Winter’s Bone, a country noir set in the Ozarks, is quite a revelation. You should see it and then listen to our podcast about it. And if you listen to just one 3x3 this year, it probably shouldn’t be our discussion of the best uses of lava, which begins at the 52-minute mark.
Best movie to worst synopsis/3x3 ratio ever. Thank christ I’m not in charge of those bits.
I’m about to start listening, and I can’t imagine what you did for the synopsis. You got the short end of that bone, Kelly.
EDIT: Wow. That bone-opsis was fantastic. I didn’t think you had that much material to work with. Admittedly my expectations were low after seeing your post.
Thanks for bringing this film to my attention, gentlemen. Luckily a nearby theater is screening it and I can catch it.
Worst thing I’ve ever written and then said, and that’s saying something, but thanks. So, so, so much easier to synopsize crap than Southern noir awesomeness.
What was the song played at the beginning and end of the podcast this week?
“We Never Talked”, by Nina Nastasia. I can’t recommend her enough. She’s fantastic.
We never talked
About the thing
We witnessed
What sadness cameOur conversations
Stayed safe
From year to year
Like a pact we’d madeWe never talked
About that thing
We witnessed
What sadness cameIn the car
You’d have brought it up
But i went on
About that jobAll the love
I have left
You won’t know
You won’t knowAll the fear
I have left
You won’t know
You won’t know
-Tom
Now that I think about it Tom, would be cool if you could list the artist/song/album (if possible) for both movie and game podcasts, just because I don’t always recognize them and that always makes me curious.
Just wanted to say that this podcast is very good, and I thank you gentlemen for creating it. My wife Michelle keeps saying, “What a cast. Whoever cast this… genius.” I’d include the sheriff, although he took a little grief from you lot. I didn’t recognize the actor (Garret Dillahunt) as the actor who played two (amazing) roles in Deadwood.
That reminds me of a moment in Winter’s Bone that I loved: when the sheriff tapped his gun against the side of the pickup to announce that he’d drawn it. I mean, that whole scene was golden, but that little touch was real, and it was yet another touch that made me trust the script.
I haven’t finished the podcast quite yet, but I’m still here, and want to mention how brilliant it is that even by the end of the movie, when the women get Ree into the boat along with a chainsaw, I didn’t know if the women were going to help her or kill her. It was fifty-fifty on whether Merab would saw Ree in half or put her coat on Ree as she wept.
So, you all might talk about this later in the podcast, but I have a question: do you think that the men in Thump’s gang were aware that the women were going to take Ree to the body, or did the women take that matter into their own hands? (No pun intended.)
Wow, once Cthulu entered the picture, everything a splode!
I don’t think there’s any way in hell those women did that without Thump’s approval. Maybe it was their idea, as a way to end the problem of this girl, but with all those women involved? All it would take is for one of them to let it slip sometime “…when we showed her the body…” and they’d be in deep shiat. And that’s assuming the girl herself wouldn’t say anything somewhere down the line, and that’s assuming Thump wouldn’t be curious about how she didn’t lose the house after all.
I agree, game. For some reason, when I watched the movie, I thought they were acting in concert but in secret. I wonder if the women volunteered to take Ree to the body for some particular reason.
The way it seems to work, from what I can tell, is that the women front for the men as much as possible. This allows the men to minimize their risk, which is important seeing how they will most likely be the targets of the law(and each other).
So when this Ree situation comes up, I expect the women are the only ones to realize how serious it is. The men(Thump and his gang) are too insulated to see it. I think those women realize how desperate Ree is AND, with Teardrop as an ally, how dangerous she is. That’s why I think the women would be the ones to suggest taking her out there once and for all.
However, the men still have to okay everything(her friend borrowing the truck was one example).
That was my sense as well. Plus chainsawing hands off is women’s work. J/k. Even early on when she’s cruel and distant, (I thought) the wife was trying to protect Ree by trying to spare her the potentially fatal consequences of getting the men more involved. Such a great movie, so many subtle, pivotal moments.
Watched the movie the other night and thus got around to dusting off the podcast and giving it a listen today. I’m very much with Tom’s reaction of having liked the movie when I watched, but then liking it more and more in the hours and then next day afterwards. I also loved that the viewpoint never left Ree, up to and including the greatness of letting Teardrop ride off into the sunset–to kill and likely be killed, whichever and however it happened was his business, not hers, and just reinforced how tightly everyone was bound by their codes.
My only regret is not seeing it sooner.
While I usually hate it when someone says “the book was better than the movie,” I regret having read Daniel Woodrell’s novel before watching the movie. The book takes place in the dead of winter, with the cold being a very important thematic element. There are also some interesting, and kind of odd, magical realist moments in the novel. The men in the novel (Thump and Teardrop especially) are almost supernaturally frightening.
It looks like the movie was shot in late fall or early spring, probably because of its low budget. The film really needed to have a winter landscape like the one the Coens gave us in Fargo.
Men makes the messes, and women clean them up.
IIRC they wanted to shoot it in the freezing cold but the weather was just unusually warm.