Joel Daniel Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen, collectively known as the Coen brothers, are an American filmmaking duo. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). Many of their films are distinctly American, often examining the culture of the American South and American West in both modern and historical contexts.
Samuel M. Raimi is an American filmmaker. He is best known for directing the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007) featuring the Marvel superhero and the Evil Dead franchise (1981–present). He also directed the 1990 superhero film Darkman, the 1995 revisionist western The Quick and the Dead, the 1998 neo-noir crime-thriller A Simple Plan, the 2000 supernatural thriller film The Gift, the 2009 supernatural horror film Drag Me to Hell, and the 2013 Disney fantasy film Oz the Great and Powerful. He returned to direct another superhero movie which is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in 2022. It became the highest grossing movie of his career.
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, then learns that a millionaire, also named Jeffrey Lebowski, was the intended victim. The millionaire Lebowski's trophy wife is kidnapped, and millionaire Lebowski commissions The Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release. The plan goes awry when the Dude's friend, Walter Sobchak, schemes to keep the ransom money for the Dude and himself. Sam Elliott, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid, David Thewlis, Peter Stormare, Jon Polito, and Ben Gazzara also appear in supporting roles.
A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at Walt Disney Productions during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios.
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 a triple homicide that takes place after a desperate car salesman hires two criminals to kidnap his wife in order to extort a hefty ransom from her wealthy father. The film was an American–British co-production.
Raising Arizona is a 1987 American crime comedy film directed by Joel Coen, produced by Ethan Coen, and written by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Nicolas Cage as H.I. "Hi" McDunnough, an ex-convict, and Holly Hunter as Edwina "Ed" McDunnough, a former police officer and his wife. Other members of the cast include Trey Wilson, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand, Sam McMurray, and Randall "Tex" Cobb.
Jason Schwartzman is an American actor and musician. Schwartzman made his film debut in Wes Anderson's 1998 film Rushmore, and has gone on to appear in seven other Anderson films: The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Isle of Dogs (2018), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023).
Sir Roger Alexander Deakins is an English cinematographer, best known for his collaborations with directors the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve. Deakins has been admitted to both the British Society of Cinematographers and to the American Society of Cinematographers. He is the recipient of five BAFTA Awards for Best Cinematography, and two Academy Awards for Best Cinematography from sixteen nominations. His best-known works include The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Fargo (1996), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Skyfall (2012), Sicario (2015), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and 1917 (2019), the last two of which earned him Academy Awards.
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. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, the film is set 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), Raising Arizona (1987), and Fargo (1996). The film follows three main characters: Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), a Vietnam War veteran and welder who stumbles upon a large sum of money in the desert; Anton Chigurh (Bardem), a hitman who is sent to recover the money; and Ed Tom Bell (Jones), a sheriff investigating the crime. The film also stars Kelly Macdonald as Moss's wife Carla Jean and Woody Harrelson as a bounty hunter seeking Moss and the return of the $2 million.
A storyboard artist creates storyboards for advertising agencies and film productions.
Burn After Reading is a 2008 black comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox, whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitted gym employees. When they mistake the memoirs for classified government documents, they undergo a series of misadventures in an attempt to profit from their find. The film also stars George Clooney as a womanizing U.S. Marshal; Tilda Swinton as Katie Cox, the wife of Osbourne Cox; Richard Jenkins as the gym manager; and J. K. Simmons as a CIA supervisor.
Graham David Phillips is an American actor, filmmaker and singer. Beginning his acting career at the age of nine, Phillips is known for a variety of television, film, and stage roles; as Zach Florrick on the CBS series The Good Wife, Ben Tennyson in the film Ben 10: Race Against Time, and Evan Goldman in the Broadway musical 13, as well as a leading role in the independent film Staten Island Summer. He has also appeared in films such as Blockers and XOXO and in the recurring television roles of Nick St. Clair in Riverdale and Nate in Atypical. He made his feature film directorial debut in 2019 with The Bygone.
Ben Barenholtz was a Polish-born American film producer, exhibitor, and distributor with a significant presence in the independent film scene since the late 1960s. In 1968 Barenholtz opened The Elgin Cinema in New York City which was known for its experimental midnight screenings of new filmmakers.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson is an American story artist, character designer, television director, illustrator, and film director. She is best known for directing the films Kung Fu Panda 2, Kung Fu Panda 3, and The Darkest Minds. Yuh is the first woman to solely direct and the first Asian American to direct a major American animated film, and has been recognized as a commercially successful Asian American director.
Inside Llewyn Davis is a 2013 period black comedy drama film written, directed, produced, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1961, the film follows one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac in his breakthrough role, a folk singer struggling to achieve musical success while keeping his life in order. The supporting cast includes Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver.
Part of the New Hollywood wave, Kubrick's films are considered by film historian Michel Ciment to be "among the most important contributions to world cinema in the twentieth century", and he is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential directors in the history of cinema. According to film historian and Kubrick scholar Robert Kolker, Kubrick's films were "more intellectually rigorous than the work of any other American filmmaker."
Hail, Caesar! is a 2016 period black comedy film written, produced, edited, and directed by the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. An American-British co-production, the film stars Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum, with Michael Gambon as the narrator. It is a fictional story that follows the real-life studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Brolin), working in the Hollywood film industry in the 1950s, trying to discover what happened to a star actor during the filming of a biblical epic.
Joel and Ethan Coen, collectively referred to as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, and have edited almost all of them under the collective pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a 2018 American Western anthology film written, directed, and produced by the Coen brothers. It stars Tim Blake Nelson, Tyne Daly, James Franco, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Heck, Grainger Hines, Zoe Kazan, Harry Melling, Liam Neeson, Jonjo O'Neill, Chelcie Ross, Saul Rubinek, and Tom Waits, and features six vignettes set on the American frontier.
