O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 crime comedy film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning in supporting roles.
The Big Lebowski is a 1998 crime comedy film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler. He is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, after which The Dude learns that a millionaire also named Jeffrey Lebowski was the intended victim. The millionaire Lebowski's trophy wife is kidnapped, and he commissions The Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release; but the plan goes awry when the Dude's friend Walter Sobchak schemes to keep the ransom money. Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, and John Turturro also appear, in supporting roles.
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, screenplays, poetry, essays, and a play. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life.
Absurdist fiction is a genre of fictional narrative, most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire, dark humor, incongruity, the abasement of reason, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing." Works of absurdist fiction often explore agnostic or nihilistic topics.
Fargo is a 1996 black comedy-crime film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Frances McDormand stars as Marge Gunderson, a pregnant Minnesota police chief investigating roadside homicides that ensue after a desperate car salesman hires two criminals to kidnap his wife in order to extort a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law.
Raising Arizona is a 1987 American crime comedy film directed by Joel Coen, produced by Ethan Coen, and written by Joel and Ethan. It stars Nicolas Cage as H.I. "Hi" McDunnough, an ex-convict, and Holly Hunter as Edwina "Ed" McDunnough, a former police officer and Hi's wife. Other members of the cast include Trey Wilson, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand, Sam McMurray, and Randall "Tex" Cobb.
Guru Har Rai revered as the seventh Nanak, was the seventh of ten Gurus of the Sikh religion. He became the Sikh leader at age 14, on 8 March 1644, after the death of his grandfather and sixth Sikh leader Guru Hargobind. He guided the Sikhs for about seventeen years, till his death at age 31.
Coen is a town and locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. The town of Coen is inland on the Peninsula Developmental Road, the main road on the Cape York Peninsula in far northern Queensland. In the 2011 census, Coen had a population of 416 people.
Crimewave is a 1986 American comedy film directed by Sam Raimi, written by him and the Coen brothers, and starring Louise Lasser, Paul L. Smith, Brion James, Sheree J. Wilson, Edward R. Pressman, Bruce Campbell, and Reed Birney, with Campbell also serving as a producer. Following the commercial success of The Evil Dead (1981), Raimi and Campbell decided to collaborate on another project. Joel Coen of the Coen brothers served as one of the editors on The Evil Dead, and worked with Raimi on the screenplay. Production was difficult for several members of the crew, and the production studio, Embassy Pictures, refused to allow Raimi to edit the film. Several arguments broke out during the shoot for the film, because of continued interference by the studio.
No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American neo-Western crime thriller film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel of the same name. A cat and mouse thriller starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, it follows a Texas welder and Vietnam War veteran in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. The film revisits the themes of fate, conscience, and circumstance that the Coen brothers had explored in the films Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996).
William Rodney Allen is an American author and former Professor of English at the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. He received his PhD from Duke University, and was a faculty member at LSMSA from the time the school first opened in 1983 until his retirement in 2011. He is married to Cindy Allen, a counselor at the school, and has two daughters, Emily and Claire, with her. He has many interests, which include and are not limited to playing guitar, reading, and cutting down Magnolia trees. He is also a Kurt Vonnegut fan and owns what is believed to be the last thing that Vonnegut wrote before his death in 2007, a postcard addressed to Allen.
Max Kahn (1902–2005) was a Litvak lithographer, painter and sculptor born in Slonim, Belarus in 1902. He worked until age 100 and died in 2005 at the age of 103. He was one of a small group of lithographers in the late 1940s and 1950s demonstrating the self-expressive qualities of the medium.
A Serious Man is a 2009 black comedy-drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1967, the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Minnesota Jewish man whose life crumbles both professionally and personally, leading him to questions about his faith.
Rama or Ram, also known as Ramachandra, is a major deity of Hinduism. He is the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu, one of his most popular incarnations along with Krishna and Gautama Buddha. In Rama-centric traditions of Hinduism, he is considered the Supreme Being.
Enrico Sandro Coen is a biologist who studies the mechanisms used by plants to create complex and varied flower structures. Enrico combines molecular, genetic and imaging studies with population and ecological models and computational analysis to understand flower development.
Philip Moon is an American actor of Asian descent who has appeared primarily in television. He is best known for playing Keemo Volien Abbott in the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless from 1994 to 1996, Mr. Lee in the TV series Deadwood (2005), and the thug Woo in the 1998 Coen brothers film The Big Lebowski. In 2007 he played the leading role in Allen Blumberg's drama film Ghosts of the Heartland. In 2011 he appeared in the "Dead Ringer" episode of CSI: Miami.
Hal Hinson is an American film critic who wrote for The Washington Post from 1987 to 1997. As of July 2015 he has 887 reviews collected on the website Rotten Tomatoes. Hinson has been cited as a critic who is unpopular with his fellow critics, as he is not afraid to give a polarized review; he lauded Hudson Hawk (1991) for instance, which was universally panned. Another example is his review for Super Mario Bros. (1993), which went against the critical consensus. Hinson wrote an essay on Montgomery Clift, entitled "Some Notes on Method Acting" for Sight & Sound in 1984. He also reviewed for Film Comment in the mid 1980s.
Margaret Coen was an Australian artist, known for her watercolours, paintings of flowers, landscapes and still life works. Her paintings and personal papers are held in national collections.
