No love for Patty the Daytime Hooker?
I really hope John Hawkes takes home the Best Supporting Actor award, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Jennifer Lawrence get the win as well, though that’s highliy unlikely. Not as unlikely as taking home Best Picture, but it’s great that it got the nom.
What?
Dale Dickey played Patty the Daytime Hooker on My Name Is Earl.
Ah, I understand. I never watched that show - or indeed any sitcom in the past 20 years. But Merab was indeed one of the most terrifying villains since Hannibal Lecter.
Just saw this on DVD so late to the party, but I loved this movie.
I agree that the sheriff was probably on the payroll of the Miltons. I was surprised on the IMDB message boards at two things-
OPEN SPOILERS (since it’s no longer in the theaters and if you’ve read this far without seeing it then you’ve already got some spoilers)
1- The number of people who thought the movie was boring (How? I suppose if you went in expecting to see a young Clarice Starling solving a case it would be, but as a character study it was incredible)
2- The amount of speculation as to who killed Jessup (does it even matter who pulled the trigger?)
[QUOTE=gaffa]
But Merab was indeed one of the most terrifying villains since Hannibal Lecter.
[/QUOTE]
Also one of the most interesting. Her Third Act “save the day” actions were grisly but amazingly compassionate for a woman who’d just recently beat the fuck out of a desperate teenaged girl.
I loved Dale Dickey in this and wish she’d gotten some awards. In spite of her near trademark on “Deep South Skank” characters she’s actually a very intelligent and very sweet person.
John Hawkes disappeared into Teardrop. I’d never have recognized him from Deadwood or his other bigger roles. Totally deserved his nomination in my opinion.
Something I found funny: There are reviews (mostly from bloggers and unpaid critics) that warn people about the grisliness of the squirrel skinning and the deer carcass. Yeah, the valleys full of a huge meth cooking clan and murder and violence I can deal with, but let the poor squirrel go home to his wife and kids!
A question for somebody who’s read the book: Any idea how close a relation Blonde Milton (Sonya’s husband, the next door neighbor) was to Thump Milton? I was wondering if he was a son or nephew or more of a “common ancestor somewhere but we just say cousin” sort of relative. Also, I’m assuming Merab was Thump’s wife- is that correct? (If so probably not his first as she’s a bit young to be the mother of his boys and the grandmother of that girl.)
My parents were schoolteachers and small time cattle farmers and I grew up in central Alabama rather than the Ozarks, but it’s surprising how resonant this movie was for me. I knew a lot of people just like the ones in the movies and the pastures and farms I knew as a kid looked just like those and in the past generation there’s been a major drug ring formed in the area where I grew up.
Our next door neighbors (not counting family) lived about 2 miles away and had a son who went in just a few years from being penniless and unemployed and living with his wife and kids (he started having them when he was about 16) in a tiny bombed out trailer on his dad’s farm to enlarging the family’s pond and building a very nice log home to which he later added a pool and big shed. A few years ago (long after I’d left) he was shot point-blank several times on his property while his wife (a different one now) hid in a panic room- which is not a common feature of rural Alabama homes. Pot was also ubiquitous and often grown by the last people you’d suspect (old church going redneck men for example).
Also I grew up going frequently to stockyards and with lots of people I knew well who had yards full of junked cars and the like, and we and everybody else had dog packs around the house. While we never made or sold drugs I can see how with only a couple of twists we would have- we would most definitely have welcomed any interest from meth cookers in buying our house if it had been a big drug of choice back then because it would have been perfect for it: isolated, modern, big detached garage wing, fifteen miles away from police jurisdiction and the sheriffs were stupid in the first place and corrupt in the second.
It was almost nostalgic watching this.
Anyway, two thumbs out of the water and up.
I’m so happy you liked it Sampiro, thank you for posting! I own the book and I started re-reading it to find an answer for you. It’s a bit confusing because all of the relationships are so intertwined, but one thing I’ve found out so far is that Milton is their first name, not their last name. Most everyone names their sons one of 4 names, Milton, Jessup, Arthur and Haslam. Everyone has nicknames to differentiate. During one of her long walks Ree tries to remember the nicknames of all the Miltons. There’s Thump, Blonde, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap, Lefty, Cotton, Hogjaw, Ten Penny, and Peashot that she can remember. There are at least two dozen Miltons she knows that are kin to her. Her brother Harold (who became Ashley in the movie) almost became a Milton but Ree and her mom (at a time before her mind broke), pitched a fit. Her other brother Sonny is a Jessup, Sonny is a nickname. Teardrop’s first name is Haslam.
It’s implied that one of the reasons most of the men have one of 4 names is to confuse the law. I’m sure there’s more about who’s who later in the book. I haven’t read it since last summer. You should read the book, it’s very good, with wonderful language they couldn’t get across in the movie.
I finally saw this movie tonight (now I’ve seen all 10 of the nominated films) and I thought it was just OK. I thought there’d be more drama to it. It was well-made, well-shot, and well-acted but I just found it dull. Sorry. It’s easily my least favorite of the ten Best Picture nominees.
[off-topic]You made me very happy with your post last May, but now I have to smack you over the head with a trout. For the last nearly-year, I’ve been under the impression that happythankyoumoreplease was “really awful” and so when I got a pass to see it for free last night I almost blew it off. Then I thought, oh what the hell, it’s free. At least I’ll know what to make fun of when people bring it up.
I really REALLY liked it. A LOT. I’m so glad I saw it, and I’ll pay to see it again when it opens. When it started I was all ready to MST3K it in my mind, and was composing snarky Tweets in my head, but as it went on, I started losing the impression I got from you, and started liking it for what it was. By the end of the movie, I actually cared for all of the characters. It’s a very nice movie, and a great debut for the director. He’s one to watch.
It’s amazing how someone can off-handedly say something, and that impression will stay with you. I just have to quit retaining stuff like this. It’s one reason why I rarely read reviews or watch trailers before I go see films. I try to only read a synopsis, just to get the briefest idea of what a movie is about. I only talked so much about Winter’s Bone in this thread’s OP because most people aren’t as weird as I am.
I’ve been wanting to see this since it came out and the reemergence of this thread finally prompted me to rent it. I thought it was fantastic. Visually gorgeous and acted with real integrity. Oddly I didn’t find it particularly grim or bleak, I think because even though the setting often is those things, Ree is a character who fills her world with warmth.
Was I the only one who felt like the fact that everyone Ree meets seems to be related to her somehow was playing to stereotypes a little bit?
[QUOTE=Electric Warrior]
Was I the only one who felt like the fact that everyone Ree meets seems to be related to her somehow was playing to stereotypes a little bit?
[/QUOTE]
In the book most of them even have the surname Dolly. OTOH, my mother could easily have gone much further than that in the hills where she grew up without ever seeing a non-relative, it’s very conceivable. When a place is settled in the 19th century by a few families who each have 10 to 15 children, it doesn’t take long at all before everybody’s related (and damned if you can even remember how).
(Spoilers)
In the movie Ree has to find out what happened to her Dad because if she doesn’t her family will be kicked out of their house. I seem to recall that she had about a week to find out before the county took the house. She seems to fails until Patty the Daytime Hooker helps her out, but her family is never kicked out of the house. Was this addressed in the movie and I just missed it?
Her family isn’t kicked out because she’s able to prove that her father is dead.
I saw this the day before the Oscar ceremony, in my final push to see all ten BP nominees, and I loved it.
So here’s my question. Ree’s dad Jessup puts up the house and land for his bond, but we learn that the value is “not nearly enough.” Someone comes to the jail with a paper sack full of cash money to cover the rest of the bond. When Jessup is proved to be dead, and the person who put up the money cannot be identified, the cash is given to Ree’s family.
So, am I right to assume that the person who paid the bond was Thump Milton or, more likely, one of his sons, so that Jessup would be released from jail and they could kill him?
Yes. Thump is unlikely to try to get the money back from Ree as that would confirm that he supplied it.
[QUOTE=Skammer]
So, am I right to assume that the person who paid the bond was Thump Milton or, more likely, one of his sons, so that Jessup would be released from jail and they could kill him?
[/QUOTE]
That’s the implication, though it’s never said for certain. I wondered who Haslam/Teardrop was going to go after at the end.
I love how much is implied without being outright said all around in the movie. The scene in the barn where one of Thump’s men says “That motherfucker ain’t catching me in here naked!” when he hears that Teardrop (aka Haslam) is outside and he (the ‘naked’ guy) is unarmed tells you a lot more about just what a tough little sumbitch Teardrop is than if they’d shown him tear up 4 men in a bar fight. You also know that Merab and Thump are one dysfunctional as hell couple who also happen to have a strong code of honor and propriety.
I have a hard time squaring “honor” with murder and beating the shit out of an innocent girl.
Oh it’s a f*cked up hillbilly crank cooker sense of honor, but there is one- sort of a “though this be madness there is method in it” thing. And I really hope that Teardrop takes out at least a couple of Thump’s folks (little hope of him taking out the man himself) before going down, but…
It’s actually to salvage the family honor, as well perhaps as some sense of compassion for the girl, that Merab gives Ree a hand or two in proving her father’s dead. (“One hand don’t prove nothing, they know that trick.”)
Also, in the book, Merab’s sick and tired of all the trash talking about her and her sisters for beating up Ree. Merab knows Ree hasn’t said a word against them, but everyone else is talking about it disapprovingly and Merab wants to put a stop to the talk. Merab’s reasons for helping Ree come across as a lot more compassionate, so to speak, in the movie than in the book.
Yeah, that’s in the sequel Spring’s Bone: Teardrop’s Revenge, in theaters this Memorial Day.
THIS TEARDROP WON’T FALL.