Budget - <\/b>$1.5m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$3.8m<\/p>
\"The first day of shooting on Blood Simple was the first time I'd ever been on a feature movie set in any capacity.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
The Coen's feature debut was a taut thriller about a man called Julian (Dan Hedaya) who hires a private detective to confirm that his wife's cheating on him. When Julian's fears are realised, the private detective is offered a bag of cash to off the cheating couple. And that's when things get complicated. In classic Coen style, the movie features such themes as greed, lust, envy, punctuated with the occasional gruesome death.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/Blood-Simple-24.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Blood Simple"},{"captionHeading":"Raising Arizona","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$7m \r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$30m<\/p>
\"We don't have to convince everybody that the story should go like this, or like that. We haven't had to defend anything to anybody.\"<\/b> - Ethan Coen<\/i><\/p>
The second movie released by the brothers Coen hit cinemas in 1987, and featured Nicolas Cage as petty criminal Herbert \"H.I.\" McDunnough and Holly Hunter as his policewoman wife, Edwina. <\/p>
Unable to conceive a child, the couple instead coneive a plan to steal someone else's. In true Coen style, it's a plan full of holes, most of which are created by the greed of friends and enemies.<\/p>
Interestingly, crazed biker Leonard Smalls, who attempts to steal the baby, shares his name with Of Mice and Men's Lennie. But while Lennie wants to take care of rabbits, Leonard kills one with a grenade.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/Raising-Arizona-9.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Raising Arizona"},{"captionHeading":"Miller's Crossing","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$14m \r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b> $5m<\/p>
\"It was just going really slowly. It took us areally long time. I guess because the plot was so involved, we just got sick of it at a certain point. And we decided to take a vacation from it in the form of writing something else, which turned out to be Barton Fink.\"<\/b> - Ethan Coen<\/i><\/p>
The plot, inspired by the likes of Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars (later remade as Last man Standing with Bruce Willis), see's Gabriel Byrne's 20s mobster flitting between rival gangs as war breaks out. <\/p>
Beautifully shot (by cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld) and intricately plotted, it's a movie that has the Coens' prints all over it, yet, perhaps due to the time period, or even Sonnefeld's own career path which would make this the last Coen movie he would shoot, Miller's Crossing remains very distinct from the work they've done since.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/Millers-Crossing-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Miller's Crossing"},{"captionHeading":"Barton Fink","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$9m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$7m<\/p>
\"Ethan likes to call it a buddy movie for the '90s. I'm not sure what you would call it. John Turturro thinks it's a sort of coming-of-age story. It's like a sort of black comedy, I guess.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
While it's a superior movie compared to Hudsucker, Barton Fink is easily the most confusing - and least rewarding - Coen film to date. But for many, they will never make a better film. <\/p>
Turturro is the titular Barton, a playwright in 1940s New York, who is offered a job at a Hollywood studio where he's asked to write a B-wrestling B-movie. Pompous, naive - yet strangely innocent, Barton's search for the every-man is apparently solved with the arrival of John Goodman's Charlie. Only Barton's a bit too self-obsessed to notice. <\/p>
Full of subtle imagery and nods to studio movies of the 40s, it's a rich, clever movie with a startling, yet ultimately unfulfilling climax.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/Barton-Fink-18.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Barton Fink 14"},{"captionHeading":"The Hudsucker Proxy","caption":"
Budget -<\/b> $25m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b> $3m<\/p>
\"It had a lot of verbal comedy, the kind you see in films by Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks, with dialogue delivered in a rapid-fire, machine-gun style. But it was bigger and broader, with physical comedy sequences and a lot of oddball action.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
In a collection of bizarre, occasionally impenetrable and always offbeat movies, Hudsucker is easily one of the oddest films the Coens have yet made.\r\n \r\nThe story concerns Tim Robbins' would-be bussinesman, who starts his career in the mailroom of Hudsucker Industries. Having invented the hula hoop, he finds himself running the corporation, little knowing that he's just a stooge put in place by Paul Newman's evil exec, who's more interested in temporarily depressing the stock value. <\/p>
Certainly not for all tastes, but worth watching if only for the moment a child realises how to use a Hula Hoop.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/The-Hudsucker-Proxy-7.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Hudsucker Proxy"},{"captionHeading":"Fargo","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$7m \r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b> $25m<\/p>
\"If an audience believes that something's based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
After the dismal box office performance of Hudsucker Proxy, the Coens turned in their most successful hit to date while spending a fraction of the money. <\/p>
Apparently based on true events, William H. Macy's Jerry Lundergarde is the archetypal Coen character. With a flawed plan to make money, he hires two thugs to kidnap his wife in order to extort a ransom from his tightfisted father in law. <\/p>
But it all goes, as usual, very wrong. Frances McDormand is excellent as the homely cop who won't let the case lie, while Steve Buscemi grabs the attention as the slimy (funny lookin') kidnapper. <\/p>
However, quite how much truth is involved is questionable - particularly after Joel admitted the effect such a claim has on the movie.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/Fargo-18.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Fargo"},{"captionHeading":"The Big Lebowski","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$15m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$18m<\/p>
\"If this movie got too complicated, it didn't really matter. If people get confused, it won't get in the way of them enjoying the movie.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
Essentially, it's a story about nothing. An alleged kidnapping that never happened, a ransom that never existed, a bag of money that never was... It's a Raymond Chandler-esque film noir that's hard to understand for a different \r\nreason - almost nothing happens. <\/p>
Not even the much-touted bowling match occurs before the film ends. <\/p>
Despite all this, The Big Lebowski is a work of genius that will have a cult following long after the Coens finish directing.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/The-Big-Lebowski-11.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Big Lebowski"},{"captionHeading":"O Brother, Where Art Thou?","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$26m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$72m <\/p>
\"It’s very loosely and very sort of unseriously based on The Odyssey.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
There are many reasons to suspect that O Brother was based on Homer's Odyssey to a larger degree than the Coens would have us believe. <\/p>
But apart from the wonderfully absurd plot, the real success of this movie it's the remarkable fusing of laugh-out-loud comedy, and the dark, depression-era tone that underpins numerous scenes. <\/p>
George Clooney leads a trio of escaped convicts as they hunt for buried treasure in a valley that faces imminent flooding by a hydro-electric dam. The money is simply a tool to get the characters moving, as they find themselves involved in increasingly ridiculous situations with even sillier characters. And the odd song.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/O-Brother-Where-Art-Thou-6.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"O' Brother, Where Art Thou"},{"captionHeading":"The Man Who Wasn't There","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$8m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$19m<\/p>
\"With this one, we were thinking noir to a certain extent, but we were also thinking about science fiction movies from the early 1950s. You know, the flying saucers and the pod people.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
Back to blackmail for the Coens with this 1949-set drama about Ed Crain (Billy Bob Thornton), a hairdresser who blackmails his wife's boss in order to invest in a new-fangled technology called Dry Cleaning. <\/p>
It probably goes without saying, but it all goes a bit awry. <\/p>
Shot in black and white on a small budget, it was an unusual step for the Coens to make such a lo-fi movie, but it's a script that harks back to the likes of Blood Simple and Barton Fink, and despite it's small scale, is a perfectly formed comedy/ drama.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/The-Man-Who-Wasnt-There-17.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Man Who Wasn't There"},{"captionHeading":"Intolerable Cruelty","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$35m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$120m<\/p>
\"They got to do something with the hair on the last one so they obsessed with teeth on this one. I might be doing another film with them. I'm running out of body parts. Maybe I'll wax my back.\"<\/b> - George Clooney on working with The Coens<\/i><\/p>
Some die-hard Coen fans might object to the most mainstream effort to date, but the figures are hard to deny. After years of making critically acclaimed yet financially insignificant movies, the Coens light-hearted comedy about divorce lawyers was by far their most succesful venture. <\/p>
Clooney's Miles Massey is the cock-sure, never-lost-a-case lawyer who is charged with the duty of winning the unwinnable case, as Catherine Zeta-Jones' Marilyn attempts \r\nto take her ex-hubby for all he's worth. Quick fire dialogue and the occasionally ridiculous set piece are hallmarks of Coen in a movie that appealed to a far larger audience than any before.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/Intolerable-Cruelty-76.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Intolerable Cruelty"},{"captionHeading":"The Ladykillers","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$35m\r\n
\r\nBox Office <\/b>- $77m <\/p>
\"As far as we were concerned, we took from the original what we were interested in and didn't have any problem changing everything else.\"<\/b> - Joel Coen<\/i><\/p>
There is one consistent element of all the Coen movies not to wow the critics, and that's the source material. Intolerable Cruelty originated with two other writers and The Hudsucker Proxy had input from Sam Raimi. <\/p>
The Ladykillers, being a remake, is the least original work the pair have done - but if the box office returns from this mediocre 'reimagining' of the Ealing classic make it possible for the Coens to produce more Lebowski's, few will argue. <\/p>
Tom Hanks plays the leader of a bunch of would-be bank robbers, who abuse the genorosity of an old lady in their attempts to tunnel their way to riches. The manner in which the group are knocked off is typically Coen, but the movie itself simply isn't.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/The-Ladykillers-6.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"The Ladykillers"},{"captionHeading":"No Country For Old Men","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$25m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b>$74m<\/p>
\"The setting is so integral to the book... it's about where it takes place as much as anything else. It is a very beautiful landscape, but in a bleak rather than picturesque way. That's important to what the story is about - the human confrontation with this harsh environment.\"<\/b> - Ethan Coen<\/i><\/p>
The masterpiece that is No Country propelled the real Coen brothers into the limelight. Having achieved respectable returns for their offbeat efforts, and sizeable returns for their mainstream work, No Country finds them back at their elusive best, while still pulling in the audiences that made The Ladykillers a success. <\/p>
Javier Bardem is awesome as the psychotic killer on the trail of a bag of cash, while Josh Brolin eludes his clutches as he attempts to keep it to himself. Tommy Lee jones puts in a rare heartfelt performance as the Sheriff attempting to understand why a man could possibly be as cold as Bardem's Anton Chergugh.<\/p>","url":"2008/10/10/No-Country-For-Old-Men-2.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"No Country For Old Men"},{"captionHeading":"Burn After Reading","caption":"
Budget - <\/b>$37m\r\n
\r\nBox Office - <\/b> $60m<\/p>
\"I guess we sort of wanted to do a spy movie. It didn't exactly turn out that way. I don't really think it is a spy movie. That's how the original idea was structured.\"<\/b> - Ethan Coen<\/i><\/p>
After No Country For Old Men's pessimism, the brothers return to knockabout comedy with their latest, Burn After Reading. <\/p>
When a pair of gym instructors come across a lost CIA computer disk, containing the memoirs of a retired agent, they set about making money form the situation. And, oh yes, the pland goes a bit awry...<\/p>","url":"2008/9/10/Burn-after-reading-15-1.jpg","width":570,"height":364,"alt":"Burn after reading 15"}];