Film Feature: Chad’s Top 10 Films of 2013

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann present their Top 10 Films of 2013.  Here’s Chad’s list, presented in the order of which he feels they deserve to be ranked (1 being the best, 10 being pretty damn good too!)

1.) Inside Llewyn Davis
"If it was never new and it never gets old, then it's a folk song"
“If it was never new and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song”

The Coen brothers newest film is a hilarious, thought-provoking, darkly intelligent, musical journey into the 1961 New York folk music scene.  Featuring masterful performances under the direction of master filmmakers, Inside Llewyn Davis is a documentary of sorts — accurately capturing a time period and a historical mentality…yet its message is timeless.

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Film Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

‘I am a man of COEN sorrow…’

Oscar Isaac cradling the real star.
Oscar Isaac cradling the real star of Inside Llewyn Davis.

In a dimly lit smoky bar, an unshaven, slightly disheveled, solo male singer leans into a mic and begins gently singing, ‘Hang me / Oh hang me / I’ll be dead and gone.’ For the next three or so minutes, we are up close and personal to this singer, watching his calm disposition as he sings out the entirety of the song, not even once looking up at the quiet audience wrapped up in the beautiful melody, drinks, and cigarettes. This is how Inside Llewyn Davis begins, the extraordinary and immaculately conceived new film by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, or as we know them, the Coen brothers. This singer is, of course, Llewyn Davis, and these opening lyrics are deliberately chosen to open the story — they set the tone and capture the somber outlook of the title character. Based on a pivotal moment in our nation’s cultural history, and using a fictionalized version of folk musician Dave Van Ronk to capture the experience of many lost artists of that time period, Inside Llewyn Davis is a pointedly dark and comical drama that serves as an allegorical tale and a cinematic exposé of the unfortunate “futility” of many talented artists.

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Spinning Platters Interview with T-Bone Burnett and Oscar Isaac from ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

The towering, imposing, and yet, gentle-voiced T-Bone Burnett strolled into the room occupied by a few eager journalists.  Oscar Isaac, quiet and kind, followed close behind.  The two artists, one a musician who has been inching closer and closer to becoming a household name for three award-winning decades, the other an actor who is sharply on the rise, not wholly but in part due to his incredible performance as the lead role in the Coen brother’s newest masterpiece, Inside Llewyn Davis, sit down at the table.  Without pause, we jumped into conversation…and it wasn’t hard to get T-Bone going…

What are your five favorite film soundtracks?

T-Bone Burnett: God, I don’t know.  I can’t even think of any.

Oscar Isaac: The Mission.  Ennio Morricone.

T-Bone:  Yeah, that was a good one.  I like My Fair Lady.  Even though I think that Dr. Strangelove is a much more strange and subversive film and should’ve won the Academy Award…I’m talking like a Hollywood insider, like a movie person <<laughter>>… but I loved that musical.  You know the song, “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face”?  I can barely make it through that song, it’s just so beautiful.  And “On the Street Where You Live,” It’s just beautiful songwriting and one beautiful melody after another.  It beat Dr. Strangelove, which is one of the most important movies ever.

So, one of the reasons why I called the Coen brothers was because I had become a fan of theirs after their first movie, Blood Simple, because it just had so much of my home (Texas) about it and there was a style of storytelling that I thought was really great.  And their next movie came out, Raising Arizona, that just had this insane soundtrack — “Ode to Joy” on the banjo with whistling and yodeling.  And every joke of it landed for me.  And one thing about the Coens is that there’s history in every shot.  Isn’t that right?

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