Joel and Ethan Coen
Joel and Ethan Coen

Author: R. Barton Palmer

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2022-08-15

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0252054148

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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.

The Coen Brothers
The Coen Brothers

Author: Joel Coen

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9781578068890

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Collected interviews with the quirky and distinctive writer/director team of such films as Raising Arizona, Intolerable Cruelty, and Barton Fink

Joel & Ethan Coen
Joel & Ethan Coen

Author: Paul A. Woods

Publisher: Plexus Publishing (UK)

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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Comprising an anthology of essays this volume considers the work of the Coen brothers. It features writing on all of their films including 'Intolerable Cruelty'. Previous ed.: 1999.

Gates of Eden
Gates of Eden

Author: Ethan Coen

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2008-11-11

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0061684880

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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.

The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers
The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers

Author: Mark T. Conard

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2008-12-12

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 0813138698

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“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.

Ethan Coen and Joel Coen: Collected Screenplays 1
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen: Collected Screenplays 1

Author: Ethan Coen

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2002-10-15

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 0571210961

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These four early works by the internationally lauded filmmaking team deal with the subject for which they are best known: corruption and crime in situations that combine the real and the surreal with the hilarious. Of the scripts included here, Barton Fink--an intense look at the psychological ruin of a New York playwright trying to make it in 1940s Hollywood--is a masterful culmination of these themes.

Masters of Cinema: Ethan and Joel Coen
Masters of Cinema: Ethan and Joel Coen

Author: Ian Nathan

Publisher: Phaidon Press

Published: 2012-09-17

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782866429034

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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.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Author: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2018-11-20

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 0571353339

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Death is always the issue-in life, and in the Western. Joel and Ethan Coen's The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a movie of six Western stories. In each, our common destination is approached by a different road. Through each, diverse characters hurry for their final appointment: Oregon Trail-travelers, a gold prospector, a motley crew of stagecoach passengers, a high-plains drifting bank robber, even a singing cowboy. These six stories escort them with a care that either respects, or mocks, the dignity of all.The film stars Tom Waits, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tim Bake Nelson and Zoe Kazan and is shot with the harsh grandeur of the classic John Ford westerns.

The Brothers Grim
The Brothers Grim

Author: Erica Rowell

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2007-05-30

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 146166408X

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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.

Coen Brothers - Virgin Film
Coen Brothers - Virgin Film

Author: Eddie Robson

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-07-31

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0753547708

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Joel and Ethan Coen make up one of the most original and unconventional movie-making partnerships to come out of America at the end of the 20th century. From their debut tour de force Blood Simple to the hugely acclaimed The Man Who Wasn't There, the brothers' films have attracted critical kudos and commercial success in equal measure due to their irreverent, individual and technically virtuoso nature. Each of their films defies categorisation, yet you're never in any doubt you're watching a Coen brothers movie. This exploration of the movie career of Hollywood's best-loved outsiders charts their rise from cult favourites to box-office contenders, whilst combining indispensable reference material and critical analysis of their films.