'Burn After Reading' - The New Coen Brothers Movie Trailer, feat. Elbow and Spirit

Burn After Reading, out 12 September in the USA, 17 October in the UK.




Being in a state of self-imposed internet quarantine to avoid Lost spoilers until I've managed to watch the finale, the one website I did check was /Film, which gave me the lovely surprise of the above trailer for the new Coen Brothers movie. So I figured I'd share it, coz it's bloody good. As brilliant as No Country for Old Men was, it's great to see something so completely different from the Coens, and great to see some of their regular crew back (Frances McDormand (Joel Coen's wife), George Clooney, and Richard Jenkins who was in The Man Who Wasn't There and Intolerable Cruelty, as well as Six Feet Under, which gives him a free pass in my book). Plus - I'd never have thought I'd say this five years ago, but Brad Pitt has managed to turn himself into one of my favourite actors, via Assassination of Jesse James, Babel, and the also-eagerly-awaited The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (see the pretty astonishing trailer here).

To keep this at least vaguely music-related: there are two songs featured in the trailer, both of which are REALLY GOOD. The first is the first single off the new Elbow album The Seldom Seen Kid (second appearance for Elbow recently on this blog - see also this...). I'm hoping that the presence of an Elbow track in the trailer is the only link between Burn After Reading and Southland Tales (see the trailer, featuring 'Forget Myself' as well as the Pixies' 'Wave of Mutilation', here). The second track is the first single off an album that preceded The Seldom Seen Kid by 40 years: The Family That Plays Together by Spirit, a.k.a. the band that both Led Zeppelin and Pink/Beck ripped off/sampled for 'Stairway to Heaven' (see 'Taurus') and 'Feel Good Time' (see 'Fresh Garbage') respectively.

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from The Seldom Seen Kid)

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from The Family That Plays Together)


And to tie this mess of a post all together in a pleasingly circular fashion. Remember why I found this trailer? Coz of 'LOST'. What's the name of the bald dude in that show? John Locke. And who was the keyboardist in Spirit? John Locke. Not the same guy, obviously, coz, y'know, one of them's, like, FICTIONAL. And it's not the philosopher either. Or any of the other John Lockes.
What a ker-azee world we live in, no?

An insight into my mind involving Leona Lewis, Elbow, and Hummus

1. I am alerted to the fact that, according to NME (and this site) Elbow are apparently "being tapped up [what does 'tapped up' mean?] by the man who wrote Leona Lewis' 'Bleeding Love'." That is, there is a very very remote possibility that Elbow might write the next Leona Lewis album.

2.I go into the kitchen to have something to eat - hummus on toast :)

3. This hummus is SPECIAL HUMMUS. It has olives and tomato puree in it, in addition to the conventional ingredients of chick peas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic and sunflower oil. The red shade provided by the tomato puree makes this almost the hummus-world equivalent of the blood orange. One might even call it 'blood hummus'. Which sounds disgusting, but anyway...

4. Blood --> Bleeding --> 'Bleeding Love' by Leona Lewis.

5. Rest of the day: I have 'Bleeding Love' on my head, except in my head it's a duet between Leona and Guy Garvey off of Elbow. Guy's doing more of a spoken-word thang really (just one spoken word, too), in his gruff Manchester voice. This brand new version goes:

Leona: "...you cut me open and I keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding--"
Guy: "Hummus!"
Leona: "I keep bleeding, I keep keep bleeding--"
Guy: "Hummus!"
Leona: "keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding--"
Guy: "Hummus!"
...and so on ad infinitum.

Seriously, "you cut me open and I keep bleeding hummus". What is wrong with me?!??

In case I haven't already imprinted that auditory image (oxymoron - whatever dude...) on your consciousness, here's the original:

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from Spirit)

And, to give you an idea of Guy Garvey's "gruff Manchester voice", here's an awesome song by Elbow, the first single off their second album:

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from Cast of Thousands)