Here are some blurbs from the great reviews coming out of the first Cannes screening of Inside Llewyn Davis.

The Hollywood Reporter

The Coen Brothers’ competition film starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake presents an outstanding fictional take on the early 1960s folk music scene …

… But the work’s core and most brilliant filmmaking, as stunning and singular as anything in the Coens’ canon, is embodied in what initially feels like a tangent that, among other things, can be viewed as a deadpan satire on the whole “on the road” ethos of the period, right down to the casting of Dean Moriarty himself, Garrett Hedlund, as the mostly mute driver on a hitchhiking trip Llewyn makes to Chicago. With John Goodman’s sarcastic raconteur Roland Turner splayed across the back seat like a malignant combination of Henry VIII and Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, the trip proceeds into a surrealistic twilight zone. Although not decisive, the trip does present the artist with a defining moment the viewer is free to ignore or accept as the truth about what’s “inside” Llewyn Davis. FULL REVIEW

Indiewire

Critics of the Coens often fixate on their alleged disdain for their protagonists as they endure Job-like suffering with no end in sight. Llewyn’s plight provides no exception, but that his conundrum is more understandable because he’s trapped by his passion. After a private performance for one potential client, he’s told, “I don’t see a lot of money in this,” and has no rebuttal prepared. An ode to art for art’s sake, “Inside Llewyn Davis” is the most innocent movie of the Coens’ career, which in their case is a downright radical achievement. FULL REVIEW

Rope of Silicon

It’s been 13 years since Joel and Ethan Coen gave us the bluegrass energy of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and now they’ve jumped forward 30 years to 1961 and the folk music scene of Greenwich Village with Inside Llewyn Davis, a film so perfect it appears almost effortless…

And from the cold New York streets to the just-as-cold streets of Chicago, Llewyn hitches a ride with Garrett Hedlund (who grunts more than speaks and not very often at that) at the wheel and a passed out John Goodman in the back …

Hedlund, Goodman, Abraham and Adam Driver all add something special to the film as the Coens continue to not only cast the right people in the right roles, but give them something to do. FULL REVIEW

Screendaily

A very funny and moving look at a folk artist whose sizable talent always lags behind his personal failings and bad luck, writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis is a companion piece of sorts to A Serious Man, their 2009 comedy-drama in which a decent, ordinary man seemed to have the entire world conspiring against him. The filmmaking duo’s new movie features a protagonist far more flawed and self-defeating, but thanks to a sterling lead performance from Oscar Issac, the Coen brothers have once again delivered an impressively nuanced character study — one that has much to say about art, compromise and all the aspiring hopefuls who never got their moment in the sun. FULL REVIEW

Playlist

And the directors cast the rest of players wisely, with the aforementioned actors all very good (Mulligan is perfectly acidic and bitter) and even smaller parts for John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund (nearly dialogue free), Adam Driver (who was part of one of the biggest laughs at the Cannes screening) and Alex Karpovsky, aren’t just cast for cameo purposes, but really enliven what would otherwise be throwaway roles, creating a rich world for this movie to take place in, and for Llewyn to interact with …

Definitely a bit darker than people might expect, particularly in the latter stages, “Inside Llewyn Davis” celebrates those whose moment at fame will forever be a phantom. Llewyn Davis is endlessly striving, gets knocked down and picks himself up again, brushes off his rumpled clothes and gives it another go. He’ll make mistakes, he’ll fuck up, he’ll be down and out and perhaps even on top if ever so briefly. But when that light goes on, and you can connect even for four minutes on stage, in a club you’ve played hundreds of times, sometimes that’s enough. “Inside Llewyn Davis” isn’t about someone trying to make it big, but someone just trying to make it, and the Coens celebrate the hard road that can inspire great art. FULL REVIEW

The Guardian

Cannes audiences just heard a clean, hard crack: the sound of the Coen brothers hitting one out of the park. Their new film is brilliantly written, terrifically acted, superbly designed and shot; it’s a sweet, sad, funny picture about the lost world of folk music which effortlessly immerses us in the period …

Llewyn figures he might be able to make an audition in Chicago, and to that end shares a car with a smoulderingly Kerouac-y poet, played by Garrett Hedlund and a pompous jazz musician played by John Goodman with a habit that keeps him detained a long time in the men’s room. FULL REVIEW

And some of the tweets posted after the screening are behind the cut …

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Coen Brothers’ ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ Dated For Dec. 6

Comedy-drama in competition at Cannes

CBS Films has dated Joel and Ethan Coen’s comedy-drama “Inside Llewyn Davis” for limited domestic release Dec. 6, followed by an expansion on Dec. 20.

Oscar Isaac stars in the title role in the story of an aspiring folk musician in the 1960s in Greenwich Village. Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham and Justin Timberlake also star.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is screening in competition at Cannes.

The Coen brothers directed and produced along with Scott Rudin. T Bone Burnett produced the soundtrack which includes music performed by Isaac, Marcus Mumford and Timberlake.

Studio Canal is handling international distribution and foreign sales. CBS Films acquired U.S. rights in February.

Source

From Playlist

‘Only God Forgives,’ ‘Nebraska,’ ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’ ‘The Past’ & More Lead Official Selection For 2013 Cannes Film Festival

As usual, sifting the actual fact from the speculation when it comes to the line-up of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival has been a little tricky. We know the opener — Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby,” the closer — “Zulu,” with Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom, and as of yesterday, the Un Certain Regard headliner, in the shape of Sofia Coppola’s “Bling Ring.”

But aside from the occasional film that’s been taken out of the running properly, like Bong Joon-Ho’s “Snowpiercer,” the field’s still been wide open. Until this morning, that is — the line-up for the 66th annual Cannes Film Festival has been unveiled. And as ever, there’s plenty of gold to be found If you’ve had your ears close to the ground, and there were few surprises. As expected, Steven Soderbergh’s “Behind The Candelabra,” Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives,” The Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis” and James Gray’s latest (albeit now retitled “The Immigrant”) were among the biggest announcements, along with “The Past,” the new film from “A Separation” director Asghar Farhadi.

More surprising, although still tipped by some, were new films by Roman Polanski (stage adaptation “Venus In Fur”), Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska,” Arnaud Desplechin’s English-language “Jimmy P,” and the latest from Francois Ozon, “Jeune Et Jolie.” The likes of Paolo Sorrentino, Alex Van Warmerdam, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Abdellatif Kechiche made up the rest of the official selection, which you can see in full below.

Cannes favorite Gray made a second appearance out of competition, as the co-writer of Guillaume Canet’s “Blood Ties,” which stars Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Zoe Saldana, Mila Kunis and Matthias Schoenaerts, while J.C. Chandor’s “Margin Call” follow-up “All Is Lost,” starring Robert Redford, also gets a bow away from the official selection. A second HBO movie also crops up, with Stephen Frears’ “Muhammad Ali’s Final Fight,” starring Benjamin Walker, Christopher Plummer, Danny Glover and Frank Langella, getting a special screening alongside a second Polanski film, a restoration of his motor racing documentary “Week End Of A Champion.”

Meanwhile, the organizers seemed to take little notice of the criticism last year of the male-centric nature of the line-up, with only one female director in competition, and others pushed to the sidebar Un Certain Regard section; alongside the previously announced Sofia Coppola film, Claire Denis’ “The Bastards” will also premiere there. They’re joined by James Franco’s “As I Lay Dying,” and Sundance favorite “Fruitvale Station,” among others. That aside, it’s a typically exciting line-up, and we’ll be on the Croisette once again to cover many of these films when the festival kicks off on May 15th.

Complete list of titles under the cut.

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Cannes Film Festival News

The official Cannes lineup will be announced tomorrow, but word is Inside Llewyn Davis will be in competition at this year’s festival. The festival runs from May 15th to the 26th.

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UK Release Date Announced

StudioCanal has dated Joel & Ethan Coen’s latest Inside Llewyn Davis [pictured] for Jan 24, 2014 [in the UK - ed]. The Coens’ last film True Grit went on to become their best UK performance at $13m (£8.5m).

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CBS Films Pays $4 Million for Coen Bros.’ ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

The Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis has been acquired for domestic distribution by CBS Films. The purchase price was about $4 million, according to sources.

The film, a folk-music drama set in 1960 in New York’s Greenwich Village, stars Oscar Isaac as a singer loosely based on the local hero Dave Van Ronk. Carey Mulligan plays his love interest, while the film co-stars Justin Timberlake, Garrett Hedlund and John Goodman.

Isaac, Timberlake and Grammy-winning folk-rock singer Marcus Mumford will perform on the soundtrack, which is being produced by T Bone Burnett. Isaac, a trained musician, performs throughout the film, which focuses on the stormy career of a man who became known as “The Mayor of MacDougal Street,” which also served as the title for his memoir.

“We did all the music live, no playback; it’s like a concert movie,” Isaac told THR last summer. “There’s like six or seven songs in it.”

Scott Rudin is producing the film alongside the Coen brothers; previous collaborations among the filmmakers and the producer include No Country for Old Men and True Grit.

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What do you guys think? I think it looks perfect – I love the Coen Brothers and the whole trailer just made me smile. And I can’t wait to hear the soundtrack – Oscar Isaac has a great voice and every time he shows up in a movie, he winds up being my favorite part of it – I’m so excited for him to have a big break in Hollywood.  - Laura