Wilson Webb/Focus FeaturesWriter/director Joel Coen and actor Richard Kind on the set of “A Serious Man.”

Joel: “It’s semi-autobiographical, I guess you could say, in the sense that the story takes place in a community very much like the one that we grew up in — Minnesota in 1967. And also there are a couple of very superficial similarities to our family — [Danny's] father is an academic, and our father was a university professor. But [our father] wasn’t really anything like the character in the movie, and the story is made up and doesn’t really have anything to do with anything that happened in our family.”

When pressed, Joel — who favors futzing with his Adam’s apple, while Ethan attends to a fingernail — does admit that he and his younger brother “were big ‘F Troop’ fans.”

A-ha!

Saddling up with the Dude?
On the subject of what the brothers were digging so long ago, I ask whether the 1969 Western “True Grit” — reportedly slated for the Coens’ “reimagining,” with “El Duderino” Jeff Bridges in talks for the John Wayne role — was a movie on their teenage radar.

Ethan: “Actually, yeah, we did see it as kids. It made very little impression on us. Subsequently, we both read the book [on which the movie is based], and the book made a huge impression. I guess [the book is] kind of why we’re interested in doing [our version].”

Joel: “Would our movie be a ‘remake’? The other day we were trying to figure out what you’d call it.”

Ethan: “I mean, if we did an adaptation of the Bible, would that be a ‘remake’ by virtue of the fact that the Bible has been made into other movies?”

Hmmm. For the secular Coens, “True Grit” is the classic “good book” — but maybe everything does go back to the Bible after all.

More roundtable quotes from the Coens

On making the Minnesota of 2008 look like the Minnesota of 1967: “Those [suburban] developments of the late ’50s and early ’60s remain quite pristine,” says Joel, “so about half [of what's in the film] is just as it exists now. But [the neighborhoods are] full of old-growth trees now, so almost all of those [trees] were removed by computer.”

On what Ethan, in the “Serious Man” press kit, calls “the whole incongruity of Jews in the Midwest”: “To us,” says Ethan, “the [flat Midwestern] landscape with Jews on it is funny, you know? Maybe this is part of why we put in that little story [set in a shtetl] at the beginning of the movie, to kind of frame it. You look at a shtetl, and you go, ‘Right — Jews in a shtetl.’ And then you look at the prairie in Minnesota and you kind of think — or we kind of think, with some perspective on it, having moved out, ‘What are we doing there?’ It just seems odd.” Joel: “Mel Brooks once had a song called ‘Jews in Space.’ I guess that’s sort of the idea.”

This festive fright-fest was a nice surprise from what I was originally expecting. This is another horror remake (from the people behind ‘Final Destination’ – great film), but un-like so many others; it did manage to come up trumps; such as ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’ This is a remake of Bob Clarke’s 1974 classic slasher movie, ‘Black Christmas’; which actually came four years before John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’. Some fans lay claim that it was the original slasher flick.

From the outside, this looks like just another of your basic ‘there’s a psycho hacking up a bunch of pretty girls, who are running up the stairs instead of out of the door,’ and to a certain extent that’s correct, it’s the way this is conveyed which is interesting and enticing to watch.

The story: crazed killer, Billy Lenz, escapes his psychiatric ward and is determined to make it to his childhood home, where he was abused, by Christmas. Problem is, it’s years later and the home is now a Sorority house. It’s Christmas Eve and a who’s who of teen/horror girl stars are there to welcome him, including Melissa (Michelle Trachtenberg , ‘Buffy the vampire slayer’ fame), Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, ‘Final Destination 3’), Dana (Lacey Chabert, ‘Mean Girls’) and Kelli (Katie Cassidy, ‘When a stranger calls’ remake.)

This movie is actually pretty good, it has a constant feeling of being watched that runs right through it and adds a sparkle to the scares, and the tension is kept high. The actresses, although spouting some awful lines at times, also say some good ones. The acting is good, and because most of the leading ladies are stars, and most of them horror stars, the audience doesn’t guess which one is going to make it to the rolling credits. The story-line builds well, and there is a mounting tension, as the killer first phones the girls, and then starts to do away with them.

A similar storyline to the original ‘Halloween’, with a killer coming home for the holidays, there are also many similar P.O.V shots of the killer, watching the girls throughout the house. The Christmas theme bleeds in nicely with the plot, and it comes across in places (especially, the flash-backs to Billy Lenz’s childhood) like something, director, Tim Burton, would dream up. The film gets darker and darker as we move through it, with some very violent scenes, and the music by Shirley Walker is great; capturing horror and Christmas all in one twisted melody. Also, the use of red and green lighting throughout (owed to Christmas) is very cool, and creates a great atmosphere.

Due to it being set in a Sorority house, and this no longer being 1974, some of the dialogue just doesn’t cut it. I can’t imagine many of these girls’ staying in the house with a crazed serial killer, just because they can’t find their ‘sorority sister,’ believable in 2007 – sad, but true. There is, unfortunately, the obligatory shower scene, but it’s used for scares, not thrills, and so works.

Right from the start you can tell, this isn’t your usual run of the mill slasher, it actually has a back story, and we do find ourselves caring for some of the characters, for example, Kelli, played by Katie Cassidy is great; plus if you hated ‘Dawn’ in ‘Buffy the vampire slayer’ – you are gonna love this movie.

I must confess that the day I watched the trailer of “V For Vendetta” at the movie theater I wasn’t any close to be willing to pay a ticket for watching that guy with a funny mask on his face. It seemed to me it would be one more of those simple movies extracted from a not very known “comic” (at least for me) that are appearing in theaters quite often these days. But now that I watched it, I think I was judging this movie wrong and not being totally fair with the writer and director.

It was quite surprising to follow the story and its continuous resemblance to what is happening today in a not too far away country and not too strange neighborhoods. In the movie is England that has been taken over by a group of fanatics that have concluded that their reason to live is power and the imposition of his world model and ideas over everyone and everywhere. There is a continuous war outside the borders and inside democracy is over; meanwhile fear is alive. People has lost the power of questioning reality and take conscience of the terrible consequences of living under such a decadent regime. It is a model based not in reason not in justice. Is the model “fascists” preach, where obedience and a “clock-like” functioning of the society in the interest of a few “chosen ones” is needed.

But suddenly there is a problem menacing the “status-quo”, they (without knowing) have created their own finisher. It is a figure that appears to us as a mix of revenge with a revolutionary mind, its name is “V”. Though the movie makes it closer to a simple vengeance thirst of this character, which is a bad point for the writer, but anyway; the film put us in front of tyranny being challenged by a single questioner, a single doubt of what has been happening to that society and his menace to multiply those doubts once the right time has come, this is…The 5th of November.

There is also the human side of “V”, he meets the girl in the movie thanks to his opportune showing while she is about to be raped by a group of secret agents of the “fascist” regime that have catch her walking at the wrong hours. You are not even the owner of your time as long as the preachers of “England Prevails” are in power. She escapes safe thanks to “V” but only to be initiated into the world of those who will change that world. She will be the guest and prisoner of “V” until she finally learns that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

At the end there seems to be a split of the vengeance appetites of “V” and the revolutionary intentions that have been growing as the story develops. It becomes somewhat clear that everything coming from the old regime must die, including “V”, but he has left a final gift and maybe a lesson for those who want to learn it. Passions belong to individuals and can be very powerful forces; but revolutions can not be made by one or two individuals, revolutions are made by the conscience and willing of the people.

After a number of months hearing once and again a ton of good comments about “Brokeback Mountain” movie I finally had the opportunity to watch this movie in the theaters. I know I’m kind of late, even Oscars have passed, but it took sometime for the film to arrive in my town.

Curious sensation what I felt when the movie started playing, after hearing so many comments about the film I was at the point from which I already knew, at least from the morbid side, what the story was about and who was whom on the screen. At least that’s what I thought.

It all starts in the distance; one truck passing by the hills and then we find one young man outside an office that seems to be far away from everything. Then our second character arrives almost pushing his old black truck. It is now that we realize what they are looking for…they need a job.

They are hired to take care of sheep in the mountains of Wyoming, they will spend the summer together in the mountains, they will live and work side by side during all those days. As they arrive to their destination, “del Mar” , feeling more confident, releases a few words from his mouth and starts talking a bit more and showing some signals of sympathy to his buddy. He is a tough young man with a family history with resemblance of a nightmare from one of those Dickens stories. No one suspects anything “out of normal” is happening in the story. Days seem to be passing without any great novelty.

But something new happens, something out of the regular tasks of those working days and nights at “Brokeback Mountain”. Something has arisen between the two men, it is like a storm coming from nowhere that has entered their lives and that will mark them forever. It seems to be just a passionate episode of the lonely at the beginning, a dream that none will ever know. But reality dictates something different, what just happened, will continue happening once and again, they are attached forever by a force that makes or bends the will of anyone; something we may call, love.

Summer is over and both men must go back to their worlds away from the mountain, to their previous lives, but inside them in a secret place they know those lives exist no more. They have been confronted with their most inner reality and it won’t go away.

They will marry wives and strive to pursue a “normal” life just to realize they are being a pair of fakes. They don’t belong to that traditional society, they belong only to each other since those day in the mountains. They finally decide and meet again outside “del Mar’s” home, a poor second floor apartment. He hasn’t had much luck in life since childhood and it seems to accentuate everyday, now even his wife knows about his preferences. We are inclined to conclude his only luck and fortune in life is what he feels for Jack, his “fishing buddy”.

Things go wrong at “del Mar’s” home, marriage brakes and he is left alone fighting for life in a society that would stone him to death if they only knew. But there are bright moments too, and those happen at “Brokeback” where he regularly meets Jack  who travels from far away Texas to meet the only love he has known.

By the end of the story there have been conflicts arising between the partners; too much distance and just a scarce proximity can not improve any relation. They have just had a bad encounter in their paradise, they part away with the promise of meeting again and fix what can be fixed when suddenly the story takes us to a scene where “del Mar” receives the notice of Jack’s death in a cold post card with letters that say “deceased”. Everything indicates he has been murdered, he was caught by those who won’t let the “others” happen. And now Ennis del Mar has been left aside from society, with his love eternally longing for Jack and a daughter that will get married soon and who doesn’t know his dad is a loner for a reason; and love won’t count.