Eytan Heller’s creative video to inspire people to visualize what could be in the Middle East in 2018 (part of our Imagine 2018 campaign) has been nominated as one of 24 finalists (out of several hundred contenders) for the Viral Video Awards.
Check it out and vote for it.
http://www.viralvideoaward.com/
When the movie Life is Beautiful came out back in 1997, I felt a gnawing guilt at enjoying the movie so much, when the protagonist, as a concentration camp prisoner, found a way to laugh and make others laugh, amidst dehumanizing circumstances. Could a sense of humor have a place in such a dark episode in humanity?
After overcoming the tears from the final scene, I called my Dad and asked him whether people actually laughed in a concentration camp. I was surprised to learn that indeed, the jokes his Dad told may have been the only thing that kept him and other inmates at their bunker in Dachau going – finding some crumbs of humanity to feed their frail hearts, to keep them going. In fact, in a weird way, my Dad felt Life Is Beautiful was among the movies that best captured his experience as a kid protected by his father (my grandfather), who refused to give up his ability to smile even in – or particularly amidst – such adverse moments.
This weekend we saw Counterfeiters, and I wish I had my Dad around to ask him what he thought of the movie.
I wish I could ask him how he related to the poignant dilemmas presented in the movie: to sabotage the Nazis and risk your life AND the life of your inmates or loved ones, or to pursue your survival while adding fuel to an evil enterprise? The movie does an excellent job at providing a nuanced story that avoids black and white heroism and forces us to grapple with questions about the human spirit, about the struggle of accepting the privileges of a rotten apple when others don’t have even that to eat.
If you rent this fast-paced, excellently acted and directed movie, make sure you listen to the interview with the writer, Adolf Burger, whose book "The Devil’s Workshop" this movie is based on.
Quiet for decades about his ordeal, Burger finally forced himself to look back and tell his story when the "Holocaust Denial" movement rose among neo-Nazi youth. He even describes some of the techniques he used for forging British notes, which the British government never caught.
Hollywood has for many years taken for granted people who speak languages other than English. It is the most annoying thing to listen to actors break their teeth as they pretend to speak in "Spanish" – or French, or Hebrew, or Russian – and I gather any other foreign language. It is bad enough that foreigners tend to be the villains, but at least let them be legitimate sounding villains!
I wonder if this results from carelessness from the Directors, or if desperate actors claim they "speak" a language and nobody bothers to ask a native to check it.
It’s even sillier when movies like Vantage Point (which we just wasted 90 minutes watching) try to philosophize about the arrogance and blindness of American foreign policy, all the while using actors that don’t nearly resemble the nationalities they pretend to represent. I guess Hollywood figures most Americans won’t notice.
But this is what worries me about America. As globalization continues, more people across the world are learning English and learning about other cultures, but Americans are not investing enough into learning about other cultures and countries. This will have very real implications for American competitiveness.
If you do nothing else today, make sure you view this – The Story of A Sign – La Historia De Un Letrero – it is well worth it.
http://en.zappinternet.com/video/nilSqaMboM/HISTORIA-DE-UN-LETRERO
(and it happens to be shot in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, a town my Mom is from)
Every line in Cameron Crowe’s script for Jerry Maguire (one of my favorite movies) is at once witty and apt. IMDB has a good compilation of some great lines. Besides the ones that have made it into every day life, like "Help me help you", "You had me at hello," and "Show me the money!", here are a couple examples:
Rod Tidwell, Jerry’s only remaining client: You are hanging on by a very thin thread and I dig that about you!
Jerry Maguire: I’m finished, I’m fucked. Twenty four hours ago, man, I was hot! Now… I’m a cautionary tale. You see this jacket I’m wearing, you like it? Because I don’t really need it. Because I’m cloaked in failure! I lost the number one draft picked the night before the draft! Why? Let’s recap: Because a hockey player’s kid made me feel like a superficial jerk. I ate two slices of bad pizza, went to bed and grew a conscience!
Avery Bishop, Jerry’s hard-core fiance: If you ever want me to be with another woman for you, I’d do it. It’s not something I’m interested in. Once, yeah, it seemed normal, but it was just a phase, a college thing, like torn Levi’s or law school for you. Would you like something from the kitchen? I’m gonna get some fruit.
Copy store clerk, after reading Jerry’s Mission/Manifesto: That’s how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there!
Ray, Dorothy’s munchkin son: D’you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds?
Jerry Maguire: Did you know that Troy Aikman, in only six years, has passed for 16,303 yards?
Ray: D’you know that bees and dogs can smell fear?
Jerry Maguire: Did you know that the career record for hits is 4,256 by Pete Rose who is NOT in the Hall of Fame?
Ray: D’you know that my next door neighbor has three rabbits?
Jerry Maguire: I… I can’t compete with that!
Avery Bishop: There is a sensitivity thing that some people have. I don’t have it. I don’t cry at movies, I don’t gush over babies, I don’t buy Christmas presents 5 months early, and I DON’T tell the guy who just ruined both our lives, "Oh, poor baby." But I do love you.
Dorothy: I just want to be inspired.
Dorothy: He’s coming over.
Laurel: Tonight?
Dorothy: He just lost his best client. I invited the guy over.
Laurel: Dorothy, this is not a guy. It’s a syndrome. Early mid-life. Hanging on to the bottom wrung. "Dear God, don’t let me be alone or I call my newly long suffering assistant without medical for company settlement."
Marcee Tidwell: [shouting, to Jerry] What do you stand for?
Dorothy: How about a little piece of integrity in this world that is so full of greed and a lack of honorability that I don’t know what to tell my son! Except, "Here. Have a look at a guy who isn’t yelling ‘Show me the money." Did you know he’s broke? He is broke and working for you for free! Broke. Broke, broke, broke. I’m sorry I’m just not as good at the insults as she is.
Marcee Tidwell: No, that was pretty good.
Dicky Fox, Jerry’s mentor earlier generation agent: Hey, I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
Look at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
- Carl Sagan, commenting on a picture of planet Earth taken 4 billion miles away by NASA, showing a fragile speck of blue adrift in an unimaginably vast sea of space. See a film with Carl Sagan’s commencement address at the Pangea Day website.
The film-maker Jehane Noujaim dreamt a day when people across the world would see the same films, images and messages on the same day, at the
I was struck when I saw the initial cut of this film at how the Director, Adam Hootnick, was able to be objective and empathetic about every subject it covered, avoiding caricatured stereotypes, and helping us understand the perspective and motivations of those involved during the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. I highly recommend it for any person who wants a better understanding about the Middle East.
UNSETTLED, a documentary feature film following the lives of a varied group of Israeli twenty-somethings during the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip, will open for a limited engagement at NYC’s Pioneer Theater on Friday, May 9th, and LA’s Laemmle Music Hall 3 on Friday, May 16th. The film has won a number of festival awards including Jury Prizes at Slamdance (2007) and Sonoma Valley (2008). MTV’s Kurt Loder calls it "remarkable for the balance of its compassion, and for the range of youthful intelligence it reveals," and Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, former Pakistani representative to the UK, calls the film "very important for people in the Muslim world." Special dialogue events have been announced in both cities.
In New York, the 8pm May 13th screening will feature a post-film talkback with Director/Producer Adam Hootnick and Najla Said, actress and writer.
In Los Angeles, the May 18th screening will feature a post-film talkback with Professor Reza Aslan, author of No god but God.
To view a trailer and get ticket info, visit http://www.UNSETTLEDmovie.com
Like Hotel Rwanda, Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) peers into the genocide in Rwanda, here from the eyes of an older priest and a young teacher who witness the slaughter by Hutu militia wielding machetes on Tutsi refugees as UN peace-monitors stand by. Less than 15 years ago this true story took place. After witnessing the inhuman carnage from close, helpless to save a mother and her baby, Joe Connor, the idealistic English teacher, asks Christopher, the exhausted Catholic priest:
Joe: How much pain can a human being take, do you think?
If you feel enough pain, does everything just shut down…
before you die?Christopher: I don’t know, Joe.
Joe: ’cause you’d think that, wouldn’t you? You’d think there’d be some, something in the design, some shut-off valve, if you feel enough pain?
Christopher: I hope so.
Joe: Yeah, God knows. [chuckles] Maybe we should ask him… If he’s still around.
Christopher: I think it’s time we packed our bags.
The UN then begins a withdrawal, evacuating foreigners, but abandoning the compound, and the refugees. What could Joe do? What can the priest do?
Robert Redford plays a Professor at a Stanford-like California liberal arts university with an urgent message for his students about the imperative of not leaving governance and public service to the despots, the bureaucrats and the political animals. Even if, no, particularly if, things look bad, service is that much more needed, and giving it your best is what is important.
The title of the movie comes from an analogy from the World War I to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Germans in the first world war used to admire the British soldiers on the front as courageous and determined but they considered their generals mediocre. One German General said something along the lines of, "Never have I seen so many lions commanded by such lambs." Redford’s character feels the same is true of the idealistic young men who volunteered to serve their country in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Too bad the movie has several moments that feel contrived, either because of an overly didactic script or because of the editing. But the movie is worth watching because of several compelling observations, even if some are forced in.
The core message of not turning to apathy just because things are bad is very much applicable to the world we live in today. It is such an easy cop-out to complain and be cynical. It takes more work to do something about it.