Author : Joel Coen
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 32,62 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781578068890
Collected interviews with the quirky and distinctive writer/director team of such films as Raising Arizona, Intolerable Cruelty, and Barton Fink
Author : Lynnea Chapman King
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 26,56 MB
Release : 2014-10-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0810885778
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.
Author : R. Barton Palmer
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 10,98 MB
Release : 2022-08-15
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0252054148
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.
Author : Ian Nathan
Publisher : Aurum
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 14,71 MB
Release : 2017-11-02
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1781317291
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.
Author : Mark T. Conard
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 467 pages
File Size : 25,36 MB
Release : 2008-12-12
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0813138698
“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.
Author : M. Keith Booker
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 30,33 MB
Release : 2019-05-24
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1538120879
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.
Author : Ian Nathan
Publisher : Phaidon Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,3 MB
Release : 2012-09-17
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9782866429034
An essential introduction to the world's greatest directing team - the Coen brothers. Ethan and Joen Coen is a comprehensive, yet concise and accessible monograph including insightful texts written by some of the world's most respected specialists. This guide is richly illustrated with 100 images, some of which have rarely been seen before.
Author : Schuy R. Weishaar
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 27,38 MB
Release : 2012-10-16
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1476600600
The concepts and theories surrounding the aesthetic category of the grotesque are explored in this book by pursuing their employment in the films of American auteurs Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Coen Brothers and David Lynch. The author argues that interpreting these directors' films through the lens of the grotesque allows us1to situate both the auteurs and the films within a long history of the grotesque in art and aesthetics. This cultural tradition effectively subsumes the contribution of any artist or1genre that intersects it but also affords the artist or genre--the auteur and the genre filmmaker--a pantheon and an abundance of images, themes, and motifs through which he1or she can subversively represent the world and our place in it.
Author : Joseph McBride
Publisher :
Page : 120 pages
File Size : 44,41 MB
Release : 2022-03
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781839983313
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.
Author : Erica Rowell
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 33,15 MB
Release : 2007-05-30
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 146166408X
In 1984 Joel and Ethan Coen burst onto the art-house film scene with their neo-noir Blood Simple and ever since then they have sharpened the cutting edge of independent film. Blending black humor and violence with unconventional narrative twists, their acclaimed movies evoke highly charged worlds of passion, absurdity, nightmare realms, and petty human failures, all the while revealing the filmmakers' penchant for visual jokes and bravura technical strokes. Their central characters may be blind to reality and individual flaws, but their illusions, dreams, fears, and desires map the boundaries of their worlds—worlds made stunningly memorable by the Coens. In The Brothers Grim: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen, Erica Rowell unmasks the filmmakers as prankster mythmakers exploiting and subverting universal storytelling modes to further what seems to be their artistic agenda: to elicit laughs. Often employing satire and allegory, the Coens' movies hold a mirror up to American society, allowing viewers to both chuckle and gasp at its absurdities, hypocrisies, and foibles. From business partnerships (Blood Simple, The Ladykillers) to marriage (Intolerable Cruelty) to friendship and ethics (Miller's Crossing), the breakdowns of relationships are a steady focus in their work. Often the Coens' satires put broken social institutions in their cinematic crosshairs, exposing cracks in ineffective penal systems (Raising Arizona; O Brother, Where Art Thou?), unjust justice systems (The Man Who Wasn't There), a crooked corporate America (The Hudsucker Proxy), unnecessary wars (The Big Lebowski), a tyrannical Hollywood (Barton Fink), and the unbridled, fatuous pursuit of the American Dream (Fargo). While audiences may be excused for missing the duo's social commentary, the depth and breadth of the brothers' films bespeak an intelligence and cultural acuity that is rich, highly topical, and hard to pigeonhole.
