Thanks to YKFK reading, moviemaker, who let me know, you can watch a short making of clip from the Coen brothers-directed TV ad from the previous post.

It seems there is a campaign going on in the US to educate the populace to the fact that “in reality there is no such thing as clean coal”. The campaign is called This Is Reality and who better to make the campaign’s TV ad than Joel and Ethan Coen? It is embedded below for your viewing pleasure…

Thanks (again!) to the wondeful Bunnie Lebowski for sending this in!

Not sure if this is genuine or final but I just found this;

That’s right folks! Fargo, arguably the Coen brother’s finest movie, is coming to Blu-ray to hi-def it up before your very eyes! MGM are releasing it on May 12th. Bonus features include;

• Feature Audio Commentary with director of photography Roger A. Deakins
• Minnesota Nice (27 min)
• Trivia Nice
• American Cinematographer Article
• Photo Gallery
• Theatrical Trailer
• TV Spot
• BD-Live Boot strap (these are pretty rubbish in my experience)

I can’t wait to see those Roger Deakin’s snowy vistas in glorious 1080p! More when I have it.

Entertainment Weekly has listed who it considers to be the 25 Greatest Active Directors. Of course the Coen brothers made the grade coming in at number 10.  Of Joel and Ethan they had this to say;

“Like two smart-alecs in the back of a classroom, the Coens are occasionally too clever for their own good. But they’ve been astute students, co-opting old-school film noir and incorporating their own twisted brand of wit and irony. A Coen hero is a bumbler, so tracking down the money in a Coen film always makes for a bumpy, and often deadly, ride.”

Here’s the full list-

1. Steven Spielberg
2. Peter Jackson
3. Martin Scorsese
4. Christopher Nolan
5. Steven Soderbergh
6. Ridley Scott
7. Quentin Tarantino
8. Michael Mann
9. James Cameron
10. Joel and Ethan Coen
11. Guillermo del Toro
12. David Fincher
13. Tim Burton
14. Judd Apatow
15. Sam Raimi
16. Zack Snyder
17. Darren Aronofsky
18. Danny Boyle
19. Clint Eastwood
20. Ron Howard
21. Ang Lee
22. Paul Thomas Anderson
23. Paul Greengrass
24. Pedro Almodóvar
25. Jon Favreau

I’m sure you’ll agree that is pretty much spot-on list of the best working directors.  For me, the world would be a better place if these guys, and only these guys, made movies. Other than the omission of Wes Anderson, I really can’t think of anyone else I think should have made the list, can you?

To celebrate the release of Burn After Reading on DVD and Blu-ray here in the UK on February 9th, Tiscali are hosting a competition in the form of a game to determine your “Stupidty Quotient” by slinging a bunch of trick questions your way. It’s a bit of fun, try it out and you could win a Nintendo DS with Braintraining (a fitting tie in to be sure).

Thanks to Marc for sending in the link.

Forget Obama! This guy would totally get my vote!

A parody of the now famous Obama “Hope” image artist Ben Swift created this as part of a Big Lebowski art show. He created 80, limited edition prints at $20 a piece but they’ve all sold out

Spotted over at /Film.

You can see other geeky versions of the Hope poster here.

It’s been very quiet lately and I just stumbled across this over on the mighty Flickr. There seems to be something of a trend of taking a new film, book or game and making an old-style cover for them. Here’s Spacesick’s cover for the novellisation of The Hudsucker Proxy...

I got a bang out of it and thought you would too. And – TWO Hudsucker posts on the trot! WOW!