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.

The American Film Institute has listed the Coen brothers’ latest movie, A Serious Man, as one of 10 movies of the year. The AFI’s intent is to generate a sort of visual history of American cinema by adding movies and TV shows of worth to the collection every year. Here is their explanation of what they do;

“AFI was created to protect and preserve the legacy of the moving image art form so that future generations will have a greater understanding and appreciation for the proud heritage reflected in the realities of a new modern day.

Each year, AFI AWARDS honors excellence in the moving image arts within the context of a Year in Review. One of AFI’s national mandates is the creation of an annual almanac that records and preserves the evolution of the moving image arts in the 21st century.”

Anyway, A Serious Man was joined by Coraline, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, The Messanger, Precious, A Single Man, Sugar, Up and Up In The Air. Additionally, No Country For Old Men made the cut in 2007’s awards and Roger Deakins was awarded their Cinematographer of the Year award for The Man Who Wasn’t There back in 2001.

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.

According to movie font of all knowledge, the IMDB, one Katherine Borowitz is to appear in the forthcoming A Serious Man as a character called Mimi Nudell. Using my rules for the Family Tree section of YKFK an actor must have appeared in at least two Coen brothers movies and Borowitz’s previous appearance was in 2001’s Palme D’Or winner- The Man Who Wasn’t There as Big Dave Brewster’s (James Gandolfini) wife, UFO conspiracist and future department store heiress, Ann Nirdlinger. To jog your memory here’s a pic…

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.

Jeeze, where do I start with this one! OK there’s this website see, where the guy, Brendan Dawes, created a program to sample a tiny image from a movie once every second. The program then sticks all the many images in a chain and creates one massive image. Over on Cinema Redux you can see eight such images created for Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Boorman’s Deliverance, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and the Coen’s own The Man Who Wasn’t There. Anyhoo, taking the lead from this Boogah on Flickr has created similar for The Big Lebowski. You can see it (in it’s largest version) here or by clicking the sample below. Enjoy… I think…

The internet sure is a strange place, but I still haven’t seen the Queen in her damned undies!

I was just checking to see if biglebowskidvd.com was active yet and it still is not, but further exploration has throw up the release of a R1 Coen Brother’s Collection boxset, due out on 18th October. It has VERY similar artwork to the R2 release but completely different movies!!! In it will be the new special edition Big Lebowski, Blood Simple Director’s Cut, Intolerable Crualty and The Man Who Wasn’t There. A strange mix to be sure. RRP is set ar $39.98.ar $39.98.