Joseph Cedar Returns to the Acaedemy Awards

I'm a bit late with this news, but it's worth noting on my blog anyway: "Footnote", an Israeli film directed by Joseph Cedar, is nominated for a Best Foreign Film Award at the upcoming Oscar ceremony. This is an excellent film, which tells a universal tale of father-son rivalry and workplace politics. It's nice to have an Israeli film about something other than the conflict get recognized for its excellence.

The press tended to focus on the fact that one of the other four films in this category is an Iranian film, "A Separation". They call it the Israeli-Iranian war by proxy, or a cultural battle. Bullshit. Israelis know to separate between politics and culture, between leaders and artists. In fact, "A Separation" is being shown in theaters in Israel. Israeli authorities have no problem with that. Iranian authorities, however, allowed the film to be distributed in Israel only after European countries pressured them into it. You'd never see "Footnote" in an Iranian theater.

I'm rooting for "Footnote", because it is an excellent Israeli film (and the only one in the category that I've seen), not because of some hatred for Iran or any other country in the running. I also hope that the second time's a charm for Cedar, who was nominated in 2008 with "Beaufort".

Oskar Schell Goes to the Movies

I read Jonathan Safran Foer's novel "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" four and a half years ago. I absolutely loved it. I even posted a review on this blog (which I don't remember ever doing with other books), and discussed the question of whether or not Oskar is autistic (I said no, most commenters said yes). For some reason, the latter post is the most popular one on my blog, with people reaching it through Google searches every day. Apparently, the question is on the minds of many (though it seems like often it has been assigned to them for a school paper).

Now there's a movie adaptation out, which is even nominated for a Best Film Oscar. I have only seen a couple of trailers, since the movie itself hasn't opened in Israel yet. The reviews are mixed, with some critics saying it is a manipulative weepy.

From the trailer and other things I've read, the movie has done away with any ambiguity about autism/Asperger's, and even mentions that Oskar was assessed for Asperger's but the diagnosis was inconclusive. I'm not too happy about that. I think it would have been better to let moviegoers decide for themselves, just like the novels lets readers decide for themselves. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether or not that hurts the film.

I'll certainly write about the movie again after I see it.

Maccabees and Gibson Right For Each Other

I love Hanukkah. It's one of Judaism's most fun holidays, perhaps second only to Purim. Kids spin dreidels and eat chocolate coins, and though not all people get vacation during Hanukkah, for those who do, it is the only extended time off between the High Holidays in the fall and the holidays of late winter and early spring. However, to really enjoy the Festival of Lights, liberal secular Jews must ignore the true origins of the holiday.

We were taught in school that Hanukkah was born out of Judah Maccabee's war against the Greeks and their imposition of their religion on the Jews. It was a war for national sovereignty and religious freedom - that's what the teachers said.

In truth, religious intolerance is more of a monotheistic trait than a polytheistic one. There is no evidence that the Greek rulers of Judea made any decrees forcing Jews to worship Zeus and the other Greek gods. Jews who decided to assimilate into Greek culture did so of their own will. They probably liked the less restrictive culture, and were the closest thing to secular people to exist at the time.

Judah Maccabee's war wasn't just against the Greeks, it was just as much against those assimilated Jews. He did not fight for religious freedom. He wanted to force the Jews to follow strict Jewish laws.

That is exactly why I wasn't upset to hear that Mel Gibson is going to make a movie based on the Books of Maccabees. Mel Gibson shares a lot in common with Judah: they're both violent, intolerant religious fanatics who are sure of the power of the Jews (of course, that last part meant very different things for each). There are also differences, like the fact that Gibson never went to war and killed anyone to impose his beliefs, which is a point in his favor.

ThunderCats and Democracy

A new ThunderCats* series has started airing in the States. This reminded me of the fact that three of my favorite shows - ThunderCats, He-Man and She-Ra - all had magical sword-yielding princes as their heroes. As an adult, I'm not crazy about the idea of shows teaching kids that there are certain people who were born to lead, due to the fact that they were born to the right families.

I've read that the new ThunderCats show has changed a lot of the elements of the original. For instance, Lion-O is no longer a kid trapped in an adult's body. He's a teenager now. However, he is still the Lord of the ThunderCats, just because his father was king. The show is about him learning the leadership skills required of a man in his position.

If it were up to me, I'd change the storyline to something more democratic. I'd start the new show with Lion-O's father declaring the end of the Thunderan monarchy and a transition to a democratic republic. One aristocratic ThunderCat does not want to lose the privileges of power, and schemes to become king himself. However, he can't do it alone, so he calls the mutants, who do a bit of overkill. They destroy the planet, leaving the traitor without a kingdom.

Lion-O and his fellow ThunderCats flee to Third Earth, where he is not expected to become a leader, because of his father's wishes to end the monarchy. However, he still wants to learn leadership skills, because he'd like to earn the leadership position, rather than inherit it.

Wouldn't that be a better, more democratic and educational version?

* As you may have noticed, my logo includes the ThunderCats' Sword of Omens. No deep thought went into choosing the elements of the logo. If I remember my thought process, I wanted a pen and a sword, but since I knew that wasn't very original, I wanted the sword to be special. So, I thought of television shows I liked as a kid. I don't remember why I didn't use the sword from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which inspired this blog's title. Perhaps it wasn't distinctive enough, so I chose another 80's favorite - ThunderCats.

Brothers & Sisters Blood Type Goof

Here's one of those rare posts where I write about something completely unimportant. In this case, the silly television show "Brothers & Sisters". If you are willing to read some nitpicking, and have watched Episode 14 of the fifth and final season, or don't mind seeing spoilers about it, go on reading.

"Lost": Thoughts and Theories About "Across the Sea"

The "Lost" finale is just nine days away. I watched "Across the Sea" last night and I have some spoilery stuff to say about it, so if you haven't seen it, don't read the rest of this post.

"Lost" Theorizing: What the Timelines Are

If you haven't watched "Happily Ever After", the eleventh episode of the sixth season of "Lost", you might not want to continue reading. Spoilers ahead.

Finding Roots on Television

My previous post was about a new NBC show, "Parenthood", which reminded me of another new show about to debut on that much-maligned network on Friday, March 5. Every episode of "Who Do You Think You Are", a documentary series based on a British show of the same name, takes a different celebrity on a journey to find their roots and uncover unknown facts about their ancestors. Several international versions of this show have been produced in different countries, including in Israel.

I've been fascinated with the Israeli version, where every episode and every celebrity's story and reactions have been very different, even in cases when there were similar family histories (two stories included ancestors serving in the Hungarian Labor Battalions, and in all four episodes that have aired so far, the story of at least one side of the family involved the Holocaust). The episode with comedian Tal Friedman was laugh-out-loud funny, while other celebrities were more somber. Friedman retraced his mother's steps as a young child running across the French-Swiss border alone, only with an even younger boy by her side. Actor Ohad Knoler discovered that one of the scenes in "Munich", a film he appeared in, was filmed in a building designed by his own great-uncle and once owned by his family. Journalist Gabby Gazit discovered the horrible conditions both his parents lived through during the Holocaust. Writer Shifra Horn discovered she was descended from the Moroccan rabbi who re-awakened the Jewish community in Buchara, Uzbekistan. Each one of these celebrities discovered much more information about their families.

Two episodes are left. The promo for Thursday's episode promises actress and TV presenter Michal Yanay will discover a horrible secret. Then a week later, TV psychoanalyst Yoram Yuval, will explore his own roots as well.

The celebrities on the American version will be Lisa Kudrow, who also serves as producer, Sarah Jessica Parker, Susan Sarandon, Spike Lee, Matthew Broderick, Brooke Shields and Emmitt Smith.

Asperger's and Autism on TV

"Parenthood", a new NBC show based on the 1989 Steve Martin film, will feature a child with Asperger's Syndrome. The pilot episode will depict the child being diagnosed and how his parents deal with this. I'm curious to see how well the show portrays Asperger's. Alan Sepinwall, TV critic for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, has an interesting article about Aspie characters on TV.

It seems to me that of all the autism spectrum disorders, Asperger's Syndrome is way over-represented. When it comes to high-functioning autism, there is nothing but AS on television and in films these days, at least among those with autistic traits who are declared as autistic and not just hinted as such. Even clearly non-Asperger characters such as the heart surgeon on "Grey's Anatomy" and the lawyer from Boston Legal, both mentioned in Sepinwall's article, are called Aspies. The surgeon seems like she has a different kind of autism, but the lawyer seems to have an assortment of mental problems that don't have much to do with autism, including David E. Kelly's favorite whacky disorder, Tourette's Syndrome.

Jerusalem, City of... Love?

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, a perfect day for romantic movies. I'm sure many couples went out to see "New York, I Love You", the second installment in the "Cities of Love" series, or rented a DVD of the first installment, 2006's "Paris, je t'aime". Each film is an anthology of several love stories from different neighborhoods of the city in the title.

I have not seen either film, nor do I intend to do so. The only reason I'm interested in this series is the odd news that one of the next films will be "Jerusalem, I Love You", with segments directed by American, Israeli and international directors. Jerusalem? Really?

Paris made sense as the first city in the series. After all, it is the City of Love, and considered the most romantic city in the world. New York is also the location of many a love story. Rio, one of the future installments is quite exotic. But Jerusalem?

I do not associate Jerusalem with romance. The only famous Jerusalem love story I can think of is David and Bathsheba - you know, the one with the cheating, the murder of the cheated husband and the death of the bastard baby. Israel has much more romantic cities, like Tel-Aviv, Eilat or even Haifa. These are cities with beaches and quite a night life. In Haifa, there's also romantic natural scenery.

The only love I associate with Jerusalem is the love of God. The excessive love of God, that is. Fanatics spilling the blood of those who are of different religions or are their co-religionists but not devout enough in their own minds.

Oh, well. The creators of the short films about Jerusalemite romance will find something to write about. Romance happens in Jerusalem all the time, just like in any other city. And the movie has one good thing going for it: I'm sure Natalie Portman will appear in it, and maybe even direct a segment. After all, she directed a segment of "New York, I Love You", appeared in both the New York and Paris installments and was born in Jerusalem.

Oh, and one more thing in Jerusalem's defense: Another future installment in the series will be about Shanghai, a city I associate with romance even less than Jerusalem.

Ajami, Oscar Nominee

For the third time in a row, an Israeli film has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Unlike "Beaufort" and "Waltz With Bashir", this film has nothing to do with the First Lebanon War, though it does touch on Jewish-Arab relations. "Ajami", which I have not yet seen, tells the story of  people who live in Ajami, a mostly-Arab neighborhood in Jaffa. It has an 86% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on seven critics' reviews [Update: As of Feb. 15, it has a 95% favorable rating among all critics, with 19 positive and just one negative review. Among Top Critics it has a 100% positive rating, based on six reviews].

"Ajami" is competing against “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” (Argentina), “The Milk of Sorrow” (Peru), “Un Prophète” (France) and “The White Ribbon” (Germany). I haven't seen any of these, either, but I understand that the French and German films are very good and are very tough competition. Then again, these last few years this category has provided surprises. Last year, there were two favorites to win, including "Waltz With Bashir", and neither of the two won. Maybe "Ajami" will be this year's dark horse.

Update (Feb. 15, 2010): I watched the film and loved it. It is very powerful, and the acting is excellent. Surpisingly, all the actors are amateurs, but it doesn't show. The movie might be a bit confusing at times, but that doesn't hurt the film. It is similar to the movie "Precious" in how cruel and relentless the protagonists' lives are and how little hope there is for the future.

Michael Moore's Sicko

I recently watched Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, "Sicko", about the health-care system in the United States and other countries. It's a very entertaining film, but not a very good source of information.

I totally agree with Moore when it comes to the American health-care system: it's broken and has to be fixed. I support government-funded universal healthcare. Moore's health insurance horror stories, though, were not very surprising. The media has shown such cases numerous times. Of course, I don't live in the States, but I'm quite sure the source of most reports I've seen on the subject is the US mainstream media.

My main problem with the film is the rosy depiction of other health-care systems. As someone who lives in a country with socialized medicine, I know that the system we have here is better than the market-based system in the States, but that our system, too, has problems. There are a lot of problems with the systems in Canada, Britain and France. I've seen quite a few reports on BBC World and Sky News about calls to reform the National Health Service.

The scenes in France were particularly annoying. Moore focuses at length on the many social benefits the French government bestows upon citizens and residents, much of it excessive, and asks how the French aren't drowning in taxes. How does he prove that they aren't? He goes to one (yes, that is one [1]) family and shows that they're living the good life. Other than a mortgage, they aren't in any debt! They fly off to some other place in the world once every year! So what? That doesn't really prove much, other than the fact that I'd like to punch that couple in their faces. You can find people like that in pretty much every Western country, under any health-care and tax system.

The most problematic part of the documentary, of course, is when Moore takes a group of 9/11 rescue workers and other under-insured sick people to Cuba. At first, he claims he only wants to go to Guantanamo Bay, where detainees get free health insurance (a scene that might have inspired a similar scene in an Israeli docu-activist show, where journalists Orly Vilnai and Guy Meroz visit an Israeli prison where prisoners get free dental care, which isn't covered by Israel's national health insurance). Then, Moore takes his group to a Cuban hospital. Everything is presented as wonderful. Everything is free. It's first-class medicine. Does everybody get this kind of treatment in Castro's Cuba, or just the wealthy and the camera-wielding? We don't really know. Besides, even if Cuban healthcare is truly open to all citizens, would you rather live in Cuba or the States?

Justice for Roman Polanski?

Yes, Roman Polanski is a wonderful filmmaker. Yes, the then-13 year old girl he had sex with in the 70's has since forgiven him and expressed her wishes that Polanski not be punished. Yes, the crime was committed more than thirty years ago.

And yes, Roman Polanski should be extradited to California from Switzerland and face time in prison. The man admitted he had sex with a minor and then ran to Europe when it seemed like he would have to serve jail time. Not punishing him would send the wrong message. If you are powerful enough and evade the law long enough, you can get away with criminal behavior even after you're finally caught.

Aspie Racer

After the previous season of The Amazing Race included a team of a deaf man and his mother, the current season, which had its debut last night in the States, includes Zev, a guy with Asperger's Syndrome who is racing with his best friend Justin. Since I live in Israel, I haven't seen anything from the current season, but I'm very curious about it.

Lately, it seems there's a spike in the entertainment industry's interest in autism, mostly in its Aspie form. Films such as "Adam" and shows such as "Boston Legal" and "Grey's Anatomy" have featured characters with Asperger's. The Amazing Race, as far as I know, is the first show to actually feature a real autistic person, and not just an actor playing one.

Good luck, Zev & Justin!

Lebanon Through Israeli Movie Cameras

The first Lebanon War was a disaster when it took place in 1982, and then when it lead to an Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon and a war of attrition with Hezbollah and other local groups. In the latter half of this current decade, though, the misadventures in Lebanon have led traumatized Israeli filmmakers to make excellent, award-winning movies about the war. It wasn't the Second Lebanon War that prompted directors and writers to look back at Israel's Vietnam, since 2007's Beaufort and 2008's Waltz with Bashir were already long in the making. I wonder what was.


A new Israeli film, "Lebanon" won the Golden Lion (first prize) at the Venice Film Festival yesterday. I haven't seen it, and hope to have an opportunity soon. Director Samuel Maoz recounts his own experiences as part of a tank crew in the 1982 invasion.

I must admit that the first time I heard about "Lebanon" I thought to myself, "Oh, no, not another one." Then I thought of the fact that I actually liked the previous Israeli war movies, and if the new one is good, there is no reason not to see it.

Now I wonder if for the third year in a row, an Israeli movie about Lebanon will be nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. If it is, it will be weird when they announce "From Israel: Lebanon".

Celebrity Dead Ringers

So, I'm watching a Season 6 episode of CSI: Miami, and there's a guest actress there who I was sure is the same one who plays Sarah Newlin on True Blood. She looks exactly the same, only slightly younger. Turns out, the actress from CSI is Jessy Schram, while the True Blood actress is Anna Camp.

Compare for yourselves:

Left: Anna Camp; Right: Jessy Schram

Eurotrash 2009

The Eurovision Song Contest will take place in half an hour. I'll just watch the beginning to see Israel's Noa (Achinoam Nini) and Mira Awad perform, and if I'll still be up, I'll tune in again about two hours into the broadcast (midnight Israel time) to see the point allocation.

I wonder how Noa and Awad will fair. I've seen at least a few seconds of about half the songs in the contest and most of them are horrid. "There Must Be Another Way", Israel's entry, is one of just a handful of relatively good songs, but it may still suffer for political reasons. Voters in other countries might punish Israel for the operation in Gaza and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu. On the other hand, it is a song about co-existence between Jews and Arabs, so some might want to reward Israel for that. And maybe there are some who will vote for the song just because they like it.

By the way, what's with the Czech guy in a superhero suit who looks a little like Mahmoud Ahmedinijad?

Hollywood to Israelis and Arabs: You're All the Same to Us

A few days ago I watched an episode of "Desperate Housewives" featuring the character Yaniv, an Israeli fitness trainer who uses boot camp tactics on women trying to lose weight. He looked like he could be Israeli, but his accent was off. Curious, I went on-line and checked if he was really an Israeli actor. Turns out his name is TJ (Tarek Jafar) Ramini, and he's a British actor of Palestinian descent. I found this amusing.

The running joke in Israel about Israeli actors trying to make it big in Hollywood is that they are only cast as Arabs, usually terrorists. So, in this instance, the situation is the exact opposite: an Arab playing an Israeli.

There are enough Israeli actors in the States to play Israeli characters and I'm sure there are enough Arab actors in Los Angeles to play Arab characters, but still Hollywood groups them together. Is that a covert pro-peace message: you're all the same anyway, so just get your shit together already?

Filling the Gaps of Battlestar Galactica

It isn't often that I need to include a spoiler warning in my posts, but this time I do. If you haven't watched the series finale of Battlestar Galactica and don't want to find out what happens then read no further.

SPOILER AND GEEK ALERT!

Well, weirdly, somehow the final episode was at once very satisfying and very unsatisfying. The battle portion was great. Even most of the Earth part was good. We said goodbye to the characters in an emotionally satisfying way, although the idea of the Colonials being the source of Greek mythology makes no sense, considering the fact that they arrived about 140,000 years before the emergence of Greek myths. Also, the whole "God did it" thing is unsatisfying. There were so many unaswered questions here (like what's the connection between the Lords of Kobol and the Cylon God). Maybe some of this will be addressed in the prequel Caprica, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I made up my own answers for the unanswered questions. I used some background from the original series and shifted it around to suit me. Here's a time-line:

• 22,000 BCH (Before Cylon Holocaust): A reptilian race in a far away galaxy creates robots which rebel against them and wipe them out completely. The robots then go on to attack Humania, the only other inhabited planet in that galaxy. A one thousand year war begins.
• 21,000 BCH: The Humanians, a humanoid race (though not human), create their own robots to help them in their war. However, their own robots turn against them and join the original robots. The war ends in mutual annihilation, with all robots destroyed completely, and of the Humanians only 50 people aboard the Starship Kobol survive. They see that their race cannot survive through regular reproduction, so they invent resurrection technology.
• 20,000 BCH: Humanians settle upon a planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. They name it after their ship, Kobol.
• 18,000 BCH: Humanians find our Earth and primitive homo sapiens. For some reason, they decide that genetically engineering biological creatures would be safer than building robots, so they take a few thousand bone samples and try to guess how they'd naturally evolve. They call the homo sapiens Humans, after their original planet. They place them on twelve different locations on Kobol, which would later become the basis for the twelve tribes. The Humanians come to be known as the Lords of Kobol and are thought to be gods by the humans.
• 4,400 BCH: El, one of the few offspring of the original 50 Lords of Kobol, is born.
• 4,100 BCH: Humans create Cylons. The LOK are pissed, but El convinces them not to do anything.
• 4,000 BCH: A human scientist discovers that Cylon resurrection technology can be used on humans as well. The Lords of Kobol kill him before he can announce his discovery and prevent him from downloading into a new body. They decide to banish the Cylons. El is furious and leaves Kobol with them. Also joining him are five human priests who worship the Lords of Kobol.
• A few months later: The Temple of Hopes in established, where the Cylons and the five human priests pray to the Gods. They later find Cylon Earth. A few homesick Cylons take the last remaining FTL-capable ships and return to Kobol. They are the source of the information on Kobol about Earth and the Temple of Hopes. However, the LOK distort the story and make it sound as if El made the Cylons create the temple for himself and the five priests. He would use this distortion a few centuries later to reveal the identities of the Final Five (who don't really have anything to do with the five priests).
• 2,000 BCH: The Cylons create robots who attack them. The humanoids and the robots destroy each other. El, though, saw it coming because of the previous encounters with robots, so he warned the Final Five. He builds an FTL-capable ship for them, but the Lords of Kobol destroy it, so the Final Five must use a subluminal ship.
• Meanwhile, El returns to Kobol, and the Lords of Kobol, in their panic, decide to banish the twelve tribes (plus the remnants of the Cylons who returned to Kobol, which is why sometimes it is said that the 13 tribes left at this time). Athena, who disagrees with this decision, disables her own ability to resurrect and commits suicide.
• 1,990 BCH: A solar system with 12 inhabitable planets is discovered by the 12 human tribes. Meanwhile, the Kobolian Cylons go in search of Earth. Unfortunately for them, they never find it and die out.
• Towards the end of the first Cylon war, the final five finally reach Kobol, but find it abandoned. They mysteriously find a ship identical to their own orbiting the planet. They discover it is a jump-capable ship with the coordinates to humanity's current location. The Lords of Kobol, who had come to regret their actions of 2,000 years earlier, are the ones who secretly provided the ship.
• The Lords of Kobol and El partially reconcile. They both manipulate humanity, sometimes with the same goals in mind, sometimes with conflicting goals.
• When Kara Thrace is killed in the maelstrom, the LOK recreate her body and viper on Earth, and then downloads her into a new body. El, on the other hand, is the one who turns on four of the Final Five with the music.
• When the Colonials reach our Earth, the Lords of Kobol make her see her father one last time, and he tells her it is her time to go. She says so to Lee and disappears. She's actually taken to the LOK's ship, because they believe she deserves an explanation for everything that happened. She dies on the ship and is taken to Kobol to be buried.
• Colonial culture was lost, and all we got from them is DNA. However, the LOK manipulate things so that their names come up in Greek mythology.
• Head Six and Head Balter in Times Square don't really exist. It is just a representation of El's internal thoughts, using the images he made Caprica-Six and Baltar see. He himself has a side of him who thinks humanity will succeed and one side that thinks they won't. He's also joking with himself about how people see him as a god.

What's Up With the Zohan

This weekend Adam Sandler's new comedy, "You Don't Mess With the Zohan", is being released in the United States. Sandler plays an Israeli commando-turned New York City barber who falls in love with his Palestinian boss (played by a Jewish Canadian actress of Moroccan descent) and has to fight terrorists on the streets of the Big Apple.

Other than the Chanukah Song, I've never been a fan of Adam Sandler's work. "Anger Management", the least stupidest movie of his I've seen, was mildly amusing mostly because of Jack Nicholson's performance. Still, I'm curious to see "Zohan". It's interesting for me as an Israeli, but I also want to see it because Sandler co-wrote the script with Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel. I loved Apatow's "40-year-old Virgin" and "Knocked Up", and am quite a fan of Smigel's creation, Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog (just shows how immature I am). The New York Times review by A. O. Scott is quite positive.

By the way, from the trailer it is clear Sandler has not mastered the art of imitating the Israeli accent. Usually, Hollywood actors who try to sound Israeli end up sounding Polish or German (which might make sense for Polish- or German-born Israelis, but not for those born in Israel). Sandler, on the other hand, sounds either French or like Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.

So, is the movie going to be great... for me to poop on?