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…

This time from one Blake Loosli who seems to specialise in caricature/portraiture. He’s created work based on a wide range of subject matter including quite a lot of movie related stuff, not least of which are his amazing No Country For Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Walter Sobchak pieces.

Check out all of his excellent work here. Spotted on The Lebowski Podcast’s Twitter feed.

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.

Lots of people got in touch to point me in the direction of a featurette over at Apple’s site. The Coens have been using Apple’s editing software, Final Cut Pro, for some time now and have filmed a short interview for Apple. It mainly concentrates on the use of colour in O Brother, Where Art Thou? but does contain shots from No Country For Old Men of Moss being persued by a truck (I’m doubtful that the shots of a city and taxi are from the movie but you never know). Very exciting indeed- the first footage from the next Coen movie!!! Go check it out – Apple Final Cut Coen interview

Thanks; Red, John, Doug, Curt, Ramesh, Armon and Ricky (hope I haven’t missed anyone).

More casting news for No Country For Old Men. Joining Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin in the cast will be Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root and Tim Blake Nelson. Both Rooth and Nelson have worked with the Coen brothers before on O Brother, Where Art Thou? where they played the blind radio station manager and Delman respectively.

Thanks to the following people for emailing me- Barry Watson, Matthew Leach and Stephen Gliteroe.

Apparenlty George Clooney is looking to direct the Coen-penned, Suburbicon (or is it Suburbacon?). Clooney’s directing debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, showed a lot of promise and his second movie as director, Goodnight And Good Luck, is getting great reviews so this, if it comes off, could be very good indeed.

This is what I already knew about Suburbicon – from the Future Projects page;

“A murder mystery the Coens started writing shortly after Ethan moved to New York. This one still may be a going concern in some sense, as George Clooney has mentioned that it was going to be his first film with the Coens until they decided to offer him ‘O Brother Where Art Thou.‘”It was a small part and I was going to get beaten to death with a shovel. I liked it. It was a great part”. Thanks to Ciaran Cassidy for supplying the info.”

Thanks to Matt for the nod. Jo Blo