Inside Llewyn Davis, the new film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, which opens in select US theaters this Friday, December 6, has been named one of the year's top films by the National Board of Review and, earlier this week, received the award for Best Feature at the Gotham Awards. Oscar Isaac, who plays Llewyn Davis, accepted the award on Monday.

For more on Isaac and how the Coen brothers chose him for the title role, there is a new video, called "Finding Llewyn Davis," featuring interviews with Joel and Ethan Coen; T Bone Burnett, who produced the film's soundtrack with the Coens; and two of Isaac's fellow actors in the film, Stark Sands and Justin Timberlake. You can watch the video here:

Sands, Timberlake, and another star of the film, Carey Mulligan, can also be seen and heard in a clip from the film posted to Rolling Stone. In the excerpt, the three perform the Hedy West tune "Five Hundred Miles." You can watch the clip here and listen to the complete recording in the film's soundtrack, which is out now on Nonesuch Records.

The Wall Street Journal music critic Jim Fusilli, in a new piece titled "Listening with a Writer’s Ear," spoke with Joel and Ethan Coen and T Bone Burnett about their working together on the music at the heart of the film. "Folk music is essential to the film—and not only as its soundtrack," writes Fusilli. "The lyrical content of the songs selected by Joel and Ethan Coen, along with executive music producer T Bone Burnett, helped inform the film’s story."

He goes on to say:

Though the music is inextricable from the film, the soundtrack album, issued by Nonesuch, works as a bittersweet stand-alone: The songs and performances represent the Village of the early 1960s; Mr. Isaac, as Llewyn Davis, is an effective folk singer, both brooding and sweet; and the always-exquisite Punch Brothers provide instrumental and vocal support. The collection sweeps toward its conclusion by placing traditional American, British and Irish folk songs as preludes to the appearance of Mr. Dylan’s “Farewell.” Though the album concludes with the folk blues “Green, Green Rocky Road” by Dave Van Ronk, whose memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, influenced the Coens’ story, it is Mr. Dylan’s song, in which the narrator is heading toward new adventures, that provides the soundtrack’s valediction.

Fusilli then adds: "It’s clear from Inside Llewyn Davis that the Coen brothers listen to music with a writer’s ear for story."

Read the complete article to hear what the Coens and Burnett have to say at online.wsj.com.

The Village Voice gives the film a perfect five stars and says it "might be the best Coen brothers movie yet." Reviewer Stephanie Zacharek says Isaac's voice is "luminous as the moon" and concludes: "Inside Llewyn Davis gets everything softly, quietly right. T Bone Burnett supervised the music, and it never sounds as if it's been lifted out of some dusty vault — it's alive."

For a look at some of the real-life musicians who may have influenced the Coen brothers' fictional account of a young singer in the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961, check out the piece by Slate's David Haglund at slate.com.

To pick up a copy of the Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack, head to the Nonesuch Store, where CD and vinyl orders include a download of the complete album at checkout. Both are now 35% off the standard retail price (about 20% off the everyday low prices listed on the site) as part of the current Nonesuch Store anniversary sale.