Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis.

In last month's New York Times story on the Coen brothers' first film since True Grit, Joel Coen said that Inside Llewyn Davis--their movie about a folk singer in the ’60s (Oscar Isaaac, Drive)--shares something with the Broadway-cum-cinematic hit Les Misérables. Sure, there will be singing (No "I Dreamed a Dream," though, fortunately), a love triangle and even a cretinous villain, but what does New York's burgeoning folk-rock scene have in common with the French Student Rebellion?

Perhaps the oddest thing about Inside Llewyn Davis isn't the two Ls in Llewyn, or the fact that Justin Timberlake is playing a banjo in one scene, but that the movie has been picked up for distribution by CBS Films, the company behind both Beastly and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Though as long as there isn't a Two and a Half Men cameo in the movie, we're good to go.

Tuesday: Marley & Me
Get out the Kleenex! With nearly $145 million in domestic grosses, it’s clear that moviegoers shed many tears thanks to this weepy, blonde-highlighted adaptation of John Grogan’s bestseller last Christmas. We’re not here to rain on that parade—after all the dogs are almost as cute as Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston—but rather to marvel at the fact that something so mainstream was co-written for the screen by Don Roos and Scott Frank, the men behind The Opposite of Sex and Out of Sight, respectively. We guess you have to pay the bills somehow, right fellas? [HBO, 9 p.m.]

Wednesday: Miller’s Crossing
The Coen Brothers’ Prohibition-era gangland epic doesn’t have the awards pedigree that Fargo or No Country for Old Men might (staggeringly, it garnered zero nominations back in 1990), but we’ll still go ahead and call Miller’s Crossing their best movie. From the rat-tat-tat script to the impeccable cast (career-best performances from Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden and John Turturro) to Carter Burwell’s hauntingly authentic score, Miller’s Crossing doesn’t let go until the finale. And it actually has a finale! Not that we’re still bitter about No Country for Old Men or anything… [Fox Movie Channel, 8 p.m.]

Thursday: 30 Rock
Does anyone remember laughter? Yes, actually. A funny thing happened in the time that 30 Rock has been off the air between seasons three and four: sitcoms got good again! From Community to Parks & Recreation to Modern Family (though we’re still not sure what everyone sees in this one [Editor's note: we see that it is awesome], it seems like the grasp that Tina Fey’s baby has on the title of “television’s funniest comedy” is under fire. Don’t be too concerned though. With—among other season premiere subplots—Jenna (Jane Krakowski) getting an “image makeover” and Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) leading a page strike, we’re sure 30 Rock will leave us lizzing. [NBC, 9:30 p.m.]

Friday: Ugly Betty
As if you needed more proof that Friday night is where television shows go to die, allow us to introduce you to Southland, which NBC canceled last week before it even aired. Ouch. With that said, we wouldn’t get too attached to Ugly Betty. The series, formerly a hit, switches to Friday nights this season and gives Betty a new look (no braces!). Moves like those are usually steps one and two in the path to cancelation, but maybe Betty will break the trend. Nah, probably not. [ABC, 8 p.m.]

Zombieland

What’s the story: Think Shaun of the Dead… but with Americans. Blessed with one of the strongest trailers we’ve seen in quite some time—Van Halen! Snooty British voice over!—Zombieland comes into this weekend with tremendous buzz, great reviews and even a little controversy; stay off the blogs unless you want the big celebrity cameo spoiled for you. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg star as a pair of mismatched companions trying to survive through life in post-zombie America. Expect buckets of blood, lots of laughs and some major box office. Seriously, there’s no reason why this thing shouldn’t become a huge smash.

Who should see it: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

Whip It

What’s the story: Be your own hero, indeed. We saw Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut last weekend and can happily report that it is as heavy on charm as it is on temporary tattoos. Whip It finds Ellen Page as the ridiculously named Bliss Cavendar, a Texas high school senior who becomes a roller derby sensation named Babe Ruthless. Along the way she falls in love, makes some friends (hey, Kristin Wiig!) and earns the respect of her domineering-but-well-meaning mother, played by Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden. There will certainly be better movies this year than Whip It, but we doubt many will be as much fun.

Who should see it: Diablo Cody.

The Invention of Lying

What’s the story: Another movie we’re dying to see! The Invention of Lying is Ricky Gervais’ latest attempt to become an American movie star—he tried and failed last fall with the wonderful-but-ignored Ghost Town—and this time he’s brought along some major star power in the forms of Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill, Rob Lowe, Tina Fey and Jason Bateman. While Lying looks absolutely hilarious, what the trailers don’t tell you is that a large amount of the film deals with the existence—or lack thereof—of God. Leave it to Mr. Gervais to stick something so serious inside the workings of a studio comedy.

Who should see it: David Brent.

A Serious Man

What’s the story: Say hello to the first serious (pun!) Oscar contender to open this fall. A Serious Man, the new film from the Coen Brothers, can apparently be filed under comedy of the jet-black variety. A cast of no-names—the most recognizable face is Richard Kind; yep, that Richard Kind—help the Brothers loosely tell the story of Job, but transplanted into 1960s Minnesota. The reviews have been what you’d expect—stellar and reverent, though our Rex Reed was mixed—but we wonder if this film is too small for the Academy to really embrace.

Who should see it: The Dude.

Also opening this weekend: Disney releases Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D so your kids can see them all over again, while wearing glasses.

Growing up going to Hebrew school every day and synagogue every Saturday may not be a prerequisite to overcome the bleak confusion of A Serious Man, but my guess is that it sure would help. This is the new one from the quirky Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, who shift from comedy to drama with uneven results, and work easily with big stars or nobodies. This time it’s the latter (not even a guest appearance by Brad Pitt), as they return to their hometown of Minneapolis in 1967 and the setting of Fargo to tell the depressingly sluggish story of a nebbishy Jew named Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who goes through the perils of Job in the stressed-out weeks before his son’s bar mitzvah. It’s a farce like the dreadful The Big Lebowski, with a confusing and maddeningly unsatisfactory ending like No Country for Old Men. Not one of their best films, but because of its sincerity and the parsing away of sentiment and pretension, it is, in many ways, one of their most likable.

A Serious Man is also one of their most personal. The Coens have never struck me as religious people dedicated to the rudiments of liturgy. (Joel has been married since 1984 to Frances McDormand, who is about as Jewish as Donald O’Connor.) But they know the territory, and appear driven to cynicism about it when anyone mentions the words Talmud or Torah. A lengthy prologue that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie shows a gnarled, impoverished couple in a grim Slavic country that looks like a set from Fiddler on the Roof who open their door in a snowstorm to a neighbor feared to be a dybbuk. The wife stabs him and turns him back out into the cold, inviting a curse that threatens to plague them forever. Cut to the cookie-cutter suburbs of 1960s Minnesota and the endless travails of the Gopnik family.

Larry Gopnik is a math teacher nobody understands, struggling to become a mensch, and failing miserably. His students are bored; his wife divorces him for an aging, bloviated hippie; his pious campus associates pass him by for promotion; his son steals from his wallet and smokes pot in Hebrew school; his daughter can’t get into the only bathroom in the house because his unwelcome, unemployed brother—who is turning into a permanent house guest—always locks himself in to drain his disgusting cysts. Gopnik’s rabbi ignores him; his colleagues patronize him; the deer-hunting redneck next door encroaches on his property to build a boat shed; and the father of an Asian student who bribed him to get a better grade now sues him for defamation. The poor man is rendered homeless and forced to move to a motel. At times, the audience needs the patience of Job to endure the stream of humiliations and torments visited upon Gopnik. The Coens lodge their tongues firmly in their cheeks, addressing the clichés and rituals of Judaism with contemporary skepticism, and equating the complex tenets of the Jewish faith with the problems in Gopnik’s life. Gopnik consults a series of incompetent rabbis (one of them is so obsessed with Jefferson Airplane he substitutes their rock tunes for scripture) who do nothing but complicate his life and give him idiotic advice. Add mortage foreclosures, a wrecked car, footing the bill for his wife’s lover’s funeral and his brother’s arrest for sodomy, and Gopnik is at the end of his rope. Taking stock of what he’s got, he comes up with bubkes. You may need Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish to understand half of the dialogue, but patience pays off. I found the usual moral center in Coen brothers films missing in action, but while I related to practically none of the suffering personally (my Jewish friends call it “the story of my life”), I must admit I laughed out loud.

As Gopnik loses faith and questions the existence of God and the meaning of life, A Serious Man substitutes a comic sense of life’s absurdities for any ethical wisdom grounded in theology, and the movie turns both suicidally sobering and funny as hell, often at the same time. But eventually it falls into the universal Coen brothers abyss—a most unsatisfactory ending that leaves you bewildered and angry. Just when Gopnik’s life is back on the rails and there’s a brief sign of a happy finale, more life-altering calamities come raining down—a hurricane sweeps down on Minnesota and the cancer doctor calls and … but no more spoilers. Clearly the Gopniks are victims of preordained fate, descendants of the crones in the opening scene, and the dybbuk’s curse will go on forever. The Coens never know how to end their movies; remember how the final scene wrecked No Country for Old Men? They always leave you infuriated and dangling. Everyone is just as miserable in the finale as they were in the beginning. A Serious Man may be their most religious film yet, but there is nothing spiritual about it.

rreed@observer.com

Fittingly, he'll play the title role as Larry Gopnik, a professor in the Midwest whose wife leaves him and his socially awkward brother (played by another prime casting choice, Richard Kind) won't move out of his house. The story take place in 1967, according to Variety. Shooting begins next month in Minneapolis.

Best Picture

"Atonement"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"

Actor in a Leading Role

George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"
Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises"
Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"

Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
Julie Christie, "Away From Her"
Marion Cotillard, "La Vie En Rose"
Laura Linney, "The Savages"
Ellen Page, "Juno"

Actor in a Supporting Role

Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"
Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"
Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton"

Actress in a Supporting Role

Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"
Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"
Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"
Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone"
Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton"

Directing

Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Jason Reitman, "Juno"
Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"

Writing (Original Screenplay)

Diablo Cody, "Juno"
Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"
Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"
Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, "Ratatouille"
Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages"

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Christopher Hampton, "Atonement"
Sarah Polley, "Away From Her"
Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"

Best Foreign Language Film

"Beaufort"
"The Counterfeiters"
"Katyn"
"Mongol"
"12"

Best Documentary Feature

"No End in Sight"
"Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience"
"Sicko"
"Taxi to the Dark Side"
"War Dance"

Best Animated Feature Film

"Persepolis"
"Ratatouille"
"Surf's Up"

Art Direction

"American Gangster"
"Atonement"
"The Golden Compass"
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
"There Will Be Blood"

Cinematography

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
"Atonement"
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"

Costume Design

"Across the Universe"
"Atonement"
"Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
"La Vie en Rose"
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

Best Documentary Short Subject

"Freeheld"
"La Corona (The Crown)"
"Salim Baba"
"Sari's Mother"

Editing

"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
"Into the Wild"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"

Makeup

"La Vie en Rose"
"Norbit"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"

Music (Original Score)

"Atonement"
"The Kite Runner"
"Michael Clayton"
"Ratatouille"
"3:10 to Yuma"

Music (Original Song)

"Falling Slowly" from "Once"
"Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted"
"Raise It Up" from "August Rush"
"So Close" from "Enchanted"
"That's How You Know" from "Enchanted"

Animated Short Film

"I Met the Walrus"
"Madame Tutli-Putli"
"Meme les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven)"
"My Love (Moya Lyubov)"
"Peter & the Wolf"

Live Action Short Film

"At Night"
"Il Supplente (The Substitute)"
"Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)"
"Tanghi Argentini"
"The Tonto Woman"

Sound Editing

"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"No Country for Old Men"
"Ratatouille"
"There Will Be Blood"
"Transformers"

Sound Mixing

"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"No Country for Old Men"
"Ratatouille"
"3:10 to Yuma"
"Transformers"

Visual Effects

"The Golden Compass"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
"Transformers"

The Minnesota-born Coen brothers have written, produced and directed eight movies, starting with 1984's Blood Simple . Their latest film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? , is a contender in this year's Academy Awards (for Best Cinematography and Best Adapted Screenplay). For the past 10 years, the Coens have been working out of a small basement office in a 20-story rental apartment building at 280 Riverside Drive, on the corner of West 100th Street. According to Joel Coen, the brothers looked for bigger office space for a few months last year. When asked how big their offices are now, Mr. Coen admitted he wasn't sure. "I'm just not a square-foot kind of guy," he said.

Last July, the Coens agreed to buy a three-story building on Reade Street for $1.5 million. Joel Coen described the new building as "the right amount of space"–it's only 1,800 square feet, probably smaller than either of the brothers' apartments. But, said Mr. Coen, "we have a very small operation." It's just the two of them–and they share an office–plus an assistant. Their purchase is expected to be final on Feb. 27, when, Mr. Coen said, "we're just going to move in." No renovations, no fuss.

For the folks moving out, things are a little more complicated. Architect John Petrarca bought the small building in western Tribeca 20 years ago for $120,000, and has renovated it and lived there with his family ever since. He's in the process of building the Reade Street homes–five built-on-spec townhouses that will be among the first structures in the city to employ geothermal heating and cooling–on Reade and Greenwich streets. He and his family will occupy one of the townhouses, but it won't be ready until April. In the meantime, Mr. Petrarca has rented a large office space near his new home and will literally camp out there, pitching large tents to serve as bedrooms for his family.

Mr. Petrarca put his home on the market on April 14 for $1.45 million, not necessarily with a film-industry buyer in mind. But Tribeca is the closest thing New York has to a back lot. "Tribeca was definitely an asset," said Joel Coen, "but it wasn't that we were specifically looking there. We've been working down in the Village recently, and we just thought it would be nice to be downtown."

Next thing you know, they'll be doing lunch.

HAMPTONS HEADACHE: A MAN NEEDS HIS CASTLE

They say a man's home is his castle, and in recent years some in the Hamptons are taking the old adage and running with it. With several of the properties presently on the market priced at $45 million and up, they threaten to leave Jerry Seinfeld's record-breaking Hamptons purchase of last year in the dust. And these monuments to egotism are not just hugely expensive; they are downright strange.

There's the seemingly cursed Southampton estate, now called Elysium, owned by Francesco Galesi. Local residents may still know the place by its old name: Dragon's Head. Mr. Galesi, a real estate developer, bought the property for the low, low price of $2.3 million in May 1992. It was already infamous for its creepy rehabilitation in the 1980's, resulting in turrets ringed with gargoyles and a saltwater grotto that once featured a shark and other forms of sea life.

Now the three-story, 17-bedroom estate on 9.7 acres on Meadow Lane is on the market for $45 million.

But at least Elysium has a long pedigree in the area, dating back to its service to Henry F. du Pont's family under the less assuming name of Chestertown House. More in the du Pont tradition in style, if not scale, is copper-trader David Campbell's 25-acre estate in Wainscott, with frontage on Georgica Pond. Mr. Campbell bought the property on Burnt Point five years ago for $10 million. The house, designed by architect Francis Feetwood, was finished only two years ago. The asking price, now that the property has the house, two barns, a separate guest house, a tennis pavilion, a greenhouse, a boathouse, a private dock and a gazebo on the water: $50 million.

Joan Jedell, local celebrity watcher and publisher of The Hampton Sheet , said that these "ego-architecture" properties often have a hard time on the market. But that's just the natural vetting process in an area that wants desperately to communicate a disdain for showiness–once déclassé, now inevitable.

"They come and go," said Ms. Jedell of the giant estates and their attendant headline-grabbing parties. "Maybe it's a kick to come there and party and make a scene and make it known that, 'I'm here! Hey! Look at me!' But I think that they get tired of it…. It's just a momentary lapse of sanity."

Some lapses are more severe than others. Take the four-year-old Wilzig Castle, summer home of Alan and Ivan Wilzig, New Jersey bankers whose cars bear vanity plates that read "SIR ALAN" and "SIR IVAN." The castle boasts seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, two kitchens, and bizarre details like a trompe l'oeil bookcase that conceals a boudoir, fake Picassos, faux-medieval bric-a-brac and a living room that transforms into a 70's-style discotheque. But the brothers already seem to have outgrown the style–if not the size–of the building.

"That's no more of a castle than my house," sniffed one Hamptons insider. And Wilzig Castle isn't even in a fashionable Hamptons district–though that may be changing. "It's far north of the highway, in Deerfield," the local said. "But nothing is not chic in the Hamptons anymore–it's like Manhattan now."

And here, too, the owners are looking for a way out. At $3.2 million, the current asking price, the Wilzig property is not even very expensive. But–to the chagrin of the local Maidstone Club set–anyone interested in buying the castle will have to have a very special kind of taste, not just the right kind of money.

More and more of these "very special" buyers are snapping up land in the Hamptons. Ms. Jedell pointed out that work on the Ira Rennert compound looks almost complete. The project, begun by the industrialist in 1998, was estimated to cost around $30 million. The plans called for a 110,000-square-foot, four-wing building with 29 bedrooms, 42 bathrooms, a 20-car garage, a 2,950-square-foot garden pavilion, a 240-square-foot beach pavilion, a gatehouse, two bowling alleys, two squash courts, two tennis courts, a basketball court with spectator stands, a giant indoor pool and the coup de grâce : a reconstructed pub, transported stone by stone from an original site in England.

UPPER WEST SIDE

101 Central Park West

Three-bed, two-and-a-half bath, 2,800-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $5.595 million. Selling: $5.595 million.

Charges: $2,900; 40 percent tax deductible.

Time on the market: three months.

KEEPING UP WITH THE MILSTEINS There's nothing like a fat price tag on the neighbor's place to make yours seem like it's worth more. That helps to explain the sweet price a couple who've just left town got for this apartment "just below the tree level," according to Daniel Douglas of the Corcoran Group, who sold it. Located in a 19-story, white-glove co-op, the apartment had recently been renovated–and tastefully. Four of the apartment's seven large rooms look out on Central Park, and there are high ceilings along with a marble master bath and powder room. Plus, 101 Central Park West, which has about 100 apartments, is hardly a low-profile building: Rick Moranis and Harrison Ford both live there.

Last fall, real estate executive Edward Milstein put his own sprawling apartment in 101 Central Park West on the market for $18 million. Although it hasn't sold yet, Mr. Milstein has had offers "in the ballpark," say brokers who have shown the apartment–and though it's about three times the size of the couple's place, it makes their apartment seem not so overpriced after all.

UPPER EAST SIDE

150 East 93rd Street

Two-bed, one-bath, 950-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $479,000. Selling: $455,000.

Charges: $961; 54 percent tax deductible.

Time on the market: two months.

THE BACHELOR AND THE BROKER Carnegie Hill is no place for a sexy bachelor to find a date. At least, that's what Marlene Steiner, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, told her friend, a "hot" banker in his 30's who'd been living in this fifth-floor co-op for about four years–apparently very much alone. The apartment's large eat-in kitchen and high ceilings lured a young couple, who signed a contract to buy the place last November. Ms. Steiner said the wife was worried that she would give birth during the couple's meeting with the co-op board in late December, but they passed the board without incident–and brought their new baby to the closing on Jan. 31. "It's a family building; the mother can take the baby to the park!" said Ms. Steiner. But more to the point, "it's in the right school district." In the meantime, the broker had convinced the bachelor to buy a condo in Bridge Tower, a new luxury construction at 401 East 60th Street, right near the hopping bar scene at trendy Guastavino. "I found him the babe magnet," she said. (Warning: Ms. Steiner also lives in Bridge Tower.)

SOHO

117 Prince Street

Two-bed, two-bath, 2,500-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $2.6 million. Selling: $2.35 million.

Charges: $1,077; 0 percent tax deductible.

Time on the market: Six weeks.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE ARTISTS GONE? As a broker, you must realize you have it made when an Upper East Sider says he wants to buy something "special" in Soho in 2001. "Price didn't make much of a difference," said Sheba Forrest of Douglas Elliman, who took this uptown buyer around to about 15 apartments below Houston Street. They narrowed it down to this co-op with north and south exposures, a wood-burning fireplace with a blue-vein polished granite mantle, South American cherrywood floors, teak and onyx countertops in the bathrooms and glass partitions sandwiched in rice paper. It also has fabulous light, huge windows and city views. The seller, an artist, was leaving the city to live in Europe. She had been living in the apartment for about four years, and had imported almost everything from Brazil. Ms. Forrest is not sure what the buyer will do to the decor since it is "pretty much renovated." The deal closed Feb. 15.

TRIBECA

166 Duane Street

2,385-square-foot condo loft.

Asking: $2.6 million. Selling: $2.45 million.

Time on the market: seven weeks.

STOCK ANALYST SAYS "SELL!" As long as developers have been pre-selling loft apartments, buyers have been abandoning them because they don't match their expectations. But despite reported problems with the luxury condos at 166 Duane Street–especially the wood floors that started buckling almost immediately after tenants moved in in 1998–the resale value of this apartment doesn't seem to have suffered. In this case, owner Richard Scocozza, a software-stocks analyst, left his apartment in Duane Park about two years after buying it. The apartment sold last November for $2.45 million–$150,000 below the asking price, but more than twice what Mr. Scocozza paid. Mr. Scocozza made his mark at Bear, Stearns calling stocks like Computer Associates and, as recently as Jan. 19, advising clients to buy stock in Microsoft. The Duane Park building faces a small park that architecture critic Francis Morrone called "one of the most comfortable spots on the island" after renovations were completed there in 1998. This building, along with several others abutting the recently restored park, were originally warehouses built to store produce for nearby Washington Market; most are now upscale condos. This apartment is one of the smaller units in the building; the largest is more than 5,000 square feet in size. Each boasts an open island kitchen and whirlpool baths. There are no outdoor spaces connected to the individual units, but tenants share a terrace on the roof as well as a 24-hour doorman. Richard Orenstein of Halstead Properties represented Mr. Scocozza.