The Insider

The Coens go West; John Torode goes East; Christmas FM goes jingle all the way

This Western anthology film is a series of tales about the American frontier, as told by the unique and incomparable voice of the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan. Each of the six chapters recounts a distinct story about the American West and each features a splendid cast, including Tyne Daly, James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Tim Blake Nelson and Brendan Gleeson, who gets to play a character simply called ‘Irishman’. “We’ve always loved anthology movies,” say Joel and Ethan Coen (they even talk as one), “especially those films made in Italy in the ’60s which set side-by-side the work of different directors on a common theme.” While the cast is impressive, the production credits on the film are also top-notch, including composer, Carter Burwell; director of photography, Bruno Delbonnel, and editor, Roderick Jaynes. Fans of the Coens know that they share editing duties under that particular moniker, though the production notes for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs would have us believe that Mr Jaynes “began his film career minding the tea cart at Shepperton Studios in the 1930s. The UK native then moved into the editing department, where he worked on some of the British film industry’s more marginal features from the 1950s and ’60s. With the demise of the Carry On series, he retired from film editing, only to emerge from retirement to work on Joel & Ethan Coen’s first feature, Blood Simple (1984).” Hmmm.