More Oscar Contenders

I went to see "Atonement" and "No Country For Old Men" this weekend. They are both great films with amazing casts and exceptional performances all around. I particularly loved the long tracking shot in Atonement on the beach as the soldiers were waiting to be picked up. The shot went on endlessly and was just really well done. No Country had its great moments as well - truly an amazing film with colorful characters that was done in that laconic Coen brothers style. One thing that's always a great feature of the Coen brothers films is the dialog. This film was no exception. There was damn little of it, but what was there was amazing. Javier Bardem is intense and played such a great villain in "No Country". I've always thought Keira Knightley a great actress and she was at the top of her form as Cecilia in Atonement.

The thing that's great about seeing films that are this good is that they give you great ideas, or make you think about elements that may be applicable to your work. While LOD is not all that close to the No Country story, there are some vaguely familiar elements and themes between the two which I found encouraging. The thing that sucks about having similarities to popular films is that when people see LOD they're likely to say something like "they stole that from No country" when in reality most of the similar stuff was baked into LOD long ago.