Download or read book The Coen Brothers written by Joel Coen and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2006 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected interviews with the quirky and distinctive writer/director team of such films as Raising Arizona, Intolerable Cruelty, and Barton Fink
Download or read book Fargo written by Ethan Coen and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the midst of the bleak midwinter snow drifts of the American Midwest, Fargo is a story of murder and mayhem. Jerry Lundegaard plots the kidnapping of his wife to rescue his precarious financial situation, but events career out of control when one of the perpetrators he has hired to do the job goes haywire. In a senseless universe, it falls to Marge Gunderson (chief of the Brainerd Police Department and the moral centre of the film) to set things to rights. Like the Coen brothers' auspicious debut feature Blood Simple, Fargo concerns itself with dirty deeds done for money, but the grimness of the tales is alleviated by the laconic humour with which the characters greet their fates. The intricacy of the plotting is executed with brillance, yet the writing also reveals humanity at its core. Fargo was honoured with the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay of 1996.
Download or read book A Lot Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere written by Todd Melby and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Go behind the scenes at this classic '90s film from cinematic masters Joel and Ethan Coen. Ya, you betcha, you're gonna discover some fascinating tidbits to celebrate the film's 25th anniversary.
Download or read book The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers written by Mark T. Conard and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-12-12 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Written for both fans of the Coen brothers and the philosophically curious, without the technical language . . . educational and entertaining.” —Library Journal Joel and Ethan Coen have made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, but no matter what genre they’re playing with, they consistently focus on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore “the life of the mind” and show that the human condition can often be simultaneously comic and tragic, profound and absurd. The essays in this book explore the challenging moral and philosophical terrain of the Coen repertoire. Several address how Coen films often share film noir’s essential philosophical assumptions: power corrupts, evil is real, and human control of fate is an illusion. In Fargo, not even Minnesota’s blankets of snow can hide Jerry Lundegaard’s crimes or brighten his long, dark night of the soul. The tale of love, marriage, betrayal, and divorce in Intolerable Cruelty transcends the plight of the characters to illuminate competing theories of justice. Even in lighter fare, such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, the comedy emerges from characters’ journeys to the brink of an amoral abyss. However, the Coens often knowingly and gleefully subvert conventions and occasionally offer symbolic rebirths and other hopeful outcomes. At the end of The Big Lebowski, for example, the Dude abides, his laziness has become a virtue, and the human comedy is perpetuating itself with the promised arrival of a newborn Lebowski. The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers sheds new light on the work of these cinematic visionaries. From Blood Simple to No Country for Old Men, the Coens’ characters look for answers—though in some cases, their quest for answers leads, at best, only to more questions.
Download or read book Fargo written by Noah Hawley and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The making of the acclaimed, award-winning TV show told exactly as it occurred. From bestselling, Edgar Award-winning author Noah Hawley (Before the Fall) comes the perfect collector's item to the hit TV show based on the film Fargo. This companion to the first three seasons of Fargo, which Hawley created and executive produced, is packed with script selections-including all three pilots-candid, behind-the-scenes photography, exclusive interviews with cast and crew, and much, much more. Learn about what makes Lorne Malvo tick in a fascinating conversation with Billy Bob Thornton. Discover Kirsten Dunst's and Jesse Plemons's favorite scenes. Find out what it was like for Ewan McGregor to play both Stussy brothers. Hear from Patrick Wilson, Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and many others as Hawley, in this gorgeous, illuminating journey, takes you behind the curtain to reveal the making of one of the best shows on television.
Download or read book The Coen Brothers and the Comedy of Democracy written by Sara MacDonald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both critically and commercially successful filmmakers, the Coen brothers have written, produced, and directed numerous acclaimed films over the past three decades. Sara MacDonald and Barry Craig demonstrate that their comedies, in particular, which are often dismissed as mere entertainments, actually present substantial philosophic and political arguments. They examine five of the Coen brothers’ comedies: Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou, and Hail Caesar!. In those works, they discover insightful engagements with such ideas as questions of human freedom, the relationship of reason to religion, and the nature of liberal democracy in the American regime. They demonstrate how sometimes explicitly, but generally implicitly, the Coens draw on thinkers such as Homer, Plato, Dante, and Hegel, while simultaneously presenting popular entertainment.
Download or read book No Country for Old Men written by Cormac McCarthy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-11-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law—in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell—can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers—in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives—McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines. No Country for Old Men is a triumph. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
Download or read book Joel and Ethan Coen written by R. Barton Palmer and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With landmark films such as Fargo, O Brother Where art Thou?, Blood Simple, and Raising Arizona, the Coen brothers have achieved both critical and commercial success. Proving the existence of a viable market for "small" films that are also intellectually rewarding, their work has exploded generic conventions amid rich webs of transtextual references. R. Barton Palmer argues that the Coen oeuvre forms a central element in what might be called postmodernist filmmaking. Mixing high and low cultural sources and blurring genres like noir and comedy, the use of pastiche and anti-realist elements in films such as The Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink clearly fit the postmodernist paradigm. Palmer argues that for a full understanding of the Coen brothers' unique position within film culture, it is important to see how they have developed a new type of text within general postmodernist practice that Palmer terms commercial/independent. Analyzing their substantial body of work from this "generic" framework is the central focus of this book.
Download or read book The Coen Brothers Encyclopedia written by Lynnea Chapman King and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-10-10 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joel and Ethan Coen have written and directed some of the most celebrated American films of the last thirty years. The output of their work has embraced a wide range of genres, including the neo-noirs Blood Simple and The Man Who Wasn’t There, theabsurdist comedy Raising Arizona, and the violent gangster film Miller’s Crossing. Whether producing original works like Fargo and Barton Fink or drawing on inspiration from literature, such as Charles Portis’ True Grit or Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, the brothers put their distinctive stamp on each film. In The Coen Brothers Encyclopedia, all aspects of these gifted siblings as writers, directors, producers, and even editors—in the guise of Roderick Jaynes—are discussed. Entries in this volume focus on creative personnel behind the camera, including costume designers, art directors, and frequent contributors like cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Carter Burwell. Recurring actors are also represented, such as Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, George Clooney, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, and John Turturro. Each entry is followed by a bibliography of published sources, both in print and online. From Blood Simple to Inside Llewyn Davis, The Coen Brothers Encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference on two of the most significant filmmakers of the last three decades. An engaging examination of their work, this volume will appeal to scholars, researchers, and fans interested in this creative duo.
Download or read book Blood Simple written by Joel Coen and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 1989-03-15 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Director Joel Coen's and producer Ethan Coen's Blood Simple (1984, River Road Prods/Circle Releasing/Palace) is a contemporary noir thriller set in Texas. A taut, convoluted plot and imaginative direction made the independent release a word-of-mouth hit and established the Coen brothers' reputation for originality. Actors John Getz, Frances McDormand, and Dan Hedaya appear in the story in which a woman commits adultery, and her enraged husband hires a killer for revenge. Blackmail, violence, and mistaken assumptions lead to an edgy, exhilarating climax.
Download or read book Reel Bay written by Jana Larson and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police concluded, while searching for the fictional treasure buried in a snowbank at the end of the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo? Or was it something else that brought her there: unrequited love, ritual suicide, a meteor shower, a far-flung search for purpose? The seed of an obsession took root in struggling film student Jana Larson when she chanced upon a news bulletin about the case. Over the years and across continents, the material Jana gathered in her search for the real Takako outgrew multiple attempts at screenplays and became this remarkable, genre-bending essay that leans into the space between fact and fiction, life and death, author and subject, reality and delusion.
Download or read book The Coen Brothers written by Ian Nathan and published by Aurum. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through in-depth and informative text written by film journalist Ian Nathan, The Coen Brothers Archive re-examines the brothers' most famous work including Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men and True Grit. Plus, some of their cult films, like The Evil Dead, Paris je t'aime, and A Serious Man. Packed with stunning images from the Kobal archives, this book will also highlight their surprising involvement in recent films like Bridge of Spies and Unbroken, as well as looking at those who they frequently collaborate with.
Download or read book The Coen Brothers America written by M. Keith Booker and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-05-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than three decades, Joel and Ethan Coen have produced some of the most unique and thought-provoking works in modern cinema. In broad comedies such as Raising Arizona, violent thrillers like No Country for Old Men, and black comedies such as Fargo, the filmmakers have offered brilliant takes on a variety of film genres. One of the most distinctive features of their movies is their skewed view of America itself. In The Coen Brothers’ America, M. Keith Booker discusses feature films produced by the pair since their 1984 debut Blood Simple. The author focuses on how the Coen brothers’ films engage with American cultural history and are embedded in specific geographical settings. From New York to Los Angeles, from Texas to Minnesota, the Coens capture the essence of real locations from unusual angles, which often make the films appear as if they are taking place in an alternate reality. In addition, many of the brothers’ films are steeped in America’s cultural past, from the deep south of the 1930s in O Brother, Where Art Thou to the Greenwich Village of the 1960s in Inside Llewyn Davis. The Coens make particularly effective use of films from Hollywood’s Golden Age, producing their own updated versions of such genres as film noir (The Man Who Wasn’t There), the Western (True Grit), and screwball comedy (The Hudsucker Proxy)—not to mention their idiosyncratic depictions of Hollywood itself in Barton Fink and Hail Caesar! This book also explores how the Coens draw upon cultural phenomena outside of film, including literature, music, and television. Approaching each film within the framework of Ethan and Joel’s overall vision. The Coen Brothers’ America provides an entertaining look at the pair’s work that will appeal to scholars and fans alike.
Download or read book It Doesn t Suck written by Adam Nayman and published by Pop Classics. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What's celebrated as the "worst movie ever," film writer Adam Nayman explores the 1995 Paul Verhoeven film that won the Razzie and perhaps ended its star's career. He argues that Showgirls is not so bad it's good, it's so good it's mistaken for bad.
Download or read book Gates of Eden written by Ethan Coen and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gates of Eden, Ethan Coen exhibits on the printed page the striking, twisted, yet devastatingly on-target vision of modern American life familiar from his movies. The world within the world we live in comes alive in fourteen brazenly original tragicomic short stories—from the Midwest mob war that fizzles due to the principals' ineptness to the trials of a deaf private eye with a blind client to a fugitive's heartbreaking explanation for having beheaded his wife, alarming in that it almost makes sense.
Download or read book The Whole Durn Human Comedy written by Joseph McBride and published by . This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Coen Bros. have attracted a wide following and been rewarded with Oscars and other honors, and some of their films are cult favorites and boxoffice hits, such as FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Yet the team of filmmaking brothers remains misunderstood in some circles. Ethan and Joel Coen deliberately unsettle conventional expectations and raise disturbing questions about human nature while mischievously mixing film genres and styles. Their films display shocking tonal shifts as they blend comedy and drama and, most controversially, comedy and violence. This potent mélange of themes and stylistic approaches makes the Coens' films adventurous, unpredictable probes into contemporary social anxieties; as brilliant satirists they are heirs to Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. But they resist easy definition and raise the ire of some critics who like films to fit more comfortably into preexisting formats. Film historian and critic Joseph McBride -- author of acclaimed biographies of Frank Capra, John Ford, and Steven Spielberg, along with critical studies of Orson Welles, Ernst Lubitsch, and Wilder -- jousts with the Coens' detractors while defining the filmmakers' freshness and originality. The quirkily individualistic Coens are the kind of personal filmmakers the increasingly conglomerated American cinema rarely fosters anymore, and this critical study illuminates their artistic personalities and contributions.
Download or read book Coen written by Elijah Siegler and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, True Grit--Joel and Ethan Coen make movies. They make movies that matter. But do these movies matter for religion? Coen is a masterful response to this question of religious significance that neither imposes alien orthodoxy nor consigns the Coens to religious insignificance. The Coen movies discussed each receive a chapter-length investigation of the specific film's relation to the religious. Far more than just documenting religion in all Coen films--from blink-and you'll-miss-them biblical references to gospel tunes framing the soundtrack--the volume, cumulatively, mounts a compelling case for the Coens' consistent religious outlook with an original argument about precisely what constitutes religion. The volume reveals how Coen films emerge as morality tales, set in a mythological American landscape, that critique greed and self-interest. Coen heroes often confront apocalyptic and unredeemable evil, face human limitation and the banality of violence, and force audiences to wrestle with redemption and grace within the stark moral worlds portrayed on screen. This is religion on Coen terms. Coen teaches its readers something new about religion, about film, and about the kind of world-making that each claims to be.
