{"id":43,"date":"2009-04-09T23:55:13","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T23:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.wordpress.com\/?p=43"},"modified":"2009-04-09T23:55:13","modified_gmt":"2009-04-09T23:55:13","slug":"live-from-mustang-island-burn-after-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/09\/live-from-mustang-island-burn-after-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Live from Mustang Island: "Burn After Reading""},"content":{"rendered":"

So here on the Texas coast of Mustang Island, where I misspent my highschool years and where the wind blows like a hurricane on any given day, which is today, naturally, we’re chasing two-year-old Lili around the pool area. It was a minor miracle that we managed to get her to build sand castles. I remember the old coffee commercial from the Seventies where some irritable guy says, “But it’s so windy at the beach!” This landscape is also the setting of Goodnight, Texas<\/em>. Right now I’m watching the Coen Brothers latest film, Burn After Reading<\/em>, the first one to follow No Country for Old Men<\/em>. (Last Saturday we spent the night at the Hotel Paisano, in Marfa, Texas, where the cast\/crew of Giant<\/em> stayed while filming, a cool old hotel with a gorgeous ballroom, classic tile floors, and a fountain in the courtyard, where people congregated to have afternoon drinks. Some of the scenes of No Country<\/em> were filmed in the Marfa area.) Burn<\/em> isn’t one of the best Coen Bros movies, not in the same league as, say, Miller’s Crossing<\/em> or The Big Lebowski<\/em>, but it has its zany moments: the divorce lawyer and the plastic surgeon are razor send-ups of the devious professionals. Frances McDormand and George Clooney have great moments, both fast-talking, nervous types in the tradition of the madcap comedies of the Thirties and Forties. Brad Pitt is high energy but he seems to be trying too hard. It’s a perfect Coen Bros moment when the Asian girl says, about an online dating service, “Both of my friends got hooked up that way. With really special guys.” It echoes a similar moment in Fargo<\/em>, but doesn’t feel like it’s stealing or self-plagiarism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here on the Texas coast of Mustang Island, where I misspent my highschool years and where the wind blows like a hurricane on any given day, which is today, naturally, we’re chasing two-year-old Lili around the pool area. It … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}