A Serious Revisitation

It seems that with just about every Coen brothers film, it takes me two attempts to really fall in love with the film.  Such was the case with A Serious Man.  I saw it the first time, said “eh…”, and walked away. Then I saw it a second time and thought, “oh yeah, that’s brilliant.” With the film up for the best-picture award at the Oscars, Slate also takes a second look at the film.

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Bites: The Coens Grit, Detesting Eggers, Dennis Cooper on Justin Taylor, Lit. Mystery Spots, and More

The Coen bros are closer to making True Grit a reality. From The Awl: “It’s safe to say that Eggers is currently the most detested man in American haute-literary circles.” Remember that time a bunch of people wanted to kill Salman Rushdie?  He’s gonna write a book about it. Dennis Cooper on Justin Taylor. L Magazine reviews Taylor’s Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever. A literary mystery spot at Lit Kicks. Where all all the Jews in John Hughes’ […]

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The Coen Brothers and the Return of the Middle-Aged Jewish Man

By Jason Diamond Using names like Woody Allen, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Leonard Michaels, a case could be made that there is an entire genre focusing solely on the neurosis of middle-aged Jewish men. John Updike must have thought so, take his character Henry Bech for proof. But while Bellow, Michaels, and the WASP king Updike are all dead, Roth is still good (a bit depressing maybe, but in a good way) and Allen is more content on using […]

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