This is it, my faithful reading several, the last leg of my coverage of my post modern film history course. This week, we were treated to a work created by the ultimate ‘post modern” era film team, the Coen Brothers. Whom, frankly, are a film making team whose work I stopped caring about after “Fargo” was made because I thought their films were becoming too quirky for their own good. It’s supposed to be all about substance over style, not the other way around. How many times I have to tell you people this?

By “post modern,” my professor means “the era where the rise of electronic information transfer becomes more dominant” (i.e. television, internet) and the concept of “intertexuality:” the means in where which a modern text (or media) borrows ideas from a past text. (Or in other words, there no such thing as an original idea anymore!) If my professor wanted to choose the ultimate post modern film director to study for this course, he should’ve chosen Quentin Tarantino, because none of his movies have any original ideas in them at all.

This week’s film was “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” which was basically Homer’s Illad retold in a Great Depression setting. (There goes that intertexuality concept again!) what else stopped this film from being enjoyable for me was George Clooney and John Goodman, two actors whose theatrical skills are the death knell of any movie.

This film shall also be damned for bringing blue grass music out of obscure-musical-guest-between-the-funny-bits-of-Prairie-Home-Companion-with-Garrison-Keillor-ghetto and into the mainstream hipster, suv driving  ”I’m cooler than thou for no particular reason” crowd. An inexcusable offense in my opinion.

This is the end of the syllabus, so there is no film to review next week. Please keep an eye on this website for new and fresh topic ideas in the near future!

jareddriskill