Sel­dom, in the films of the Joel and Ethan Coen, do char­ac­ters’ schemes go accord­ing to plan. You can watch it hap­pen all across their fil­mog­ra­phy: the baby theft in Rais­ing Ari­zona, the own-wife kid­nap­ping and ran­som in Far­go, the casi­no-vault tun­nel heist in The Ladykillers, the Com­mu­nist con­ver­sion of a screen idol in Hail, Cae­sar! But they’ve earned their enor­mous cin­e­mat­ic rep­u­ta­tion not just for their themes, but for the pre­ci­sion with which they con­struct movies around them; it some­times seems that the more dis­solute the char­ac­ters and ulti­mate­ly dis­as­trous the plot they fall into, the more care­ful­ly-made the pic­ture.

This pat­tern began in 1984 with their first fea­ture, the Texas neo-noir Blood Sim­ple. Despite its rel­a­tive­ly small-scale pro­duc­tion (espe­cial­ly by the stan­dards of their peri­od piece-heavy recent work), it show­cas­es every ele­ment their fans love: the sense of place, the sharp dia­logue, the fas­ci­na­tion with “low” life, the dark humor, the atten­tion to detail.

No won­der, then, that it has now arrived in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, in an edi­tion which includes sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als like the com­par­i­son between the sto­ry­board and fin­ished scene above, fea­tur­ing com­men­tary from the Coens Joel and Ethan both, as well as direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Bar­ry Son­nen­feld and actor Frances McDor­mand.

“There are direc­tors who are com­plete­ly com­fort­able extem­po­riz­ing on the set, and oth­ers who are not,” say Joel and Ethan, trad­ing off obser­va­tions. “Some direc­tors want to throw every­thing up in the air and just see where it lands; that’s real­ly how they work, fun­da­men­tal­ly, and get great results. We’re kind of the… oth­er end of the spec­trum. We’re more com­fort­able if we have a plan, even if we stray quite a dis­tance from that plan while we’re shoot­ing.” They seem not to have strayed at all in the par­tic­u­lar scene in this video, but their fil­mog­ra­phy boasts more than enough vital­i­ty to rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­plete, con­trol-freak­ish rigid­i­ty. All of it shows us how the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry — but only because the Coen Broth­ers lay even bet­ter plans first.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Coen Broth­ers Put Their Remark­able Stamp on the “Shot Reverse Shot,” the Fun­da­men­tal Cin­e­mat­ic Tech­nique

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

Tui­leries: A Short, Slight­ly Twist­ed Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

John Malkovich’s fil­mog­ra­phy includes not Wild at Heart but Places in the Heart, not Inland Empire but Empire of the Sun, not Mul­hol­land Dri­ve but Mul­hol­land Falls. This respect­ed actor, in short, has nev­er appeared in a David Lynch film, but he recent­ly demon­strat­ed that he could have starred in all of them — and can even por­tray the direc­tor him­self. In Psy­chogenic Fugue, Malkovich slips into a vari­ety of Lynchi­an per­sonas, from heroes like Eraser­head’s icon­i­cal­ly pil­lar-haired Hen­ry Spencer and Twin Peaks’ square­ly cof­fee-lov­ing Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er to vil­lains like Blue Vel­vet’s Frank Booth and Lost High­way’s Mys­tery Man, to even the Ladies Log and in the Radi­a­tor.

Those names, I assure film­go­ers not so up on their Lynch, will mean a great deal to fans, whether of the direc­tor or of the actor. Though both are Amer­i­can men of cin­e­ma, both of the same gen­er­a­tion, Lynch and Malkovich would at first appear to have lit­tle in com­mon: the for­mer, who’s made ten fea­tures in the past forty years, has spent his career div­ing deep­er and deep­er into stranger and more per­son­al (but ulti­mate­ly, some­how, acces­si­ble) psy­cho­log­i­cal waters, while the lat­ter, pro­lif­ic in his screen act­ing with almost 100 appear­ances to his cred­it, hops between huge­ly dis­parate per­son­al­i­ties, time peri­ods, and intel­lec­tu­al lev­els with­out seem­ing to break a sweat. But both of them do tend to attract the same descrip­tor: intense.

The ver­sa­tile Malkovich also knows what it means to look inside him­self, hav­ing starred in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, which famous­ly includes a scene where every human being has turned into a ver­sion of John Malkovich. This minute-long trail­er for Psy­chogenic Fugue may remind you of that unfor­get­table view­ing expe­ri­ence, but if you want the full, twen­ty-minute ver­sion, it comes with only a ten-dol­lar dona­tion (accom­pa­nied by more good­ies at high­er dona­tion lev­els) to the David Lynch Foun­da­tion, which you can make at playinglynch.com. The fact that the mon­ey won’t go to fund anoth­er Lynch fea­ture may dis­ap­point some, but at least if he even­tu­al­ly decides to make a not just psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly but lit­er­al­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film, he’ll know exact­ly who to cast in the lead.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear John Malkovich Read Plato’s “Alle­go­ry of the Cave,” Set to Music Mixed by Ric Ocasek, Yoko Ono & Sean Lennon, OMD & More

Hear John Malkovich Read From Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, Then Hear Kurt Von­negut Do the Same

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

A Young David Lynch Talks About Eraser­head in One of His First Record­ed Inter­views (1979)

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Before the Japan­ese fell com­plete­ly, one-hun­dred per­cent in love with any­thing and every­thing Dis­ney (I mean, seri­ous­ly, they love it), Mick­ey Mouse rep­re­sent­ed some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent: Pure Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ist evil.

At least he does in this 1934 ani­mat­ed pro­pa­gan­da car­toon Omochabako series dai san wa: Ehon senkya-hyaku­san­ja-rokunen (Toy­box Series 3: Pic­ture Book 1936) by Komat­suza­wa Hajime. It’s a con­vo­lut­ed title, but pret­ty sim­ple in plot. An island of cute crit­ters (includ­ing one Felix the Cat clone) is attacked from the air by an army of Mick­ey Mous­es (Mick­ey Mice?) rid­ing bats and assist­ed by croc­o­diles and snakes that act like machine guns. The fright­ened crea­tures call on the heroes of Japan­ese sto­ry­books and folk leg­ends to help them, from Momo­taro (“Peach Boy”) and Kin­taro (“Gold­en Boy”) to Issun-boshi (“One Inch Boy”) and Benkei, a war­rior monk, to send Mick­ey pack­ing. The not-so-sub­tle mes­sage: Mick­ey Mouse may be your hero, Amer­i­ca, but our char­ac­ters are old­er, more numer­ous, and way more beloved. Our pop cul­ture is old­er than yours!

Iron­i­cal­ly, the film is ani­mat­ed in the style of Amer­i­can mas­ters Walt Dis­ney, Ub Iwerks, and Max Fleis­ch­er, with its boun­cy char­ac­ter loops and elas­tic meta­mor­phoses.

Though made in 1934, it is set in 1936, which might tie (accord­ing to this site) into the expi­ra­tion of a naval treaty between the Unit­ed States and Japan on that date. The Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor was a full sev­en years off, but clear­ly ten­sions were run­ning high even then, as both the West and Japan had their eyes on Asia and the South Pacif­ic.

Also of note is the trope of char­ac­ters com­ing alive from a sto­ry­book, as this was a favorite sub­ject in sev­er­al Warn­er Bros. car­toons that would come out a few years lat­er (and which we’ve cov­ered.)

And final­ly to clar­i­fy Mickey’s fate at the end of the film: the old man with the box is a Rip Van Win­kle char­ac­ter, and in Japan­ese folk­lore he is made old by the con­tents of a box he’s been told not to open. Vio­lence is not van­quished with vio­lence at the end of this car­toon, but with mag­ic and deri­sive laugh­ter fol­lowed by a song. In the real world, things would not end so eas­i­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.