A week ago, when I reported on Joel and Ethan Coen’s new movie Inside Llewyn Davis picking up Oscar Isaac as its leading man, I opined that further casting news would probably be coming soon. The Coens’ new film is about a folk singer coming up in the Greenwich Village scene, and it’s loosely based off the life of Dave Van Rank, so it’s going to be necessary for the brotherly team to cast actors as stand-in characters for all of Van Rank’s musician friends. Well, a week later the brothers have signed up their first, and this one is a doozy. According to Variety, Carey Mulligan has signed on to play the female lead opposite Isaac. Despite my conclusion-jumping that most of the characters in this film will be musicians of some sort, there isn’t actually any confirmation that the character Mulligan will be playing will be musically inclined at all. Variety is correct to point out that the actress has the chops to pull some musical numbers off if she has to, however. She plays a singer in director Steve McQueen’s upcoming sex addiction drama Shame and really knocks her singing scene out of the park in that film. It’s maybe the most crucial scene of the film, and Mulligan rises to the occasion admirably.

Being chosen as the star of a new Coen brothers movie is kind of an honor. When you become a Coen headliner you join the ranks of huge names like Nic Cage, Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, and Tom Hanks. Just look what it did for the careers of guys like William H. Macy after he starred in Fargo or Josh Brolin after he starred in No Country for Old Men. One good performance in the lead of a Coen brothers movie can be your ticket to the top. So it had to be very exciting news for Oscar Isaac when he found out that he scored the lead role in the brothers’ next movie Inside Llewyn Davis. Or not — maybe he’s a cold, cold man. Isaac isn’t an incredibly well known actor as of yet, but he’s had a good amount of work. Most recently he’s appeared in things like Sucker Punch and Drive, and soon he will be showing up in a high profile role in The Bourne Legacy. So far I don’t know what to think about him from the little I’ve seen. I thought he did a fine job in Drive, but he seemed to me to be far too hammy in Sucker Punch. Just the act of being cast as a Coen lead gives me faith that this guy has the chops to become something big though. I have total faith in those two weirdos, and acting under their assured directing hands should bring out [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The last film we got from legendary directorial team Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010’s remake of True Grit, was one of their most successful yet. This time it wasn’t just film nerds heading out to the theater to see what the brothers had up their sleeves, they managed to pull in a large chunk of the mainstream audience as well. So it is with bated breath that we have been awaiting an announcement regarding their follow up. Wait no longer, because today Variety hit us with not only a title of their new film, but also some confirmation on what it’s going to be all about. There have been rumors that the Coens were looking to make a movie that dealt with folk music for a while now, and this next project appears to be it. The film is titled Inside Llewyn Davis, and it’s a fictionalized account of a popular folk singer coming up in the Greenwich Village scene of the 1960s. Well, actually there is word that the character is loosely based on the career of real life folk artist Dave Van Ronk, but when the Coens and the phrase “loosely based” get together, the material they end up presenting usually is so much their own that you could have called it pure fiction and no one would have noticed anyway. There are not yet any rumblings on potential casting, but as with all things Coen brothers, I’ll be eagerly awaiting word. Or we could just start a [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Why Watch? The sheer joy of watching a Coen Brothers’ film in three minutes. This segment from To Each His Own Cinema (which should be seen by everyone ever) is like taking the last bite of your favorite desert. It’s completely satisfying with its slow comedy, Josh Brolin’s fish-out-of-water-who-thinks-the-water’s-fine behavior, and the pocket of truth that everyone here is trying to find in its most common form. Maybe that’s what’s so appealing here. There’s nothing false about this scene at all, and yet it’s still so funny. What does it cost? Just 3 minutes of your time. Check out World Cinema for yourself:

We often don’t think of commercials as having authorship, at least not in the same way we think of movies. Commercials are created by advertising companies, by focus groups, by strategists; not by “artists.” But while the purpose of a 30-second ad may on the surface differ from the motive of a feature length film (though not always), both are media assembled through a particular economy of storytelling devices and are made often by a collaborative company of individuals. But commercials don’t often contain credit sequences, and thus the phenomenology of its making is cloaked and the personalities who made it unconsidered. The focus is on the product being sold, not the creative team selling it. So it can be surprising to find out that well-respected, top-tier, artistic filmmakers often direct commercials. Sure, many filmmakers regularly make commercials as a more lucrative and less time-consuming alternative to feature filmmaking, and there are many visual artists who have honed an ability to express their personality in various media forms, but a surprising number of supposedly cinema-specific auteurs make commercials, despite a lack of apparent monetary need or professional benefit. This subject came to my attention recently because of a series of articles on Slate last week by David Haglund about the oeuvre of the Coen brothers that included the filmmaking duo’s commercials in considering their larger cinematic contribution. It’s an interesting way to view a filmmaker’s career, for it forces you to look for their identifying traits and revisited themes via [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Sound Works Collection has done a panel interview with the sound team of True Grit that is an interesting listen for a couple of reasons. They’ve gathered together longtime Coen collaborators Skip Lievsay, who is the Sound Re-recording Mixer and Supervising Sound Editor, Greg Orloff, who is also a Sound Re-recording Mixer, and Byron Wilson, who is a Dialogue/ADR Editor. Much of the interview centers on their work on True Grit, complete with clips of key scenes and their analysis of what they did and why to create the sound of the film. They go into not just the technical aspect of how they got the job done, but also explore the themes of the film and why they made the choices that they did in order to support the storytelling as a whole. It’s an interesting listen in that respect for audiophiles and prospective filmmakers.

This past weekend saw the cinematic glory of Resident Evil: Afterlife pushing past security to get into your local theater even though it was moving slower than an instant replay in a curling match. The absolute atrocity of this film raises a lot of questions, but one of the first and foremost is whether or not directors should work with their spouses in a leading role. Paul W.S. Anderson, who thinks Milla Jovovich is as big an action star as Sigourney Weaver, is also married to Milla Jovovich, and while we can’t prove causation for the low marks in her performance here – we can certainly point to correlation. We can also point to 9 more husband and wife teams in order to find out if working with your legally bound significant other is really such a great idea.

This week we feature the best movie the Coen Brothers have made and one of the greatest of all time.

Do you remember the movie Stranger Than Fiction? There’s a scene where Dustin Hoffman explains to Will Ferrell the difference between comedy and tragedy and has him tally up events that would fit into either genre. The Coen Brother’s new film, A Serious Man, seems to live this debate as I can’t really tell if it’s a dark comedy depicting tragic events or a tragedy with comedic characters.

If there is one thing we can’t seem to stay away from here at FSR, it is a good discussion about what is the best or the worst movie in any particular category…

Joel and Ethan Coen take their superbly cast film into a Fall release.

Joel and Ethan Coen will write and direct the Alaskan murder mystery, set in a fictional Jewish settlement.