Empire magazine’s website has listed what they consider to be the the 20 best micro-part characters from the Coen brothers oeuvre. Here’s are those 20…

1. Loren Visser (M Emmet Walsh), Blood Simple

2. Dot (Frances McDormand), Raising Arizona

3. Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), Raising Arizona

4. Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito), Miller’s Crossing

5. Tic Tac (Al Mancini), Miller’s Crossing

6. Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), Barton Fink

7. W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), Barton Fink

8. Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning), The Hudsucker Proxy

9. Buzz (Jim True-Frost), The Hudsucker Proxy

10. Mike Yanagita (Steve Park), Fargo

11. Officer Lou (Bruce Lohene), Fargo

12. Marty (Jack Keller), The Big Lebowski

13. Penny Wharvey McGill (Holly Hunter), O Brother, Where Art Thou?

14. Freddy Reidenschneider (Tony Shalhoub), The Man Who Wasn’t There

15. Gus Petch (Cedric the Entertainer), Intolerable Cruelty

16. Wheezy Joe (Irwin Keyes), Intolerable Cruelty

17. Deputy Wendell (Garret Dillahunt), No Country For Old Men

18. Gas Station Proprietor (Gene Jones), No Country For Old Men

19. CIA Superior (J.K. Simmons), Burn After Reading

20. Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed), A Serious Man

Nice to see a couple of entries from Intolerable Cruelty which I still think is massively underrated suffering, as it does, from the weight of Coen quality prior to it.

What do you think? Has anyone been missed?  Only ONE from The Big Lebowski? I would have Knox Harrington (David Thewlis) in there right away! And no Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), surely Jesus’ part is small enough to make this list? None from The Ladykillers? Let’s talk…

Long time Coen brothers composer, Cater Burwell has been nominated for two prestigious World Soundtrack Academy Awards for his rousing work on Burn After Reading. The awards have been running and have been held in Ghent annally since 2001 and comprise of three main categories; Film Composer of the Year, Best Original Score of the Year and Best Original Song Written Directly for a Film. Burwell is up for a gong in the first two categories. Below is the complete list of nominees;

FILM COMPOSER OF THE YEAR

o CARTER BURWELL (Burn After Reading, Twilight)
o ALEXANDRE DESPLAT (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Coco Avant Chanel, Largo Winch, Cheri)
o DANNY ELFMAN (Milk, Taking Woodstock, Notorious)
o MICHAEL GIACCHINO (Star Trek, Up, Land of the Lost)
o HANS ZIMMER (Frost/Nixon, Angels & Demons, The Dark Knight)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE OF THE YEAR

o BURN AFTER READING by Carter Burwell
o THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON by Alexandre Desplat
o FROST/NIXON by Hans Zimmer
o THE INTERNATIONAL by Reinhold Heil, Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek
o SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE by A.R. Rahman

BEST ORIGINAL SONG WRITTEN DIRECTLY FOR A FILM

o “GRAN TORINO” from ‘Gran Torino’
Music & Lyrics by Jamie Cullum, Clint Eastwood, Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens
Performed by Jamie Cullum & Don Runner

o “JAI HO” from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
Music by : A.R. Rahman
Lyrics by Gulzar and Tanvi Shah
Performed by A.R. Rahman, Sukhvinder Singh, Tanvi Shah, Mahalaksmi Iyver, Vijay Prakash
Published by KM Musiq ltd

o “O SAYA” from Slumdog Millionaire’
Music & Lyrics by A.R. Rahman and Mathangi Arulpragasam
Performed by M.I.A. & A.R. Rahman
Published by KM Musiq ltd

o “RUN & HIDE” from ‘Je l’aimais’
Music & lyrics by Anna Chalon
Performed by Anna chalon

o “THE WRESTLER” from ‘The Wrestler’
Music & lyrics by Bruce Springsteen
Performed by Bruce Springsteen
Published by Bruce Springsteen

Winners will be announced on October 17th at the closing of the Ghent International Film Festival. The very best of luck to him!

Another great find on the Focus Features site, this time a slideshow about the inception, design and finalising of the awesome Saul Bass-esque, 1960’s poster for Burn After Reading. In it you can see some truly brilliant early designs (including one I posted in July 2008 but had to take down again) and some bizarre information about how the MPAA had a say over the poster’s design. Here are a few of my favourites from the article…

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.

The outrage!

Yep Burn After Reading has struck out entirely. Not a single Oscar nomination for the Coen brothers’ latest. Not even a little biddy Best Original Screenplay nod. The complete list of nominations for the 81st Academy Awards was announced this afternoon, David Finchers sumptuous looking The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leads the way with 13 nomination while Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire has amassed 10. Both The Dark Knight and Milk landed 8 apiece. Check out the full list here. Still, at least it means us Coen brothers fans need not endure the ceremony this year… no sour grapes honest…

Regular readers of You Know, For Kids! will know that the Coen brothers’ latest, Burn After Reading, was nominated in two categories at this year’s Golden Globes, well, it won neither! In the category of Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical it was beaten out by Woody Allen’s supposed return to form, Vicky Christina Barcelona while thew award for Best Performance by an Acress in a Comedy or Musical went to Sally Hawkins for her performance in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky beating Frances McDormand.

Boo!

Long time no post but it’s all gone quiet on the Coen front. Anyhoo no big spiel, just to let you know that Burn After Reading has been nominated in the category of Original Screenplay by the Writer’s Guild of America.

Variety has a brief interview with long-time Coen collaborator, composor Carter Burwell in which he discusses the ideas behind the music score for Burn After Reading.

Thanks to Bunnie (again!) for the tip off.

Just a quick note to point you in the direction of two reviews of the Burn After Reading Blu-ray release. The first is from Blu-ray.com who laud the disc for its audio- “it is reference material all the way, with luscious, extended treble, gorgeous midrange and taut bass”, the second from a site which is new to me, Into The Blu which is also a very favourable review.

My copy arrived on Saturday morning and I am pleased to confirm that it is a region free release and so works on my UK PS3- yay! I am yet to watch the movie but have watched the three brief featurettes which are the usual Coen brothers love ins. I had a mess with the “My Scenes” option which basically lets you select sections of the movie and save them as your favourite bits by hitting a button to mark the start and end of the section. The BD-Live (online) stuff is not yet working as the disc isn’t officially out yet so the servers are not running so I don’t know what to expect from that.