Israel gets its newest celebrity visitor

November 9, 2009 - 11:25 AM by Nicky · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, Life, Pop Culture, Travel 

We get a lot of celebrity visitors to Israel. Bill Clinton, George Bush, the Dalai Lama, Madonna
, Leonardo DiCaprio, Grover from Sesame Street – you name it, the great and glorious come here. It’s a field day for the press, who follow their every move in Israel, trying to get that one great shot of Madonna at the Western Wall, or the Dalai Lama at Temple Mount.

The newest celebrity visitor to our shores, however, crept in without the slightest bit of press hoo ha, making surprise visits to a number of top Israeli hot spots without causing any kind of media stir or even extra security. It’s Alpha Rex, the Lego Mindstorms robot. Yes, you heard it here first.

lego ww cAs part of Lego’s 10th anniversary for its Mindstorms robot line, the company sent out two of its Alpha Rex humanoid robots to cross the globe.

The sturdy little robots left the FIRST World Championship in Atlanta in the US in April 2008 and have been travelling every since. One headed off to tour the US, and the other – clearly more adventurous – headed west to Japan, taking in Europe, Australia, Canada, Egypt, India, China, the South Pole, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Iceland etc. etc. etc. along the way.

They aren’t alone of course. Lego employees, fans and business associates have guided them on their long, difficult and sometimes lonely journeys, taking snaps of them at their destinations.

lego gal cNow it’s the turn of Israel, where Alpha Rex along with his human guide, David Schilling, got to visit Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee, enjoying some occasionally autumnal weather on the way

It’s not the end of Alpha Rex’s global endeavor. He’s still got quite a few countries to go – including Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia (hope the Israeli authorities didn’t stamp his passport), and Argentina to name a few.

At the end of it, the Lego team plan to make a screensaver showing all the places he visited. They should also consider setting it to music and putting it on Youtube. It worked for Matt Harding after all.

So what did Alpha Rex think of Israel? Wasn’t it the best place he visited? Does he plan to come here again? He declined to answer.

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Foto Friday – Behind the lens with Israel Press

January 9, 2009 - 5:47 PM by Rachel Neiman · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, War 

If a news photographer does the job right, they will render themselves anonymous. Viewers will focus on the image itself and forget that there was someone who created that image. But there are people behind the lens, often a phalanx of them, roasting in the hot sun in hopes of spotting Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio and Bar Refaeli or any other visiting or local celebrity; standing around for hours while police drag the Yarkon river at a crime scene; or, as they have for the second week in a row, laying their lives on the line on the Israel-Gaza border.

Getting the shot, however, involves a great deal of hanging out, watching and waiting, and shutterbugs might click off a few shots of their own to stave off the boredom. Often, the subject is the person standing next to them.

tomeriko_gaza_press_by_koko_2Photo credit: Koko

Tomeriko, photo editor and staff photographer at Yediot Aharonot, is also the founder of a Israel Press, a Flickr page where Israeli news photographers upload the pictures they take of one another. Taken as a whole, the pictures document a tiny brotherhood – including a few sisters – of people who know each other very well.

tomeriko_gaza_press_by_koko_4Photo credit: Koko

“I started it because I had a lot of pictures of photographers from all sorts of events and didn’t know what to do with them,” explains Tomeriko. “At first, I thought I would send the pictures individually but I also wanted other people to see them. So I started the Flickr page and uploaded about 1000 pictures. When the other photographers heard about it, they started to send pictures to me. It’s kind of a family album.”

tomeriko_gaza_press_by_koko_5Photo credit: Koko

“It came from boredom,” laughs photographer Gilad Kavalerchik. “If you look at the beginning of the album, you’ll see a lot of pictures from football games and so on. But it’s become a way of having a souvenir of an event.”

Right now is not at all boring and Kavalerchik is running between jobs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and the front, where he managed to snap a few such mementos.

tomeriko_gaza_press_by_gilad-kavalerchik_2Photo credit: Gilad Kavalerchik

tomeriko_gaza_press_by_gilad-kavalerchik_1Photo credit: Gilad Kavalerchik

Tomeriko emphasizes that Israel Press is a non-commercial enterprise, and isn’t intended for people to promote themselves or their news organization. He is very careful, however to credit each image, and provide contact information. He’s also divided Israel Press into disciplines – news, sports, camera-persons, reporters and of couse, the celebrity press. (The t-shirt in this photo says “Caution- Paparazzi before you”).

tomeriko_caution_paparazziPhoto credit: Tomeriko

Some of the photos are exercises in photographic composition.

tomeriko_michael-kremer-and-boazPhoto credit: Tomeriko

Sometimes, they are opportunities to try out in-camera effects, as in this picture of veteran photographers Koko and Moshe Shai, at the starting line of the Tel Aviv night run this past summer.

tomeriko_koko-and-moshe-shaiPhoto credit: Tomeriko

Others document the camaraderie of a particular event – like the DiCaprio-Refaeli paparazzi stakeout – where photographers camped out for days. “This is our work. This is our shared experience,” says Koko.

tomeriko_paparazzi_coffeePhoto credit: Tomeriko

tomeriko_paparazzi_readingPhoto credit: Tomeriko

Israel Press is a closed group with membership limited to Israeli photographers both here and abroad. Says Tomeriko: “You have to register to comment. Of course, people are interested in the behind-the-scenes of the media and we want people to see the pictures, but it’s really for us.”

Since the war started, Tomeriko has added some new photos of what the front is like behind the camera. “We’ve gotten some e-mails from people who want to give us encouragement, which is very nice. I posted them on the site.”

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Blue carpet

November 24, 2008 - 6:53 PM by Harry · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Movies, Pop Culture 

Hardcore Zionist: Marty the ZebraIsraelis love their celebrities. When locally celebrated pop culture figures reach even just the cusp of major international recognition, these figures feel the need to defend themselves as not being proper divas (see Shiri Maimon). When a local unknown becomes a blip on the international pop culture radar, let the Israeli embracing begin (see Eden Harel or Yael Naim).

And when a local becomes a full-blown international sensation – whoo boy, watch out for the storm of disproportionate Israeli love (see Zohan Dvir – yes, yes, we know he’s fictional – and supermodel Bar Rafaeli).

It all stems from a nation that has been deliberately starved of international pop culture contact since its birth – that is, until globalization and cable TV made such isolationism an irrelevant impossibility. The ebb and flow of Israel’s celeb-isolationism can be tracked as a parallel story to the ebb and flow of the profile of international rock acts that perform on her shores.

Known Zionist and big-time studio mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, on the other hand, is working hard to make Israel a standard destination for Hollywood’s elite – or at least for Hollywood’s elite comedic voice talents. Last year, he arranged for Jerry Seinfeld’s much-examined visit to Israel to promote his Bee Movie.

Now Katzenberg has arranged for a big-time Netanya premiere for Madagascar 2, with Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith attending the screening yesterday. With the right red-carpet arrangements, apparently experiences like the Refaeli-DiCaprio debacle are avoidable. Yesterday, fans lined up, and autographed were signed.

The talent even joked about adoration here exceeding fan buzz back in the US. According to the Jerusalem Post, Stiller was quoted as saying, “This is better than any premiere we have had so far,” while Rock said of Israel, “It’s much better than Hollywood. They don’t like us in Hollywood, but here they love us.” Maybe that’s because American fans have been trained – to an extent, anyway – to ignore celebrities so as to not make them uncomfortable.

Referring to his Madagascar 2 character, Rock took the love to another level: “Marty the Zebra [pictured] loves Israel.”

So yes, Katzenberg, keep them coming. And keep this great land of ours in the international press for items that are happy and light.

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