I just finished watching the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers — a dark-humored remake of the 1955 British film of the same name.

A swindler professor (Tom Hanks) assembles a gang (Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma, Ryan Hurst) to rob a casino. The only way to enter the casino with money is through the basement of the house of a religious old woman named Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall). To implement his plan, the pseudo professor rents a room and a cellar from her for fake rehearsals of his musical ensemble.

The unsuspecting Marva, fascinated by the poetry professor, agrees and the gang secretly gets down to business. But very soon it becomes clear that the observational abilities of a religious elderly woman were clearly underestimated.

The word “fuck” is heard 89 times in the film. But of course, that’s not the subject of my story.

The Ladykillers includes a couple of musical gospel scenes, and these took me back to my distant childhood.


Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

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