S4E21.5 Hail, Caesar!

Wayne Knight was indeed /appallingly flat/ in Space Jam.

This is all very meta(tron) in that the studio head is an [4 letters] the Small. Not unlike Enoch becomes A lute or a lyre? Bc a lute is...very Petrarch As to the changing the image gives some "Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham" vibes & this is during PEAK Hays which was a solitary heir to Heinrich Kramer taking the hammer to film The humor of a rabbi scoffing at *ehye asher ehye*

What one does to someone confessing so much: you send them on a pilgrimage for penance

Idk if I'm reaching a bit here, but the setup of making a movie/play about Jesus from a Roman perspective and having to justify it to some kind of moral authority felt VERY The Master and Margarita to me

Ah yes Eldritch Arenreich, he made a pact with the ancient, unknowable god of Cinema, Stii’venn Spihelburg for the power to channel his raw charisma into movie roles.

Since watching this when it came out I have thought of it as maybe my favourite Coen brothers film but not really being able to say why. After listening to this I still can't but what a hell of an hour and a half!

i dont usually pause movies in the middle but when the words "direct action" were said on screen i truly got up and walked around until my laughing fit was over. i love it when my movies/tv/theater is written by people who have Been To Meetings. i also super enjoyed the section in no dames when channing tatum and two of his buddies are tapdancing at the bar. i haven't seen the gene kelly sailor movie but the bar tapdancing reminded me of singin'-in-the-rain (another movie about movies!). off to check out the work of this marcuse fella o7

Also the actual Hollywood gossip the on wings of eagles thing is riffing on is that Cukor got fired off Gone With The Wind cause Clark Cable recognized him as a client back when he was hustling

i gotta recommend for the next religion season bonus, ken russell’s the devils if you can find the uncut version, that’s the one to go with

….I have some art by one of (famously blacklisted) Howard Fast’s wives on my wall

Okay I’m going to have a lot to say about the movie cause I uhhh wrote a lot about it and the time it was set* but the other joke about Clooney’s casting is that he popularized the Caesar cut for men in the 90s while on ER - a cut he had because he was coming directly from a production of Antony and Cleopatra * Edie Mannix, real guy, used to be a bouncer at a traveling carnival, arguably the 3rd most powerful guy at MGM and probably killed a bunch of people directly or indirectly which makes using his real name for this a bit uuuuuuuhhhh

I saw this movie when it came out on dvd and didn't really get it, it kinda pissed me off because I took the impotency of the screenwriters and Mannix's to Baird speech to mean "communism is fucking stupid, movies are truth". Now I've watched it a second time with my thinking cap on and with Nova's excellent analysis, I think I appreciate it more. I definitely didn't get the parallels between the narration of the Tale of the Christ and the new idea of communism... I also read the screenwriters being abandoned by Channing Tatum, as well as losing the money, as a metaphor for dedicated communists being exploited and then discarded by the Soviet Union. They pin their hopes and funds on a "new soviet man" and the red star, but are ultimately just transport and fall guy, left with nothing. "You only have worth in serving the picture"? But perhaps I am being sentimental.

Maybe I missed it but I’m shocked that Abi didn’t point out the Rabbi is played by Robert Picardo, aka the holographic Doctor from Star Trek Voyager.

After looking up pics of Alden Ehrenreich as Hobie in this movie, I was genuinely surprised at the lack of thirsty remarks from Devon cause damn lmao

Speaking of Johnathan Glazer at the end, you should really do Sexy Beast soon

Just another shout out for Yentl to be in the running before I go on about how triggering this movie is to my own pedantic fuck nature and I am like THAT ARMOR IS WRONG THEY SHOULD NOT BE IN CHARIOTS CAESAR WASNT A LIVING GOD YET and so on. So it goes

In terms of the Venn diagram of Coen Brothers' movies and "they don't make movies like this anymore" I can recommend the last western movie that should ever be made: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

You guys really should talk about Ben-Hur while we're on religion season. I've watched that movie at least a dozen times. Weird good time. Very homoerotic. Fascinating point of view on religious suffering and revenge. I have like a billion things to say about it and I'd love to hear what you guys think.

maybe start wearing a mask, november?

The stylised, heroic leap that Channing Tatum makes from the rowboat to the sub is exactly the same as one of his moves in the extremely gay tap number. Glorious moment.

wowowow this is one of my favorite movies and it was such a great to hear y'all discuss it. Disclosure: I'm a Christian and walked into the theater thinking it would be a fun comedy about swords and sandals movies and left, deeply moved by this "tale of the Christ". Then I heard an NPR podcast review it saying "meh I didn't really understand it" to my utter disappointment, so I was JUMPING OUT OF MY SEAT to hear Nova GET IT haha (down to the stars they were parodying, only one I didn't hear was Esther Williams, the "bathing beauty" who ScarJo is) also dropping Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian I love to see. Anyhoo one of my favorite films about wrestling with the identity of Jesus, and the commentary on how "we're all compromised" yet spiritual whether we are trying to be or not was so illuminating to me. 💜 10/10, no notes.

I always half-suspected the near-strangulation-by-projector bit was a reference to Isadora Duncan (strangled by her own scarf in a weird traffic accident), but she died in 1927, so I dunno how that would fit.

Autolycus is also the name of Bruce Campbell's character in the Xena and Hercules TV shows produced by Coen buddy Sam Raimi. And Carlotta Valdez (or Valdes) is the name of the ghost woman in Vertigo (and also the name of a Harvey Danger song).

Probably one of my absolute favorite movies, though I will admit I've never sat down and actually analyzed it. Then again I'm very much of the "I get to sit in a big quiet room, in a comfy chair with a large drink" school of movie enjoyment.

Everytime I see Channing Tatum, or read his name, immediately what I think of is his face over that dancers ass

Me leading my all white horse over rocky terrain: "CAREFUL WHITEY!"

I'm not sure which is harder trying to moderate the communist/anarchist group and stopping them from fighting or bouncing off the walls or starting a new one and trying to George Clooney all the walk in traffic.

The Nazi concentration camps were modeled after Roman army camps, I think. The lagers were definitely modeled on Roman barracks. So it’s either a Roman camp or it’s both

I must disagree with Nova. The Coen Brothers True Grit isn't simply a remake of the John Wayne movie. It is a more faithful adaptation of the source material , the Charles Portis novel. The Coen Brothers version has the same dark humor to it that the John Wayne version stripped out. Mattie Ross is much more annoying and way funnier in the Coen version than she is in the Wayne version. I could go on but I don't think any of you want to read my comparative essay on this topic.

Absolutely jumpscared by the reference to my city.

My favorite bit in this movie is the rabbi's take on the Trinity: these people are all crazy. As some raised without a religion this seems like most reasonable take on that particular bit od Chistian theology.

My wife was a synchronized swimmer and she said they never used anything like a ring or prop to stabilize. You have to hold positions in the water through a tiring and precise leg motion. But, she said it's not surprising that it would be used for non-competition type events where the performers may not have the training of competitive synchronized swimmers.

Fantastic episode of course, how can we do the plot of the Parent Trap to get the Coens back together anyone got anything?

I'm a little behind on the pod episodes, but came here to pre-emptively thank Nova for this treat, much as I enjoy the garbage shredding it is also a delight when a film I genuinely like gets covered

Banger! send directly to the brains dojo collection

Sooooo, the message is that we're all already Communist and all already Spiritual (read Christian), and that everything will just work itself out in the end? I don't buy it, because you're taking seemingly natural human drives and trying to make a deterministic claim that everyone wants to be this thing that was invented long after humanity appeared. Spirituality and Communism aren't inevitable end points of humanity, they're things we invented, and which this philosophy is claiming that we were already always heading towards. And please don't give me a Marxist lecture me on the inevitability of Communism, it's clearly not inevitable, we have to fight tooth and nail to make it happen, or the world is going to die to Capitalism and Climate Change. Things don't just work themselves out in the end, there is no fate but what we make.

*Anime girl with snapback meme* Bonhoeffer and Rahner mentioned

For the record, I'm not a fan of the midroll ad on a patreon episode.

7:36 talking about the buttermaid I 100% heard Abby say "bottom aid" and was very confused for a moment

Also I just remembered that the movie 'Dead Presidents' exists, and you could do it for heist season. Black Vietnam veterans decide they have to do a heist because it's the only way they can survive in American racist capitalism. Keith David, Chris Tucker in a rare serious role.

I look forward to the All Latin, All the Time stylings of Sword and Sandal Season, when you cover, like, Barabbas.

So hype one of my faves. One of those movies where I felt they made it for me specifically

I'm a huge Coen brothers fan and this has become one of my favourites over the years since it came out. Very rewatchable and extremely funny (whether you know anything about communism or not)

underrated cohen bros movie

Hell yeah fuck yeah. haven't even started listening to this yet and I had to comment already. this movie was the first time I'd ever heard the term dialectics and it unironically got me interested in Marxism, and then I learned about Marxism from Philosophytube. Coen Brothers to Kill James Bond pipeline Also Hobie from this movie is my "literally me" character. I am/ want to be a little singing cowboy Eddie Mannix's wife is Kim Pine from Scott Pilgrim Pedantic point: the Coen brothers made an adaptation of the original novel "True Grit" by Charles Portis. I wouldn't necessarily call it a remake of the John Wayne True Grit. the novel and Coen Brothers movie True Grit are both fairly religious, with a devoutly Christian protagonist and Christian themes. Charles Portis also wrote a novel called "the dog of the South" which is a hilarious combination of Cormac McCarthy and PG Wodehouse, about an asshole whose girlfriend runs away with his coworker, and he goes on a road trip to track them down to get his car and his property back.