I just stumbled upon these images on the intertubes and I’m not sure if they are official and final but, my oh my, they’re pretty…

On August 30th, 20th Century Fox are releasing the Coen Brothers Collection Blu-ray boxset comprising Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing and Fargo. Other than Fargo they are Blu-ray debutants. They will all be available separately and will contain the same special features as their DVD equivalents (links below will take you to the Amazon.com pre-order pages)…

Blood Simple: Director’s Cut —

• Commentary with Kenneth Loring of Forever Young Films
• Cast and crew biographies
• Production notes
• Theatrical trailer

Raising Arizona —

• Theatrical trailer
• TV spots

Miller’s Crossing —

• Shooting Miller’s Crossing: A Conversation with Barry Sonnenfeld featurette
• Interview Soundbites with cast members Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, and John Turturro
• Still gallery
• Theatrical trailers

Fargo —

• Commentary with cinematographer Roger Deakins
• Minnesota Nice featurette
• Trivia track
• Trailer
• Still gallery
• American Cinematographer article on the film

Lurking in Twitter I found a link to this, frankly awesome, collection of re-imagined Coen brothers movie posters. The designers at Poster Lab have reworked posters for Blood Simple, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn’t There and No Country For Old Men. I think you’ll agree that they’re truly beautiful.

Click on the images below to see the full size posters;

Which is your favourite? Mine? It’s a toss-up (no pun intended) between No Country and Hudsucker.

I’ll keep an eye on Poster Lab and update if they do the missing movies, I really hope they do.

Just spotted this on Twitter but, for some reason, the Raindance website has made the screenplays for EVERY, and I mean EVERY, Coen brothers’ movie available for download. Now, this includes the screenplays for both A Serious Man AND their next movie, True Grit!!! You heard me right- including TRUE GRIT!

I suggest you get them ALL while you can because I can’t imagine the True Grit one being available for long. Get them HERE!

Obviously most of them are available right here on YKFK and have been for a long time however, I have gotten into a bit of legal deep water in the past for posting up scripts for forthcoming movies before which is why I have not uploaded the ones for Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and True Grit…

The Coen brothers’ latest movie, A Serious Man has been nominated for two awards at the 25th Film Independent Spirit Awards. The nominations for Joel and Ethan Coen in the Best Director category and for the ridiculously awesome, Roger Deakins in the Best Cinematography category. In addition the movie has been awarded their Robert Altman Award which is a special one awarded to just one film’s the director, casting director and its ensemble cast. The award ceremony takes place on Friday March 5th 2010.
The Coens have been successful at the Spirit Awards before. In 1997 Fargo won the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Female Lead (Frances McDormand), Best Male Lead (William H. Macy) and Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins – told you he was awesome!). In 1986 Blood Simple was nominated for Best Picture but was beaten by Martin Scorsese’s After Hours while that movie and Blood Simple shared the gong for Best Director, M. Emmet Walsh also won the Best Male Lead award for his creepy, slimey portrayal of Loren Visser.

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…

Now,  I don’t have an iPhone myself so I don’t vouch for this but it is official so must be OK I guess. MGM have put together a Fargo soundboard application for Apple’s phone (or iPod Touch I’m guessing). It has sixteen audio clips each accompanied by an image from the movie. Kinda wish I could have this myself (love the woodchipper icon at bottom-left!)…

You can get it here via iTunes. Thanks to long-time reader, JD for the tip.

Veteran actor Harve Presnell has succumbed to cancer. He died on Tuesday at the age of 75. He had a long and distinguised career on stage and screen but is best know to us here on YKFK as Jerry Lungergaard’s (William H. Macy) father-in-law, Wade Gustafson in the Coen brothers’ 1996 sleeper hit Fargo.

Harve Presnell 1933-2009

WOW! I love it when this happens because it doesn’t happen very often but MGM are releasing the Blu-ray version of Fargo in the UK on 4th May while the US has to wait till 12th. I don’t know how this got by me till now but I’ve just pre-ordered it. So exciting!

Pre-order yours for £14.99 on Play.com or £14.88 from Amazon.co.uk.

I think this only applies to readers in the UK but Sky Movies Indie is showing a “season” of Coen brothers movies building up to their premiere of No Country For Old Men showing on Sky Movies Premiere in HD. They’ve dubbed the season “Scream with the Coen brothers” and have put together this frankly ACE trailer which is a compedium of one of the Coens’ recurring themes- people screaming. It starts on 30th March and end on 12th April.

Information on the Sky site is not very well organised but I’ve been able to root this out;

The Hudsucker Proxy is showing on Monday 30th March at 20:00,

O Brother, Where Art Thou? on Monday 30th at 22:00 and Tuesday 31st at 20:00,

Blood Simple on Tuesday 31st at 22:00,

The Big Lebowski is showing on Wednesday 1st April at 22:00,

Raising Arizona is showing on Wednesday 1st April at 20:00 and Thursday 2nd April at 2:00

Beyond that, scrabbled together information I’m not sure if they’re showing more of their movies or not, certainly there are clips from both Barton Fink and Fargo in the trailer but they have no listings on the site. Perhaps those with a Sky subscription could clarify?

Thanks to Will for the info.