Hacker Cinema
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
2018 · Film · 132 min
Directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Vignettes weaving together the stories of six individuals in the old West at the end of the Civil War. Following the tales of a sharp-shooting songster, a wannabe bank robber, two weary traveling performers, a lone gold prospector, a woman traveling the West to an uncertain future, and a motley crew of strangers undertaking a carriage ride.
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13 comments on Hacker News
Holy moly. I don’t think I’ve ever read an article so angry. Every paragraph has a sensational opinion or put down posing as fact.
There’s some fascinating industry trends here but the analysis in the article is overwhelmed by the cacophony of anecdotes about b movies and bland tv shows all encouraged by the corrupt and evil parent company. Not helpful.
My take on the quality of shows— there’s a huge volume of mediocre stuff but that’s always been the case with TV. (There’s literally hundreds of forgotten sitcoms on broadcast tv from the 70s to 90s). But there have been many gems in the past decade.
A random list of fantastic or innovative shows I saw first on NetFlix. - House of Cards, season 1 and 2 - Russian Doll - Squid Game - Queens Gambit - Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Arcane - Kaos
Only the first was mentioned in the article, and with negative comment.
Overall, a poorly written article and a waste of time to read it.
>Where did you get this stereotype of farmers?
it's not a hard guess even if you don't share the opinion ; nearly every movie where 'farmer' is a plot point demonstrates a rural-living poorly educated family living in dust-bowl conditions and barely scraping enough resource by to feed the animals.
grapes of wrath, wizard of oz, of mice and men, o brother where art thou, ballad of buster scruggs -- yes it's a stereotype , but it's a common one in movies and literature.
I think the Ballad of Buster Scruggs was a TV series that they turned into a movie, and I think it benefited from it. That's also the only anthology film I even like I can recall.
Netflix had The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a freaking Coen Brothers movie! Also a Spike Lee film with Da 5 Bloods.
Roma, Unforgivable, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Dont Look Up, Bird Box, The Irishman, lots of good movies, few of them are greatbut some are good.
By the by, if you haven't seen the Coen brothers' film "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", which features this poem, I highly recommend stopping everything, popping some corn, and watching it as soon as feasible.
The poem reminds me of the Coen Brothers movie "Ballad of Buster Scruggs", released on Netflix a few years ago, which presents four (or five) vignettes.
In one of these Harry Melling plays a handicapped performer of poems in the "wild west", and the segment starts with him reciting this poem. Liam Neeson plays his manager. The segment is one of the most Darwinian, cold things I've ever seen. The whole movie is great, but this vignette especially.
EDIT: the beginning of the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQKUvv3bew
This makes a great appearance in one of the short stories in the movie the Ballad of Buster Scruggs. A brilliant Coen brothers movie on Netflix.
I've never been huge on poetry, but decided last year to memorize a poem each month. Totally doable, but I only made it through about four. My own laziness.
You get to know a poem so much better when you memorize it. You need to think about each word. Sometimes your brain wants to substitute another word and you have to think about why the poet chose the one they did instead of the one that might feel natural.
It feels like engaging in a great conversation. These poets all read each other's work, going back in this timeless chain into the distant past. And you can tell when one is responding to the words of another, who they know can never answer back, but there's a connection all the same.
Recognizing Ozymandias being recited in a Ballad of Buster Scruggs short felt like seeing a dear friend make a surprise cameo in a movie.
Plus, if you've got a flair for the dramatic, it's a neat party trick.
That is a good point, I have a harder time deciding if I want to spend $3-4 to rent a movie on Amazon than just pulling up Netflix and browsing around! Plus I don't feel like I wasted money if I don't enjoy a movie and stop watching (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs sorry!).
On the other hand I don't mind buying music, since I basically know the entire song ahead of time, and I don't think I ever buy more than $10 worth of music a month.
There are two films I want to watch releasing this weekend and season 2 of The Punisher, those alone pay for it for the month, they've had some corkers in the last year - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was brilliant.
Our house has both Netflix and Prime Video and that about covers me, my partner and the little boy (Trollhunters is fantastic if you have a child in the house also created for Netflix).
No to forget that it would have dominated Cannes 2018, if the french producers wouldn't have fought them to death. And then subsequently dominated the Venice Film Festival with 3 of its most important prices going to Netflix movies: Roma, Ballad of Buster Scruggs, On my skin.
I agree with you, outside of a few productions the vast majority of netflix content isn't good. Black Mirror, Stranger Things, the new movie the Ballad of Buster Scruggs... I can't think of anything else I like from them.
Amazon has the same problem, both Amazon and Netflix seem to pump out tv shows without putting that much work into them going for quantity over quality. First Amazon show I actually enjoyed was the Jack Ryan tv show. Sneaky Pete was good for the first few episodes but it just seems to fizzle out.
In contrast, almost everything on HBO is good. I rewatched Band of Brothers for I think the 3rd time the other week and I enjoyed it just as much as I had the first time I had seen it.