Michael Winterbottom - A Cock and Bull Story (2005)

Published by e-man | Filed under Video

A Cock and Bull Story (DVDrip - 2005)
94 min | XviD 608×256 | 914 kb/s | 133 kb/s mp3 VBR | 29.97 fps | N-VOP | 700 MB + 3% recovery record
English | Subtitles: Spanish, English and French .srt | Genre: Comedy| RS.com

A Cock and Bull Story (released in the United States and Australia as Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story) is a film-within-a-film, featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making of a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s 18th century novel Tristram Shandy. Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles. Coogan is playing the titular role in an adaptation of Tristram Shandy being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby, and believes his role to be of equal importance to Coogan’s, calling himself the “co-lead”.

Laurence Stern’s “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” is considered the first meta-fiction novel. Written in the 1700’s, before the phrase or even concept of ‘meta-fiction’ was born, it’s the story – or, rather, Shandy’s attempt to tell the story – of his life. But as all readers know, it’s a work of epic digression, the tale of nearly everything else but the life of its title character. With invaluable assistance from his leads Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, Winterbottom has created a meta-film: a meditation on the novel that plays as a movie-within-a-movie. After setting up the conceit with a scene of the actors in make-up discussing the subtleties of billing, and the color of Brydon’s teeth, we’re cast into Sterne’s knotty and bawdy world, brought to vivid life with all the technical sleight-of-hand film can offer. Coogan, as both Shandy and his father, narrates the story of his birth, popping in and out of scenes as character and actor, commenting on the proceedings, interrupting them, revising them. The backstory of the drama between the actors parallels that of the movie, especially the growing competition between Coogan and Brydon, and the numerous deviations of the director, the other actors, and the crew.

The film is short, but dense — every scene has so many dimensions that the end result fans out like a peacock’s tail. There are infinite details to sift through in its 90 minute running time, and there is a very beautifully done telescoping of time periods to match Tristram Shandy’s 18th-century milieu with that of Steve Coogan’s and our own modern day. When Coogan haggles over a script in the lobby of a trendily underlit London hotel, you feel somehow transported back to Shandy’s father’s palatial home and its elegant candlelight. The central scene of the film comes when Coogan, escaping from a costume party where the 21st century briefly crashes into the 18th, tells his wife: “I just had a nightmare.” That nightmare is called our world, reality, human as opposed to divine love, the world controlled by time yet where nothing really changes except the clothes and the hairstyles, and that, despite its obvious wretchedness and pain, people are too afraid to give up; yes, the very same “cock and bull story” of the title. It is not every comedian who has something to say about the human comedy. But Coogan certainly does, under Michael Winterbottom’s expert and disillusioned hand. IMDB comment

Adaptación libre de la novela clásica del siglo XVIII “Vida y opiniones del caballero Tristram Shandy” de Laurence Sterne, la caótica historia se inicia con el protagonista de la novela contando su vida. Las historias de niñez de Tristram son constantemente interrumpidas por su familia y su servicio doméstico, que revelan mucho más de la vida del protagonista que cualquier autobiografía convencional. En el momento dramático del nacimiento de Tristram, el ayudante de dirección grita “¡Corten!”, señalando el final de la sesión de rodaje, y entonces vemos a Steve Coogan, los otros actores y los técnicos durante una caótica tarde en el plató. La novia de Coogan llega con su hijo de seis meses para una esperada reunión, un periodista persigue al actor acerca de una historia escandalosa, su agente aparece con un puñado de guiones de Hollywood y los que financian la película amenazan con cerrar el grifo.

IMDB

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