Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: The Big Lebowski (1998)

11/06/2013

The Big Lebowski (1998) - The stoner comedy to reign supreme

♥♥♥♥♥♥

+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year

+ Best Comedy of the Year

Star Jeff Bridges with humorously spaced-out shades and a very funny tag-line adorn this poster for Ethan and Joel Coen's The Big Lebowski

LA-residing stoner/bowling man, the unemployed Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski gets involved in a kidnapping case through a case of mistaken identity (SPOILER and his own provocation that someone has pissed on his beloved carpet rug.) A really important bowling tournament is also coming up, so the timing for these problems is really just off. His good bowling pals help him out but also heavily convolute things.

The Big Lebowski may be one of the funniest comedies ever made, and it is certainly on my Top 3 of favorite movie by Minnesotan master filmmaker, brothers co-writer/producer Ethan and co-writer/director Joel Coen (Barton Fink (1991)). It is their 7th feature.

The film is narrated by a mysterious cowboy character (Sam Elliott (The Legacy (1978))), and its LA-set subculture crime plot is fashioned over the legacy of Raymond Chandler's noir structure of detective novels. Joel Coen has said eloquently about the point: "We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story – how it moves episodically, and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery, as well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant." This turned out to be an ingenious decision for the best stoner comedy of all time, The Big Lebowski.
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart (2009)) is The Dude, a role he was lucky to get and which more than any other defined his career since. Each of the supporting actors are also great in each their own way as well: John Goodman (The Artist (2011)) is hysterical as a gun-crazed Vietnam veteran (inspired on John Milius!), and Julianne Moore (The Hours (2002)) shines as a presumptuous feminist performance artist. All the characters and dialog are totally outrageous and hysterically funny. The film works as contemporary satire and a developing crime/stoner comedy at the same time.
The music of Lebowski is awesome, as arranged by 'music archivist' Carter Burwell (The Rookie (2002)), its dream and drug-fueled sequences are extravagant, stylish and fantastic, and the film's ending is so tar-black in its humor, - it's just plain killer!
The movie has understandably inspired considerable cult, (mostly, I suppose, in the ever-existing stoner stratum of society), and even a 'religion' called Dudeism.

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) or, The Man Who Wasn't Dylan
True Grit (2010) - The Coens' grand western present

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2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
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A Serious Man (2009) - One of the Coens' best; a philo-religious serio-comedy
Burn After Reading (2008) or, Idiocy 2008

No Country for Old Men (2007) - Undigestible McCarthy adaptation lets you hang in midair

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) - Much to love in fabulous Coen music yarn

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Top 10: Best comedies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The Big Lebowski (1998) - The stoner comedy to reign over all

1996 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

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Fargo (1996) - The Coen brothers make movie magic with dark-humored crime thriller

Top 10: Best films about filmmaking
Barton Fink (1991) or, The Writer's Hell

Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi give an interview about the film many years later here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 46.9 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.12 times its cost)

[The Big Lebowski premiered 18 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 117 minutes. Shooting took place from January - April 1997 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #6 to a 5.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, its peak position there, where it grossed 17.4 mil. $ (37.1 % of the total gross). The film continues to add to its gross through re-releases. It was nominated for a European Film award, among other honors. Roger Ebert originally gave it a 3/4 star review but since changed it to a 4/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. IMDb's users have rated the film in at #203 on the site's Top 250 list, sitting between How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and Monsters, Inc. (2001). Ethan and Joel Coen returned with O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Bridges returned in Arlington Road (1999); Goodman in The Blues Brothers 2000 (1998); Moore in Welcome to Hollywood (1998); Steve Buscemi (Big Fish (2003)) in The Drew Carey Show (1998, TV-series)) and theatrically in The Wedding Singer (1998); and John Turturro (Transformers (2007)) in Animals with the Tollkeeper (1998)). The Big Lebowski is certified fresh at 83 % with a 7.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Big Lebowski?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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11/06/2013

The Big Lebowski (1998) - The stoner comedy to reign supreme

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