The One with the Ladykillers

It was a fast Contract Lecture morning followed by an equally fast LAWR lesson. Makes me realise that I am sorely needing to finish reading my case file. Shit.

Immediately after the LAWR tutorial, we rushed off to orchard for a movie. Bought tickets for The Ladykillers at 3:15pm and had lunch (a pathetic ham steak) at Cafe Cartel. Basically sat there until almost 3pm. Super sleepy. The show was nothing like the trailer. Which is fine. I trust the Coen brothers. And it's true. They're sick. But I was worried that Grace and Eunice might not have liked the film. Hmm. I guess here are some points I have for the film.

The tagline for the movie was:
The greatest criminal minds of all time have finally met their match.
I believe it should be:
Crime doesn't pay. Praise the Lord.

It's true that this film flops on the fact that Tom Hanks is too heavy weight and that some of the actors are just plain bad. Another pet peeve I have for the film is its predominantly black extras cast.

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Some trivia:

This is the first Coen brothers film where Joel Coen and Ethan Coen are both given directing and producing credits. They have shared these duties on all of their films, but Joel has always been listed as the director, and Ethan as producer.

Cameo( Bruce Campbell): at the dog food commercial shoot.

Irma says throughout the film that she donates monthly to Bob Jones university, citing it as a "good Bible College." Viewers unfamiliar with the college may not understand the reference that Jones is a radical right-wing institution that banned black students up until the 1970s, and up until 2000 did not allow interracial couples to openly date while attending classes.

When the group is debating various methods methods to kill Mrs. Munson, Professor Dorr suggests shackling her in an earthen recess in the wall and enclosing it with the leftover bricks and mortar they have available. This is a reference to "A Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe, whom Dorr cites frequently throughout the film.

The first piece of music that Dorr's band pretends to play is Boccherini's minuetto: it was the same piece of music that was played by Dorr's band in the original Ladykillers, The (1955).

Prior to filming, Tom Hanks had not seen Ladykillers, The (1955) as he did not want it to prejudice the way he acted in the remake.

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A review from the IMDB website which to a certain extent I agree with:
tedg (tedg@alum.mit.edu)
Virginia Beach
Summary: A Glorious Failure

I really appreciate artists willing to push the envelope. They're not pushing if they don't fail at least a third of the time. This is a failure, but an interesting, glorious one and in its way is more interesting to watch than, say, `O Brother.' You know something worth knowing is up when the most nuanced actor in a high level project like this is a painting.

These guys are cinefiles, enthusiasts who examine what they and others do with meticulous detail and grand vision. They reach for a specific tone, different for each project, and then engineer the pieces to support.

What do you think? Was the original vision too ambitious: a takeoff from the Shakespearean actor from Huck Finn? In this case, it is a Coen-like folding: an actor playing an actor playing Twain who writes the riverboat plot using a previously written skeleton (something recently done by PS Hoffman in `Cold Mountain').

Or is it that the vision was as apt an reachable as any they have had, but they erred in the engineering? I think it is this latter. Some of the blame is theirs: they have come to be hypnotized by the power of themed music in their films. Here it is a distraction, saps resources and fails to support the quirky vision. Tbone failed them.

But they were stuck with some bad casting. Once that happens, you're lost. Hanks is such a heaviweight that he forces the vision to bend to what he wants to do as an actor. Big mistake.

The old lady Marva Munson is capable of playing only one sort of character. We've seen her do it in several dreary projects. She just couldn't ever get the joke and really believes she is in an Eddie Murphy movie.

And third, and almost incidentally, we have Wayans. He also knows only one way of swinging.

None of these three was capable of getting on board the twisted vision the brothers had. Dozens of real actors have. But these three are, alas, characters now, not actors.

Still, you can see what they had in mind, and still be amused by it even though it never appears on the screen

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Later on came back to hall. Collected books from library and like rushed back for dinner. Saw Jo on the way. Feel bad again. Darn. I'm sleeping early today. Read some Wizard. Then wake up tomorrow early and read my case file. Heh.

Goodnight.