Not too many directors could get away with making a movie in which the most famous actor is Richard Kind.  But when you’ve made No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading in back to back years, you earn yourself a little leeway.  Anyway, this one’s called A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers’ latest.

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Larry’s unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny (Aaron Wolf) is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is filching money from his wallet to save up for a nose job. An anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry’s chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. [Apple]

It opens in limited release October 2nd, which I don’t understand at all.  How is it the guys with the loyal fanbase who made a best picture two years ago get a limited release, when a smelly hobo tampon like I Love You Beth Cooper gets a wide one?  Is it really that hard to sell a movie from the guys who did No Country for Old Men? I know there’s this assumption that there’s no audience for real movies in the center of the country, but if you never give people a choice between steak and easy cheez, eventually they’re just going to get used to the easy cheez.  At which point you better enjoy making eazy cheez.  Dang, all this Coen Brothers talk has got me craving a steak covered in eazy cheez.