Saturday, April 18, 2009

Sirens



The real singing voices here are the alway-wonderful Alison Kraus, Emmylou Harris, and Gillian Welch.

The allegory, of course, is to the Sirens that attempted to seduce Ulysses and his crew. In the movie, George Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill, who is married to Penelope (Penny) played by Holly Hunter. John Goodman plays a massive one-eyed killer Bible salesman, aka, the Cyclops. Many other Homeric references are scattered throughout the film.

The name of the movie, by the way, is a reference to a movie never made within a movie that was made. The movie that was made was the 1941 film, Sullivan's Travels in which the producer is intent on making a serious social commentary film to be called O Brother, Where Art Thou? Instead, he finds that his backers want him to make a comedy, because they do better at the box office.

3 comments:

Barb said...

One of my all-time favorite movies - I didn't know about the story behind the name though.

Gina Spadafori said...

One of my favorite movies of all time, too. And I have the CD in the van. I listened to non-stop when I was living in Franklin County, Fla. It was as long as the drive from Panacea to Apalachicola.

FrogDogz said...

And a third vote for favorite movie of all time, and second favorite sound track.