2015-01-30 Fa®go

 

2015-01-30          Fa®go 

                ‘Two can play at that game’, Steve Buscemi’s murderer-for-hire says it better in the Coen brother’s Fargo to the literally hatched-faced and near-mute Scandinavian man he refers to as ‘his associate’, his partner-in-crime, ‘smart guy.’

                You might think that (y(our man ©in the humble(d) narrator of thie Take This Thang Back to Balti-memoi®es and Fa®go might be after watching any film set in a sunshine place, given the weather outside and recent blizzard, but you’d / be wrong.  ©instead it’s the ©oens’ immortal Fargo that we’re after videeing, preceded of course last night by Essential Killing, another grim movie of Eu®opudding / Canal + provenance, and featuring (y)our man the actor Vincent Gallo in the main and essentially only role – a performance in which he does not (m) / (st) / utter one word over the course of the entire movie, it’s a stellar performance and a riveting watch, almost matching the Oscar-winning  performance of (y)our man(imal) Hannibal the ©annibal Anthony Hopkins, who won the statue for Best A©to® for being on-screen in Jonathan Demme’s immortal The Silence of the Lambs for a scant nine minutes be©ause have the lambs stopped screaming. Cla®®isse - your man Gallo playing an Al Qaeda or Taliban or whatnot fighter who falls into and then out of the clutches of the U.S. marines up on out on up on up on out in the Middle East somewhere, and then on the way to a clandestine base in Europe for further beatings / interrogations he excapes, (y)our man(imal) Hannibal the ©annibal

                But that / was yesterday, Cin videed the film first to fall asleep of a Thirstday evening – and they never get any more or any less / thi®sty - before during and after cooking himself like a glazed ham at the gym sauna – he’s beginning to think that cooking himself like a glazed ham at the gym sauna may not be all it’s cracked up / to be, though it remains his one and only pleasure be©ause ®egime ze®o, other of course than the fappening (hooker please, -id.) – and second after he woke up at some ungodly hour and then watched it / again.  Course Fargo he’s videed umpteem times as we do – it came as ®etail therapy in a boxed set for $9.99 from Blockbuster with Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise , to be videed after Fargo this TGIFFriday evening before during and after Blo©kbuste® went tits  / up, innit G – and prolly reviewed just as many / times in the pixels and pages of (t)his Take This Thing Back to Baltime-moi®es  and Fa®go, tits / up is all we gots.

                He binge-watches movies of course as the stresses mount as they do and baking himself like a glazed ham after a work-out – ‘the sweaty’ Cin was called when he worked at Definitions © NYC, ‘ox’, innit Coop – just doesn’t do it / anymore, though the baking and sweating part of it he knows is cintegral to him not going entirely coo-coo / for coa-coa puffs, ‘it was like’ Axl Rose’s -ex said it better of their relationship, ‘putting a nuclear bomb in the living room and hitting it with / a hammer, ‘when a tornado’ Eminem and Rhianna sing it better in their duet Love the Way you Lie ‘meets / a volcano’, coo-coo / for coa-coa puffs is all / we gots.

     

‘The bark beetle carries its’ food’ the National Geographic narrator says it better as the TV show in the movie Fargo plays for heroine Marge Gunderson, played in an Oscar-winning  performance by Frances McDermett, innit Tu®bo, and her husband in bed, ‘back to / its’ nest’.  ‘Act of God’ Buscemi’s low-life murderer-for-hire shouts it better into the phone to William Macy’s flabbergasted husband character - the latter who’s paid to have his wife / whacked by  the former - by means of explanation of the various flies in the ointment of said /nefarious plan, ‘force / majeure.’

‘I’m doing really super there’, Marge Gunderson wipes the smiles off the front desk clerks at the Twin Cities hotel she’s staying at in the movie, after being aksed / the same, ‘thanks.’   It’s a great performance throughout, McDermett plays Marge’s blonde moments right until the end of her various interviews, at the ends of which she delivers the final question she’s always come / to aks.  Ending questions with ‘do ya think?’ as she does throughout the movie is on the same ©ingratiating scale as ending them with ‘or not / so much? – the 21^st century’s equivalent of ‘do ya think?’ – but all is forgiven with a performance like this, with a performance like this all is forgiven  is all / we gots.

  What it is is that the business-men types in the movie – Macy’s hen-pecked husband and his father-in-law – delude themselves into thinking that they can play hard-ball with Buscemi’s murderer-for-hire character and his side-kick the melancholy Dane.  Disasters ensue - ‘acts of God’ and ‘force / majeure’ – until a very-pregnant Marge, the town sherriff, comes if not to the rescue then at least to play the moral card.

‘I’m going’ Macy’s out-matched and flabbergasted husband says it better to his son, to whom the father has had to sell some cock-and-bull story about his mother getting kidnapped, and as the walls come tumbling / down, ‘to bed now’, going to bed now as the walls come tumbling / down is all / we gots, or it was anyway when (y)our man ©in’s (s) / (m) / (b) / (gl) and just plain adventures used to come home to roost, and sweet sweet sleep seemed, and was, and is, the only temporary relief, ‘to sleep’ the original melancholy Dane said it better back in the 15^th in the Shalespeare play of the same name, while contemplating snuffing it as we do, ‘perchance / to dream’, (s) / (m) / (b) / (gl) and just plain adventures is all / we gots.

What it is is in Alice is that Julianne Moore’s Alice begins to lose her marbles around her 50^th birthday, takes the memory test – ‘what did the doctor tell the patient with Alzheimer’s ?  ‘go home  and forget / about it’ , and ‘did you hear about the Irishman with Alzheimer’s, he forgot everything except / the grudge’ haha it hurts because / it’s true, innit HW – and fails, forgetting the street address in Hoboken that she was ‘assupposed / to remember, not that we didn’t occasionally do the same when we lived on Madison Ave. in that same Frank Sinatra hometown, innit Jenke.

Alice’s husband, played by a restrained Alec Baldwin, is sympathetic – ‘one’ he says it better when he hears / the news, ‘that sounds crazy, and two, I’ll be here for whatever / you need’ or the equivalent - it was a nice save in a movie that otherwise has precious / few (that’s enough, you monster –id.)  Her children and significant others do not fare as well in the movie , though Kristen Stewart’s actress daughter character at least tries, the others smiling inappropriately from frame one to frame ‘the end’ as Alice’s character goes through the usual scenes, forgetting not-so-incrementally the five elements of ‘wtf’, namely the who / where / when / and what and / why she is.

A decision to dare to make movie about Alzheimer’s is by definition a brave one, but the decision to make the subject of such a subject the main subject of the film itself though is risky, problematic, we don’t need to hear Alice aksing ‘what day is it’ more than twice – once really – much less in every other scene where a new character other than Alice gets / the news.

See, it’s review-proof, the reviewer sounds like / a dick no matter what.  Cin may be projecting his own discomfort with the subject, his own Da a victim of the dreaded ‘forgetting  flu’ - whether giving a decidedly un-scientific malaise a scientific name helps, of which ©in is far from certain, ‘the old-timers’ the manager of the Overlook describe what happened in the same better to Jack Torrence in Kubrick’s take on your The Shining, innit Mr. King, ‘called it cabin / fever’ – and even as he criticizes the telegraphed scene in the film in which (y)our (wo)man Alice is set up to give a speech on Alzheimer’s to a support group for the same, but when she gets up to the lectern no one on her family thinks to stand nearby until of course she spills her cue cards all over / the place, (y)our man ©in thinks regretfully of the funeral where he did / the same with (y)our man his Da, leaving him on the altar  of the church to mumble his eulogy, instead of standing guard next to him, if only for moral support, standing guard if only for moral support is all / we gots.

Note to self : according to the movie this som’ of a bitch the forgetting flu – the g®eat’ someone callsit better, ‘es©ape’ - is hereditary, better get after hulk-smashing away at this Take This Thing Back to Balti-memoi®es and Fa®go slog from sunrise to sundown.  Course the quizzes they give you aks about having your head whacked and all kind of other things – it’s like the alkie test, if you answer it at all honestly, everyone / fails – and between all the booze and the drugs and the cincussions and we weren’t that bright / to begin with, Innit DD, we might leave that particular test / untaken, leaving some particular tests untaken is all / we gots.

Thank you for reading (t)his Take This Thing Back to Balti-me-moi®es and Fa®go.