If It Ain’t Fixed, Don’t Broke It

Where’d you get a gun like this? he said.
At the gittin place.
  Cormac McCarthy, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES (1992)

Where’d you get that pistol? she called.
At the gettin place.
  Cormac McCarthy, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2005)

The Popcorn Interlude: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Cormac McCarthy, a quality crime yarn and the Coen Brothers: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN should have been a perfect storm. It’s a marvellous movie, there’s no doubt about that, and that it’s not entirely wonderful is due in part to the curse of high expectations, and at least two, and possibly three, rather convoluted leaps of logic the filmmakers ask the audience to make – one is plenty, two is pushing it and three is just sloppy, which is not an adjective often used in the same paragraph as ‘the Coen Brothers’. In saying that, it will certainly reward a second viewing and it will deservedly be in most critics’ Top Ten come the end of the year. But here’s another way of getting at what we were trying to say here: the fact that NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a crime story will in no way influence the way its critics and its audience view the film. It will be judged on its production values, its direction and acting, how plausible and engaging its story is, how well it achieves its implicit ambition. If its narrative genre is mentioned at all it will be in a positive context, given the Coens’ superb understanding and execution of what makes crime a global obsession; the Coen Brothers are among the best in the business because they work in the crime genre, not despite it. The same could be said for Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, W.R. Burnett. It helps, of course, that the Coens work in what is still a relatively new form, one that doesn’t concern itself with high or low art but good or bad movies. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler: “There’s only two kinds of writing, good and bad.” The Coens understand that there’s only two kinds of stories, essential or not. It’s still too early to decide if NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is essential in the way FARGO and THE BIG LEBOWSKI are, but for the moment it is almost a perfect storm.- Declan Burke

Blood Is Never Simple

Ever since the news started filtering back from Cannes that the Coen Brothers were not only back on form, but with an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel, the elves have been fairly salivating at the prospect of No Country For Old Men. Due early next year, it’s a classic Coen set-up: guy finds a heap of money in desert, psychotic killer turns up to claim it, chaos ensues. The cast includes Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson, but don’t expect the skewed black comedy of Fargo or The Big Lebowski: taking its cue from the pessimistic WB Yeats title, this baby’s dark, dark, dark, and very much a return to Blood Simple territory. McCarthy, the Coens, and a neo-noir classic-in-the-making? Truly our cup runneth over.

This ‘Funky Friday’s Free-For-All’ Malarkey: It’s Just Another Name For An Interweb Mash-Up Baloohaha Thingy, Isn’t It?

Erm, yes. Moving swiftly on … the RTE Guide was less kind than it might have been to Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo, claiming that, “the basic premise is good … but there are too many loose ends and sub-plots that never quite get off the ground.” Still, the Raith Rovers fan will always have the Portico Prize AND the Theakston's Old Perculier Crime Novel of the Year award she won for The Grave Tattoo to sustain her … Unsurprisingly, Brian McGilloway’s Borderlands gets the 21-gun salute from Shotsmag: “Borderlands is a highly tense, taut debut novel with the same intensity one has come to expect from established authors.” Which is nice … Staying with Shotsmag, they’re getting to know Ken Bruen (left) quite well, apparently: “Bruen’s writing has a beguiling quality, written in very intimate first person … If you like your crime thrillers to challenge the way you think, then Bruen’s your man.” And staying with all things Bruen, Murderati has his ‘essay’ A Tale of Two Childhoods, which contains the deliciously downbeat kiss-off to the rich ‘n’ famous, “If you want to know what God thinks of money, look who he gave it to.” Ooooh, get him … John Connolly has had his prints taken over at Rap Sheet, where they’re asking a host of writers what crime novel they think has been most unjustly ignored over the years. Ross Macdonald’s The Chill, says John: “At the risk of being heretical, Macdonald was a much better novelist than Chandler, who was a flashier writer … read The Chill not only for its exquisite plotting and elegant, measured prose, but for the empathy, humanity and sheer generosity of spirit that infuses every page.” Couldn’t agree more … Finally, we got information, man, new shit has, uh, come to light … yep, it’s a double-whammy for Coen Brothers fans: not only did Ethan (right) and Joel's (righter) movie of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men get les reviews raves at Cannes and finally blot out the blight that was The Ladykillers, but the Guardian brings news of a Coen Brothers-Working Title tie-in, Burn After Reading, Working Title being the company who worked on Fargo and The Big Lebowski (“Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.”). Joy untrammelled, eh? Finally-finally, here's aspiring author Bernard Black / Dylan Moran of Black Books (below), not really coming to terms with his latest rejection letter. Altogether now: "Piss-midget!" And that’s all for another week, folks: have a good weekend and y’all come back now, y’hear?