The Coen Brothers PDF Download

Author: Joel Coen
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578068890
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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

Author: R. Barton Palmer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054148
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
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: Paul A. Woods
Publisher: Plexus Publishing (UK)
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
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.

Author: Ethan Coen
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061684880
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
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.

Author: Mark T. Conard
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813138698
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
“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: Erica Rowell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810858509
Category : Motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The Brothers Grim examines the inner workings of the Coens' body of work, discussing a movie in terms of its primary themes, social and political contexts, narrative techniques, influences, relationship to their other films, and the Coens' referential modus operandi that retreads cinema, literature, history, philosophy, and art to amplify their films' themes.

Author: Joel Coen
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 9780312021689
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
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.

Author: Ellen Cheshire
Publisher: No Exit Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The revised and updated edition of this pocket-guide to perhaps the finest filmmakers working in America today. Features an introductory essay on the Coens along with an analysis and discussions of each of their films, including a consideration of their latest works Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers.

Author: Peter Kšrte
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9780879109639
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
(Limelight). An analysis of the Coen oeuvre through O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). The authors, German film critics, include a previously unpublished interview with the filmmaking brothers on their off-center work in genres they both satirize and pay tribute to: film noir, horror, screwball comedy, and buddy escapade. As Ethan Coen says: "We grew up in America, and we tell American stories in American settings within American frames of reference. Perhaps our way of reflecting our system is more comprehensible to non-Americans because they already see the system as something alien." Well illustrated.

Author: Carolyn R. Russell
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476616159
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen got their start in the independent film business in 1984 with their debut feature Blood Simple, which won the award of Best Dramatic Feature at Sundance in 1985 and was hailed as one of the best films of the year by the National Board of Review. Since their early success, the Coen Brothers have built a name for themselves and gone on to create other big-name movies such as Raising Arizona, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski. This book is a comprehensive account of these four films and Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy. Production information and in-depth analysis and critique are provided, as well as discussions on how each movie functions in the broader context of the Coens' work, and the themes, strategies, and motifs often utilized by the Coens.