No Country for Old Men

[Sean Skube]

I'm surprised a thread for this one hasn't been started yet. If you haven't seen this yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Should win an award for best sound design, because the foley work is practically the main character of the movie. But that aside, it's an exceptionally good movie.

[Ben Winter]

I was thinking the same thing! The delicacy of the soundtrack was wonderful--the slight clink as Chegar (sp?) the assassin sets the metal compressed air cylinder down on the pavement against a silent background...the subtle clacks of the dime up against the screws of the metal air grate in the hotel room...just fantastic. The tedium of hearing every minute sound...that's what kept me riveted.

[Daniel Kongos]

It was the best movie I've seen in a while. The Coen brothers do it almost every time. The sound was amazing and Chigurh was the most convincing bad guy I've seen in a long time. So satisfying to finally see a movie in the theaters that I really liked.

[Charles Papert]

Saw it last night at an Academy screener, there was a Q&A with a handful of cast and key crew including the sound designer and editor, DP, prod. designer and costume designer. There were quite a few questions directed towards the sound gents who talked about how they were building their work around the performances , including the specific timing of the clink of Chigurh placing his tank down offscreen just after blowing the lock on Stephen Root's character's office (they said that they felt he would do so methodically so the effect is laid in to reflect this). They also talked about the wind tracks that were present through many scenes, which were occasionally interwoven with an atmospheric orchestral score that was barely recognizable as such.

For my first viewing I was taking in the movie as a whole and didn't single out the sound design except for a few places; I was probably guilty of focusing on Roger Deakin's cinematography in those times that I was taking myself out of the movie.

Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem had a great repartee during the Q&A...Bardem had a hilarious answer to the question (presumably asked by an actor) of how he prepared for the part by suggesting that the haircut made him so pissed off that after a while he wanted to kill everybody on the set, so he used that!

One could only hope that the DVD would have commentaries from all above, or at the very least a combined commentary from the various departments with many of these nuggets and more.