Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Smart Auss

What I'm looking forward to... from Aussies

Who - let's face it - have been teaching the world a thing or two about emotionally relevant, consequence-exploring crime film-making the last few years. Those folks at the collective Blue Tongue Films gave us Nash Edgerton's The Square



and David Michod's Animal Kingdom


have another haunted-looking crime-tinged drama making the rounds this summer - Kieran Darcy-Smith's Wish You Were Here


And while you may not get the chance to catch that one theatrically, here're some heading for a multiplex near you.

Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly adapted from George V. Higgins' Cogan's Trade and featuring a helluvan ensemble - Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Sam Shepard, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini.


But not the cast and not even the source material sells me on the project like Dominik's name does. After all, this is the cat who gave us Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford from writing by Mark Read and Ron Hansen respectively. And, all due respect to Nicolas Winding Refn and Tom Hardy, but I'd take another round with Chopper ahead of Bronson.


But a Hardy project makes this list easily. The writing/directing team of Nick Cave and John Hillcoat are all you really need to hold my interest, after all they're responsible for The Proposition


But throw in subject matter like prohibition-era crazies with Thompsons and moonshine? Just take my money now. So, Lawless is waaaaay up there on the list.


The Beef aside (I wish the kid no ill will) the cast is, shall we say, promising, and I'm more than a little interested in checking out the source novel The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant - after all Mr. B. shares a name with one of the baddassed characters in crime fiction - Big Pete Bondurant from James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy.

Also, I've got Garry Disher's latest Wyatt - Port Vila Blues - threatening to jump off the book pile and put some choke on me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for helping to fill my Netflix queue. Great post.

jedidiah ayres said...

Doh! - I meant to reserve Chopper before recommending it. Yeah, them's some gooduns