The first official still from Burn After Reading has been released. You can see it here. Looks to me like George and Fran are watching Raising Arizona…

Tonight’s edition of the BBC’s Mastermind was contested by a dude called Chris Jones whose specialist subject was The Coen Brother’s Films. I tuned in half way in and missed his 2 minutes but hopefully the episode will show up on the BBC’s i-player. You can do a short (and dead easy) true of false quiz here.

Hurrah! Joel and Ethan Coen have won the Director’s Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for No Country For Old Men. Apparenlty this award is a very accurate barometer for the winner of the Oscar for same.

You can download a podcast of their acceptance speech and a Q&A with the press here.

Thanks to JD for the link to the podcast.

A list of what is possibly/probably the specs of the forthcoming DVD and Blu Ray releases of No Country For Old Men have emerged on the internet. Extra features include;

Working with the Coens: Reflections of Cast and Crew – Learn more about Joel and Ethan Coen from the perspective of their collaborators, cast and crew.

The Making of No Country for Old Men – Take a journey through the Coen Brothers’ process and back to their roots as storytellers with a unique voice and vision.

Diary of a Country Sheriff – Explore the relationship between the compassion of Sheriff Bell and the brutality of Anton Chigurh.

Irritatingly but probably because they’re busy finishing off Burn After Reading is is once again bereft of a Coen commentary track. Both the DVD and the Blu Ray are out on March 11th. I cannot wait!

I don’t know where it came from but here’s an annoyingly small image of the press announcement of the release. If anyone finds this image in a better, legible resolution please let me know.

February 18th sees the release of The Complete Coen 1984-2004 on DVD. It features, as you might expect, all 11 Coen brothers movies from Blood Simple to The Ladykillers. The RRP is £69.99 but you can get it for less than £49.98 at amazon.co.uk and £55.99 at play.com. I almost wish I hadn’t bought them all already!

Today the Academy announced the nominations for this year’s Oscars. No Country For Old Men and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood topped the table for most noms with eight apiece. The Coen brothers have been nominated in both the Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay categories while Javier Bardem has picked up yet another Best Supporting Actor nod and the movie is also up for the big one- Film of the Year. Other noms are Achievement in Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Achievement in Film Editing (Coen alias Roderick Jaynes), Achievement in Sound Mixing and Achievement in Sound Editing. The 80th Academy Awards takes place on 25th February. No word on whether or not the WGA strike will affect it.

BBC Radio 4’s weekly Film Programme on Friday 18th January was a Coen brothers special. Don’t worry if you missed it because, thanks to their awesome, “Listen Again” feature you can catch it here for the rest of this week. I’ll try to get it up on this site permanently too.

No Country For Old Men has been nominated for 9 BATFAs! And this one being a British award ceremony, will be unaffected by the WGA strike and will actually happen. The film’s nominations were; Best Film, Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Editing (amusingly Roderick Jaynes), Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Adapted Screenplay (again Joel and Ethan), two for Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones), Supporting Actress (Kelly MacDonald) and Sound (Peter Kurland/Skip Lievsay/Craig Berkey/Greg Orloff). Good luck to all.

The brothers Coen, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin appeared on the Charlie Rose show to discuss No Country For Old Men and that king among web-surfers, finishdish, has come through for us again with a link to the pertinent clip. Thanks finishdish! Also, do a wee search for “coen” and you’ll find yet more interviews with our favourite movie making bros about O Brother, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There and Intolerable Cruelty!

No Country For Old Men continues to cause discussion and debate. Read this most impressive article/post over at Jim Emerson’s Chigaco Sun Times blog. Very, very good read.