Longtime readers know I'm kind of a sucker for time travel movies. And I can enjoy a good quirky-meets-quirky-and-falls-in-love flick, which is what this really is. It's based on an ad for a time-travel companion originally published in Backwoods Home Magazine (the writer of the ad, John Silveira, is credited as "time travel consultant" on the film.) Three magazine writers (actually, one writer and two interns) from Seattle travel to the small town where the ad was published, looking for the guy who wrote it so they can do a story about him. And the one female intern, Darius (Aubrey Plaza) meets the guy, Kenneth (Mark Duplass, who with his brother Jay served as executive producer.) While she's out "training for the mission" and learning about Kenneth (and getting to like him) her boss Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) is really there to hook up with his old high school girlfriend (oh yeah, he grew up in this town.) And the second intern, an Indian biology major and total nerd named Arnau (Karan Soni)...well he doesn't have much to do until Jeff decides to take him out, get him drunk, and get him laid.
Oh yeah, and there's a time travel plot...kinda. The title, SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED, is actually about the dangers of falling in love, not time travel. And, of course, it's kind of based on a true story and time travel isn't real. But that didn't keep me from rooting for it to work in the end. Even in its cheesy moments (especially the ending) I was on board (although I suspect that's when it would lose most people.)
Running Time: 86 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,948
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Jason goes to Jewfest North--Day 10
Another day up at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley, two more shows.
The first started with a short, THE RABBI AND CESAR CHAVEZ. Director Daniel Robin is the son of a rabbi. And, in fact, his father was a rabbi in Bakersfield who supported César Chávez and even learned about and warned him of a credible plot against his life. Pretty interesting stuff.
And then the feature, PAPIROSEN. It's more of a collection of family movies than a real narrative or traditional documentary. And oftentimes it doesn't really explain what's going on. Director Gaston Solnicki made this film about his family, and mostly about his father Victor, born right at the end of WWII. His (Gaston's) grandmother narrates part of it, and in particular the pain of his father's (Victor's father, Gaston's grandfather) suicide. Or, as he explains to Gaston's nephew Mateo, "he died of sadness." But for most of the movie, I was just confused and bored by what I was seeing. Maybe if I knew the family (and if I saw it a few more times maybe I would) I would be interested. But as it was, this was the first film in the festival where I couldn't find at least some thread to hold onto and carry me through the film.
Then the second film I saw was BROKEN, a drama about troubled schoolkids in a low-income, predominantly African or Muslim neighborhood outside Paris, and the young, brave Jewish teacher who hopes to make a difference in their lives. But this is not the story of the bright teacher who inspires her students. This is a story of a system that is so broken that it can't really help the kids and all the teachers can do is hope to survive. Anna Kagan is the new history teacher in the school. Her class has a number of problem kids, especially Moussa, a black "kid" whose easily the largest person in the film, has anger problems, and is 17 (although this is a third grade class.) The most promising student is Lakdar--or rather was Lakdar. He had a gift for drawing, enough that he saw a way out of poverty by becoming a cartoonist. Problem is, his hand was broken and the overworked doctor in the ER (who happens to be Jewish) set the plaster too tight, resulting in permanent damage. Anna has difficulty gaining the kids respect, trouble in the neighborhood leads to riots. You keep expecting a breakthrough and some epiphany that there is still a way to succeed. But this isn't a fairy tale story, this is the far too common reality. Well acted and well written...and tragic.
Total Running Time: 200 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,861
The first started with a short, THE RABBI AND CESAR CHAVEZ. Director Daniel Robin is the son of a rabbi. And, in fact, his father was a rabbi in Bakersfield who supported César Chávez and even learned about and warned him of a credible plot against his life. Pretty interesting stuff.
And then the feature, PAPIROSEN. It's more of a collection of family movies than a real narrative or traditional documentary. And oftentimes it doesn't really explain what's going on. Director Gaston Solnicki made this film about his family, and mostly about his father Victor, born right at the end of WWII. His (Gaston's) grandmother narrates part of it, and in particular the pain of his father's (Victor's father, Gaston's grandfather) suicide. Or, as he explains to Gaston's nephew Mateo, "he died of sadness." But for most of the movie, I was just confused and bored by what I was seeing. Maybe if I knew the family (and if I saw it a few more times maybe I would) I would be interested. But as it was, this was the first film in the festival where I couldn't find at least some thread to hold onto and carry me through the film.
Then the second film I saw was BROKEN, a drama about troubled schoolkids in a low-income, predominantly African or Muslim neighborhood outside Paris, and the young, brave Jewish teacher who hopes to make a difference in their lives. But this is not the story of the bright teacher who inspires her students. This is a story of a system that is so broken that it can't really help the kids and all the teachers can do is hope to survive. Anna Kagan is the new history teacher in the school. Her class has a number of problem kids, especially Moussa, a black "kid" whose easily the largest person in the film, has anger problems, and is 17 (although this is a third grade class.) The most promising student is Lakdar--or rather was Lakdar. He had a gift for drawing, enough that he saw a way out of poverty by becoming a cartoonist. Problem is, his hand was broken and the overworked doctor in the ER (who happens to be Jewish) set the plaster too tight, resulting in permanent damage. Anna has difficulty gaining the kids respect, trouble in the neighborhood leads to riots. You keep expecting a breakthrough and some epiphany that there is still a way to succeed. But this isn't a fairy tale story, this is the far too common reality. Well acted and well written...and tragic.
Total Running Time: 200 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,861
Monday, July 30, 2012
Jason goes to Jewfest North--Day 9
Two more movies yesterday (Sunday) evening. I've been using this week to catch up on things I missed at the Castro (or a few films that didn't play there.)
First up, a kind of unsettling Israeli drama, INVISIBLE, based on actual events that happened in the 1970's. Nira (Evgenia Dodina) is an editor for a documentary about the Israel-Palestine conflict. She's reviewing footage of IDF soldiers evicting Palestinians from their olive grove. Settlers are demanding they leave, while activists are trying to defend them. And suddenly, she recognizes one of the activists. It takes a while, but she finally remembers from where. Lily (Ronit Elkabetz) and her met at a police lineup decades ago, identifying the serial rapist who attacked them both (known in the media as "The Polite Rapist.") It's not a very nice reason to form a bond, but they become friends and in the process reveal old psychological wounds that had become invisible, which shakes up both of their private lives. It's unsettling, sometimes difficult to watch, and often just plain slow. But it is nice to see two of the greatest Israeli actresses practicing their craft together.
And then the last movie of the night was a bit happier. HELLO, I MUST BE GOING stars Melanie Lynskey (HEAVENLY CREATURES, which in my opinion is still Peter Jackson's finest movie) as a recently divorced woman who has moved back in with her parents. She's depressed and unmotivated, always wears the same ratty t-shirt and sweatpants, and just watches old Marx Brothers movies (the title is a Marx Brothers reference.) Her parents do force her to clean up for a dinner party they're throwing for an important potential client--one who could allow her dad to finally retire and for them to take their "gallivanting the globe" world tour. Instead, at the party, she meets the potential client's 19 year old son and aspiring actor. And they have a bit of a romance, although they have to keep it secret from everyone (she sneaks off in the night claiming to be out renewing her prescription for anti-depressants.) Wacky hijinks ensue, of course, especially because everyone thought the young actor was gay. It's not overtly Jewish, but it's definitely a neurotic, East coast Jewish family. And it's a funny crowd-pleaser, enough to be the opening night film of Sundance.
Total Running Time: 185 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,661
First up, a kind of unsettling Israeli drama, INVISIBLE, based on actual events that happened in the 1970's. Nira (Evgenia Dodina) is an editor for a documentary about the Israel-Palestine conflict. She's reviewing footage of IDF soldiers evicting Palestinians from their olive grove. Settlers are demanding they leave, while activists are trying to defend them. And suddenly, she recognizes one of the activists. It takes a while, but she finally remembers from where. Lily (Ronit Elkabetz) and her met at a police lineup decades ago, identifying the serial rapist who attacked them both (known in the media as "The Polite Rapist.") It's not a very nice reason to form a bond, but they become friends and in the process reveal old psychological wounds that had become invisible, which shakes up both of their private lives. It's unsettling, sometimes difficult to watch, and often just plain slow. But it is nice to see two of the greatest Israeli actresses practicing their craft together.
And then the last movie of the night was a bit happier. HELLO, I MUST BE GOING stars Melanie Lynskey (HEAVENLY CREATURES, which in my opinion is still Peter Jackson's finest movie) as a recently divorced woman who has moved back in with her parents. She's depressed and unmotivated, always wears the same ratty t-shirt and sweatpants, and just watches old Marx Brothers movies (the title is a Marx Brothers reference.) Her parents do force her to clean up for a dinner party they're throwing for an important potential client--one who could allow her dad to finally retire and for them to take their "gallivanting the globe" world tour. Instead, at the party, she meets the potential client's 19 year old son and aspiring actor. And they have a bit of a romance, although they have to keep it secret from everyone (she sneaks off in the night claiming to be out renewing her prescription for anti-depressants.) Wacky hijinks ensue, of course, especially because everyone thought the young actor was gay. It's not overtly Jewish, but it's definitely a neurotic, East coast Jewish family. And it's a funny crowd-pleaser, enough to be the opening night film of Sundance.
Total Running Time: 185 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,661
Jason goes to Jewfest North--Day...8?
I think...it's easy to lose count by this time. Anyway, it was Saturday and the first day in Berkeley/Palo Alto/JCCSF. I was in Palo Alto at the Cinearts for two shows.
First up, the documentary SIX MILLION AND ONE, a holocaust documentary and a family documentary at the same time. It starts with the death of director David Fisher's father, and the discovery of the journal he kept while in Gusen labor camp. A place where the average survival time of a Jew was less than two weeks, he survived over 10 months. It was one of the last camps liberated (a good 4-5 months after Auschwitz,) and he was one of the last to be released. And, like most survivors, he didn't talk about it much, and his own children didn't know the full extent of the horror.
You know, over the years at Jewish Film Festivals and elsewhere I've seen many, many holocaust documentaries, but I'm still surprised by the capacity to shock and horrify me. What really struck me in hearing the descriptions of the torture and death at the camp was how perversely creative they were, as opposed to the stereotype you often get about the efficient, emotionless death machines. Fisher also meets the soldiers who liberated the camp, and hears their horror stories of finding so many people starving they were practically living skeletons (the saddest part is the soldiers gave them food, only to see them immediately die when their stomachs couldn't take it.) And perhaps the most moving part is when Fisher brings his brother and sister to the camp with him and they have a unique opportunity to tour the tunnels (it was an underground aircraft fuselage manufacturing plant) and discover a new appreciation for their father who couldn't say the right words in life but in his diaries revealed to them that even in their happiest moments a part of him was always there (in Gusen.)
Next up was another documentary, again with some Nazi-era sadness, but ultimately a story of a triumphant life of a true mensch. GLICKMAN is the story of Marty Glickman, a New York high school track star who went on to Syracuse and was one of only two Jews on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. In case you forgot, 1936 was the Berlin Olympics, overseen by Hitler. And most people remember Jesse Owens embarrassing Hitler by winning 4 gold medals. But what I didn't realize before was that Owens was originally entered in only 3 events. The day before the 4x100 meter relay--where the Americans were so heavily favored the only way they could lose was by dropping the baton--Glickman and Sam Stoller (the other Jew on the team) were dropped and replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. For the record, Owens protested the move, which Glickman always appreciated, but it was a time and environment when the coach said to do something a black athlete couldn't really defy him. There's a lot of speculation about what was really behind it. The story within the team was there was a rumor that Germany was holding back its best runners to compete in the relay and embarrass the Americans (the Germans finished 4th) so they had to put their best runners in. USOC head Avery Brundage claimed that Glickman and Stoller were only alternates from the start, and never expected to compete (Brundage was a supporter of Hitler's regime, and instrumental in preventing a boycott by convincing the USOC that Germany did, indeed, allow Jews to compete on their team. This, of course, was a lie.)
Anyway, the important thing in this movie is not actually the injustice done to him at the 1936 Olympics. In fact, it's a story of what happens when you pull the rug out from under an 18 year old kid's dreams (of course, with the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics, 1936 turned out to be his only shot.) Many would become bitter and angry at it. Marty went on to have a fine career at Syracuse, was a local celebrity, and became a broadcaster. Nowadays, it seems pretty natural for athletic stars to go into sports broadcasting, but Marty was the first. Before him, sportscasters were broadcasters who happened to broadcast sports, but he was the first jock who understood the games and could call them as if he was playing along. Apparently if you grew up in New York at the right time, he was ubiquitous, but I honestly hadn't heard of him before this movie. He was the voice of the New York football Giants for years, before a contract dispute with the station forced him over to the Jets. He was the voice of the Knicks--really, the voice of the fledgling and struggling NBA for years. He invented much of the terminology--baseline, lane, key, "swish!"--and mentored a young Marv Albert. And that was a big part of his career, too--mentoring the young guys. And that's pretty remarkable in a competitive field with only so many plum jobs, usually an established guy doesn't want to give a hand to some young go-getter who might replace him. He was also great at encouraging kids in youth sports, broadcasting his high school game of the week. He finally got on national TV on HBO, which I never knew actually started out as a predominantly sports-themed station.
And all this time, he called the games but never said much about his playing days or what happened in 1936. It was only some 50 years later when he returned to Berlin and to the Olympic Stadium and he was overcome with all this anger that he had held inside (later, on a third trip to Berlin, he sat in Hitler's box and reveled in the fact that, "I was there and he wasn't." He also came to terms with the fact that compared to what happened to so many other Jews, what happened to him was nothing.)
And that was last Saturday at Jewfest North.
Total Running Time: 177 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,476
First up, the documentary SIX MILLION AND ONE, a holocaust documentary and a family documentary at the same time. It starts with the death of director David Fisher's father, and the discovery of the journal he kept while in Gusen labor camp. A place where the average survival time of a Jew was less than two weeks, he survived over 10 months. It was one of the last camps liberated (a good 4-5 months after Auschwitz,) and he was one of the last to be released. And, like most survivors, he didn't talk about it much, and his own children didn't know the full extent of the horror.
You know, over the years at Jewish Film Festivals and elsewhere I've seen many, many holocaust documentaries, but I'm still surprised by the capacity to shock and horrify me. What really struck me in hearing the descriptions of the torture and death at the camp was how perversely creative they were, as opposed to the stereotype you often get about the efficient, emotionless death machines. Fisher also meets the soldiers who liberated the camp, and hears their horror stories of finding so many people starving they were practically living skeletons (the saddest part is the soldiers gave them food, only to see them immediately die when their stomachs couldn't take it.) And perhaps the most moving part is when Fisher brings his brother and sister to the camp with him and they have a unique opportunity to tour the tunnels (it was an underground aircraft fuselage manufacturing plant) and discover a new appreciation for their father who couldn't say the right words in life but in his diaries revealed to them that even in their happiest moments a part of him was always there (in Gusen.)
Next up was another documentary, again with some Nazi-era sadness, but ultimately a story of a triumphant life of a true mensch. GLICKMAN is the story of Marty Glickman, a New York high school track star who went on to Syracuse and was one of only two Jews on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. In case you forgot, 1936 was the Berlin Olympics, overseen by Hitler. And most people remember Jesse Owens embarrassing Hitler by winning 4 gold medals. But what I didn't realize before was that Owens was originally entered in only 3 events. The day before the 4x100 meter relay--where the Americans were so heavily favored the only way they could lose was by dropping the baton--Glickman and Sam Stoller (the other Jew on the team) were dropped and replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. For the record, Owens protested the move, which Glickman always appreciated, but it was a time and environment when the coach said to do something a black athlete couldn't really defy him. There's a lot of speculation about what was really behind it. The story within the team was there was a rumor that Germany was holding back its best runners to compete in the relay and embarrass the Americans (the Germans finished 4th) so they had to put their best runners in. USOC head Avery Brundage claimed that Glickman and Stoller were only alternates from the start, and never expected to compete (Brundage was a supporter of Hitler's regime, and instrumental in preventing a boycott by convincing the USOC that Germany did, indeed, allow Jews to compete on their team. This, of course, was a lie.)
Anyway, the important thing in this movie is not actually the injustice done to him at the 1936 Olympics. In fact, it's a story of what happens when you pull the rug out from under an 18 year old kid's dreams (of course, with the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics, 1936 turned out to be his only shot.) Many would become bitter and angry at it. Marty went on to have a fine career at Syracuse, was a local celebrity, and became a broadcaster. Nowadays, it seems pretty natural for athletic stars to go into sports broadcasting, but Marty was the first. Before him, sportscasters were broadcasters who happened to broadcast sports, but he was the first jock who understood the games and could call them as if he was playing along. Apparently if you grew up in New York at the right time, he was ubiquitous, but I honestly hadn't heard of him before this movie. He was the voice of the New York football Giants for years, before a contract dispute with the station forced him over to the Jets. He was the voice of the Knicks--really, the voice of the fledgling and struggling NBA for years. He invented much of the terminology--baseline, lane, key, "swish!"--and mentored a young Marv Albert. And that was a big part of his career, too--mentoring the young guys. And that's pretty remarkable in a competitive field with only so many plum jobs, usually an established guy doesn't want to give a hand to some young go-getter who might replace him. He was also great at encouraging kids in youth sports, broadcasting his high school game of the week. He finally got on national TV on HBO, which I never knew actually started out as a predominantly sports-themed station.
And all this time, he called the games but never said much about his playing days or what happened in 1936. It was only some 50 years later when he returned to Berlin and to the Olympic Stadium and he was overcome with all this anger that he had held inside (later, on a third trip to Berlin, he sat in Hitler's box and reveled in the fact that, "I was there and he wasn't." He also came to terms with the fact that compared to what happened to so many other Jews, what happened to him was nothing.)
And that was last Saturday at Jewfest North.
Total Running Time: 177 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,476
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Jason watches the Thrillpeddlers do Marat/Sade
I've been a fan of the Thrillpeddlers since back when they were doing their Shocktoberfest show at the old Odeon Bar at the intersection of Mission and Valencia (yes, go down far enough and these parallel streets meet.) I was thrilled when they got their own space--The Hypnodrome, a cozy little place under the freeway for their Grand Guignol and Theatre of the Absurd happenings. But lately they're shows have been so popular that while it's still relatively easy to get tickets you do have to plan in advance. It's not so easy to just show up on the day of the show and get a ticket.
So I'm extra thrilled that their latest show (only one more performance on Sunday evening--last chance everyone!) is in the much larger and beautiful Brava Theater. And I'm extra impressed that they had a pretty full house last Friday (not quite sold out, but pretty darn full.)
And the show certainly deserved such a large crowd. It's their take on Peter Weiss' MARAT/SADE (English translation by Geoffrey Skelton,) full title: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.
So the actors have the chaotically free experience of playing insane people playing roles in a play (complete with an on-stage audience of the director of the asylum and two lovely high society ladies.) Marat is played by a paranoiac, his assassin Charlotte Corday is played by a narcoleptic, her completely platonic friend is played by a sex addict. And various other inmates make up the supporting cast and band. And, of course, it's all overseen by the infamous Marquis de Sade.
Of course, the premise of insanity allows the inmates to freely deviate from the script and spout their own banned opinions, while the asylum director runs on stage to protest such indecency and force the proceedings back on track.
Never lost is the fact that modern day questions of revolution, human rights, the plight of the poor, and class conflicts are really behind everything. Although never mentioned in the play, the set design is full of references to modern American politics, including Paul Ryan, Gingrich, the Tea Party, and Obamacare. And so little bon mots like, "My patriotism is bigger than yours" ring true to life today. Or even, "You can't have a revolution without a little general copulation" (leading into the orgy scene featuring plenty of nudity.) And the final call to take a side and take action is easily applicable to modern life. Heck, I want my rights and I don't care how. Give me the revolution...NOW!
One more chance for you all to see this. Tickets here.
So I'm extra thrilled that their latest show (only one more performance on Sunday evening--last chance everyone!) is in the much larger and beautiful Brava Theater. And I'm extra impressed that they had a pretty full house last Friday (not quite sold out, but pretty darn full.)
And the show certainly deserved such a large crowd. It's their take on Peter Weiss' MARAT/SADE (English translation by Geoffrey Skelton,) full title: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.
So the actors have the chaotically free experience of playing insane people playing roles in a play (complete with an on-stage audience of the director of the asylum and two lovely high society ladies.) Marat is played by a paranoiac, his assassin Charlotte Corday is played by a narcoleptic, her completely platonic friend is played by a sex addict. And various other inmates make up the supporting cast and band. And, of course, it's all overseen by the infamous Marquis de Sade.
Of course, the premise of insanity allows the inmates to freely deviate from the script and spout their own banned opinions, while the asylum director runs on stage to protest such indecency and force the proceedings back on track.
Never lost is the fact that modern day questions of revolution, human rights, the plight of the poor, and class conflicts are really behind everything. Although never mentioned in the play, the set design is full of references to modern American politics, including Paul Ryan, Gingrich, the Tea Party, and Obamacare. And so little bon mots like, "My patriotism is bigger than yours" ring true to life today. Or even, "You can't have a revolution without a little general copulation" (leading into the orgy scene featuring plenty of nudity.) And the final call to take a side and take action is easily applicable to modern life. Heck, I want my rights and I don't care how. Give me the revolution...NOW!
One more chance for you all to see this. Tickets here.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Jason goes to Jewfest North--Day 7
Just four movies on the Castro closing night. But the festival is far from over--it continues another weekend in San Francisco (at the JCCSF,) a full week in Berkeley (Roda Theatre) and Palo Alto (CineArts,) an extra weekend in San Rafael (Rafael Film Center), and for the first time an extra bonus Monday in Oakland (Piedmont Theater.)
My day started with a loving look at a Florida retirement community, KING'S POINT. Five Jewish seniors, most (if not all?) from New York, pontificating on life, love, friendship, and aging.
By the way, I don't want to say this festival has an elderly population, but when they asked everyone who's on Facebook to stand up, I was the only one.
I also don't want to say this festival has an elderly population, but it's the only festival I know that asks you to remember them in your will.
Those weren't jokes, they were absolutely true.
Okay, back to the movies with WHITE: A MEMOIR IN COLOR, a new self-exploration documentary by Joel Katz (who made the excellent STRANGE FRUIT which played at the festival in 2002.) This time, he's making a very personal exploration of race issues in his life, from the point of view of a white man. Of course, he is Jewish and in some places at some times that wouldn't have counted as "white" but he's pale-skinned, doesn't look too Jewish, and it's present day America, so Jew = White. His wife Leah, while from a very similar Jewish background, is more olive-skinned. But again, she passes as white. His father was actually one of the few white professors at Howard University (he started the Chemical Engineering department) and was there during the Civil Rights movement. He supported Civil Rights (part of the reason he went to teach at Howard,) but it still became kind of uncomfortable when a lot of the rhetoric turned in the "blame whitey" direction...and he was the only whitey on campus. Now back to modern days--Joel and Leah are looking to adopt, and the application gets very specific on questions of race. Which is unsettling, but it makes sense. You have to understand that two white parents with a black child will get looks when they're out in public. And there's the question of can white parents provide a black child with a connection to his or her heritage? And how important is that? Is Curious George a slave allegory and is it appropriate for a white parent to read it to a black child? This is the jumping off point, and the movie asks more questions than it can answer. The most interesting point is how "color blindness"--which was the goal when I was a kid--also blinds a white person (like myself) to the advantages afforded them on the basis of his whiteness. Even if official opportunities are equal, white people are more likely to be born in better circumstances where it's easier to take advantage of those opportunities. Even if you weren't born rich but were in the middle class, would your parents have made as much money--even with the same skills--if they were black? If they did, on the same income could they have purchased a home for the same price and got a mortgage with the same low interest rate if they weren't white? While (according to the movie, I didn't independently look up the statistics) the income gap between whites and blacks has closed somewhat, the wealth gap is still pretty big--on the order of 10 to 1, meaning the average white baby is born into 10 times the wealth of the average black baby.
My big takeaway is this: That while color blindness was the goal of my generation when we were growing up, it's not enough. And yes, that means the goalposts have changed and that can be frustrating to some people. But when your goal is to constantly improve, you have to keep changing the goalposts. Otherwise, you don't keep moving. That's how continual improvement works.
Next up was another personal family documentary, this time a detective story looking into the past. THE FLAT starts with director Arnon Goldfinger cleaning out his recently deceased grandmother's flat in Tel Aviv. In it, he discovers some old copies of Der Angriff, one of the worst Nazi propaganda newspapers of the day. Specifically, the were copies that featured the travelogue of Baron von Mildenstein, and his pro-Zionist series on "A Nazi Visits Palestine." He was the leader of the 1930's Nazi support for Zionism (well, they wanted to get rid of the Jews, and sending them to Palestine was an okay solution.) And his companion on those journeys were a Jewish couple named Kurt and Gerda Tuchler. And they happen to be Arnon's grandparents. This bit of the family history had been kept secret before, but Arnon delves in and makes some remarkable finds. He meets Mildenstein's daughter, he delves into the official records, and he discovers there's more to the story even than she knows. I won't go into details, but it plays out like a riveting detective story but also works as an exploration of the importance of the past, and whether it is best to leave some details forgotten.
Then next up was a narrative (oddly, the only non-documentary of the day,) SHARQIYA. It's a story of Bedouin life, and particularly Kamel and his family. Kamel is a proud Israeli Bedouin. He served his time in the army, he works as a security guard in a bus station. He's also a self-taught electrician who fixes TV's and DVD players for his little village, where he lives with his brother Khaled and sister-in-law Nadia. It's a tough life, but he's getting by. Only problem is, they didn't have an official government permit to build on the land (even though his grandfather lived there since before statehood) so the government puts a demolition order on their house (really just a simple shack of wood and corrugated aluminum siding.) It's a subtle and moving story, with excellent acting (by all non-professional actors) and does a great job of showing the uneasy tension between Israel and its Bedouin citizens.
And finally, one more documentary, and another music movie (Jews and Tunes, a theme of the festival.) Did you know that "Save the Last Dance For Me" was written by a guy who couldn't dance. That was Doc Pomus, a pudgy Brooklyn Jew crippled by polio. And the movie A.K.A. DOC POMUS speeds through his remarkable life and the remarkable list of songs (more than 1,000) that he wrote. It's just one of those stories that seems too weird to be true (I can't say too "good" because there's a lot of sadness in it.) Crippled by polio, he found a life through music. First he was a blues singer (where he surprised a lot of people that a white Jewish kid could sing the blues so well) and then a song writer...in fact, a verified hitmaker. He was royalty in the famed Brill Building, until the singer-songwriters of the 60's sort of killed that industry (oddly, Bob Dylan much later came to him for help writing a song.) He was a hitmaker for Elvis Presley, particularly in his movies years (not only did he write "Save the Last Dance For Me" without being able to dance, he wrote "Viva Las Vegas" without ever visiting Vegas.) And...well, I don't want to spoil too much of the movie. I'll just say I had never heard of Doc Pomus before, and learning about him and his tragic but triumphant life was a treat.
And as a bonus treat, we got a brief concert of Doc Pomus fans by local Bay Area musicians. I honestly don't know the music scene very well, but they were Andy Cabic (who admitted he was named after Andy William--Doc Pomus wrote his hit "Can't Get Used to Losing You,") Eric D. Johnson, Kelly Stoltz, and Sonny Smith. And they did a fantastic job with his biggest hits, of course ending on "Save the Last Dance For Me."
And that was it for Jewfest North at the Castro. I'll be splitting time between Berkeley and Palo Alto, just catching up on stuff I missed or stuff that didn't play at the Castro.
Total Running Time: 367 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,300
My day started with a loving look at a Florida retirement community, KING'S POINT. Five Jewish seniors, most (if not all?) from New York, pontificating on life, love, friendship, and aging.
By the way, I don't want to say this festival has an elderly population, but when they asked everyone who's on Facebook to stand up, I was the only one.
I also don't want to say this festival has an elderly population, but it's the only festival I know that asks you to remember them in your will.
Those weren't jokes, they were absolutely true.
Okay, back to the movies with WHITE: A MEMOIR IN COLOR, a new self-exploration documentary by Joel Katz (who made the excellent STRANGE FRUIT which played at the festival in 2002.) This time, he's making a very personal exploration of race issues in his life, from the point of view of a white man. Of course, he is Jewish and in some places at some times that wouldn't have counted as "white" but he's pale-skinned, doesn't look too Jewish, and it's present day America, so Jew = White. His wife Leah, while from a very similar Jewish background, is more olive-skinned. But again, she passes as white. His father was actually one of the few white professors at Howard University (he started the Chemical Engineering department) and was there during the Civil Rights movement. He supported Civil Rights (part of the reason he went to teach at Howard,) but it still became kind of uncomfortable when a lot of the rhetoric turned in the "blame whitey" direction...and he was the only whitey on campus. Now back to modern days--Joel and Leah are looking to adopt, and the application gets very specific on questions of race. Which is unsettling, but it makes sense. You have to understand that two white parents with a black child will get looks when they're out in public. And there's the question of can white parents provide a black child with a connection to his or her heritage? And how important is that? Is Curious George a slave allegory and is it appropriate for a white parent to read it to a black child? This is the jumping off point, and the movie asks more questions than it can answer. The most interesting point is how "color blindness"--which was the goal when I was a kid--also blinds a white person (like myself) to the advantages afforded them on the basis of his whiteness. Even if official opportunities are equal, white people are more likely to be born in better circumstances where it's easier to take advantage of those opportunities. Even if you weren't born rich but were in the middle class, would your parents have made as much money--even with the same skills--if they were black? If they did, on the same income could they have purchased a home for the same price and got a mortgage with the same low interest rate if they weren't white? While (according to the movie, I didn't independently look up the statistics) the income gap between whites and blacks has closed somewhat, the wealth gap is still pretty big--on the order of 10 to 1, meaning the average white baby is born into 10 times the wealth of the average black baby.
My big takeaway is this: That while color blindness was the goal of my generation when we were growing up, it's not enough. And yes, that means the goalposts have changed and that can be frustrating to some people. But when your goal is to constantly improve, you have to keep changing the goalposts. Otherwise, you don't keep moving. That's how continual improvement works.
Next up was another personal family documentary, this time a detective story looking into the past. THE FLAT starts with director Arnon Goldfinger cleaning out his recently deceased grandmother's flat in Tel Aviv. In it, he discovers some old copies of Der Angriff, one of the worst Nazi propaganda newspapers of the day. Specifically, the were copies that featured the travelogue of Baron von Mildenstein, and his pro-Zionist series on "A Nazi Visits Palestine." He was the leader of the 1930's Nazi support for Zionism (well, they wanted to get rid of the Jews, and sending them to Palestine was an okay solution.) And his companion on those journeys were a Jewish couple named Kurt and Gerda Tuchler. And they happen to be Arnon's grandparents. This bit of the family history had been kept secret before, but Arnon delves in and makes some remarkable finds. He meets Mildenstein's daughter, he delves into the official records, and he discovers there's more to the story even than she knows. I won't go into details, but it plays out like a riveting detective story but also works as an exploration of the importance of the past, and whether it is best to leave some details forgotten.
Then next up was a narrative (oddly, the only non-documentary of the day,) SHARQIYA. It's a story of Bedouin life, and particularly Kamel and his family. Kamel is a proud Israeli Bedouin. He served his time in the army, he works as a security guard in a bus station. He's also a self-taught electrician who fixes TV's and DVD players for his little village, where he lives with his brother Khaled and sister-in-law Nadia. It's a tough life, but he's getting by. Only problem is, they didn't have an official government permit to build on the land (even though his grandfather lived there since before statehood) so the government puts a demolition order on their house (really just a simple shack of wood and corrugated aluminum siding.) It's a subtle and moving story, with excellent acting (by all non-professional actors) and does a great job of showing the uneasy tension between Israel and its Bedouin citizens.
And finally, one more documentary, and another music movie (Jews and Tunes, a theme of the festival.) Did you know that "Save the Last Dance For Me" was written by a guy who couldn't dance. That was Doc Pomus, a pudgy Brooklyn Jew crippled by polio. And the movie A.K.A. DOC POMUS speeds through his remarkable life and the remarkable list of songs (more than 1,000) that he wrote. It's just one of those stories that seems too weird to be true (I can't say too "good" because there's a lot of sadness in it.) Crippled by polio, he found a life through music. First he was a blues singer (where he surprised a lot of people that a white Jewish kid could sing the blues so well) and then a song writer...in fact, a verified hitmaker. He was royalty in the famed Brill Building, until the singer-songwriters of the 60's sort of killed that industry (oddly, Bob Dylan much later came to him for help writing a song.) He was a hitmaker for Elvis Presley, particularly in his movies years (not only did he write "Save the Last Dance For Me" without being able to dance, he wrote "Viva Las Vegas" without ever visiting Vegas.) And...well, I don't want to spoil too much of the movie. I'll just say I had never heard of Doc Pomus before, and learning about him and his tragic but triumphant life was a treat.
And as a bonus treat, we got a brief concert of Doc Pomus fans by local Bay Area musicians. I honestly don't know the music scene very well, but they were Andy Cabic (who admitted he was named after Andy William--Doc Pomus wrote his hit "Can't Get Used to Losing You,") Eric D. Johnson, Kelly Stoltz, and Sonny Smith. And they did a fantastic job with his biggest hits, of course ending on "Save the Last Dance For Me."
And that was it for Jewfest North at the Castro. I'll be splitting time between Berkeley and Palo Alto, just catching up on stuff I missed or stuff that didn't play at the Castro.
Total Running Time: 367 minutes
My Total Minutes: 294,300
Friday, July 27, 2012
Jason goes to Jewfest North--Day 6
5 more shows on Wednesday, including lots of shorts, so here we go:
First up was the shorts program The Best of Tel Aviv University. Student films from Israel's oldest and largest film school. Here's the lineup:
TASNIM: Coffee, Bedouins, a stubborn girl, a father, and the prospect of a second wife.
BARBIE BLUES: A dead critter in the pool, a helpful neighbor, and one thing leads to another...
STUDIO VAROUJ: The last days of a famed Jerusalem photo studio. Would've been a good companion piece to LIFE IN STILLS, too.
AUDITION: Coffee, and an Arab actor auditioning for a female Israeli director. The audition maybe goes one step too far...
STITCHES: The stitches are from a recent c-section (with complications,) as a young lesbian couple enters into motherhood.
The next show was a longish short followed by a shortish feature. MY NEIGHBORHOOD is the story of an Arab-Israeli neighborhood in East Jerusalem where the families who have been there for decades (if not generations) are faced with eviction based on a court ruling and an unjust law (in a nutshell, if settler groups can produce a deed--ranging back to the days of the Ottoman Empire--to the property showing it belonged to a Jewish family at one time, the law says it's Jewish land. Arabs with similar deeds have no standing under the law.) It's also the story of the conscientious Jews who protest to stop the evictions (for now the evictions have stopped due to public pressure, but the families are still living under the threat of eviction at any time.) For more information, visit Just Vision.
That was the lead in to the feature AMEER GOT HIS GUN. In Israel, military service at age 18 in mandatory, with a few exceptions. There are the normal medical exceptions, of course. And Arab Israeli citizens don't have to serve, because they might be a security threat. Nevertheless, every year about 20 Arab Israelis volunteer for military service, and this narrative documentary follows one--Ameer Abu Ria. He comes from a long line of military men, and wants to continue the tradition. The movie follows him through boot camp and his first assignment as a border policeman. Of course, he gets it from both side. Arabs calling him a traitor, Jews not trusting him. Some pretty tense conversations with his fellow soldiers (more than once you here something along the lines of 'Wipe them all out...except for Ameer and his family.' It's even followed by a 'just don't breed too much, like you people do. Two or three children are enough.') He does earn quite a bit of respect when it turns out he's good at his job and catches a guy trying to sneak a knife across the border. Catching a knife is kind of a feather in the cap of a border policeman. And it's a nice moment of respect from his peers. But mostly, the movie is about the difficult position of an Arab in the Israeli military, and the uniquely strong character it takes to deal with that.
Next up was another short and feature pairing. The short, SEVEN MINUTES IN THE WARSAW GHETTO was one of the most amazing pieces of art I've ever seen. It's a stop-motion animated piece about a child living in the ghetto, searching for food. And it's based on a true story. I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say the entire audience gasped at it. And just a bit of technical information about it--the eyes on the puppets were real human eyes digitally added to the puppets (who otherwise were very obviously and intentionally shown to be puppets--even showing the joints in the puppets.) Director Johan Oettinger (from Denmark, and he was big enough to dwarf program director Jay Rosenblatt on stage) talked about the interesting challenges and opportunities of directing eye-only actors.
Well, that was the lead-in to ROMAN POLANSKI: A FILM MEMOIR. Polanski is one of the most interesting filmmakers with one of the most controversial private lives in the world today. The film was mostly shot as a conversation during his house arrest in Switzerland between himself and his friend and producer Andrew Braunsberg. It's an interesting look at his life and juxtaposes scenes from his movies very well to show how often he's being autobiographical. Especially in THE PIANIST, in which many scenes are based on his memories as a child surviving the Holocaust (his mother wasn't so lucky.) With that, and his very pregnant wife Sharon Tate murdered by the Manson family, you realize the reason for his exile from the U.S. might not even make the list of top 5 most dramatic moments of his life. But I have to talk about it, because that's what makes him controversial to this day, and it's the biggest weakness of the film. In 1977 Polanski was arrested for multiple counts relating to sex with a minor. Now, Polanski did strike a plea deal to plead guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in exchange for a lighter sentence. Problem was, the sentence became a moving target. And ultimately (according to the interview,) it was only when the judge was threatening him with an indefinite amount of jail time (basically he gets out when the judge finally decides to let him out...which I didn't even know was legal) followed by deportation that he decided to skip the country. Well...fair enough, but this is the problem with being interviewed by a friend (along with the fact that Andrew often finished Roman's answers.) There's no attempt to tell the judge's side of the story, or how his rulings might make sense. Judging from this movie, the judge was simply madly bent on punishing Polanski despite what everyone else asked for. And more importantly, it doesn't go at all into what he did to the girl. It just leaves you with "unlawful sex with a minor." Well, does "minor" mean a 17 year old (when the age of consent in California is 18) or younger? (A: she was 13.) Was the sex "unlawful" just because she was under age but still consensual? (A: he allegedly drugged her and then violated every hole, each time with her saying, "no.") And even with the victim now saying to just let it go...well, this is still what makes me so conflicted about the man. Perhaps if he had done his time legally (I'm not going to argue that he hasn't been punished) and it was officially cleared off the books, we could move on. And maybe the judge made the process unbearable and he was rational to run away. But ultimately it's his fault that this is still hanging over him, and is the forefront of any conversation about him.
One final note, just in fairness to the film. The overly friendly tone would be inappropriate if it was supposed to be a hard-hitting interview. But Andrew reveals right away that he's Roman's friend, and describes the project as sitting down for a conversation. Roman even reveals that he's never had much time for himself and that he is treating his house arrest as a "monastic retreat." And that in itself was very interesting.
Next up was a feature narrative about young people on opposite sides of the Israel/Palestine wall learning to understand a bit more about each other. Like the spotlight feature THE OTHER SON, the feature A BOTTLE IN THE GAZA SEA is a French-Israeli production, and stars Mahmoud Shalabi (who played Yacine's older brother Bilal in THE OTHER SON.) He plays Naim, who is living in Gaza and finds a bottle with a message in it on the beach. It's from an Israeli girl who recently moved with her family from France. Her name is Tal and she recently witnessed a suicide bombing and wanted to ask anyone in Gaza how someone could do such a thing. Naive question, to be sure, and Naim's original response (she provides an e-mail address) is bitter and sarcastic. But she keeps on, and eventually they become something of pen pals (or e-pen pals? I'm showing my age with that term, aren't I?) Anyway, there relationship starts pretty tense, and even after they are on friendly terms, there's still difficulty with their situation. There's a bit when Hamas soldiers suspect Naim is an informant, and he has to stay quiet for a while (although they start e-mailing in French and he claims she's his French teacher.) The moments when there are bombings on either side and the e-mail with worry for each other are pretty nice. Ultimately, it's a story of people who are geographically close (Jerusalem and Gaza are 73 km away) but separated by much much more and trying to break down that separation. And without giving too much away, the ending expertly underlines that.
And finally, we ended the night with Henry Jaglom's paean to actors, actresses, and the families with the strength to not disown them. JUST 45 MINUTES FROM BROADWAY is an adaptation of his play of the same name (complete with curtain effects) about a family of actors--descendants of the Yiddish stage--and their Passover weekend in their secluded wooded home. The elder daughter Betsy (Julie Davis)--the only one to reject the life of an actress and embrace "civilian" life--brings home her fiancee (Judd Nelson, the only member of the cast who wasn't in the original play.) And, of course, everyone has to be incredibly dramatic around him. In fact, melodramatic is a better word, and to the point where it's often kind of annoying (but I assume that's kind of the point. Or at least it's the point for certain audience members.) And no one is more melodramatic than the younger sister and appropriately named Pandora (frequent Jaglom collaborator Tanna Frederick.) I won't get into the plot details, but needless to say everyone creates the necessary drama they need to feel...I guess "right" if not comfortable. And the point (underlined both by a monologue and by the structure of a play-within-a-film-based-on-the-play) is that the line between real life and acting is blurry to say the least. After all, if someone gives you sad news about their life that doesn't affect you directly, do you express sadness because you're really sad or because social convention teaches you to act sad in that moment?
Oh, and as an aside, I normally don't say too much about this, but it was shot on digital video and it was interesting how the aesthetics of digital vs. film worked well. It gave it more of an immediacy that worked well with it's origins as a play. It was like a play with very realistic production values (so you don't actually see the stage, just the house, trees, etc.) and this was the performance they decided to videotape for posterity.
Both Henry Jaglom and Tanna Frederick were there for a Q&A afterwards. The most interesting parts were:
1. Henry Jaglom admitted that most actors and actresses he knows come from "civilian" families and they're the only dramatic ones. So he wrote it from the idea of reversing that dynamic.
2. Tanna Frederick revealed that she considered her role (and all her roles in Jaglom's films) as a way of her playing Henry--or at least Henry's inner girl. He had never heard this before.
Total Running Time: 481 minutes
My Total Minutes: 293,933
First up was the shorts program The Best of Tel Aviv University. Student films from Israel's oldest and largest film school. Here's the lineup:
TASNIM: Coffee, Bedouins, a stubborn girl, a father, and the prospect of a second wife.
BARBIE BLUES: A dead critter in the pool, a helpful neighbor, and one thing leads to another...
STUDIO VAROUJ: The last days of a famed Jerusalem photo studio. Would've been a good companion piece to LIFE IN STILLS, too.
AUDITION: Coffee, and an Arab actor auditioning for a female Israeli director. The audition maybe goes one step too far...
STITCHES: The stitches are from a recent c-section (with complications,) as a young lesbian couple enters into motherhood.
The next show was a longish short followed by a shortish feature. MY NEIGHBORHOOD is the story of an Arab-Israeli neighborhood in East Jerusalem where the families who have been there for decades (if not generations) are faced with eviction based on a court ruling and an unjust law (in a nutshell, if settler groups can produce a deed--ranging back to the days of the Ottoman Empire--to the property showing it belonged to a Jewish family at one time, the law says it's Jewish land. Arabs with similar deeds have no standing under the law.) It's also the story of the conscientious Jews who protest to stop the evictions (for now the evictions have stopped due to public pressure, but the families are still living under the threat of eviction at any time.) For more information, visit Just Vision.
That was the lead in to the feature AMEER GOT HIS GUN. In Israel, military service at age 18 in mandatory, with a few exceptions. There are the normal medical exceptions, of course. And Arab Israeli citizens don't have to serve, because they might be a security threat. Nevertheless, every year about 20 Arab Israelis volunteer for military service, and this narrative documentary follows one--Ameer Abu Ria. He comes from a long line of military men, and wants to continue the tradition. The movie follows him through boot camp and his first assignment as a border policeman. Of course, he gets it from both side. Arabs calling him a traitor, Jews not trusting him. Some pretty tense conversations with his fellow soldiers (more than once you here something along the lines of 'Wipe them all out...except for Ameer and his family.' It's even followed by a 'just don't breed too much, like you people do. Two or three children are enough.') He does earn quite a bit of respect when it turns out he's good at his job and catches a guy trying to sneak a knife across the border. Catching a knife is kind of a feather in the cap of a border policeman. And it's a nice moment of respect from his peers. But mostly, the movie is about the difficult position of an Arab in the Israeli military, and the uniquely strong character it takes to deal with that.
Next up was another short and feature pairing. The short, SEVEN MINUTES IN THE WARSAW GHETTO was one of the most amazing pieces of art I've ever seen. It's a stop-motion animated piece about a child living in the ghetto, searching for food. And it's based on a true story. I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say the entire audience gasped at it. And just a bit of technical information about it--the eyes on the puppets were real human eyes digitally added to the puppets (who otherwise were very obviously and intentionally shown to be puppets--even showing the joints in the puppets.) Director Johan Oettinger (from Denmark, and he was big enough to dwarf program director Jay Rosenblatt on stage) talked about the interesting challenges and opportunities of directing eye-only actors.
Well, that was the lead-in to ROMAN POLANSKI: A FILM MEMOIR. Polanski is one of the most interesting filmmakers with one of the most controversial private lives in the world today. The film was mostly shot as a conversation during his house arrest in Switzerland between himself and his friend and producer Andrew Braunsberg. It's an interesting look at his life and juxtaposes scenes from his movies very well to show how often he's being autobiographical. Especially in THE PIANIST, in which many scenes are based on his memories as a child surviving the Holocaust (his mother wasn't so lucky.) With that, and his very pregnant wife Sharon Tate murdered by the Manson family, you realize the reason for his exile from the U.S. might not even make the list of top 5 most dramatic moments of his life. But I have to talk about it, because that's what makes him controversial to this day, and it's the biggest weakness of the film. In 1977 Polanski was arrested for multiple counts relating to sex with a minor. Now, Polanski did strike a plea deal to plead guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in exchange for a lighter sentence. Problem was, the sentence became a moving target. And ultimately (according to the interview,) it was only when the judge was threatening him with an indefinite amount of jail time (basically he gets out when the judge finally decides to let him out...which I didn't even know was legal) followed by deportation that he decided to skip the country. Well...fair enough, but this is the problem with being interviewed by a friend (along with the fact that Andrew often finished Roman's answers.) There's no attempt to tell the judge's side of the story, or how his rulings might make sense. Judging from this movie, the judge was simply madly bent on punishing Polanski despite what everyone else asked for. And more importantly, it doesn't go at all into what he did to the girl. It just leaves you with "unlawful sex with a minor." Well, does "minor" mean a 17 year old (when the age of consent in California is 18) or younger? (A: she was 13.) Was the sex "unlawful" just because she was under age but still consensual? (A: he allegedly drugged her and then violated every hole, each time with her saying, "no.") And even with the victim now saying to just let it go...well, this is still what makes me so conflicted about the man. Perhaps if he had done his time legally (I'm not going to argue that he hasn't been punished) and it was officially cleared off the books, we could move on. And maybe the judge made the process unbearable and he was rational to run away. But ultimately it's his fault that this is still hanging over him, and is the forefront of any conversation about him.
One final note, just in fairness to the film. The overly friendly tone would be inappropriate if it was supposed to be a hard-hitting interview. But Andrew reveals right away that he's Roman's friend, and describes the project as sitting down for a conversation. Roman even reveals that he's never had much time for himself and that he is treating his house arrest as a "monastic retreat." And that in itself was very interesting.
Next up was a feature narrative about young people on opposite sides of the Israel/Palestine wall learning to understand a bit more about each other. Like the spotlight feature THE OTHER SON, the feature A BOTTLE IN THE GAZA SEA is a French-Israeli production, and stars Mahmoud Shalabi (who played Yacine's older brother Bilal in THE OTHER SON.) He plays Naim, who is living in Gaza and finds a bottle with a message in it on the beach. It's from an Israeli girl who recently moved with her family from France. Her name is Tal and she recently witnessed a suicide bombing and wanted to ask anyone in Gaza how someone could do such a thing. Naive question, to be sure, and Naim's original response (she provides an e-mail address) is bitter and sarcastic. But she keeps on, and eventually they become something of pen pals (or e-pen pals? I'm showing my age with that term, aren't I?) Anyway, there relationship starts pretty tense, and even after they are on friendly terms, there's still difficulty with their situation. There's a bit when Hamas soldiers suspect Naim is an informant, and he has to stay quiet for a while (although they start e-mailing in French and he claims she's his French teacher.) The moments when there are bombings on either side and the e-mail with worry for each other are pretty nice. Ultimately, it's a story of people who are geographically close (Jerusalem and Gaza are 73 km away) but separated by much much more and trying to break down that separation. And without giving too much away, the ending expertly underlines that.
And finally, we ended the night with Henry Jaglom's paean to actors, actresses, and the families with the strength to not disown them. JUST 45 MINUTES FROM BROADWAY is an adaptation of his play of the same name (complete with curtain effects) about a family of actors--descendants of the Yiddish stage--and their Passover weekend in their secluded wooded home. The elder daughter Betsy (Julie Davis)--the only one to reject the life of an actress and embrace "civilian" life--brings home her fiancee (Judd Nelson, the only member of the cast who wasn't in the original play.) And, of course, everyone has to be incredibly dramatic around him. In fact, melodramatic is a better word, and to the point where it's often kind of annoying (but I assume that's kind of the point. Or at least it's the point for certain audience members.) And no one is more melodramatic than the younger sister and appropriately named Pandora (frequent Jaglom collaborator Tanna Frederick.) I won't get into the plot details, but needless to say everyone creates the necessary drama they need to feel...I guess "right" if not comfortable. And the point (underlined both by a monologue and by the structure of a play-within-a-film-based-on-the-play) is that the line between real life and acting is blurry to say the least. After all, if someone gives you sad news about their life that doesn't affect you directly, do you express sadness because you're really sad or because social convention teaches you to act sad in that moment?
Oh, and as an aside, I normally don't say too much about this, but it was shot on digital video and it was interesting how the aesthetics of digital vs. film worked well. It gave it more of an immediacy that worked well with it's origins as a play. It was like a play with very realistic production values (so you don't actually see the stage, just the house, trees, etc.) and this was the performance they decided to videotape for posterity.
Both Henry Jaglom and Tanna Frederick were there for a Q&A afterwards. The most interesting parts were:
1. Henry Jaglom admitted that most actors and actresses he knows come from "civilian" families and they're the only dramatic ones. So he wrote it from the idea of reversing that dynamic.
2. Tanna Frederick revealed that she considered her role (and all her roles in Jaglom's films) as a way of her playing Henry--or at least Henry's inner girl. He had never heard this before.
Total Running Time: 481 minutes
My Total Minutes: 293,933
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