The new Coen brothers film, coming out this September.
After seeing the release of the poster and the trailer (domestic and international, two totally different trailers) I can now say I am officially excited. The poster calls up all of Saul Bass’ iconic images, completely eye-catching.
My first impression of Brad Pitt, from in first Thelma and Louise, and then True Romance is the one that has really stuck: good-looking, yes, but doesn’t take himself all that seriously. It’s very endearing (when he’s allowed to do it). Pitt is just getting more interesting as he gets older. The parts he’s getting are more interesting, too. I love it when he is allowed to be goofy. His cameo as the pot-smoking loser roommate in True Romance is comedy gold as far as I’m concerned (“And get some …. cleaning products … ” “Dont’ condissnd meeee …..”) In the trailer for Burn After Reading, Brad Pitt gets punched in the face by John Malkovich and I’ve seen it 4 times now and it makes me laugh every time. And look at this still from the film:
I have no idea what’s going on there, but it’s hilarious.
Poster, Saul Bass comparison and both trailers below.
Doesn’t it remind you of …
International teaser trailer:
Domestic trailer:
I loved him as the honeybear smoking stoner dude in True Romance. When the gangsters are asking him for directions…and these totally armed and dangerous men are standing in front of him in this creepy, intimidating way and he’s so off his head, it doesn’t even phase him.
“So, yeah…you go up the street and you keep going and going…and then…you…make a right…”
HAHAHAHA Yeah really – like: dude, WHEN do you make a right??
And then when he gets busted after taking an enormous hit and he can’t exhale.
The previews look great. I never miss a Coen film.
I’ve always been fond of Brad Pitt as an actor. When the whole “sex symbol” thing started coming around I actively tried to dislike him. But with just about every movie he does I seem to like him more. He’s just so darn genuine, you know?
I think my favorite role of his is in Cool World and I also really dug him in Twelve Monkeys.
i am a huge brad pitt fan. i would disagree a tad and say that he does have a great deal of range, it is merely not the kind of range we normally associate with ACTORS. his is the range of a movie star.
compare his presence in ‘kalifornia’ (one of the GREAT overlooked performances) with ‘fight club’. at first glance there is a similarity but when you really get down to it the only thing tying those two characters together is the man who portrays them.
i dig pitt.
I loved Kalifornia, too! He was terrific in that.
I guess I always sense him ‘acting’ in those parts, though – it doesn’t come natural. I sense him pushing. I didn’t like him in 12 Monkeys, for example, although I appreciated the effort. But it seemed like an effort to me.
I thought he was perfect in, say, a River Runs Thru It … Like: not too many actors could just glow and emanate what needed to be emanated like he did in that movie. And still not seem self-conscious. And yeah, Bren, I totally agree: he’s a true movie star.
I just like it when he’s allowed to be goofy and ridiculous – it seems most true to him, most who he is!
Like the ridiculous clip of him dancing in the trailer below in the red T shirt. Goofball!
I mean, please look at his HANDS in that movie still I posted. hahahaha The position of the hands just crack me up. His hands look startled, right?
yeah, those are funny hands. and his eyebrows! he is NOT attractive at all. that is another thing i like about him is he doesn’t seem to be afraid of not looking his best.
hahahaha I know!! It’s very endearing.
I think I’m the only woman alive who doesn’t think he’s all that. I don’t mean that in a snotty way; I just have never thought he was as good-looking as, um, THE REST OF THE WORLD does.
I do, however, think he’s better suited for comedy. Did you ever see the episode of Friends he was in? He played a friend of Ross’s from HS who used to be really fat and now he was all slim, and, well, BRAD PITT-esque. Rachel (he was married to Jennifer Aniston then — I’ll never forgive him for all THAT, btw — just made me dislike him more which I’m sure keeps him awake at night) tries to hook up with him but he HATES HER. He and Ross had a club in HS, the “We Hate Rachel Green Club.” It was HILARIOUS.
Lisa – yes!! hahahahaha Hilarious!
Oh, and in the trailer: Clooney sneaking up the stairs holding a huge knife? Makes me so happy. I can’t wait to see it.
Here I thought I was the only women in America not wildly attracted to Pitt. Good to know. I did think he was great in Fight Club though, such a good/weird/funny movie.
I’ve never been swept away by him physically, either. I mean, he’s far from ugly, but he doesn’t exactly make me swoon. I’ve always thought he looked a little bland, like a Ken doll.
But he’s a great actor. I loved that episode of Friends!
I think I formed my opinion of Brad Pitt from Chad Palomino (James LeGros, was it?) in Living in Oblivion. Which wasn’t quite fair, you know. I thought he did pretty well in 12 Monkeys, but I confess I’ve seen altogether little of his work.
well, as far as living in oblivion goes, that is based on dicillo’s ‘johnny suede’ which pitt starred in. so dicillo wasn’t against hiring him in the first place. and all the crazy things that he makes fun of pitt for w/legros (eyepatch, etc.) actually MAKE ‘johnny suede’ as good as it is.
so i think dicillo is a bit of a nitwad to lampoon pitt who basically made it possible for dicillo to make the next 3 movies he made.
haven’t seen much greatness from dicillo since, either.
Ken – Well, I’m not saying I think he’s a nice person. I have no idea if he is or not. He could be the biggest dick in the world, I have no idea.
I love Living in Oblivion! Dicillio was famously unhappy with Brad Pitt’s performance in Johnny Suede – unhappy with the whole thing (firing the DOP for sabotage, all kinds of crazy shite). I don’t think Pitt was his first choice – he wasn’t a huge star yet.
James Le Gros – hahahaha TOO funny. He’s wonderful. My favorite is Peter Dinklage, as the pissed-off Method acting dwarf. Brilliant. “Oh, I get it. It’s a dream sequence. So of course you need a dwarf. OF COURSE.” All bitter.
And you know, his Irish accent was not half-bad in that Irish mob gun runner movie he did with Harrison Ford. I went in there totally expecting to scoff the accent, but it was pretty damn good.
I wasn’t even thinking about it that much, as far as actor vs. nice-guy-or-not terms. Attention, attention was not paid! ;-)
Ken –
hahahaha And here we are bombarding you with the entire history of the shoot of Johnny Suede! Forgive me!!
Speaking of Le Gros – he shows up in Zodiac (have you seen it?) at the very end – he has one scene, I think – and he’s barely recognizable … sort of a pudgy balding bureaucrat – he’s terrific. It’s the kind of career I really admire. Under the radar, always good – he seems to have a lot of integrity.
Emily, I feel the same way about BP looking like a bland Ken doll.
I too have always been the only gal I know that wasn’t gaga over BP — in fact, whenever I express my ambivalence, I see people look at me out of the corners of their eyes, as if they don’t really believe me and think I’m putting them on in some sort of attempt to be snobbish or cool. I then have to distract them from their unwarranted suspicions by (very sincerely and enthusiastically) gushing over Clooney. :)
I did think BP was hi-lar-ious as the gypsy in that british action flick (snatch?). And of course in the Ocean’s movies, which I know are such drivel but I love to see them all have so much fun working together. BP especially always seems to have a suppressed smile just below the surface in every scene. (And that scene where BP and GC get teary-eyed watching Oprah in O13? Dear god I almost wet my pants.)
Tina
Tina – Ha!!!! yes, I love those Ocean’s 11 movies, too – fun to watch them all goof off.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about the “Ocean” movies! I did like him in those.
I also love how Julia Roberts has described coming home to her hotel room after a long day’s work on Ocean’s 11 – only to find that Brad Pitt and George Clooney had basically booby trapped her room, and put frogs in her bed, glued her receiver to the phone – whatever … every time she came back to the hotel room she never knew what she would find. The image of those two guys sneaking around booby trapping everything so that they could then laugh hysterically hearing her screams from down the hall … Immature. Fun.
hahaha That kind of ridiculous energy totally is apparent in the movie, I think.
Forgive you? No way–thank you! I learn stuff here I could never learn anywhere else. :-)
Now that I take another look at the still, it’s got Coen Brothers all over it. It’s like the ghost of Ulysses Everett McGill is hovering in there somewhere.
Tina,
Yeah — that was Snatch, where he played an Irish traveler (or should I write that “traveller,” considering?). He was the bright spot in an otherwise over-the-top, look-how-cool-I-can-make-my-movies Guy Ritchie irritation.
“Dcha lake dags?”
that still is killing me!
Mere – isn’t it awesome? It just keeps being funny. His big wailing mouth and the terror in his eyes? Ha!!
True story, since you mention the accent in The Devil’s Own. Did you know that he spent time with my husband as part of his research for that role? He picked my husband’s brains, and then was good enough to stick around for some of the local pre-teen girls who could not believe that Brad Pitt was in my husband’s house at that very moment. So they got to meet him. Imagine these chubby 12 year old Belfast girls squealing, and him being so good about it. He also posed for a snapshot with one of the older Belfast ladies who came over with the girls, which proudly hung in the local club we had our reception in, behind the bar. I have a picture of the toothless bartender grinning away and behind him tacked to the wall is Brad Pitt with his arm casually around one of the local barflies. It is, by the way, the only celebrity photo in the place, before you get any ideas, lol. (Like, all the celebs who get their dry cleaning done there, lol)
So if you have any fault with his character in The Devil’s Own you can blame my husband.
Carrie – No way!!! I love that story! Sweet! I can so picture your Belfast neighborhood abuzz with the fact that Brad Pitt was IN YOUR HOUSE … that is so awesome!
And like I said – I really think he did an okay job with the accent. I’m very picky, but it sounded good enough to me!
(Of course the story isn’t as wonderful as you having a drink with David O’Hara, but it’s close enough!)
His accent was far better than, say, Julia Roberts’ in Michael Collins. A few too many “Ayes” but he got it better than most. It’s not the worst movie ever. I don’t think the whole estate knew he was there, though (well, who am I kidding, right?), god that would have been a madhouse. No he was just kind enough to not mind my husband letting the cat just a wee bit out of the bag to a good friend of his that would have killed him had he not told her. And my husband says he really did his homework, he wasn’t doing a superfical Hollywood star thing at all, he came in low-key, wanting to understand how things were so he could get his character right.
Sadly, this was all before my time so I can only claim David O’Hara, Brad Pitt is just mine by proxy.
LOL, I hadn’t seen your post until I posted mine, but yeah, close enough works for me!!
i can’t stop looking at his face. it has been making me laugh for 8 hours straight.
Carrie – ha!! I love that we both posted about David O’Hara – well, look, the man is a fox and you had a drink with him and it is emblazoned in my memory, even though I wasn’t there.
Nice to hear about Pitt’s seriousness about the topic. I really do get that from him. Very cool.
bren – hahahahaha I know!!
Is it “manbo” or “mimbo”? This movie looks like serious fun. Love the Coen Brothers. He looks so feminine in the bloody nose photo, you can almost hear him – “AAhongh” as if he is going to complain that you broke his nail.
Look at it this way, I have Brad Pitt by proxy, you have David O’Hara by proxy, it’s like two degrees of blurpy. :-)
“Two degrees of blurpy.” Jeebus, now I’m going to be going around thinking about some guys in their “degrees of blurpy” to me. That’s hysterical, Carrie.
Love the story about Pitt, too! The mental image of these little Belfast pre-teen girls having the time of their life on the last place in the world they’d expect to bump into a movie star…it’s wonderful.