Hollywood actors, Jerusalem scenery

November 14, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, Travel 

Rob Morrow in Northern Exposure - will he be adding Jerusalem to the pole?

I know that some readers weren’t too happy with the headline of my last posting which stated that Crosby, Stills and Nash were performing at a tapas bar in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda shuk. Sorry about that, I didn’t think it would be that realistic to the point someone might actually believe it.

However, speaking doogri, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is fond of saying in his gangsta persona, this item is 100% true – if you hang out on the streets of Jerusalem this week, don’t be surprised if you run into Ralph Cifaretto from The Sopranos or Dr. Joel Fleishman from Northern Exposure.

The actors who played those iconic roles – Joe Pantoliano and Rob Morrow respectively – are in town with almost two dozen of their Hollywood brethren (actors, producers and directors) for a week-long visit to meet with Israeli and Palestinian policy leaders, members of the arts, culture and business communities, and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

There’s no Brad Pitt or Scarlett Johanson in the delegation, but joining Pantoliano and Morrow are some pretty big and once-big Hollywood names, including Emmy Award-winner Patricia Arquette (Medium, Holes); Matthew Modine (Batman – The Dark Knight Rises, Full Metal Jacket); Stephen Baldwin (The Usual Suspects, Born on the Fourth of July); and Griffin Dunne (After Hours).

The trip is the brainchild of The Creative Coalition in conjunction with the American Israel Education Foundation, an AIPAC-affiliated organization. The Los Angeles-based Creative Coalition is a non-profit group founded in 1989 by prominent members of the creative community, and according to their write up, “is dedicated to educating, mobilizing, and activating its members on issues of public importance,” using “the power and platform of the arts and entertainment communities in award-winning public service and advocacy campaigns.”

Actor Tim Daly (Wings) serves as the organization’s president and is leading the delegation in Israel.

I wouldn’t mind having coffee at the David Citadel Hotel in the capital with any of the participants, but I do have particularly soft spots for Morrow, whose role as Dr. Joel Fleishman in the series Northern Exposure codified the American Jewish experience as well as Woody Allen, and Griffin Dunne, whose writing and acting, particularly in the spoof After Hours has always been inspired.

Maybe as a result of their visit, we’ll see an upcoming series about an American medical student who pays off his financial assistance by being sent to a development town in Israel.

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Leo DiCaprio sees gold in Israeli startup

November 6, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Technology 

Leo DiCaprio may have ended his long-term relationship with Israeli super model Bar Raphaeli, but it seems like his relationship with Israel is still going strong.

The A-list actor recently participated in a $4 million first-round funding for an Israeli visual media platform start-up company – Mobli Ltd. – and is also acting in an advisory capacity for the company, hi-tech insider newsletters reported last week.

Mobli has invented a new photo-sharing application that allows users to share images in real time.

So, for example, at a concert or sporting event, users can receive images of the event from different angles simply by searching for photos taken in other parts of the venue.

According to TechCrunch, users can connect to Mobli with Facebook to bring in a social element to the application and share photos with friends.

For example, concert-goers, celebrity fans, wedding attendees, and families can all share pictures and videos of an occasion, experience or interest with like-minded communities. All pictures/videos are geotagged (and can be optionally tagged to a Foursquare venue) to further narrow collections.

The app offers 22 free filters. Mobli uniquely applies filters on a visual basis but also in relation to location, so users can frame photos taken in a sports stadium in team colors, or taken at a conference with branded filters. Clearly, there’s a huge opportunity for brands to work with Mobli to sponsor filters.

According to the Blonde2.0 blog, “Think of Mobli as a visual engine that enables you to do a 360 around the world and see who’s doing what, where and when. People could be sitting in a café in Paris, watching a show in London, eating at a restaurant in New York, and Mobli brings all these visuals together to enable us all to see what a beautiful world we live in.”

Mobli was founded just over a year ago, and along with its headquarters in Israel, has offices in New York. According to the company, Paris Hilton and David Arquette number among the service’s other famous users, and they says 10,000 people are signing up every day.

DiCaprio’s interest in Mobil isn’t just about which angles make him look better on screen, evidently.

“It’s about him knowing and understanding branding and marketing,” Mobil CEO and co-founder Moshiko Hogeg told VentureBeat. Hogeg is pictured on the company’s website along with a dozen other young, hip-looking Israeli employees. It’s likely their enthusiasm, spark and ingenuity is what attracted DiCaprio to see the Israeli startup light.

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An Israeli Halloween

November 1, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Business, Entertainment, Environment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Pop Culture 

Halloween cookies from the Cupcake Caterers

Halloween’s over, and I’m thinking about how this Celtic and then Christian holiday has entered the Israeli consciousness, or at least to my knowledge.

Not having celebrated myself growing up — rabbi’s kid, although we did hand out candy to all the neighborhood kids — I don’t have any strong connections to the holiday. And because we were the rabbi’s family, our house did not usually get pelted by raw eggs and such — neighborhood protection. So it was the best of all worlds; appreciating someone else’s ‘chag‘, despite the anti-Semitic associations (we lived in a fairly non-Jewish neighborhood) but not having to take it on ourselves.

Living in Israel, I haven’t really given it much thought, except for cruising through various online store catalogs for Halloween costumes that could work well for Purim. But something’s happening this year, at least through my lens. Halloween has always been different for me than Thanksgiving, which I’ve always celebrated here in Israel, and have continued to do so, despite light censure from Israeli-born nieces, nephews and stepdaughters who think that the American-born adults in their lives are crazy to continue with such a blatantly chulnik (Israeli slangish for ‘foreigner’) celebration.\

Maybe it’s Facebook, and the exposure offered to what other people are doing and celebrating. Or perhaps it’s that global village thing, in which we adapt and adopt others’ trends and rituals because they seem worthwhile. All I know is, Halloween is out there, now translated to ליל כל הקדושים, All Hallows Eve.

There are parties advertised online, mostly hosted by Americans, exhorting invitees to “Do it the same in Israel as we would at home!!” There’s also the potential for doubling up on costumes, wearing what you wore for Purim on Halloween, and vice versa. And there are the comments from many, missing that easy availability of candy corn, half off Halloween candy the day after.

Halloween isn’t the American version of Purim, as Senator John McCain once mistakenly noted, despite the similarities. But it does have its appeal, particularly to those of us who hail from the land of the U.S.A. Check out the cookies made by Sidra Collins Muoio, owner of Cupcake Caterers, for her co-workers.

And, finally, there’s Rabies, Israel’s first horror film, which had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last May and played in Toronto in honor of Halloween.

If it’s a celebration of candy, costumes and good times, I’m actually all for it. And I can never argue with an Israeli film that succeeds on North American terms.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Indian Movie

July 10, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, tv 

There is very exciting news this week on the film front. A delegation of India’s top Bollywood leaders (here under the auspices of Project Interchange/ American Jewish Committee, in cooperation with AIJAC,) have arrived in Israel to explore joint ventures and scout location sites as well as participate in a panel at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

You might think that Israelis view Indian cinema as a form of exotica but you would be wrong. Israelis are long-time lovers of Indian movies. In the the 60s, 70s and on through the 80s, a high percentage of the movies shown in Israeli cinemas were in Arabic,Turkish or Hindi – particularly in towns whose populations originated in the Middle East and India.

According to a 2005 article about Israeli fans of Bollywood from the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), “A majority of the [70,000] Indian Jews here are Bene Israelis, who hail from Maharashtra. Then there are the Cochin Jews, the Kutchi Jews, the Baghdadi Jews and the recently discovered Bene Menashe, Jews from Mizoram and Manipur in northeastern India, believed to be descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel.”

They are, the author says, “a community whose religion brought them to the Promised Land, but whose hearts still throb to Bollywood beats.”

To serve this audience, there are two Indian channels available today: one for movies, the other for soap operas. Its this sort of fare that inspired Pop star Dana International when she paid homage to the genre in her 2009 duet with Idan Yaniv, “Seret Hodi” (Indian Movie).

But my sentiments lie farther back in time, with girl group trio Shokolad, Menta, Mastik and their song-skit, “Seret Hodi Nehedar” (Wonderful Indian Movie). A take-off on the three hour-long viewing experience that runs the emotional gamut from comedy to tragedy and back again, the parody brings together all elements of Indian-influenced pop culture in the early 70s: star-crossed lovers, a domineering, knife-wielding father and the Fab Four.

Unfortunately, there are no clips of this silly ditty in a live performance but someone has kindly posted the music and lyrics. A translation follows… Read more

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A super beginning to Jerusalem Film Festival

July 8, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Movies 

They didn't show up for the festival but Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams provided the thrills at the opening.

Summer is festival time in Israel, and there’s none more enjoyable than the Jerusalem Film Festival which opened Thursday night.

The festival is a long-standing Jerusalem tradition, now in its 28th year, the result of the efforts of The Jerusalem Cinemateque and its founder, Lia Van Leer, as well as countless other government, municipal and film industry offices and individuals.

And in what has also become a tradition, the festival was launched with a gala evening opening at Sultan’s Pool under the Old City Walls. After a number of speeches and the awarding of Achievement Awards to film historian and writer Nachman Ingber, director Eran Riklis and Hungarian director Bela Tarr, who will be presenting his most recent film, The Turin Horse, the main event of the evening got underway: the Israel premiere screening of Super 8, the American sci-fi hit directed by J.J. Abrams, who created the television series Lost and Fringe, and produced by Steven Spielberg.

Before the screening, Abrams appeared in a video message, welcoming everyone to the festival and introducing his movie with a “Todah raba” and “Shalom.”

Super 8 is about a teen in an Ohio town in the 1970s making a Super 8 zombie movie with his friends when they witness a mysterious train crash that soon turns their sleepy town into the focus of military and supernatural attention. Like a steroid-pumped, crash and burn hybrid of the Rob Reiner classic Stand By Me and the Spielberg classic ET, the film was a perfect choice for the huge outdoor screen and impeccable sound system, riveting the 2,000 people in attendance, who laughed and gasped on cue throughout.

Now that the opening is taken care of, the cerebral part of the festival can get underway. According the Hannah Brown, the film critic at The Jerusalem Post, at least 10 Israeli films will compete for the Haggiag Family Award for Israeli Cinema Best Full-Length Feature, including Jonathan Sagall’s “Lipstick,” which competed at the Berlin Festival; Hagar Ben Asher’s “The Slut,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week; and Yossi Madmoni’s “Good Morning Mr. Fidelman,” which received the prize for best screenplay at the Sundance Festival.
Among the films competing for the Van Leer Award for Israeli Cinema for Best Documentary Film are Dani Menkin’s “Dolphin Boy,” Arnon Goldfinger’s “The Flat,” and David Fisher’s “Mostar Round-Trip.”

Let the screening begin!

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