When a childless couple of an ex-con and an ex-cop decide to help themselves to one of another family's quintuplets, their lives become more complicated than they anticipated.
An eccentric, if not charming Southern professor and his crew pose as a classical ensemble in order to rob a casino, all under the nose of his unsuspecting but sharp old landlady.
Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern physics teacher, watches his life unravel over multiple sudden incidents. Though seeking meaning and answers amidst his turmoils, he seems to keep sinking.
Directors:
Ethan Coen,
Joel Coen
Stars:
Michael Stuhlbarg,
Richard Kind,
Sari Lennick
Loosely based on Homer's "Odyssey," the movie deals with the picaresque adventures of Ulysses Everett McGill and his companions Delmar and Pete in 1930s Mississipi. Sprung from a chain gang and trying to reach Everett's home to recover the buried loot of a bank heist they are confronted by a series of strange characters--among them sirens, a cyclops, bank robber George "Baby Face" Nelson (very annoyed by that nickname), a campaigning governor and his opponent, a KKK lynch mob, and a blind prophet who warns the trio that "the treasure you seek shall not be the treasure you find." Written by
Armin Ortmann <armin@sfb288.math.tu-berlin.de>
The character of Pappy O'Daniel is based on W. Lee (Pappy) O'Daniel, who served as Governor of Texas (not Mississippi) from 1939-41 and later as U.S. Senator. He was a flour baron with a radio show and sang with The Light Crust Doughboys. He was famous for refusing to vote in protest of the poll tax. See more »
Goofs
Pete says "today is the seventeenth" and that they have only four days to reach their goal before it is flooded. However, there are at least six different night scenes from that point until the scene in which the flooding takes place, and the newspaper Everett throws on the fire has the date "July 13, 1937" and mentions the Soggy Bottom Boys. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Ulysses Everett McGill:
Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin'?
See more »
Crazy Credits
The credit for Alan J. Schoolcraft, the president of operations for Mike Zoss Productions, is all in Spanish: "El Encargado de Mike Zoss Productions" See more »
This was the best film I saw in the year 2000. The Cohen brothers have never let me down before, and they certainly didn't this time either.
It's one of those rare movies these days - it's witty, intelligent and vastly entertaining. I left the cinema with a warmth in my heart. Of course, there's lot of Cohen stuff in there - odd characters and peculiar gadgets, well-developed plot and magic camerawork. But no Cohen film is resembling any other Cohen film, if you overlook the general quality of them, of course.
The big surprise for me was that Clooney is so good. But the true master performance in this movie comes from Tim Blake-Nelson. But the rest of the cast is superb too.
A film that is lightweight comedy with a musical touch that evolve it's story round rednecks and old time country music - dripping with wit and intelligence. Thats a very unlikely combination. But it's exactly what this picture is.
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This was the best film I saw in the year 2000. The Cohen brothers have never let me down before, and they certainly didn't this time either.
It's one of those rare movies these days - it's witty, intelligent and vastly entertaining. I left the cinema with a warmth in my heart. Of course, there's lot of Cohen stuff in there - odd characters and peculiar gadgets, well-developed plot and magic camerawork. But no Cohen film is resembling any other Cohen film, if you overlook the general quality of them, of course.
The big surprise for me was that Clooney is so good. But the true master performance in this movie comes from Tim Blake-Nelson. But the rest of the cast is superb too.
A film that is lightweight comedy with a musical touch that evolve it's story round rednecks and old time country music - dripping with wit and intelligence. Thats a very unlikely combination. But it's exactly what this picture is.