Ethan Coen (September 21, 1957)

The Coen Brothers: Joel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Coen (born September 21, 1957) have made some pretty spectacular movies. Ethan at Princeton University wrote a senior thesis entitled: "Two Views of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy" as I wrote last November for his brother's birthday.

Here's some material about their film “A Serious Man” about Larry Gopnik a Jewish physics professor (enough to make them heroic right there) --

Larry consults with three rabbis ... One offers him a bizarrely hilarious story about a gentile with mysterious engravings on the inside of his teeth. This is about as helpful as the ersatz folk tale (in subtitled Yiddish) that the Coens have devised as a prologue, wherein an old woman in a shtetl stabs a rabbi she has decided is possessed by a dybbuk (the soul of a dead person).

Though the Coens flirt with caricature, there are some serious questions about faith and Judaism underlying their sadistic fun. The film conveys a vivid sense of time and place, and much of the excellently chosen cast are semi-professional locals recruited from the filming locations in Minnesota. -- From a New York Post review

I am going to have to see this film!