Surprise! We're back with a new episode. We jump off from the idea introduced to us by J. Todd Anderson, by way of Alfred Hitchcock, that filmmaking is about two things (and according to J. Todd only these two things): suspense and surprise. We analyze ways in which films create a “burden of knowledge” in the mind of the audience, and how this can dramatically affect the way scenes play out on a screen and behind our eyes. Sometimes you’re ahead of the characters, and sometimes they’re way, way ahead of you.

Check us out in the new episode of Blank Check where we kick off their Coen brothers mini series Pod Country for Old Cast with the first film in the Coens ouvre, Blood Simple!

Coens Covered: Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, True Grit, Intolerable Cruelty, The Man Who Wasn’t There