Front cover image for The cinema of the Coen brothers : hard-boiled entertainments

The cinema of the Coen brothers : hard-boiled entertainments

Jeffrey Todd Adams (Author)
"The films of the Coen brothers have become a contemporary cultural phenomenon. Highly acclaimed and commercially successful, over the years their movies have attracted increasingly larger audiences and spawned a subculture of dedicated fans. Shunning fame and celebrity, Ethan and Joel Coen remain maverick filmmakers, producing and directing independent films outside the Hollywood mainstream in a unique style combining classic genres like film noir with black comedy to tell off-beat stories about America and the American Dream. This study surveys Oscar-winning films, such as Fargo (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007), as well as cult favorites, including O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and The Big Lebowski (1998). Beginning with Blood Simple (1984), it examines major themes and generic constructs and offers diverse approaches to the Coens' enigmatic films."-- Publisher description
Print Book, English, 2015
Columbia University Press, New York, 2015
Criticism, interpretation, etc
vii, 216 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780231174619, 9780231174602, 9780231850810, 0231174616, 0231174608, 0231850816
900031651
Blood Simple: 'It's the same old song'
Raising Arizona: a state of mind
Miller's crossing: 'a handsome movie about men in hats'
Barton Fink: 'for the common man'
The Hudsucker Proxy: a comedy of reinvention
Fargo: in the land of tall tales
The Big Lebowski: 'the dude abides'
O Brother Where Art Thou?: the hayseed epic
The Man Who Wasn't There: recreating classic film noir
No Country for Old Men: darkness in the new west
A Serious Man: parable and paradox
Conclusion: the ends of the auteur
Drawing conlcusions about Coen Brothers movies
"A Wallflower Press book."