Ring out the Old, Ring in the New

Happy new year, everyone! brought to you by one of the great new year's eve films... The Hudsucker Proxy doesn't always get the love some of the other Coen brothers films do, but it gets better every time I see it. It's a movie movie, all those parodies, all those quotes - everything from the Crowd to Gene Kelly films, though heaviest on the Capra and Sturges quotes (like Capra done Sturges style) - all the jokey interludes - newsreels, newspaper front page montages, fake home movies - it's fun fun fun. Mostly, it's the sheer pleasure of the actors and their lines - Newman and Robbins and especially Leigh bite off their lines and chew, and it is a joy. It's almost a disappointment that actors like Leigh and Robbins (or William H. Macy, say) have only done one Coen brothers films - they seem perfectly at home in them. But any actor looks good working with the Coens.