To close out his popular live-reading program at LACMA Thursday night Jason Reitman selected a film that seemed to tie the series and the room together: The Coen brothers’ 1998 noir-comedy opus The Big Lebowski. In the hot seat filling Jeff Bridges’ slippers as The Dude sat Seth Rogen, whose own slacker charm proved oddly suitable, with folks like Hank Azaria (as Donny), Rainn Wilson (as Walter) and Christina Hendricks (as Maude) alongside him re-enacting one of the most quotable films of the past two decades. The cherry on top? Playing the role of The Stranger originated by Sam Elliott and written explicitly for an actor like Sam Elliott, perhaps… was none other than Sam Elliott.
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To close out his popular live-reading program at LACMA Thursday night Jason Reitman selected a film that seemed to tie the series and the room together: The Coen brothers’ 1998 noir-comedy opus The Big Lebowski. In the hot seat filling Jeff Bridges’ slippers as The Dude sat Seth Rogen, whose own slacker charm proved oddly suitable, with folks like Hank Azaria (as Donny), Rainn Wilson (as Walter) and Christina Hendricks (as Maude) alongside him re-enacting one of the most quotable films of the past two decades. The cherry on top? Playing the role of The Stranger originated by Sam Elliott and written explicitly for an actor like Sam Elliott, perhaps… was none other than Sam Elliott.
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This week, Movieline's favorite honey badger of directors, Tarsem (The Fall, The Cell), unveils his spin on Greek mythology in Immortals, a fantasy actioner that blends artistic influences as vast and varied as Caravaggio, classics, and Henry Cavill's abs. So who better to invite to a round of My Favorite Scene than the visionary filmmaker, who managed to pinpoint the uncanny cinematic parallels between the 1992 Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog, a Cannes Film Festival awardee, and that one episode from the "brilliant" first season of COPS.
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The startling beauty of Joel and Ethan Coen's Oscar-nominated True Grit -- and in most Coen brothers films, for that matter -- owes to frequent collaborator and award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, who's lensed all but one of their films since 1991's Barton Fink. But as much as the nostalgic Western serves as a throwback to simpler times, simpler heroes (and heroines), and a yearning to stick to one's principles in the face of obsolescence, True Grit could also mark a wistful point in Deakins career -- his last film shot on film.
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Much of the emotional power of Joel and Ethan Coen's Best Picture contender True Grit comes from the contributions of longtime collaborator and nine-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins, a cinematographer whose compositions and visual choices lend the Western a subtle, nostalgic quality. It's fitting, then, that when Deakins played My Favorite Scene with Movieline recently, he pointed toward a film that also utilizes the understated to great -- but very different -- effect.
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