By: Chris Crespo of Cinema Crespodiso
Top Two Titles Coming to Netflix… NOVEMBER 2018
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
Coming to Netflix November 2, 2018
Orson Welles, John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich are all deceased legends of Hollywood, and the idea of the three of them working together to make a movie is almost too much to bear, the concept of so much talent convening together to make anything is just too staggering for our feeble brains to comprehend. So maybe that is why it was best that the movie made by these titans of industry remained incomplete and unreleased for several decades, lest it drive us all mad, but now finally in this foul year of our Lord 2018 it is hear, completed and ready for mass consumption in the most 21st Century way imaginable…on Netflix.
Can you imagine explaining Netflix to Orson Welles? As an ardent movie goer and lover of cinema, he surely would have had some interesting thoughts about the continued decline of movie theaters and the increased access to new art, and between these two things I wonder if he would have seen a Netflix release for his movie “The Other Side of the Wind” as a positive or a negative. After all, this is a movie that is itself very meta in terms of being about the movie industry, albeit the state of the industry by the late 1960s and early 1970s. You see, back then the old studio model was a dying beast, churning out expensive movies that no one wanted to see, costing people lots of money and jobs. In place of this dying beast came the young filmmakers, avant garde in ways the older filmmakers were not, and Orson Welles decided to make a movie in which an older director (played by John Huston, director of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “The Maltese Falcon” among other classics) decides to try his hand at some experimental style filmmaking. Shot in a mockumentary style and incorporating a super stylized “film within a film,” “The Other Side of the Wind” has a great chance of being the most interesting, daring and innovative movie of 2018…and the final scenes for it were shot in 1976. That’s some crazy, wild stuff.
The Other Side of the Wind | TRAILER | Coming to Netflix November 2, 2018
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS
Coming to Netflix November 16, 2018
What’s that? You have more room in your life for a new piece of art from legendary filmmakers? Well what do you know, looks like Netflix has you covered, thanks to “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” an anthology film set in the American Old West, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen a.k.a. The Coen Brothers, makers of such modern American classics as “Raising Arizona” and “Fargo,” as well as “No Country For Old Men” and “True Grit.” And that’s just four, merely FOUR, of the many amazing movies these two have made over the years. And while they have dabbled in both pseudo-westerns and actual westerns, this is the first time in their career that they have decided to go with the anthology route.
You see, what had happened was, the Coens have been writing little short stories that take place in the Old West (yee-haw!) and these stories were being compiled over the course of 25 years. That’s a long time for an idea to percolate. And finally these short stories found a home when the Coens announced in January 2017 that they would be working with Annapurna Television to produce a six-episode limited series, which was then picked up for distribution on Netflix just a few months later. But then…surprise! The Coens changed their hive mind at some point and decided to string the stories together into one 132-minute long movie, and now here we are, with their first anthology film. Featuring some Coen mainstays like Tim Blake Nelson and Stephen Root as well as folks like Liam Neeson, Saul Rubinek, Zoe Kazan, Tom Waits and James Franco, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” will be here soon for us to easily stream at home, and when it comes to Coen Brothers movies, this is a decidedly good thing to have.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs | TRAILER | Coming to Netflix November 16, 2018
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