Characters and Cashback

So just recently I bought and viewed Blood Simple, a film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. I’ve always enjoyed movies by the Coen brothers, but as time has passed I’ve only liked their work more. Blood Simple is their directorial debut, a dark neo-noir which like many of the Coen brothers’ movies is about a seemingly insignificant crime snowballing into absolute chaos and confusion. It’s one of their more dramatic films, with the occasional bit of dark humor here and there. I highly recommend it. (I’d say it was one of my favorites, but pretty much everything I’ve seen by them is my favorite, so it wouldn’t be establishing much.)

The coolest thing about the Super Coen Bros. films, in my opinion, is that they aren’t movies as much as character studies. People who primarily enjoy plot-driven movies might not like their films, because the plots in their films for the most part feel like they are from a strange dream, with coincidences and misunderstandings often diverting a character from his objective. One of these coincidences and misunderstandings, by the way, forms the entire basis for The Big Lebowski. The detail put into the vast array of personalities in their movies is amazing, from the curiously believable (The Chief of Police Marge Gunderson in Fargo likes buffets a lot, I sometimes look for her when I’m at one), to the symbolic (Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men seems to represent pure evil with no motive).

I also have to give credit to their casting; I have yet to see a performance that isn’t completely solid in one of their movies. All the characters are perfectly sure (or purposely unsure) of their motivations, and they remain faithful as the plot crumbles beneath their feet. Their most recent film, Burn After Reading, has the least closure of any Coen film I’ve seen to date (purposefully so), and while I can’t pretend this didn’t bother me a bit, the characters in the movie are hilarious. John Malkovich is the perfect Osbourne Cox, a very bitter former CIA analyst with a drinking problem, and Brad Pitt plays the funniest character I’ve ever seen him do; it was hard not to laugh at the sight of him.

Speaking of Brad Pitt, Microsoft once again brought back their Live Cashback deal, which allows you to get 30% off any eBay item as long as you Buy it Now via PayPal and it meets the Terms and Conditions. So with these refunds up to $200 per person, and with a limit of 6 purchases per person, is Microsoft making a profit with merely advertising for eBay? Or maybe they have projected they will…?

It’s kind of an interesting scenario, because Microsoft lists on their Live Search engine “Hey, get this PS3 from eBay, and we’ll give you 30% off”, which is advertising for eBay somewhat, and then when the link adds a cookie to your browser which enables this Cashback deal, once you’re on eBay a message “Hey, Microsoft is giving you this 30% off” appears.

All I really know is that I’m going to take advantage of this deal and that Jerry Seinfeld should stop appearing in pointless commercials with Bill Gates.