to get there. By the late 90s she'd been shoved into the supporting classes, from which she never really returns as headliner, but for her last classic, In the Bedroom. She collected a few trophies that year until the late surging Halle Berry (Monster's Ball) trumped her on Oscar night.

Here's three must-sees from the last twenty years of her filmography (though not always for her presence).

JFK (91) | The Straight Story (99) | In the Bedroom (01)

That's the first 15 films of her career (excluding extra work in a Warhol picture) and 3 more still. How many of those 18 have you seen?

And what would you like to see Sissy do next? Some of you have suggested in comment threads that she'd make a great Violent in August: Osage County whenever that becomes a film. She wouldn't be a bad choice for it at all, though one assumes Hollywood will want Meryl Streep to do it since they want her to do everything. As should be painfully obvious The Film Experience loves Meryl Streep, but some of her contemporaries sure could use her the big break of Streep passing on a choice role.

Exit music: Remember when we mentioned Streep's son being a fine musician? That's another thing the two actresses have in common. Here's Sissy & Jack's singer songwriter daughter Schuyler Fisk doing "From Where I'm Standing". Pretty voice, right? You can totally see Sissy in her. It's that lank sunkissed hair and those awesome cheekbones.

Bob Fosse, Posterized

Today would have been Bob Fosse's 82nd birthday if he hadn't smoked and sexed himself to death while choreographing dirty musical numbers and flirting with angels of death in Nineteen-Seve... oh wait, I'm thinking of Joe Gideon, his All That Jazz altar ego. Fosse died of a heart attack at 60 in 1987. He's best remembered today as the most important choreographer of the 20th century this side of Martha Graham, totally affecting everything that came after him. But he was also a brilliant film director and in the realm of cinema he rarely gets his due. When great actors die young they often become legendary. When great directors die after just a handful of movies, not so much... especially if they made their mark in the musical genre.

Fosse acted and danced in other movies but these are the six filmed entertainments he directed. All are worth seeing and two are among the greatest films ever made.

Sweet Charity (69) | Cabaret (72) | Liza With a Z (concert telefilm, 72)

Lenny (74) | All That Jazz (79) | Star 80 (83)

How many have you seen? If the answer is less than six, do yourself a huge favor, and put them on your rental queue. Have a Fosse completist festival at home. You won't be disappointed. And maybe you'll even wonder why he's not lumped in with the biggies when people talk about the great 70s directors. I know I do.

I like Rob Marshall's Chicago (2002) just fine but it's hard not to think about what Fosse's version would have been like. And if they do remake Damn Yankees like they keep saying they will, will they keep his awesome choreography, or chuck it and go with unskilled dancers in the big roles?

God... it's so great when you can see entire bodies in dance scenes.
Almost no filmmakers understand this anymore.

If you've seen all of Fosse's films, why not a double feature of Damn Yankees! (1958) and All That Jazz. Think about it: In the former you can watch Fosse and the legendary Gwen Verdon together (like in the scene above) and then in the latter you can watch Roy Sheider and Leland Palmer pretend to be them, acting out their very difficult relationship with Oscar calibre aplomb.

As a takeaway please enjoy Bob Fosse doing a minute of Fosse-isms in 1953's Kiss Me Kate.



Incidentally, that musical was in 3D. I actually saw it in 3D the very first time I saw it at a special showing in the 80s (there was a mini 3D fad ... i think it lasted about a year and half round about 1984 or something?). I'm reading that 3D might die out again and am crossing my fingers that history repeats itself. I like my movies flat. The best performers burst out of the screen in multiple dimensions anyway. You don't need glasses to witness those miracles. Now if only they'd give me film grain back... if anyone ever tries to clear the grain from Cabaret it won't even remotely be Cabaret, you know?
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Adrien Brody, Posterized

Oscar winner Adrien Brody is back in theaters with Predators (i.e. Predators 5: A Reboot??? I don't know. I don't follow these things) and it arrives so shortly after his last sci-fi effort Splice... why not feature him? We never discuss him and isn't there plenty to discuss. As in WTF with his career? I can't include all 35 movies so I thought we'd pick up just where things got interesting.

Though he's had his share of straight to DVD or barely released indies over the years, he actually started off with quite a few classy projects with the likes of Steven Soderbergh (King of the Hill) and Francis Ford Coppola (New York Stories). He reportedly expected Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) to be his film-carrying breakthrough but Malick's film was so fluid in the telling that many famous actors were entirely deleted in the final cut and Brody's part was drastically reduced. The film ended up being a breakthrough showcase for Jim Caviezel instead. Though really, let's be honest, the star of all of Malick's movies is Malick himself.

But Brody's reputation as a quality actor was growing all the time and acclaimed directors like Spike Lee, Barry Levinson and Ken Loach were next...

Summer of Sam (99) | Liberty Heights (99) | Bread and Roses (00)

Love the Hard Way (01) | Affair of the Necklace (01) | Dummy (02)

The Pianist (02) | The Singing Detective (03) | The Village (04)

The Jacket (05) | King Kong (05) | Hollywoodland (06)

Darjeeling Limited (07) | Brothers Bloom (08) | Cadillac Records (08)

Giallo (09) | Splice (10) | Predators (10)

Summer of Sam (1999), an undervalued Spike Lee joint, was a minor turning point, wasn't it? It was impossible not to notice him, his fine performance being all tautly tangled up in spikey punk hair and lanky sex worker physique (Why was everyone surprised by the muscles in King Kong and then again in Predators? Collective amnesia.) His mainstream peak was obviously mashing on Halle Berry when he won the Oscar for The Pianist in spring 2003.

But since then...

Dire choices? Lack of support from the right people in Hollywood? Bad luck? The stars not lining up correctly? Drifting interest (I'm sure all the modelling pays well)? Or are things going just fine... no cause for alarm?

How many have you seen? And, aside from The Pianist, what's your favorite in from his Brody of work?

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P.S. Because it's so funny, let's end with BRODYQUEST [thanks, Nick]


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James Dean, Posterized

Since he only starred in three features, I thought that James Dean would be the easiest "Posterized" episode, a fill in on a Friday when I was short on time. But because I can never leave well enough alone, I had to make this one complicated, too. Here's three sets of posters for his three classics East of Eden (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956).

What a batting average, eh?

I think these are original release posters (?) Might be wrong. Tough to find dates to coincide with poster designs. But note that the book was actually the initial selling point of East of Eden and that Dean was only top billed once (for Rebel).

Reissues and such. Note how Dean takes over.

And a few foreign versions for fun. I find it quite interesting that Sal Mineo gets to pull focus on the Italian poster (photo src) but then he does have the gun and what is that they say about movies? All you need is a girl and a gun. Speaking of the girl, Natalie Wood rarely gets much focus in Rebel Without a Cause merchandising which is strange since she's such a classic screen icon herself.

But I bet if you lined up all the posters ever made for these three pictures including original release, subsequent reissues, television airings, repertory house / specialty showings and vhs/dvd/blu-ray covers, you'd find the most conflict in the Giant posters. What do you do when you have three mammoth stars in one movie? Giant's credit hierarchy has always been.

• Elizabeth Taylor
• Rock Hudson
• James Dean

...but they don't always get equal billings on the posters. Sometimes Rock & La Liz are the focus (as they were in the 40th anniversary release) sometimes Liz & James are the focus like you see in the 70s rerelease version of the poster from Japan above. And though it's another discussion entirely you know that if the film were released in our current era James Dean would've been nominated (and won) posthumously for supporting actor instead of lead, since they're so scared of 'same sex but both leads' campaigns these days.

Another entirely different discussion: Is it just my imagination or is La Liz the actress of beauty sharing? Which is to say that she always made her co-stars look yet more handsome than they already were. It's as if her glorious beauty was too much for just one face so some of it drifted over to the actors, too.

Have you seen all three films? If the answer is no, you'd best explain yourself. They're all quite terrific in their own ways.

Tilda Swinton, Posterized

Art house patrons first saw Tilda Swinton in a series of controversial works from gay British auteur Derek Jarman's in the late 80s and early 90s (he died in 1994). A much larger international audience followed with Orlando (1993). In the past decade, key roles in mainstream Hollywood efforts won the great Swinton plentiful new devotees.

Do you remember the first time you saw her onscreen? My first time was Edward II in 1992 and though I was impressed, I had no idea what marvels awaited in Orlando the next year...

Tilda Swinton in Posters...

Caravaggio (86, debut) | The Last of England (88) | Edward II (91)

Orlando (92) | Female Perversions (96) | Conceiving Ada (97)

The Beach (00)| The Deep End (01) | Teknolust (02)

Young Adam (03) | The Chronicles of Narnia (05) | Stephanie Daley (06)

Michael Clayton (07) | Julia (08) | I Am Love (10)

That's not the complete filmography but the lead roles and a few key / essential supporting gigs. There are many more smaller roles. She's not at all afraid of a crowded ensemble film or a blink and you'll miss her cameo. The best of the latter is probably Love is the Devil. And even if you don't blink you might miss her in that rough trade art biopic (starring Derek Jacobi & Daniel Craig) because she's so shockingly unrecognizable in it.

How many of those 15 have you seen? Which are your favorites?

I AM LOVE is an absolute must see for Tilda fans and art film aficionados in general. The film opened in LA and NYC last weekend and adds more cities today. Did it hit your town yet?

previously on Posterized: Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Viggo Mortensen, Cate Blanchett and Barbra Streisand.