Concessions

I remember, vividly, the compulsion in my younger years to
own things: physical pieces of entertainment like clips from
Talk Soup (Henson era, natch) that I taped off E! after school,
or, oh, a Cranberries CD (rock!). That compulsion is dead now,
because now I, like most of you, live inside a computer. And I
no longer have the time or the desire to rewatch and re-rewatch movies,
and look up their supporting cast on IMDb until half my brain space is
taken up with the name of the dude who played the dude in Can’t
Hardly Wait who’s all, “Bullcorn!” to Ethan Embry (clearly I made
some bad choices in my teens, but one must admit that “bullcorn” is
funny). These are the obsessive caprices of a much younger lady.

So as much as I loved No Country for Old Men (and have
watched it more than once), Miramax, I’m probably not going to purchase
the DVD for all of time, after which I’m especially not going to
purchase the special-features-laden collector’s edition DVD for my
“collection,” so it can sit on a shelf and “collect” dust, pet dander,
tiny particles of bug feces, and any chunks of airborne
nanotechnology floating around my apartment (don’t think I’m not on to
you, Richard Branson).

But I did watch those “collectible” special features, to see if the
DVD is worth owning for people who still do enjoy owning things.
Verdict: not really. What I learned was this: (1) Javier Bardem
is having the greatest time of any human on earth. And (2) talking to
journalists is fucking terrible. Disc two of the set is devoted almost
entirely to press interviews, in which journalists ask the same
questions over and over while trying not to die of
awkwardness/twitterpation, and Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem tell the
same stories over and over while trying not to die of boredom.

“Javier, in No Country for Old Men, how many people do you
kill?”

“Thirteen.”

“How do you know?! You’re exactly right! Did you count?!”

“No.”

“Javier, your hair is kind of your thing—it seems like every
movie, different hairstyle. You and Sam Jackson. You’re kind of the
hair guys.”

“Michael Jackson?”

“Samuel Jackson. Samuel L. Jackson?”

“What does Michael Jackson have to do with me?”

“Javier, how did you come up with the characterization for
Chigurh?”

“I guess he was based on a haircut.”

A few segments are worthwhile, though. “Josh Brolin’s Unauthorized
Behind-the-Scenes Featurette” is a tongue-in-cheek exposé about
the tyranny of the Coens. As interviews go, Charlie Rose’s is the
most dignified and illuminating of the bunch. But I don’t want to
watch any of it ever again.