#if only this beloved band with a dedicated cult following was less beloved so their shows didnt sell out so fucking fast ... just kidding

[mellotronmkll]

The way I've seen them live 10 times in my life including twice this year and I'm considering wasting money to fly across the country just for one more fix I am such a give a mouse cookie ass motherfucker

[thesswrites]

Leading the Blind

Carrying on from the first part of my gift to @true0neutral, another story of the Hearthhearts of Goldendale, with a difference. We meet Lira Sweetwater, halfling cleric of Pelor, at the start of her own journey into the mercenary life.

A battlefield outside Pallav; Temeni (the Southern Lands)

Alone behind enemy lines, Lira reflected, was a bad place to be. Particularly with her target yelling at her through the communication earring Jennandrel had made for them. “Lira what by Tritherion’s bleeding piles are you doing? I thought I told you people to leave me!”

Lira rolled her eyes, slipping between bits of ruined building and trusting her substandard halfling height to make up for the target beacon that was her bright red hair. “We don’t do that, Goban. And you know it.”

Grumbled swearing in dwarven was the only reply. It was part of the motto of the Quickflight Diminutives, Twylla Quickflight’s mercenary band. ‘In fast, out faster, leave no man behind’. It worked well, and given the makeup of the company, it was the only way it could. They were the Diminituves because that was what they were - diminutive. Four halflings, a dozen or so dwarves, six gnomes, and a surprisingly useful fairy dragon that Lira had liberated from a local noble’s household and now followed her around like a faithful hound, they were the smallest mercenary band in Belarys ... but they were one of the best for insertions like this.

Goban was their demolitionist, one of the few dwarves in their group who wasn’t a straight-up fighter. He’d snuck into the cultist camp on the outskirts of Pallav with a few of his more localised bits of boom, intending to cause enough chaos to flush the cultists out of their tight battle formation and allow the skirmishers of the Diminutives to pick them off. This was a job for more than twenty-odd tiny people, but Lira didn’t consider the odds, any more than she considered the odds of surviving a solo extraction when one of her friends got trapped behind enemy lines.

These cultists called themselves the Eaters of Suns. Lira’s god was a god of the sun. While she herself was a pacifist by inclination, she would do whatever was necessary to stop these cultists in their tracks.

When she finally reached Goban, she reached for the symbol of Pelor around her neck with one hand and for the fallen dwarf with the broken leg with the other; she had a hand on his shoulder and had started to heal him before her knees had touched the ground beside him. Goban shook his head. “You’re a brave girl, Little Lira. Damn fool, mind, but a brave girl.”

Lira looked at him, eyes narrowing in mock offense. “Damn fool, hmm? How is saving our only demolitionist a foolish thing to do?”

Goban glared at her, meeting her eyes with some desperation. “I’m their only demolitionist, but since Ellain left, you’re our only healer, girl. Do you not smell trap on this? Agh,” he grumbled, shaking his head. “Of course you don’t and I shouldn’t expect it. You’re a fledgling to the ways of war, and--”

Fledgling she might be, but at the word ‘trap’, she touched her amulet again, this time seeking out evil. The force of it almost knocked her over, and without a moment’s hesitation, she took his flints from him and slapped the small coin Twylla had given her into Goban’s hand. Speaking the activation word, she opened a Dimension Door to get him out of harm’s way, cutting off his cheated curse mid-epithet. She hadn’t finished healing him yet, and she had no idea how well he’d be able to walk. She, on the other hand, could still run. So thinking, she found the fuse that Goban had spent many patient hours explaining and lit it with a hasty flick of tinder on slate, waiting for a spear to find her back with every second she wasted. Then, still miraculously unstabbed, she stood to face the oncoming enemy.

All that evil coming from a single man was disconcerting, to say the least. Although ‘man’ might have been stretching the point. The cultists they had been fighting had looked somehow wrong - the term Lira used was ‘soul-sick’. This one, however, looked soul-dead, and she pitied him even as she grabbed her dropped quarterstaff and drove him back, as much to get herself under cover before Goban’s black powder exploded as to keep him from finding and snuffing the fuse.

She was only barely in time; shards of broken rock skated harmlessly across her displacer cloak as she pinned the soul-dead cultist to a sandstone wall, somehow praying she could reach him. Pelor, let me help just one of them, she thought, pressing him into the wall with her quarterstaff mashing his elbows into the crumbling wall she’d found to back him against. She felt Pelor’s regretful smile even as she tried: “...Do you still have a name?”

The cultist responded by opening his mouth and spitting a mouthful of something green and foul-smelling directly into her eyes. She had a merciful moment of thinking that he had just vomited in her face (she was a healer, she worked with mercenaries, she’d had worse with every session of drinking, never mind war) ... and then the stinging in her eyes became a nearly insupportable burn and her eyelids refused to work ... possibly because they no longer existed.

While it was far too little and far too late, Lira turned her face away from the acid-spitting abomination that had once been a human man ... but she still refused to let him away from the wall. She had little enough strength left, more of it being sapped away all the time by the acid eating into her face, but there was one chance. She knew Twylla Quickflight, her immediate superior. While the plan to send Lira behind enemy lines to save Goban had originated with their commander, Lira knew that Twylla Quickflight left nothing to chance ... if only because her lover believed in preparedness to the point of triple-redundancy. Which was why, instead of an incoherent scream, Lira centred herself enough to put her cry of agony into a single word: “Rand!”

Lira’s ears were very good. She heard the quick flight of two arrows fly above her head, and the sound of impact indicated that Rand Hearthheart had chosen the path of poetic justice by putting out the eyes of the creature that had taken Lira’s.

It was about all that Lira could process before the pain overwhelmed her and she lost consciousness.

Only half-conscious, some unknown time later, Lira caught a few words from her commander. Not many, but enough to terrify her. Those words were “...back to the temple”.

Lira didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t. This cult was trying to kill suns, and one of those suns was her god. More, her time so far behind enemy lines had shown her what became of those who followed this sun-eating horror. No one deserved to have their soul destroyed that way, to walk on with darkness corroding their soul the way the acid had corroded--

Oh.

It was dark, and she was conscious, and while she could feel bandages over her eyes, she’d had cloth over her eyes before and still had some sense that she could see. Now she didn’t even have the sense of that. The pain had faded, but there was a sunken feeling where her eyes should be. Where her eyes no longer were.

The price of overconfidence.

All Lira could do was pray. Pelor, she thought, and would have closed her eyes if she could have. Pelor, if that is to be the last thing I ever see, please let me continue to help fight it. I ... I don’t ask for my eyes back. That is the mark of a lesson well-learned. Just ... please. I want to help. I want to stop them. I want my people to be spared the fate of the man who took my eyes. Let me heal them. Let me protect them. Let me help them. Let me do Your work in Your name, and keep them well.

She heard a chuckle - something huge and powerful and kind, indulgent as a beloved uncle - and felt the benevolence of a sun-god’s smile, and warm but otherworldly lips upon her forehead. Then, there was a word, and the presence of Pelor receded. Never gone - Pelor was never far from His chosen - but back in His proper place in the material.

Gods seldom intervened, by rules set down long ago - rules that Pelor and Nerull and Tritherion had all agreed upon to allow mortals to be free. But those who dedicated their lives to their gods could ask. There were dispensations, if a mortal like that asked. Knowing that Pelor had found her request worthy of granting, Lira sat up, murmuring the word she’d heard in her delirium. “...Truesight?”

“You need to be lying down,” said Rand Hearthheart. Lira had known for a long time that Twylla’s lover ‘Rand’ was actually a woman named Miranda, having healed her of enough wounds to see her without that much in the way of clothing. But now, to Lira’s lack of eyes, it was all the more obvious. The illusion spell that had at one point kept Lira’s notice away from certain anatomical features didn’t function as it should, because Lira didn’t see it at all; she sensed Miranda Hearthheart as sort of a polished stiletto blade of a woman, polished and versatile and hidden until needed.

Then a quicksilver presence that Lira identified as Twylla pushed forward. “Well, she can do that in a moment, but first I want to know what you mean by ‘Truesight’. Because I heard you say ‘Truesight’, Lira my girl, and honestly, that’s not the sort of thing I expect to hear from someone who had acid spit eat their eyes.”

Lira shook her head. “I ... asked Pelor ... to let me still help you. I ... said I didn’t want or need my eyes back. That the lesson learned was too important to lose, but ... you were talking about sending me back--”

Rand huffed out a little chuckle. “That was Goban,” ‘he’ said with a grin. “The guilt’s eating. He doesn’t really understand the whole thing where clerics put their trust in the gods. He’s less ‘praise the lords’ and more ‘pass the ammunition’.”

All Twylla could do at that point was shake her head. “Well, I’ll tell you this much, Lira-lass; you’re not going anywhere just now. And I don’t just mean because you’re injured, because whatever Pelor did to you, it at least healed the acid burns to scars, which will have to do, I suppose. Listen,” she went on, and Lira could feel the commander grinning, “even if you hadn’t had a bit of divine intervention, we’d have just kept you in the medical tent. We don’t have enough healing to spare. But a healer with Truesight? We’re not passing that up. We’ll train you up in blind-fighting and get you back in the field.”

After a silent moment in which Lira would have cried had her tear ducts not been obliterated, she simply said, “Thank you”. Everyone in the room knew that she wasn’t talking to them.

[cameoamalthea]

Half-Dragons

In the DnD campaign my husband is running we are going to visit a village of half-dragons. In D&D a half-dragon is a cross between a dragon and some other unrelated creature. Also in D&D, certain types of dragons are evil.

One of our player characters was given a quest to get black dragon scales and green dragon scales. Rather than fighting one of those types of dragons our party is going to visit the half-dragon village, a commune in the Dark Forest where half-dragons outcast by society have formed a colony/retreat.  

Black Dragons: The vile tempered and cruel of all evil dragons. They are sadistic, even preferring to eat sentient beings so they can enjoy their food suffering, and above all love cruelty and hurting others alongside ruin and misfortune. 

Green Dragons: The most cunning and treacherous of all evil dragons. They are master manipulators who revel in corrupting people and/or hoarding them like possessions. They enjoy bending others to their will, betraying/tricking others, lying, manipulation, and eating elves.  

So these sorts of dragons don’t seem like they would be very good parents or very good romantic partners so that begs a ‘how did that happen?’ For any green or black half dragon and the DM wasn’t sure, so I offered to come up with some back stories.

So if you like messed up back stories, here are our 3 Green Half-Dragons and 1 Black Half-Dragon and 1 White Half-Dragon 

Corradinus (Corry) Bognár

Race: Black Half-Dragon, Half-Human

(Warning: This is very dark. TW rape, death, torture, attempted infanticide/child abuse)

Corry’s mother, Lady Ravenna, was the daughter of a powerful noblemen whose father, Count Bognar rebelled against his league lord, the Duke, who then laid seigue to his keep. The war was made worse by flooding, which led to failed harvests and famine. With his people starving, Count Bagnar was forced to surrender and the Duke set fire to keep to teach the Count a lesson about rebellion. The Count’s family, along with a few trusted servants fled, eventually turning to the treacherous swamp lands for refuge from the Duke’s men.

It was there the dragon found them.

Cory’s father, Mergandevinsander, was a black dragon who lived in the dreaded swamp lands which surrounded Count Bognar’s land. Like all black dragons he was evil and sadistic. When he came upon the refuges he killed them. Slowly.

Ravenna watched as her mother was swallowed alive and her nurse-maid half melted by the dragon’s acid breathe. All the while the dragon taunted her of the pain he had in store for her. She tried to bargain with him, promising it the wealth of her father’s keep (and hoping to lead it to the Duke’s forces where one foe might destroy the other at least). The dragon agreed, if only give her false hope. When they returned to the keep it was a ruin and there was nothing there of value. Ravenna saw her father’s head mounted above what was left of the gate and lost all will to live.

“Just kill me” said Ravenna.

“No”

Rather than allowing her to escape her pain Mergandevinsander transformed himself into the likeness of the Duke and raped the girl.

The dragon made the ruins his home, and was soon joined by a band of kobolds who served him there, and kept the girl as a toy for a time. When Ravenna became pregnant he kept her under watch and had his kobolds care for her. He wanted to see her face when the she saw the thing she gave birth too.

When she was closer to the end of her pregnancy he let her go. Let her wander pregnant and cursed, unable to seek help without any who helped her seeing the thing growing inside her.

When her baby was born Ravenna was so horrified at the sight of it she through it into a river. Miraculously, or perhaps due to his black dragon heritage, the baby survived and was found by a Priest of Ilmater.

Given that Ilmater is the god of compassion. The clergy dedicated themselves to providing healing and succor to all in need, whatever the cost to themselves, as they believed life was sacred and that suffering to preserve it was holy. Given that, the priest had pity, even for a child such as this.  

With the baby was a scroll, a final letter from his mother asking his forgiveness for what she about to do and explaining the circumstances of his birth.

Corradinus was raised in a monastery as a cleric of Ilmater and later dedicated himself to learning combat so that he could defend the weak, specializing in non-lethal techniques and sparing his opponents pain where possible.

Class: One level of cleric, the rest Monk

Personality:

Although Black Dragons are knows for being the most evil-tempered and vile of all dragons, Dinus is perhaps the most sweet-tempered and kind of all half-dragons. He is generous, friendly and helpful. He is very devoted to his god Ilmater and tries to embody the tenant’s of his faith. He also enjoys the idea of being a dashing hero, favoring a rapier as his weapon and doing his best to be gallant and charming.

Appearance: Think Night-Crawler but black and with scales, and violet eyes 

Blerta Song

Race: Half Green Dragon, Half-Gnome

(Warning: Weird Kinks, Sexual Harassment)

Her father, Hamnet Von Kinky-Gnome, had a lot of fetishes (possibly all of them). Being a gnome was fortunate because one of his major kinks was larger women. He also had a thing for scales. It was very fortunate Hamnet lived in a world where larger creatures and sentient creatures with scales existed.

Unfortunately, most creatures don’t enjoy being fetishized, especially not by creepy gnomes.

In many ways, that’s why, the green dragon Verthandantalynx was perfect for Hamnet. When the villagers of Trenahess, who worshipped the green dragon, offered Hamnet as a sacrifice to her, his response was:

“vore me mommy”

Verthandantalynx found this incredibly creepy and off putting, and asked:

“Seriously?What is wrong with you?” 

Before clarifying that she wasn’t going to eat him if he was turned on by it (because that would be weird). He informed her that there wasn’t a thing she could do that wouldn’t turn him on. 

He then proceeded to tell her how beautiful she was and how wonderful she was in every way. Her vanity, and green dragons are very vain creatures, eventually overcame her discomfort. Although there was no challenge in bending the gnome to her will, having a willing and adoring pet seemed like it could be fun for awhile…

She she laid a clutch of tiny (for her) eggs and sent Hamnet away because he shouldn’t be anywhere near children. Only one of the eggs hatched and from that egg was born a baby green half-dragon. She gave the baby to her followers to raise, and they named her Blerta.

The dragon instructed her worshippers to raise Blerta and make sure ‘she doesn’t turn out like her father.’ So she was raised to be the most proper and pure maiden possible, and as a teenager was given a Paladan who was a member of the order Beloved of Lurue. These followers of the unicorn goddess Lurue take a vow of chastity, and the villagers figured that joining an all female order of virgins sworn to forsake earthly bonds would keep Blerta from turning out like her father. 

The Paladan, for her part, thought that adopting a tiny half-dragon girl sounded a lot better than being fed to much less tiny mother. As far as being captured by an evil dragon worshipping cult goes, adopting a teenage girl is not the worst outcome. 

Upon learning that the girl’s name was Blerta Song, the Cleric’s unicorn companion, Silver, suggested dropping by the bard’s college to get the girl music lessons, because ‘can you imagine a Bard named Blerta Song?’ 

Class: Paladan/Bard

Personality:  “Lurue teaches that life is there to be lived, and one should live it with zest and flair. Adventures and quests should be taken on a whim and life should be filled with good times and laughter.” Blerta enjoys singing with cute woodland creatures and writing songs about the forest. She is a bit vain, being raised as the sacred child of the dragon her village worshipped and can be bossy. She enjoys attention. However, the core of her religious devotion is goodness, kindness and chastity.  

Appearance: Chibi green dragon monster-girl 

Midori Takehiko

Race: Half-Green Dragon, Half-High Elf 

(Warning: Discussion of Sexuality, strong language)

Midori’s mother was an elven princess named Aoi, who was offered as a sacrifice to the Green Dragon Claugiyliamatar. While green dragons generally enjoy eating elves, Claugiyliamatar was intrigued by Aoi’s fearlessness and cunning. She saw in her a useful servant and the two became fast friends. 

In short, they were both cunning, manipulative bitches who likes the idea of power and freedom. Claugiyliamatar could transform a dragon into a human using magic and of all her kind was perhaps the most gifted at changing shape. She took Aoi as a lover, offering whatever form the elf princess preferred. Since Claugiyliamatar could shape shift, when Aoi suggested using a strap-on she simply altered anatomy. This led to a discussion about having children, which Aoi wanted as she liked the idea of having someone who would love her absolutely. 

So Midori was born to an evil interspecies lesbian couple and raised to be a cunning princess.

Class: Rogue Assassin/Monk 

Personality: Think Loki meets Azula

Appearance: Green Half-Dragon

Thanth Halen

(Half Green Dragon, Half-Human)

(Warning: None really, bad names and kidnapping I guess)

His father, Led Axle Halen, was a famous bard who toured across the land, beloved by all, and his music caught the attention of a Green dragon, Fll'Yissetat, who kidnapped him as her personal pet/music. She herself had once been held captive for a time and informed him that meant she ‘didn’t want to hear him complain about it.’ If he wanted for company, she could give it to him. Since he missed the company of his groupies, he agreed.  

Their offspring, Thanth, inherited more human characteristics. He is incredibly muscular and handsome. He also inherited his father’s musical talent. 

Class: Bard/Barbarian 

Personality: Viking God of Rock

Appearance: Muscular man with long hair, muscular arms, green dragon wings and horns like a green dragon. He is very sexy. 

Ed Snowflake 

Race: Half White Dragon, Half Orc

No one is quite sure how this happened, as white dragons are feral, vicious and basically animals famed for being really stupid for a dragon. Ed offers no clue as to how his parents met because Ed doesn’t seem to be able to speak. Or at least, if he can speak, he probably doesn’t know very many words.

Class: Barbarian

Personality: Think Ed the Hyena from the Lion King meets the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Toons 

Appearance: Imagine a white dragon crossed with an Orc. 

[moviesihaveseenbeforeiamdea-blog]

#1102 No Country for Old Men

Source

Released: November 9, 2007

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Written by: Joel and Ethan Coen, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same name. 

Starring: Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald

Had I Seen it Before? Yes

Very Tangential Bill Murray Anecdote: We have the reputation of Joel Coen to blame for the Bill Murray Garfield movie, as he reportedly only accepted to do the movie because he admired the Coen brothers, and mistakenly assumed the credited Joel Cohen who wrote the script was one of the brothers. He is not. You can read Murray’s telling of the story in a GQ interview here, it’s worth reading in his own words. (Garfield made nearly $30 million more than No Country, in the end.)

The Coen brothers are a beloved influence of mine. Being a white, twentysomething dude, I suppose that the connection is inevitable, but its inevitability should not detract in any way from the Coen brothers as an incredible creative force. Referred to as “the two-headed director,” these guys have been cranking out all-time classics and cult favorites for over thirty years now, and I see no reason why we won’t get another couple movies out of them. Despite the only-decent-to-good reviews for their latest, Hail, Caesar!, these guys’ last five movies before that---No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis---has been a hot streak for the duo, matching their previous mid-90s to early-2000s success from Fargo through The Man Who Wasn’t There. 

Which is why I’m a little miffed that this list has done a hack-job of curating their movies. The exclusion of Blood Simple. is an unforgivable sin, and while I did enjoy True Grit, I’m not sure it was necessary in place of Miller’s Crossing or A Serious Man, both of which accomplish far more than True Grit while emphasizing the directors’ peculiarities. 

But, well, I have the list that’s been given to me, and I understand the project at hand. I’m only following orders here. I ought to grapple with the movie I have now, and not the movies I wish I had later.

Kelly Macdonald and Josh Brolin as Carla Jean and Llewellyn Moss (Source)

No Country for Old Men is the Coen brothers’ best movie, even if it’s not my favorite (a three-way tie between Burn After Reading, Inside Llewyn Davis, and The Big Lebowski). There is no element to this movie that is not masterful and tightly controlled. A.O. Scott, in his review for The New York Times, writes:

At their best, and for that matter at their less than best, Joel and Ethan Coen, who share writing and directing credit here, combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits, as if they were playing Franz Liszt’s most treacherous compositions on dueling banjos.

He says of No Country for Old Men ”For formalists — those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design — it’s pure heaven.”

There’s no dying this is an expertly-made movie, even if you’re one of the few who don't enjoy the holistic presentation. What seems strange to me though is how different this feels from a typical Coen brothers movie. Not that it doesn’t feel like one of theirs, but it’s a band apart from their typical output. The Coens have long been accused of beating up on their characters and writing mercilessly ironic plots, but in No Country, it’s all taken a step further into complete despair. The characters within the movie aren’t so much tortured for laughs or their hubris as might be expected. Instead, the brothers build a narrative in which their characters are helpless form the first minute, doomed to the conclusion of the story as a result of the actions taken in the first twenty minutes. 

It’s interesting that this movie follows The Ladykillers, often considered the nadir of the brothers’ career. There was a three-year gap between the two, a little on the longer side for the guys, and maybe that time was well spent. It’s always good to take a break from yourself, and it often gives a new license, creatively. I think it’s notable that for this movie the Coens did away with their usual repertoire of actors. Though Josh Brolin would go on to be a staple in future movies, at the time the only actor who had ever appeared in a Coen movie before was Stephen Root, who plays a consequential but minor role in this movie. For a duo that is known for an intensely personal style, there seems to be a deliberate effort to go against the grain with this movie. (Though it should be noted that composer Carter Burwell and cinematographer Roger Deakins were both employed for this movie, as they have been for most of the brothers’ career.)

Javier Bardem in an immaculate performance as Anton Chigurh (Source)

And maybe the Coen brothers took that style of unexpected effort to comment on the movie they made. There’s an inevitability to this movie. I don’t mean that negatively. Everything in the movie seems to agree with me on that point. Even if this were my first time watching it, it’s obvious that nobody is going to get what they want. In the first minutes of the movie an officer claims that he’s in control of a situation and is immediately strangled to death by the man he’s detained. Llewellyn stumbles on a group of dead men who have royally fucked up a drug deal. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones) talks about how he doesn’t want to be a sheriff anymore. Ellis (Barry Corbin) tells a story of a man murdered and dying at night as if it were the only possible outcome to a story of men and guns in Texas. 

To me, it seems to be no accident that Llewellyn is murdered by the Mexicans almost immediately following his resolution to pursue and murder Anton. Llewellyn considers himself to be a dumb man, but he is introduced to us hunting and tracking in the Texas plains. He seems competent and collected, and as he is pursued he uses his knowledge of his prey to guide his own way through survival. When the threat is unknown and mostly unseen, Llewellyn navigates it expertly, moving with the endless paranoia of someone pursued. The man is so thorough and capable of zooming in-and-out of the potential hazards that will come to a man holding two million stolen dollars that you’d think he was bracing to fight God Himself. And maybe he is. 

But the minute Llewellyn decides he is only fighting a man, he loses sight of that animal instinct to survive at all costs and tries to pursue something that can’t be pursued. The Mexicans, Anton, Welles, whoever it was, they weren’t going to stop looking for that money, no matter what Llewellyn accomplished, and it’s his certainty that he is in control that kills him. As Ellis says to Ed Tom Bell at the end “You can’t stop what’s coming. Ain’t waiting on you.” To Ellis, the idea that it might wait on you, whatever it is, is “vanity.”

Llewellyn is killed by his hubris. Ed Tom Bell forces himself into retirement because he realizes he is incapable of comprehending the world around him and can’t bring himself to try anymore. Anton accomplishes everything he set out to do and is immediately smashed to pieces in a freak car accident. All these men struggle against their circumstances to scrape out a place for themselves in the shade, however they would define it, and are met with a violent, indifferent world that has no time for their ambitions. I can’t remember who it was---I believe Ed Tom---who says there’s no point in trying to go after what you’ve lost, it’s no longer yours---and you lose more trying to get it back. For all of these men, it’s a point beaten into them until they are forced to accept it. 

Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Source)

That’s all I’ve got. This is one of the movies that has stuck with me over the years, and I’ll probably see it quite a few more times before I’m dead. The Coen brothers are one of my favorite creative forces still working today, and I think this movie is the peak of their technical abilities. It’s as close a movie can be to being perfect in its execution, and watching it you can’t help but be sucked into its world. It may be relentlessly violent, but it’s not without a point, and it’s never pornographic in its depiction of that violence. Everything in this movie serves a purpose. If you haven’t seen it, it’s truly one of the movies that live up to the “essential” descriptor the list gives it. 

FInal thoughts:

IMDb’s trivia page informs me that this is the Coen brothers’ longest movie at two hours and two minutes. It’s funny, I never noticed that their movies are so succinct. Two hours is not an abnormally long runtime to have as your maximum, but it’s worked for these guys to tell their stories briskly. The Coen brothers are dedicated editors, on top of their many other talents. 

It’s also notable that the three main characters share exactly zero screen time with each other. The two closest instances I can recall are the hotel encounter between Anton and Moss, which never features them in the same shot together, and Ed Tom Bell approaching a different hotel later where Llewellyn’s body is, but, again, the two never appear in the same shot. 

Also notable is that Anton and Llewellyn do not encounter each other until nearly exactly halfway through the movie. 

One omission from the book (at least from what I recall) is Anton’s ultimate motive, which is to recover the money for a buyer. Anton doesn’t seem to have this motivation in the movie, and for the most part, he doesn’t need one. He’s presented as a force of nature, even if the movie---and Anton himself---don’t seem to believe ultimately believe in this presentation. 

The dead man originally holding the money is kept in the frame as Llewellyn first picks it up and looks at it. The Coen brothers are masterful directors. 

Llewellyn really should have bought a backpack to hold that money instead of lugging that big-ass case around with him everywhere. 

Anton’s disgust with blood isn’t only ironic, but probably the biggest indication that he’s mortal, just a man. I don’t remember Anton being uncomfortable with blood in that book, so hats off to Joel, Ethan, and Javier if that was their interpretation of the character. 

I didn’t talk about it above, but Woody Harrelson does an excellent job in his role as Carson Welles. He talks a big game and struts his stuff like he knows what he’s up against, but his scene in the hotel room with Anton is uncomfortable and sad. It is so obvious he recognizes what’s coming and doesn’t want to accept. He squirms and looks for a way out and comes close to panic, but it doesn’t matter. Anton murders him all the same. 

I also noticed that the scene in which Carson offers Llewellyn a way out is immediately followed by the scene in which Ed Tom Bell offers Carla Jean a similar offer. Both these men extend an offer they can’t follow through on. No one seems to understand how out of control the situation is until it’s too late. 

In a movie that could have been relentlessly grim, Tommy Lee Jones gets off a few good one-liners, and I loved his story about the couple running the bed and breakfast who murdered their guests. Remarking on how they tortured their victims, he figures it must’ve been because the TV was broken. 

Anton is able to accomplish so much because he is willing to veer off the script everyone else operates by and assumes everyone else will operate by too. The gas station attendant’s small talk, killing the two men at the site of the drug deal after they hand him a flashlight because he asked, stealing multiple cars from people who stopped on his authority (be it as a stranded man on the road or because he was driving a police cruiser), all of it points to a man who accomplishes so much because he cares so little.