The Coen brothers are no strangers to the movie business (The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, Miller’s Crossing), or the Award business (Palme d’Or for Barton Fink, Oscars for Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress – Frances McDormand in Fargo, Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor – Javier Bardem, for No Country For Old Men, ten Oscar nominations for True Grit), or the Grammy business (won a Grammy with T-Bone Burnett for the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou?).
But with their musically-inclined new film Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coens are headed into some new territory. On September 29 at the Town Hall in New York City, the Another Day, Another Time concert will celebrate the music of Inside Llewyn Davis. Music legends like Joan Baez and Patti Smith, contemporary stars such as Jack White and Marcus Mumford, and the film’s stars Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan will be among the performers, with the proceeds going to benefit the National Recording Preservation Foundation. The concert will be recorded with its own DVD. Tickets go on sale August 21.
Inside Llewyn Davis, which already won the Grand Prix Award at Cannes, will have its U.S. premiere at the New York International Film Festival in September. It is loosely based on the posthumous memoir of 1960’s Greenwich Village folk singer Dave Van Ronk’s, Mayor of MacDougal Street. Said Joel Coen, “The movie really doesn’t have a plot. It’s about a struggling artist, teetering on success, who is eclipsed by the poetry and abstract thinking of Bob Dylan.”
Break-out actor Oscar Isaac (Drive, The Bourne Legacy) plays Llewyn. He is struggling to gain recognition after the suicide of his singing partner. In the freezing New York winter, he drags his guitar and tiger cat from apartment to apartment, gig to gig. He has a tense relationship with a successful folk singing duo played by Justin Timberlake (The Social Network) and Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby).
T-Bone Burnett teams up with the Coen Brothers again for the film’s soundtrack. All the music is sung live except for a never before released, 1964 recording by Bob Dylan. The song is Farewell, and was intended for his, The Times They Are A Changin’ album, but never used. The new album will drop November 11.
Scott Rudin, Studio Canal, The Weinstein Company and CBS Films are releasing Inside Llewyn Davis in U.S. theaters December 20.
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