To respond to your concern about Lake Tahoe: I saw it in the FCS series at Lincoln Center early in the year but it had a limited US release in the summer of 2009; the festival showings are often a year before the US theatrical releases. I saw it on other 2009 best lists and that's how I realized it was a legitimate US release. But not "general" (wide) release; lots of films don't get those: see the two Metacritic columns. See the US reviews on IMDb. It's available o n Netflix too. The Voice reviewer's description is good: "Eimbcke's droll rhythms are reminiscent of early Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki." Unfortunately Sokurov's The Sun is not yet on Netflix, though it's listed as coming. Good luck with the Shakespeare watching.

Your Serious Man review: I read and wept. Your opinion on Bright Star is not unusual, as I said. I guess you read and recall my Cinescene review -- of A Serious Man? Rather than evaluating the film as a dismissal of life's questions and answers, I take it to be both an embracing of life's mysteries, and a wry account of the Coens' experience with rabbis growing up, which gibes with the experience of some of my Jewish friends who saw the film, they told me.