Coen Brothers To Release Holiday Film

This should be very, very good: inside Llywen Davis.

The Coen Brothers' latest film, set amid the acoustic folk movement in Greenwich Village in 1961, is about a musical era perched on a precipice. 

The movie takes place right before Bob Dylan emerged on the scene and completely transformed it. During that fleeting musical moment, "there's this apocalyptic feeling, a sense that this thing is coming, and it is almost like the end of days," says Oscar Isaac, 33, who plays Llewyn Davis. "The rapture is Bob Dylan." In the context of the film, the notion isn't as overblown as it sounds. 

The tragicomic film's plot centers on Llewyn, a sad-sack folk musician struggling to make it following the suicide of his singing partner. As the movie starts, he gets punched in the face, discovers that his debut solo album—called "Inside Llewyn Davis"—is selling abysmally, and realizes that he may have impregnated his best friend's wife ( Carey Mulligan ). Mr. Isaac says he believes his character is ordinarily "a gregarious, joyful, humorous, happy-go-lucky guy, but you are catching him during a very bad month."

This should be very, very, very good:

T Bone Burnett, who collaborated with the Coens on their other folk-infused film, 2000's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" oversaw the music. Mr. Burnett, Mr. Timberlake and the Coens rewrote a humorous ditty about the space race called "Please Mr. Kennedy"—originally penned as a satirical song about Vietnam—which is performed in the film in one of its lighter moments. (Sample lyric: "I'm 6-foot-2, so perhaps you'll/tell me how to fit into a 5-foot capsule.")

It's on the soundtrack, along with 13 other songs, including two versions of the folk classic, "Green, Green Rocky Road." One of them is performed by Mr. Isaac, and the other by the raspy-voiced Mr. Van Ronk.