Category: Coen Brothers

Party on! The five best wild guys in film

Bartender, another round, and make it a double! In Oct. 28′s “The Rum Diary,” Johnny Depp returns to the role of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson — or his alter ego, Paul Kemp. That’s great news for fans of Depp’s wild-eyed performance in the 1998 cult classic “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.”

For the infamously brilliant but unhinged Thompson, covering news and consuming booze and pills went hand-in-hand, and hallucinations of giant bats were an everyday job hazard. His fictionalized persona is one of the great loose-cannon characters in film and literary history.

Here are five guys from the movies who could tie one on with Thompson and live to tell the tale.

Originally published Oct. 21, 2011 on MSNBC.com. Read the complete article.

Code of the Coens: How to succeed in filmmaking

From their audacious 1984 debut Blood Simple onward, filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have built a remarkably consistent and unmistakably personal body of work.

Their latest, a hard-edged adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country For Old Men, is one of the frontrunners at this year’s Oscars, tied with There Will Be Blood with eight nominations, including best picture.

While it clearly ranks alongside Fargo and The Big Lebowski as the brothers’ best work, No Country has an unusual place among their movies, in some ways perfectly typical of their style and in others an unexpected reinvention of it. Here’s a quick look at some of the characteristic hallmarks of the Coen brothers’ success.

Originally published on msnbc.com Feb. 19, 2008. Read the complete article.

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