Chinese director Zhang Yimou is the Chinese man behind the Chinese movies Hero and House of Flying Daggers. His latest movie is The First Gun (formerly Three Guns) a Chinese remake of the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (trailer below). Oh, and did I mention the theme song is a rap written and performed by Zhang himself?
Award-winning Chinese director Zhang Yimou has engineered another career shift with his latest movie — a comedy remake of a Coen brothers thriller with a theme song rapped by the filmmaker himself. The film is based on the Coen brothers’ 1984 murder-laced “Blood Simple,” but swaps the US film’s Texas bar setting for a noodle shop in ancient China, while adding an ample dose of comedy, Zhang said in an online interview. Zhang, who is currently promoting the film, was shown on state television this week rapping out the lyrics to the film’s theme song, which he wrote.[via Yahoo]
Your move, Eastwood. I believe the video above shows the rap at the very end, because the description was “Three Guns theme song to make public small Shenyang Zhang Yimou sings in a chorus rap.” Haha, I love you, mistranslated gibberish speak. It reminds me of my favorite penis pill spam email, which had the subject line: “Best manure for pork stalk!” and promised me “incredible night excitement and energy for glorious deeds.” And no I did not make any of that up. I’ve been referring to my penis as a “pork stalk” ever since. And when it’s medication time, I like to break out the pills and shout, “GRANDMA! COME TAKE YOUR MANURE!”
(”The Civil War is over, Lebowski. The bums lost.”)
Charles Portis is sort of a cult-favorite writer whose best-known work is probably True Grit, which spawned a movie adaptation that won John Wayne an Oscar in 1969. Portis has been called a more comedic version of Cormac McCarthy, whose book No Country for Old Men won the Coen Brothers a best picture Oscar in 2007. Now the Coens are re-adapting True Grit, and Variety reports that they’re in talks with The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, for the lead.
For the unfamiliar, True Grit follows a 14-year-old girl, who tags along with a U.S. Marshal, Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) as they attempt to track down her father’s murderer, who is something of a drunk. But the murderer is not anyone that the police want to mess with, so Rooster is all she’s got. A Texas Ranger named La Boeuf also joins the manhunt; Cogburn and La Boeuf dont’ care for each other, but in the pursuit of the murderer, they bond.
The 1969 John Wayne movie was told from the perspective of Cogburn; the Coens version, like the novel, will tell it from the perspective of the 14-year-old girl (presumably, like the novel, as an extended flashback). [Pajiba]
I hope they not only tell it from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl, but contemporize it and have it unfold via her Twitter feed. OMG, you guyz, Rooster cockbreath & the Shia Labuff guy tooootally aren’t getting along! We beter find daddy’s killer soon, i have joBros tickets for tomorrow >:-T
Not too many directors could get away with making a movie in which the most famous actor is Richard Kind. But when you’ve made No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading in back to back years, you earn yourself a little leeway. Anyway, this one’s called A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers’ latest.
Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Larry’s unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny (Aaron Wolf) is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is filching money from his wallet to save up for a nose job. An anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry’s chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. [Apple]
It opens in limited release October 2nd, which I don’t understand at all. How is it the guys with the loyal fanbase who made a best picture two years ago get a limited release, when a smelly hobo tampon like I Love You Beth Cooper gets a wide one? Is it really that hard to sell a movie from the guys who did No Country for Old Men? I know there’s this assumption that there’s no audience for real movies in the center of the country, but if you never give people a choice between steak and easy cheez, eventually they’re just going to get used to the easy cheez. At which point you better enjoy making eazy cheez. Dang, all this Coen Brothers talk has got me craving a steak covered in eazy cheez.
We are the Co-en Bro-thers… don’t get a-long with o-thers…
The ever-prolific Coen Brothers are set to adapt True Grit, the 1968 Charles Portis novel that already spawned a film adaptation for which John Wayne won an Oscar in 1969.
Not a traditional remake, the Paramount film will be more faithful to the Charles Portis book than the 1969 pic. Portis’ novel is about a 14-year-old girl who, along with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, tracks her father’s killer in hostile Indian territory. But while the original film was a showcase for Wayne, the Coens’ version will tell the tale from the girl’s p.o.v.
Portis’ book has been described as “Like Cormac McCarthy, but funny.” It was also announced recently that Greg Mottola and Bill Hader are adapting another Portis novel, Dog of the South. Reached for comment, Portis said, “No, it’s great that you’re only just now discovering me, that’s awesome. No really. Heck, I’m only 75. Yup, nothing but silk Depends and extra-virgin prune juice for yours truly. Assholes.”
I realize this was sort of an odd pic for Friday Free for All. It’s a video by a dude named Ely Kim, who’s apparently an MFA student at Yale. It’s really repetitive, it goes on forever, and don’t expect there to be any sort of payoff, but it’s also strangely mesmerizing. It’s kind of like the gay Asian version of Dance Floor Dale. I also sort of wish he were Latino so I could’ve called it “Mexmerizing.”
Anyway, if that’s not your cup of tea, after the jump I’ve also got a commercial the Coen Brothers recently did, for an anti-clean coal organization. I mean, they’re not really anti clean coal, they’re just trying to point out that clean coal doesn’t really exist. The problem with making political commercials overly satirical like this is it only leaves you about five seconds to explain what the f-ck it is you’re actually talking about. And putting the web address at the end of your commercial? Doesn’t work. Remember those ads with “Now what?” and nowwhat.com at the end? No one went to that site and I still have no idea what those were for. Because the answer to their rhetorical question was almost always, “now I’m being entertained by something.”
