I didn't expect back-to-back "No Country" posts, but regardless, David "The Carpetbagger" Carr proves again why only he can do what only he can do.  As part of a new series he's taking a look at the five Best Picture contenders from the pure angle of the visual (I'll let his words explain why).

He kicks things off today with a oxygenlaced review of "No Country for Old Men," and I gotta say, I think the pink elephants got to him just a bit.  But it's a fascinating read nonetheless:

At its most elemental, “No Country” is something of a super-hero epic, the twist being that the hero in this case represents indifferent evil. “No Country” is Javier Bardem’s movie. After a time, it seemed as if the Bagger was watching one of those amazing shows on the Nature Channel that features, in colossal close-ups, a reptile going about its business. All snakes are carnivorous and Anton Chigurh is simply hungrier than most.

Chigurh owns the space he ambles slowly through, unbound by social mores or cultural conventions. He moves with a deliberate attention to his needs that is freaky scary. For example, he doesn’t rob a drugstore for the supplies to tend to an injury — he create a diversion and then shops at his leisure.

To Chigurh, murder is a kind of courtship and he always takes the time to enjoy it. Slowly, it is revealed to each of his intended victims that they are in a new and dangerous place. There is a moment in each interaction when he takes custody of another human’s fate, which is not so much about showing them that he is God as demonstrating that, at least in this time and this place, there isn’t one.

Read the rest!