Ethan Coen Videos

In the Great Coen Debates that occur among film fans, there's one that I never feel gets enough love: Miller's Crossing. It's probably my favorite next to The Big Lebowski. The film is deliciously dark and dreary (you can watch this in summer and still feel cold), but punctuated by that startling Coens humor. The dialogue and character quirks are not as exaggerated as they are in other Coen films, and when a character does get theatrical, it's appropriate to the setting. These are thugs who find themselves in positions of great wealth and power, after all, and they'll never know quite how to behave in the real world. The film has a level of tension I don't think the Coens matched until No Country For Old Men. Tom's white-knuckle walk into Miller's Crossing is probably my favorite scene (actually, it's difficult to pick just one), but it doesn't appear to be on YouTube. So, here's another moment of violence that just doesn't go the way you think it will, and features the best use of Danny Boy in history. I really want to believe that the gramophone is a nod to Sean Connery's death scene in The Untouchables, but I suspect it's a noir standard that ushered many a mobster and cop into his grave. Filed under: Classics, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Scenes We LoveContinue reading Scenes We Love: Miller's Crossing Permalink | Email this | Comments

It's impossible to top an icon like John Wayne, but the Coen Bros' True Grit is shaping up to have a better supporting cast than the original did. (Hey, Wayne supposedly didn't like Kim Darby either.) Variety has just announced that Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are in talks to join Jeff Bridges in the Coens' remake. Bridges will play Rooster Cogburn, while Damon is in talks to play La Boeuf, the Texas Ranger who pairs up with Cogburn and Mattie. I'll probably anger the Glen Campbell fans out there, but I think this is a vast improvement over the original casting. I can actually buy Damon as a Texas Ranger. Brolin will be taking a walk on the nasty side, as he'll be playing Tom Chaney, the man who gunned Mattie's father down for the gold he had in his saddlebag. While Chaney wasn't the most pleasant fellow in the original, there's no doubt that Brolin will increase the menace and nastiness. I think we can all agree Brolin has done no wrong since his No Country For Old Men comeback, and this is the kind of role that'll be delicious to watch him tear into. The film is set to go into production in March 2010, and the Coens won't waste any time in the editing room as it's slated to be released in late 2010. Filed under: Action, Classics, Drama, Casting, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, Western Permalink | Email this | Comments

Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox join forces with bloggers, comedians, students and citizen critics to review "A Serious Man."

Genre: Drama Cinema Premiere: 20/11/2009 Production Country: United States Directed By: Ethan Coen , Joel Coen Producer: Working Title Films Cast: Simon Helberg , Adam Arkin , Richard Kind , Michael Stuhlbarg Production Year: 2009 Plot Outline: Larry Nidus is a good man. He is a loving husband, a committed father, and a dedicated professor who always does the fair and just thing in the face of daily temptations. But one day, everything starts to go wrong. His wife leaves him for reasons she can’t explain, and her smug new lover manages to convince Larry that he should be the one to move out of the house and into a cheap motel – all for the children’s benefit, of course. Then Larry’s career is put into jeopardy by a series of anonymous letters falsely accusing him of unnamed treacheries. And when his wife’s new partner dies in a car accident, she insists that he should foot the bill for the funeral! Now the cash strapped Larry finds himself paying to bury a man he hates, bailing his gambling addicted brother out of jail, and desperately trying to save his name and his career in academia. Yet, in spite of it all, we can’t help but laugh as we contemplate Larry’s plight in a world with no silver linings that might just seem uncomfortably familiar to us all…

This is the dark comedy that Joel and Ethan Coen have been working towards. A Serious Man is the culmination of their lives, reminiscent both of their own suburban childhoods in the '60s, and of their cinematic successes over the last twenty-five years. It grabs the magic of local flavor and charm we saw in Fargo with a cast widely filled with unknown names (that pack as much of a cinematic punch as any star-studded roster you can think of), to the rapidly escalating drama of Burn After Reading. A Serious Man is cohesive and slick from stem to stern. It's serious about the craft of storytelling, both in form and function, with a dedication to characterization, pitch-perfect performances, and a cinematic backdrop that is both severely nostalgic and completely immersive. In many ways, A Serious Man is a modern-day Candide. But rather than a hapless hero who is continually undaunted by the neverending drama that plagues him, the Coens' hero isn't a ray of sunshine. Larry Gopnik (perfectly embodied by renowned stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg) is a man utterly at a loss to explain his life's severe turn for the worse; he is a man desperate for answers. The classic Candide optimism shines down in the form of the rabbis he consults with as he tries to make sense of things. But rather than sage advice, they deliver wholly inadequate responses to life's trauma that don't speak at all to the nature of Larry's life. Filed under: Comedy, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Toronto International Film FestivalContinue reading TIFF Review: A Serious Man Permalink | Email this | Comments

Rooster Cogburn will abide, if the Coen Bros, Jeff Bridges, and Paramount come to terms. Variety reports that Bridges and the Coens are in talks for Bridges to play the iconic Rooster Cogburn in the Coen Bros' remake of True Grit. It would be their first collaboration since The Big Lebowski. When the True Grit remake was first announced, the Coens were said to be making a more faithful adaptation of Charles Portis' novel, and it seemed like it might head into darker No Country for Old Men territory. But the book features a lot of deadpan humor mixed with Old Testament lessons, and if they stick to it for the script, it'll play to their talents extremely well. At first glance, Bridges seems a pretty offbeat choice for Rooster Cogburn. But having just rewatched the John Wayne original last week, I think it might just be casting heaven. Rooster is a killer, but he's also a fall down drunk, full of sarcastic quips, and surprisingly tender-hearted. He's far from the typical stoic John Wayne character, and it was a bigger departure for Wayne than I had remembered. Bridges would be a perfect choice for blending the rugged charm, the humor, and the "true grit" of Rooster, and he's talented enough to not just play it as an imitation, but make it iconic on its own. If this comes together, it's one remake that could actually equal or outdo the original. Filed under: Action, Classics, Drama, Casting, Paramount, RumorMonger, Scripts, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, Western Permalink | Email this | Comments

A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man’s search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry’s unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny (Aaron Wolf) is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. While his wife and Sy Ableman blithely make new domestic arrangements, and his brother becomes more and more of a burden, an anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry’s chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person, a mensch, a serious man? Ranked 3.43 / 5 | 830 views | 0 comments Click here to watch the video (01:40) Submitted By: videodetective Tags: A SERIOUS MAN Richard Kind Michael Stuhlbarg Sari Lennick Fred Melamed Aaron Wolff Jessica McManus Ethan Coen Comedy Focus Features Movie Trailer Movie Trailer Categories: Entertainment

I never skip a Coen brothers movie, even the ones that hardly anyone mentions anymore, like The Man Who Wasn't There. Even when the movies don't quite work, they all have wonderful moments I'd hate to miss. I prefer the comedies -- don't shoot me when I say I liked Burn After Reading better than No Country for Old Men -- so I'm looking forward to their next movie, the dark comedy A Serious Man, which will open in limited release starting October 2. The first trailer for A Serious Man has just been posted to the Apple site, and if you didn't know it was a Coen brothers movie, the visuals would give it away almost immediately. You also realize quickly that this is a non-star movie -- only a few character actors may seem familiar. The cast includes Richard Kind, Adam Arkin and Fyvush Finkel. Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, whose life appears to be crumbling around him in ways that might be heartbreaking in another movie. In the hands of Joel and Ethan Coen, however, it looks like A Serious Man could be as darkly and weirdly funny as Barton Fink. The trailer itself isn't as laugh-out-loud as the one for Burn After Reading -- every time I saw Brad Pitt in the gym I started giggling -- but it's hardly short on humor. Check it out after the jump and see whether you agree.Filed under: Comedy, Focus Features, Trailers and ClipsContinue reading Funny Trailer for Coens' 'Serious Man' Permalink | Email this | Comments

His new film is being billed as a return to form for the "Evil Dead" director.

Fill your hands you ... well, you know the line. You probably know this movie line by line, and your heart still leaps to see Rooster Cogburn flip that Winchester. So the news that True Grit is getting remade by Joel and Ethan Coen will either fill you with rage, excitement, or put you squarely into Swiss territory. According to Variety, the Coen Bros aren't aiming for a traditional remake -- they want to return to the original Charles Portis novel, and make a more faithful adaptation. Their version will be told from Mattie's point of view, as the original novel is, and keep Cogburn as a side player. The Coens will undoubtedly amp up the Biblical tone and include the darker elements ... like what really happens to her after the snakebite. Plans to remake True Grit have apparently been in the works for some time -- it originally begun at DreamWorks, but was left behind when Steven Spielberg and his shingle split with Paramount. Undaunted by the task, the Coens are tackling it before their adaptation of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. So, what else can you say? It's the Coen Bros, who will undoubtedly tackle a period Western as ably as they did a modern, revisionist one. On the other hand, it's John Wayne. It's the movie he won his only Oscar for. Do you dare touch it? I'm veering somewhere between neutral and excited myself, while simultaneously praying I don't live long enough to see anyone remake The Outlaw Josey Wales. *By the way, did you know True Grit's screenwriter, Marguerite Roberts, was from Colorado -- my home state. It was also filmed here. I honestly never knew this. I feel something akin to civic pride now.Filed under: Classics, Deals, Paramount, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Steven Spielberg, Remakes and Sequels, Western Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Comedy, Casting, Focus Features, Cinematical Indie The Coen Brothers are smart. While the critical community has been arguing about the merits of Burn After Reading, which opens wide tomorrow, Joel and Ethan are already knee deep in their next production. A Serious Man started filming in their home state of Minnesota on Monday. The project was announced in the spring of 2007, just before No Country for Old Men debuted at Cannes. Last month we learned that relatively little-known Michael Stuhlberg and Richard Kind had been cast in the lead roles in the black comedy set in 1967, with Stuhlberg playing a professor whose wife is leaving him, and Kind playing his sofa sleeping brother. While Christopher expressed his hope that Frances McDormand would be playing the wife, that role has gone to Sari Wagner (identified as Sari Lennick by IMDb), one of a trio of seriously unknown Minnesota actors cast in the film, according to an official statement released by Focus Features. The statement also says that the wife has fallen for one of her husband's "more pompous colleagues," who will be played by Fred Melamed. The other two Minnesota thespians are Aaron Wolf and Jessica McManus, who will be Kind's son ("a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school") and daughter ("filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job"), respectively. I think it's refreshing that the Coens have chosen to go with actors who don't have any previous, sometimes distracting baggage. As to Burn After Reading, I agree with the quite positive views of Kim and James; I think it's a frequently hilarious and surprisingly insightful "must see." If you still need convincing, listen to the Coens talk about it over at Moviefone. Here's hoping A Serious Man will provoke the same type of response next year. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Casting, Focus Features, Oscar Watch, Cinematical Indie How do you follow-up a broad comedy starring the biggest names in Hollywood, George Clooney and Brad Pitt? If you're the Coen brothers, you apparently hit the car in reverse and make your next effort a darker story and cast relative unknowns. Variety reports that the newly minted Oscar winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen have cast Tony-nominated stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) and TV's Richard Kind (Mad About You; Spin City) for the two lead roles in A Serious Man, their next film after this fall's Burn After Reading. The actors will play brothers in the 1967-set black comedy, which returns the Coens to Fargo territory by placing the story in their home turf of Minneapolis. In fact, when we first learned of A Serious Man, more than a year ago (and almost a year before the Coens each won 3 Academy Awards, for writing, directing and producing No Country for Old Men), the script was described as being "in the vein of Fargo." Now we get a little inkling more about the plot of Serious: Stuhlberg will play a professor named Larry Gopnik, whose wife is leaving him and whose "socially inept" brother (Kind) won't leave the house. Hopefully, to further repeat the analogy to their double-Oscar-winning 1996 film, the Coens can cast Frances McDormand as the wife, she can then win another Academy Award and Kind (pictured above) can, like William H. Macy before him, finally go from near-obscurity to well-known, well-respected supporting actor within the next decade. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Genre: Comedy , Crime Cinema Premiere: 17/10/2008 Production Country: United States Directed By: Ethan Coen , Joel Coen Cast: Brad Pitt , George Clooney , Tilda Swinton , John Malkovich Production Year: 2008 Plot Outline: A dark spy-comedy from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. An ousted CIA official's (John Malkovich) memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees who intent on exploiting their find.

Genre: Comedy , Crime Cinema Premiere: 17/10/2008 Production Country: United States Directed By: Ethan Coen , Joel Coen Cast: Brad Pitt , George Clooney , Tilda Swinton , John Malkovich Production Year: 2008 Plot Outline: A dark spy-comedy from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. An ousted CIA official's (John Malkovich) memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees who intent on exploiting their find.