Coen

WITH regard to Glenn Kenny's article on the ending of "No Country for Old Men" ["Coen Country Is Tricky Terrain," Jan. 11]: What a bunch of malarkey! From an old died-in-the-wool writer who was brought up on the beginning/middle/end, three-act structure school, Scott Rudin and the Coen brothers failed miserably to offer up reasonable fare. There are 10,000 members of the Writers Guild, any of whom I'm sure could have written a smarter denouement between the clash of the titans (Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones)

The Cannes Film Festival is making a statement at this year's gathering: We still really like Americans. The main competition will feature four directors from the U.S. -- Alexander Payne (“Nebraska”) Joel and Ethan Coen (“Inside Llewyn Davis”), James Gray (“The Immigrant”) and Steven Soderbergh (“Behind the Candelabra”) -- equaling last year's strong total of North American helmers in competition. In addition, new movies from U.S. filmmakers James Franco, Sofia Coppola, James Toback and J.C. Chandor will play in other sections.

Oscar Confidential: The Oscar Confidential column in Wednesday's Envelope section incorrectly cited "There Will Be Blood" as last year's best picture Oscar winner. The best picture award last year went to Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men."

MOVIES The actor Billy Bob Thornton has led one of cinema's more colorful recent careers (when Angelina Jolie wears a vial of your blood, you're doing something right), and he tells all in his new book "The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts. " The signing accompanies screenings of two of his landmark movies: his Coen brothers collab "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "A Simple Plan. " Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. 6:15 p.m. Fri. americancinematheque.org.

MOVIES The actor Billy Bob Thornton has led one of cinema's more colorful recent careers (when Angelina Jolie wears a vial of your blood, you're doing something right), and he tells all in his new book "The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts. " The signing accompanies screenings of two of his landmark movies: his Coen brothers collab "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "A Simple Plan. " Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. 6:15 p.m. Fri. americancinematheque.org.

If you had one guess at Herman Cain's favorite movie, what would it be? It's not a trick question (and no, it's not "Disclosure," that 1994 film with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore about reverse sexual harassment.). Cain's favorite film, at least according to the Washington Times, is “The Godfather.” Always with an eye toward marketing, Cain, the former chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza, cited the widely beloved mob flick and winked as he gave the answer.

Actors who do excellent work in very small roles don't get any awards, but they deserve accolades. As hard as it may have been for the Oscar-nominated performers to create rounded characters in two hours, try it in just a few minutes. Welcome to the third annual roundup of great little performances. These artists may not be stars, but they still shine. -- Lisa Rosen Amy Landecker, 'A Serious Man' In Joel and Ethan Coen's "A Serious Man," Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg)

Without a doubt, the Jewish book of the season that will both expand your vision of Jewish cooking and make you want to cook is Joyce Goldstein's "Cucina Ebraica: Flavors of the Italian Jewish Kitchen" (Chronicle Books, $29.95). Leaving behind the daily pressures of running her San Francisco restaurant, Square One, which she closed in 1996, gave Goldstein the time to more fully research Italian Jewish cuisine, a subject that has obsessed her since 1959.

The Cannes Film Festival is making a statement at this year's gathering: We still really like Americans. The main competition will feature four directors from the U.S. -- Alexander Payne (“Nebraska”) Joel and Ethan Coen (“Inside Llewyn Davis”), James Gray (“The Immigrant”) and Steven Soderbergh (“Behind the Candelabra”) -- equaling last year's strong total of North American helmers in competition. In addition, new movies from U.S. filmmakers James Franco, Sofia Coppola, James Toback and J.C. Chandor will play in other sections.

A New York native of Sicilian heritage, Ben Gazzara was a strongly masculine, subtly menacing screen presence with a gravelly voice that one writer described as "saloon-cured" and another said could strip paint at 50 paces. The veteran actor, who died Friday in New York City, found fame on Broadway in the 1950s, starred in the TV series "Run for Your Life" in the 1960s and was closely identified on the big screen with independent filmmaker John Cassavetes. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, said his attorney Jay I. Julien.

The Los Angeles Superior Court is the nation's largest trial court of general jurisdiction, with at any one time about 450 judges hearing complex commercial lawsuits, landlord-tenant disputes, misdemeanor and felony prosecutions, divorce and child custody disputes, conservatorships and guardianships, adoption and foster care matters, traffic cases and plenty more besides. FOR THE RECORD: Superior Court: An April 22 endorsement of judicial candidates referred to the 10 years of State Bar membership required for a California trial judge and stated that Matthew Schonbrun "won't notch his decade until the day after the election.

If you had one guess at Herman Cain's favorite movie, what would it be? It's not a trick question (and no, it's not "Disclosure," that 1994 film with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore about reverse sexual harassment.). Cain's favorite film, at least according to the Washington Times, is “The Godfather.” Always with an eye toward marketing, Cain, the former chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza, cited the widely beloved mob flick and winked as he gave the answer.

When Rooster Cogburn, Jeff Bridges' gravel-voiced federal marshal in Joel and Ethan Coen's "True Grit," defends his tendency to shoot first and ask questions later in a courtroom scene, he is a figure engulfed in shadows. Slowly, a shaft of light streams through the courtroom's giant windows, revealing Cogburn's craggy, bearded face to the film's protagonist, 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), and the audience for the very first time. The dramatic effect, announcing the movie's larger-than-life antihero through light and darkness, is the work of Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins.

If you want to watch a Coen brothers movie with your kids, the options make for a pretty brief film festival. "Raising Arizona," with its loopy comic energy and nods to the Road Runner, isn't a bad starting point, though you still might have some explaining to do about the whole kidnapping thing. "The Hudsucker Proxy" has that marvelous, wordless sequence in which we see the hula hoop take flight in children's minds. But that's three minutes out of nearly two hours. "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

On the set of his first movie, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," future "Rabbit Hole" director John Cameron Mitchell was decked out in drag ? and running around the set barking orders at Teamsters. His father, then an Army major general, was visiting the set that day. "He told me, 'Oh, you're doing what I do,'" recalls Mitchell. On most sets, that's the truth: A director's vision may be one thing, but how he or she achieves it through managing cast, crew and a thousand other tiny details is another.

Jeff Bridges calls the Coen brothers "cool," as in "no big deal. They don't get excited too much. " Josh Brolin, who, like Bridges, has worked with the Coens on two movies now, takes Bridges' description and runs with it. "They're extremely low-key ? sometimes too low-key," Brolin says, laughing. "Ethan and I had dinner once. And I see him, he's got something under the table. And I go, 'Dude, what are you doing?' And I reached over and saw that he'd brought a book. He was reading a book.

Bill Monroe, the man widely acknowledged as the father of bluegrass music, was in search of a new banjo player for his famed Blue Grass Boys when a young musician turned up backstage at Nashville's celebrated Ryman Auditorium during a 1945 Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast, hoping to audition. Once Monroe and his guitarist, Lester Flatt, heard the sparks fly from 21-year-old Earl Scruggs' instrument, the bandleader asked Flatt what he thought. "If you can, hire him," Flatt told Monroe, "whatever the cost.

The 25 best L.A. films of the last 25 years "Los ANGELES isn't a real city," people have said, "it just plays one on camera." It was a clever line once upon a time, but all that has changed. Los Angeles is the most complicated community in America -- make no mistake, it is a community -- and over the last 25 years, it has been both celebrated and savaged on the big screen with amazing efficacy. Damaged souls and flawless weather, canyon love and beach city menace, homeboys and credit card girls, freeways and fedoras, power lines and palm trees . . . again and again, moviegoers all over the world have sat in the dark and stared up at our Los Angeles, even if it was one populated by corrupt cops or a jabbering cartoon rabbit.

On the first box-office weekend of 2011, it was all about which holiday movie had the most staying power. That turned out to be the Coen brothers' western "True Grit," which after two weeks of nipping at the heels of "Little Fockers," surpassed it to become the No. 1 movie in the U.S. and Canada with a studio-estimated $15 million in ticket sales. "Fockers" was close behind with $13.8 million, down 47% on its third weekend. Two additional movies, the Nicolas Cage historical action tale "Season of the Witch" and the Gwyneth Paltrow music drama "Country Strong," failed to make much of an impact, with just $10.7 million and $7.3 million, respectively.