29. Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford - Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song)
Films filled the void left by football, when I finally fell out of love with the latter and rediscovered a new love for the former. Everyone would cite films as one of their interests, but what they usually mean is that they either enjoy going to the cinema a lot - to watch anything half-decent usually - or they have an exhaustible list of favourite films that provide familiar and comfortable viewing when they happen to be on.
Personally, I hate the cinema. People are conditioned into unnecessary and irritatingly noisy snacking and the ones you end up sitting near will either fidget or whisper and generally leak piss all over the experience of getting into a really good film on the big screen. Once my children didn't need me to take them to the cinema anymore, I stopped going (except for the recent Star Wars episodes and spin-offs that is).
But then a few things changed that. One was the discovery that there were a lot of cleverly made films in the late 60s and early 70s, which relied on dialogue, character, beautiful cinematography and avoidance of cliché. I knew and liked some of these already - Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Mean Streets, Dirty Harry, etc... But as I discovered others - Deliverance, In the Heat of the Night, Dog Day Afternoon - I started to appreciate the actual film-making, the performances, the visuals, the sound. I started to understand the art behind them. For a while, I invested a lot of time watching and reading about Hitchcock films, intrigued by his approach to the visual impact of what was on the screen, something that over-shadowed dialogue and acting in most cases.
And from there, I stumbled across the Coen Brothers. The fact that they had passed me by so completely just goes to show that I had actually lost interest in films for decades. Here were two film makers who combined Hitchcockian visual sensibilities, flawed and complex characters and dark or even macabre subject matter with the sort of quirky, black humour that has always appealed to me. And on top of this, the Coen's musical tastes and knowledge helped to soundtrack the films with a wide range of American music that perfectly suited and added to the impact of the visuals.
The film that first hooked me was unsurprisingly Inside Llewyn Davies. Unsurprising, because it is set in Greenwich Village in the early 60s and focuses on a struggling folk singer. The context is contemporaneous with Bob Dylan (whose character even features at the end) and the music is of that time and place, most notably new recordings of Hang Me, Oh Hang Me and Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song) by Dave Von Ronk, on whom the main character is based.
O Brother Where Art Thou was another Coen film celebrating American folk, with a country and bluegrass cross-over, especially the key song in the film, Man of Constant Sorrow, performed by the Soggy Bottom Boys and (I have to admit) much better than Dylan's early version.
The film Fargo - one of the best examples of Coenesque macabre, quirky wit - spawned 3 spin-off series with the most amazing soundtrack, which proved a rich source of new songs to get into, including Blitzen Trapper's version of Man of Constant Sorrow, less folky and more funky than Bob and the Soggy Bottom Boys.
These films became firm favourites of mine and I found myself reading more and more about cinema and seeking out old, lesser-known classic films that I'd never seen before. Film was a proper interest for me now. And with a new cinema opening in St Albans - a restored art deco cinema for grown-ups, with bar and tables and sofas and no noisy popcorn munchers - I found myself eager to watch the odd classic on the big screen, such as When Harry Met Sally, Heat of the Night, Rear Window Yellow Submarine and (forthcoming) Vertigo.
But the film that I had criminally never even heard about since its release in 1998 and which has now become my favourite for all the reasons that I love the Coens, is The Big Lebowski. The opening title song of choice is The Man in Me by Bob Dylan, a song I had equally overlooked and for even longer, despite having it tucked way unassumingly on side B of a lesser-listened to album, New Morning. In the list of people who got me into the best music over all this time, the Coens find themselves the latest addition following friends mentioned in earlier posts - John, Chris, Bern and Lizzy.
Personally, I hate the cinema. People are conditioned into unnecessary and irritatingly noisy snacking and the ones you end up sitting near will either fidget or whisper and generally leak piss all over the experience of getting into a really good film on the big screen. Once my children didn't need me to take them to the cinema anymore, I stopped going (except for the recent Star Wars episodes and spin-offs that is).
But then a few things changed that. One was the discovery that there were a lot of cleverly made films in the late 60s and early 70s, which relied on dialogue, character, beautiful cinematography and avoidance of cliché. I knew and liked some of these already - Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Mean Streets, Dirty Harry, etc... But as I discovered others - Deliverance, In the Heat of the Night, Dog Day Afternoon - I started to appreciate the actual film-making, the performances, the visuals, the sound. I started to understand the art behind them. For a while, I invested a lot of time watching and reading about Hitchcock films, intrigued by his approach to the visual impact of what was on the screen, something that over-shadowed dialogue and acting in most cases.
And from there, I stumbled across the Coen Brothers. The fact that they had passed me by so completely just goes to show that I had actually lost interest in films for decades. Here were two film makers who combined Hitchcockian visual sensibilities, flawed and complex characters and dark or even macabre subject matter with the sort of quirky, black humour that has always appealed to me. And on top of this, the Coen's musical tastes and knowledge helped to soundtrack the films with a wide range of American music that perfectly suited and added to the impact of the visuals.
The film that first hooked me was unsurprisingly Inside Llewyn Davies. Unsurprising, because it is set in Greenwich Village in the early 60s and focuses on a struggling folk singer. The context is contemporaneous with Bob Dylan (whose character even features at the end) and the music is of that time and place, most notably new recordings of Hang Me, Oh Hang Me and Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song) by Dave Von Ronk, on whom the main character is based.
O Brother Where Art Thou was another Coen film celebrating American folk, with a country and bluegrass cross-over, especially the key song in the film, Man of Constant Sorrow, performed by the Soggy Bottom Boys and (I have to admit) much better than Dylan's early version.
The film Fargo - one of the best examples of Coenesque macabre, quirky wit - spawned 3 spin-off series with the most amazing soundtrack, which proved a rich source of new songs to get into, including Blitzen Trapper's version of Man of Constant Sorrow, less folky and more funky than Bob and the Soggy Bottom Boys.
These films became firm favourites of mine and I found myself reading more and more about cinema and seeking out old, lesser-known classic films that I'd never seen before. Film was a proper interest for me now. And with a new cinema opening in St Albans - a restored art deco cinema for grown-ups, with bar and tables and sofas and no noisy popcorn munchers - I found myself eager to watch the odd classic on the big screen, such as When Harry Met Sally, Heat of the Night, Rear Window Yellow Submarine and (forthcoming) Vertigo.
But the film that I had criminally never even heard about since its release in 1998 and which has now become my favourite for all the reasons that I love the Coens, is The Big Lebowski. The opening title song of choice is The Man in Me by Bob Dylan, a song I had equally overlooked and for even longer, despite having it tucked way unassumingly on side B of a lesser-listened to album, New Morning. In the list of people who got me into the best music over all this time, the Coens find themselves the latest addition following friends mentioned in earlier posts - John, Chris, Bern and Lizzy.
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