New Coen Bros, A Serious Man

the shtetl sequence was actually lifted from an old f-troop

rarely rerun

It's from McHale's Navy.

u know he is credited at the end as "dybbuk?"

did f-troop routinely have joeks that were "lol, the indians are all really jews (cos that's who played the indians in the movies)"? cos i saw one episode once on nick at nite and that was basically the deal.

all i remember about f-troop is a lot of bug-eyed double-takes and neck-snapping cuts between scenes

amplified by Blaxing Saddles

xp

i saw the point of the prologue to be the deliberate ambiguity of whether the visitor was truly the rabbi or a dybbuk? the question is dramatically unresolved, but i think it ties into Larry's struggle over whether his trials are supernatural or mundane in their origin, faith vs. doubt, etc.

i mean, it's tempting to assume that the wife is wrong but the coens sometimes bring strange infernal visions to the screen (raising arizona, barton fink) so i don't think a possible dybbuk fits in there dramatically

ugh, I mean I think it *does* fit in there dramatically

I only asked my actor-acquaintance who played the Shtetl Husband if Fyvush Finkel was a dybbuk IRL

Whether or the wife is wrong about it being the dybbuk is sort of beside the point though as she's clearly not very polite to guests!

finally saw this--my favorite coen bros maybe ever

ppl who think this is as misanthropic as burn after reading or raising arizona must have seen a difft movie than me, they loved these characters

"they" being the coens.

great ending.

loved the scene w/ the kid and the old rabbi

yeah I didn't get the sense that this was mean-spirited the way RA and BAR are, this seemed very affectionate to me

Raising Arizona is not misanthropic! Moves me to tears every time.

max, "be a good boy."

I've probably seen the movie as many times as you have, and I always get the sense they are laughing AT those characters. its a comedy of errors populated by morons.

also lolz I have no idea what would move you to tears in RA, I know you ain't a sucker for babies/procreation/marriage

The ending totally does. Dude, real life and cinema do not signify in the same ways.

(I'm sure you're not completely amoral despite yr love for You Know What)

btw I've seen RA maybe 3x in 22 years, which is a lot for me.

despite yr love for You Know What

ah, the NEW love that dare not speak its name

I think we can all agree that BAR is pretty mean though, right guys?

i saw the point of the prologue to be the deliberate ambiguity of whether the visitor was truly the rabbi or a dybbuk? the question is dramatically unresolved, but i think it ties into Larry's struggle over whether his trials are supernatural or mundane in their origin, faith vs. doubt, etc.

― elmo leonard (elmo argonaut), Thursday, February 18, 2010 1:48 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ otm--echoes too w/ discussion of schroedingers cat, heisenberg. he talks w/ clives father, saying, did he leave the money, or didnt he, you cant have it both ways, dad says, "why not?"

so many scenes in this movie are punctuated with question--"who cares?" "why not?" "then what?"

u know he is credited at the end as "dybbuk?"

― mo collier mo problems (s1ocki), Thursday, February 18, 2010 12:28 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like i said here... the question mark is in the actual credit, if i didnt make that cler

ahem clear

who cares?

me iirc

so what?

embrace the mystery

I didn't do anything

F Troop, a childhood favorite of mine, was like a dumbed down cavalry version of Sgt. Bilko. Some of the humor was pretty Borscht Belt (the Indians were the Hekawi tribe, as in "where the heck are we?"), but I think the only regular played by a former Catskills comic was Larry Storch's Corporal Agarn.

Film fans and car aficionados will have the chance to own a unique piece of movie memorabilia from one of the Best Picture nominees when Variety – The Children’s Charity of Southern California next week begins hosting the online auction of the 1966 Dodge Coronet used in Focus Features and Working Title Films’ A Serious Man. The film is nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Original Screenplay (Joel & Ethan Coen). The auction will be live at www.eBay.com/varietyskids, starting Monday, February 22, 2010 and end Thursday, March 4, 2010 – right before the Oscars. Proceeds from the auction will go to help inspire hope, enrich lives and build a better future for the children in need in Southern California.

The auction will give collectors the chance to bid on the vintage vehicle seen on-screen as the car owned and driven by lead character Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg)...

Watching this right now for the first time. Impressions to come, but at the moment it feels very much a film about the ways that the Jewish community fails to help individuals deal with tragedy. Not sure if I feel totally comfortable with that, but it feels true to my experiences.

i almost don't want to watch it again: it was so dope the first time i don't think i could like it as much again. otoh, i want to watch it again.

^^^^^^

but Mordy, I thought the community helped as much as it could. ie, we all die alone.

Side note, but I recently interviewed Peter Himmelman, who grew up in St. Louis Park in the '60s and '70s a few years behind the Coens in school, and he said, "That is exactly my life."

Awesome. Sussman Lawrence were invited back to play countless dances and, I think, a prom there.

Best thing I've seen in maybe 5 years. Watched it on a plane, overtired and vulnerable to begin with, and it just destroyed me. So funny, so dark, so wonderful.

Not mentioned here yet, not sure if I imagined it and couldn't rewind to check: one of the messages in the first stack Larry gets from his secretary is his doctor calling about "urgent test results". He's flipping through when he gets distracted (by the Korean student maybe?) and never gets back to it. So even as Larry's life finally took a turn for the better near the end, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Amazing ending.

except that doesnt he go to the doctor and get an x-ray sometime during the movie?

wasn't that the first thing we saw in the 'present'? so the urgent message came afterwards?

do we know how long a timespan the movie covered? cuz I try not to think of it in terms of 'horrible shit happens to dude for no reason' as much as I do 'bad shit happens to dude, gets worse because he can't deal with it', so leaving getting back to the doctor for an age (and so letting whatever's wrong with him get worse) would work for me, whereas being fucked through no fault of his own, less so.

I am happy that the actor who plays Sy Abelman FINALLY has a wikipedia page.

My favorite Sy Abelman moment: when he counts, silently, to 10.

About the message: maybe the first time (of the several) Larry comes into his university office and his secretary hands him his messages, he gets a small stack of them (including one from Columbia Records and maybe one from Sy Adelman?), and he's flipping through them, he flips past one that says "Dr Whatever, re: urgent test results" just as he gets distracted by something (his department head? the Korean student? his kid calling him about F Troop?) and doesn't notice. This is fairly early on.

I may have hallucinated it. But I spent the rest of the movie waiting for the phone call that only came in the last scene.

yeah, Richard Kind and Fred Melamed rooked out of Oscar nominations in favor of Martin Short doing Conrad Veidt.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Dodge-Coronet-4-DOOR-1966-EXCELLENT-CND-BLUE-USED-IN-COEN-BROS-A-SERIOUS-MAN_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem3a5815a773QQitemZ250585917299QQptZUSQ5fCarsQ5fTrucks

"Item location: Hastings, MN."

loved the score for this