richard kind Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Funny Trailer for Coens' 'Serious Man'
Filed under: Comedy », Focus Features », Trailers and Clips »
I never skip a Coen brothers movie, even the ones that hardly anyone mentions anymore, like The Man Who Wasn't There. Even when the movies don't quite work, they all have wonderful moments I'd hate to miss. I prefer the comedies -- don't shoot me when I say I liked Burn After Reading better than No Country for Old Men -- so I'm looking forward to their next movie, the dark comedy A Serious Man, which will open in limited release starting October 2.The first trailer for A Serious Man has just been posted to the Apple site, and if you didn't know it was a Coen brothers movie, the visuals would give it away almost immediately. You also realize quickly that this is a non-star movie -- only a few character actors may seem familiar. The cast includes Richard Kind, Adam Arkin and Fyvush Finkel.
Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, whose life appears to be crumbling around him in ways that might be heartbreaking in another movie. In the hands of Joel and Ethan Coen, however, it looks like A Serious Man could be as darkly and weirdly funny as Barton Fink. The trailer itself isn't as laugh-out-loud as the one for Burn After Reading -- every time I saw Brad Pitt in the gym I started giggling -- but it's hardly short on humor. Check it out after the jump and see whether you agree.
Coens Start 'A Serious Man' with Serious Unknowns
Filed under: Comedy », Casting », Focus Features », Cinematical Indie »
The Coen Brothers are smart. While the critical community has been arguing about the merits of Burn After Reading, which opens wide tomorrow, Joel and Ethan are already knee deep in their next production. A Serious Man started filming in their home state of Minnesota on Monday.
The project was announced in the spring of 2007, just before No Country for Old Men debuted at Cannes. Last month we learned that relatively little-known Michael Stuhlberg and Richard Kind had been cast in the lead roles in the black comedy set in 1967, with Stuhlberg playing a professor whose wife is leaving him, and Kind playing his sofa sleeping brother. While Christopher expressed his hope that Frances McDormand would be playing the wife, that role has gone to Sari Wagner (identified as Sari Lennick by IMDb), one of a trio of seriously unknown Minnesota actors cast in the film, according to an official statement released by Focus Features. The statement also says that the wife has fallen for one of her husband's "more pompous colleagues," who will be played by Fred Melamed.
The other two Minnesota thespians are Aaron Wolf and Jessica McManus, who will be Kind's son ("a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school") and daughter ("filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job"), respectively. I think it's refreshing that the Coens have chosen to go with actors who don't have any previous, sometimes distracting baggage.
As to Burn After Reading, I agree with the quite positive views of Kim and James; I think it's a frequently hilarious and surprisingly insightful "must see." If you still need convincing, listen to the Coens talk about it over at Moviefone. Here's hoping A Serious Man will provoke the same type of response next year.
Coen Bros Cast 'A Serious Man'
Filed under: Comedy », Independent », Casting », Focus Features », Oscar Watch », Cinematical Indie »
How do you follow-up a broad comedy starring the biggest names in Hollywood, George Clooney and Brad Pitt? If you're the Coen brothers, you apparently hit the car in reverse and make your next effort a darker story and cast relative unknowns. Variety reports that the newly minted Oscar winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen have cast Tony-nominated stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) and TV's Richard Kind (Mad About You; Spin City) for the two lead roles in A Serious Man, their next film after this fall's Burn After Reading. The actors will play brothers in the 1967-set black comedy, which returns the Coens to Fargo territory by placing the story in their home turf of Minneapolis. In fact, when we first learned of A Serious Man, more than a year ago (and almost a year before the Coens each won 3 Academy Awards, for writing, directing and producing No Country for Old Men), the script was described as being "in the vein of Fargo." Now we get a little inkling more about the plot of Serious: Stuhlberg will play a professor named Larry Gopnik, whose wife is leaving him and whose "socially inept" brother (Kind) won't leave the house. Hopefully, to further repeat the analogy to their double-Oscar-winning 1996 film, the Coens can cast Frances McDormand as the wife, she can then win another Academy Award and Kind (pictured above) can, like William H. Macy before him, finally go from near-obscurity to well-known, well-respected supporting actor within the next decade.
Review: The Wild
Filed under: Animation », Comedy », New Releases », Disney », Theatrical Reviews », Family Films »
Mad Cow Disease -- which changed its name from Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) when it got famous in the late 1990's -- is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle, spread by the host consuming animal by-products infected by this protein mutation. The disease is zoonotic -- meaning it can be transmitted to humans (and vice versa) -- so this forced cannibalism resulted in the deaths of over 150 Europeans through 2004 who had consumed tainted beef. While only five BSE-infected cattle were identified in the U.S. through 2005 (due to their largely soy diet), the panic was enough to cause widespread bans on U.S. beef.
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