Constructing the Coens : from Blood simple to Inside Llewyn Davis / Allen Redmon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Redmon, Allen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coen, Ethan.

Coen, Joel.

Motion pictures--History.

Motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (193 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

New York : Bloomsbury Publishing (US), 2025.

Place of Publication:

Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file rdaft

Summary:

The films of Ethan and Joel Coen have been embraced by mainstream audiences, but also have been subject to intense scrutiny by critics and cinema scholars. Movies such as Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Raising Arizona represent the filmmakers' postmodern tendencies, a subject many academics have written about at length. But is it enough to reduce their features as expressions of postmodernism or are there other ways of viewing their work-not only their individual films but their entire output as a collective whole? In Constructing the Coens: From Blood Simple to Inside Llewyn Davis, Allen H. Redmon looks beyond the postmodern sensibilities of every film written and directed by the Coens to find an unexpected range of recurring ideas expressed in and about contemporary film. In this volume, Redmon tackles all of the films in the Coen brothers' canon by examining-among other topics-narrative coherence in The Man Who Wasn't There, intertextuality in No Country for Old Men, and sexuality in Burn after Reading and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Additional chapters look at their films through the prisms of gender studies, adaptation studies, and a constructivist sensibility weaved throughout their work. Considering the whole of the Coens' output, as well as many of the topics being discussed in contemporary film studies, this book challenges viewers to reexamine their initial responses to these movies. By engaging both the familiar and foreign elements in each film, Constructing the Coens will appeal to fans of the brothers' cinema, but also to students and scholars of film theory, adaptation studies, queer theory, and gender studies.

Contents:

"It's a problem of 'perception'": identifying the Coens' constructivist sensibility

"You don't want to be tried and found wantin'": triggering the ongoing adaptation of the the Ladykillers

"I will destroy him": negotiating the image in Barton Fink and Raising Arizona

That gag's got whiskers on it: achieving narrative coherence in the Hudsucker proxy and The man who wasn't there

"The coin don't have no say": examining intertextuality in the Hudsucker proxy, Intolerable cruelty, and No country for old men

"A lotta ins, a lotta outs": interweaving genres in the Big Lebowski and O brother, where art thou?

"Appearances can be deceptive" : investigating sexuality in O brother, where art thou?, Intolerable cruelty, and Burn after reading

"I haven't done anything funny": scrutinizing gender in the Coens' arrangements of a bunch of men around one woman

"Accept the mystery": resisting final construction and A serious man

Conclusion.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

979-88-8182-762-5

1-4422-4485-2

OCLC:

903195042