hail-caesar-quad-post

Always wondered what Hollywood looks like in the 50’s? Hail, Caesar! The new movie by the Coen brothers starring, amongst others, the dyslexic George Clooney and Channing Tatum, will transport you right back to a bygone era, with a humorous twist of course.


If you need any assistance when reading this post please note Browsealoud is installed on this site. Click the headphone logo in the top left corner of the screen to launch the assistive toolbar.


The plot

During the making of the movie Hail, Caesa! Movie star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is drugged and kidnapped. The studio receives a $100.000 ransom note ‘from the future’ and head of production at Capitol Pictures and ‘fixer’ Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) sets out to get him back.

That is not the only problem Mannix gets on his plate though. He has to deal with an unmarried pregnant mermaid (Scarlett Johansson) and the director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is giving Mannix grief about hiring Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) in a more sophisticated role, and he has to hold off the snooping twin columnists Thora Thacker and Thessaly Tacker (Tilda Swinton). All the while his wife is forcing him to quit smoking.

 

All Star movie

If you like a movie with a lot of big names, this is just the movie for you. But not just that, it jumps into the setting the Coen brothers have used before during the 1991 movie Barton Fink. That movie was set almost ten years before, in 1941 and it features the same studio – Capitol Pictures – as Hail, Caesar. One could say it’s a sequel, however, it’s much more of a comedy than that.

 

Fancy Footwork

Channing Tatum generally feels at home on the dance floor but admitted to struggling with the tap dancing in this film. “In no way I expected tap dancing to be easy”, he says. “But I in no way shape or form knew how hard it was going to be. “I am good at mimicking people physically, but the challenge for me is remembering it all since I’m not used to learning choreography.” He found that tap dancing is much more than mimicking the moves and creating a sound: “It’s almost like playing an instrument.” Since he’s dyslexic, this could have made it even harder to get the moves anchored in his memory. But as you can see from the following clip, he nailed it.

What to expect

A lot of musical outburst, and a lot of time spent on the set that have nothing to do with the plot. According to some reviews it’s a movie made up entirely from sketches, but without the glue to turn it into a cohesive story. However, for those of you familiar with the brother’s movies (and of course the absolute die hards) this is one movie you cannot miss.
Reviews: 7.1/10 for Rotten tomatoes | 4/5 Empire | 3/5 The Telegraph
Concussion is on general release from 12th February.


If you like this post subscribe to this blog, join our newsletter or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to keep up to date with new content. You might also like our podcasts.


The Codpast is a multimedia production from www.extraordinaire.tv