Ponders the Guardian’s Joe Queenan using the fact that the Coens are yet to make a tear-jerker as evidence that they are not fit to be so highly regarded. Once again a journalist bemoaning the fact that the Coens have gone from making a serious, Oscar-winning movie (No Country For Old Men) to a light, knock about comedy (Burn After Reading). Like that’s a bad thing! His comment that “the Coen brothers revert to being smart-alecks making films for snarky college students” is so boring, so well-trodden and so wrong that I almost stopped reading the article right there. And again the line about the Coen brothers “creative slump” is regurgitated, only this time, to fit the theme of his article, Queenan, has decided to make that slump a lot longer than the period in which the much maligned (unfairly, or at least overly harshly, in my opinion) Intolerable Cruelty (“a real horror”) and The Ladykillers (“a gabby, klutzy reworking of the 1955 British classic of the same name”). He extends it to include the period 1998-2006, a period in which he claims the Coen brothers “hit the skids”, conveniently beginning after most people’s favourite Coen movie, The Big Lebowski to the aforementioned serious, worthy movie, No Country For Old Men. This merely gives him the [false] evidence to back up his claims and overlooks two truly tremendous movie offerings in O Brother, Where Art Thou? ,which, in his esteemed opinion, has nothing to recommend it but (you guessed it) the multi-million selling, award winning soundtrack, and The Man Who Wasn’t There.

He also contends that- “Everything the Coen brothers do is clever, eye-opening, and stylish. That puts them in a class with Salvador Dalí. It doesn’t put them in a class with Rembrandt”.  Suits me, I much prefer the work of the surrealist master over that of Rembrandt.

In my opinion it is Queenan’s article that is a “recycling – more like a regurgitation” displaying for all to see how easy it is to write from a grumpy stand point. Of course, much like this post, his article is merely one man’s opinion to which he is entitled, however wrong it may be.

What with all the news of The Dark Knight being the bestest movie in the world since time began (according to it’s IMDB user rating) and in conjunction with YKFK’s currently running poll to find out which was the best (or more accurately- most favourite) Coen brothers movie, I thought it might be interesting to see what the IMDB users thought in comparison. In terms of ratings here’s IMDB’s rundown of Coen awesomeness first by rating and, where there’s a tie, I’ve given preference to the one with the most votes…

1. No Country For Old Men (8.4, 118,396 votes)
2. Fargo (8.3, 122,902)
3. The Big Lebowski (8.2, 122,119)
4. Miller’s Crossing (8.0, 31,861)
5. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (7.8, 71,292)
6. Blood Simple (7.8, 19,584)
7. The Man Who Wasn’t There (7.7, 30,891)
8. Barton Fink (7.7, 22,073)
9. Raising Arizona (7.5, 35,918)
10. The Hudsucker Proxy (7.4, 23,968)
11. Intolerable Cruelty (6.4, 26, 521)
12. The Ladykillers (6.2, 27,747)

Now, obviously, this is a live list so it will change over time. I just thought it might be interesting to compare what general movie fans think as opposed to specific Coen brothers fans who visit YKFK. At the moment the YKFK poll has Miller’s Crossing and The Big Lebowski tied at the top with 19% of the votes a piece. Next up is Fargo with 16% followed by Barton Fink with 13%. The bottom two in the YKFK poll unsurprisingly mirror the bottom two in the IMDB rankings, each taking up zero percent of the votes thus far- come on- SOMEONE must like them .

I was very surprised to see No Country For Old Men top the IMDB list whilst it is sixth on ours, but these type of things are always coloured by short memory. Will the IMDB voters still consider No Country superior to Fargo and The Big Lebowski in 10 years time?

Come the end of the YKFK poll (I ain’t decided how long to run it really- perhaps it should never end- your thoughts welcome) we need to decide which of the two polls is more important to us here at YKFK- the one voted for by dedicated Coen nuts or the one voted for by a more general movie fan…

Incidentally, I’m seeing The Dark Knight tomorrow afternoon and am looking forward to it immensely. I am expecting great things but the best movie of all time… nope.

I meant to post this the other day but the below news was way more exciting. Anyhow, Empire magazine polled it’s readership during November and December of last year as to which were the 201 (it was issue 201 of the magazine) Greatest Movies Of All Time. Well I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise that the Coen brothers had a couple of entries there. Coming in at number 120 was Fargo and at the dizzying, nosebleed-inducing height of number 25 was, of course, The Big Lebowksi. The top five reads thus; #5- The Godfather, #4- Star Wars, #3- The Fellowship Of The Ring, #2- The Empire Strikes Back and #1- The Shawshank Redemption. Oh, and the original The Ladykillers came in at #183 which is nice.

I’m a bit late on this one but I only found out today (thanks Joseph), but the Coen brothers made an appearance at the Soho Apple Store in New York on Tuesday 10th May (yeah, I know) to discuss their usage of Apple’s Final Cut Pro to edit both Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. You can also read a great article about the Coen brother’s use of said software HERE and see a (dodgy) photo from the event HERE. Thanks to Joseph Kinney for the heads-up.