The second film was, of course, "The Big Lebowski," the blissful comedy that, after being dismissed by critics on its release, has materialized into a cult phenomenon, celebrated in an annual event called Lebowski Fest and consecrated by the predictable academic studies.
I did not know what a blissful big deal this would turn out to be.
The big pluses are the blissful pine-scented Dalmatian islands and the warm Mediterranean climate, but you also get plenty of historic buildings too (most obviously in Dubrovnik and Split, both Unesco world heritage sites), and the dramatic, soaring Dinaric Alps backing the coast.
All of this is nonsense, of course — no underground leader would show up in a tropical white suit in a night club with his gorgeous wife on his arm — but the movie takes place in a magic space, the blissful imagining of big-studio Hollywood, a playground for the knowing, the sexual, the witty, the risk-takers.
We all get online and feel like every other couple must have a blissful relationship filled with big smiles and roses hand-delivered to their desks at work.
But they make a big noise with their sound, an uncategorisable wash of blissful, yearning pop hooks somewhere between Bon Iver, Sparks and the Chills.
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Gandolfini's legendary big heart was apparently charmed by the watch entrepreneur's blissful ignorance and he invited Kobold – then in his early twenties – to visit him on set.
"Blood Simple" was heavily informed by cinematic noir and literary pulp fiction — including both James M. Cain's novel "Double Indemnity" and Wilder's blissful take of the same — as were Coen brothers films like "The Big Lebowski" (a gloss on "The Big Sleep") and "The Man Who Wasn't There" ("Double Indemnity" yet again).
