The hapless Israeli
Filed under: Art, Entertainment, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Pop Culture
Someone sent this to me, and it’s just hysterical, worth the 6:19 minutes and seconds it takes to watch. Looks like it’s from Israel’s Channel 2 show “Ktzarim”, an Israeli sketch comedy series based on British comedy show “The Sketch Show.” Longtime actor Shlomo (Moni) Moshonov is the waiter, and I’m admitting that I don’t know who plays the tourist (anyone out there who does, please fill us in — this is part of the problem with being an immigrant, you just don’t always get all the cultural references or players.)
It’s great in English, and even better if you can understand the Hebrew, especially the part of the tourist whose mother seems to have sewn his money into his pants. Enjoy.
No red lights for TV’s ‘Ramzor’
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, tv
The cast of 'Ramzor', with Adir Miller the man in the middle.
First, the rights to the popular Channel 2 series, developed by Kuperman Productions and Keshet, and created by comedian/actor Adir Miller, were bought by 20th Century Fox TV in the US to be adapted for the American screen,
Now, a few months later, the show has now been nominated for an International Emmy award for best comedy. According to a press release from the International Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, a panel of 700 judges from 50 countries chose the series which will compete against ‘Los Simuladores’ from Mexico, ‘Peep Show’ from the UK and ‘Talok Hok Chak’ from Thailand. The winners will be announced at the Emmy Awards in New York on November 22.
The US version of Ramzor is slated to begin filming in the US next month under the name ‘Traffic Lights.’ Penned by Wedding Crashers writer Bob Fisher, the US version of the show will follow the same premise as Ramzor – focusing on three longtime friends whose romantic relationships with the women in their lives are all at different stages.
“We never imagined the show would reach these dimensions,” writer Ran Sarig told Haaretz after learning of the Emmy nomination for the show, which will soon begin filming its third season.
‘Ramzor’ isn’t the only Israeli series receiving accolades this week. The Hollywood Reporter wrote on Monday that US reality production house Stone & Co. has acquired the domestic rights to ‘Connected,’ (Mechubarot) the HOT reality show broadcast on Channel 3, in which five women are given cameras to document their relationships with their significant others.
“It’s breakthrough television,” said producer Scott Stone who is planning to pitch the show to US networks. “It’s a way of doing user-generated video in a TV show that’s never been done before; you get things that you never thought you’d see. It’s like if you were to give Candace Bushnell a camera before ‘Sex and the City.’” he told the Hollywood Reporter.
The recognition achieved by ‘Ramzor’ and “Mechubarot” follows the trend of Israeli entertainment successes in the US, which began a few years ago when the series “B’Tipul” was picked up by HBO and morphed into the hit series “In Treatment.”
Now if we could just do something about all those commercials on Israeli commercial TV…
Watch out for that horse!
Filed under: General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel
Hey, we all know Israel is safe. There’s less likely a chance of anything happening to you here than in any big city anywhere in the world.
But evidently, when you get out of the cities, watch out. The news on Channel 2 last night aired this footage they obtained from a group of tourists on a leisurely drive on a country road in the Galilee.
The tourists began filming with their video camera when three horses came on the highway and began to canter alongside their car. Very cool occurrence, and one worth documenting. But things turned weird when an oncoming car approached the horses head on.
The first two horses weaved out of the car’s path, but the third took it head-on, smashing through its windshield with its hooves before leaping over it and continuing on its way.
Channel 2 reported that the driver suffered minor cuts from smashed glass and the horse was lightly injured.
When checking out the coverage of the incident, I was especially taken with the report by Horse and Hounds magazine (which I had until now thought was a ficticious creation of Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill). Their headline? ‘Horse survives after jumping onto oncoming car in Israel’.
Meet Israel’s newest cabinet minister
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles
Sasson Gabai (center) plays Ruby Polishuk.
Polishuk is the main character in the series of the same name which Channel 2 started airing a couple weeks ago every Sunday and Monday evenings. Modeled in part after the British political satire The Thick of It, Polishuk is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening, but always entertaining series poking fun at Israeli society and the upper echelon who, through sheer luck or political expediency, end up in the corridors of power.
The series stars Sasson Gabai, who shined in the film The Band’s Visit, as the bumbling Polishuk, who rises from well-meaning, but largely incompetent back bench MK for the fictitious National Liberal Center party to his ministerial appointment following the arrest of the current minister on suspicions of pedophilia.
Polishuk’s handlers – party leader Humi Schalit, played like a Tommy Lapid tribute by journalist Amnon Dankner, and Schalit’s A-type, foul-mouthed media advisor Kozo Avital, played by Guy Loel – are solely concerned with keeping the new minister out of the spotlight and quiet in his corner as minister of advancement in society. And they woefully fail, as Polishuk becomes a laughing stock/everyman hero.
The rapid banter and earthy language are true to the nature of Israeli culture, said the show’s creator, writer and director Shmuel Hasfari.
“I talked to people who surround the ministers and MKs – like drivers and secretaries and aides. On a show like this, the dialogue, besides being ‘harif’, has to be precise and to the point. There’s no time for nonsense. So, if you took a full day in a minister’s life and reduced it to five minutes of highlights, I think it’s pretty accurately reflected in our show,” Hasfari told me.
How plausible is the show? Way too much, says Hasfari, who in an illustrious theater career has become known as an outspoken supporter of left-wing causes. However, Polishuk clearly plays no favorites in skewering both the left and right sides of the Israeli political system.
“It certainly frightens me that there are likely several Polishuks in the Knesset,” said Hasfari. “It’s all part of the problem of our electoral system here. All you need is a strong, charismatic leader like Ariel Sharon, or Rafael Eitan or Lapid, and you can bring in another 10 or 12 MKs on your coattails, who are totally unknown. Does anyone really know who the Shas MKs are? Out of the 120 MKs, there are probably 50 Polishuks, but probably not as nice as him.”
After Polishuk, I’ll never watch the Knesset channel in the same way.
Israeli satirical program beats out elections results
The popular satirical show Eretz Nehederet
But, what received the highest ratings that night? A special episode of the irreverent, political satire program Eretz Nehederet (A Beautiful Country), sort of a combination of Saturday Night Live and the Jon Stewart Show.
Evidently the farce of the elections results wasn’t enough of a hoot for Israeli viewers, as some 977,000 viewers (remember how small the country is) tuned into the election night special edition of the hugely popular show on Channel 2 which was broadcast an hour before the exit polls were announced at 10 pm.
And riding on such popular coattails, the Channel 2 news team won a solid rating wars victory over its competitors, as viewers just kept their TV tuned on Channel 2 as the results were announced.
According to Ha’aretz, Channel 2 had 28.2 percent of the viewing audience for its exit poll broadcast, while Channel 10 had a 12.3 percent share and Channel 1 received just 6 percent.
I started watching the results on Channel 10 because I like the easy going manner of the co-anchors Ya’akov Eilon and Mickey Heimovich. But someone at the channel came up with the totally demented gimmick of keeping the Channel 10 news theme jingle playing in the background on a loop throughout the whole broadcast. Within 10 minutes, I was ready to shoot myself, but instead, just switched to Channel 2, where anchor Yonit Levy does just fine, thank you.
According to the Ha’aretz report, the Channel 2 broadcast was its highest of the past three election campaigns. Channels 1 and 10, on the other hand, saw a drop in ratings compared to the last election in 2006. So, it’s unclear if people were more or less interested in finding out the results in previous years, or if that Channel 10 music just forced them to shut off their TVs.
But it seems apparent that rather than face the harsh realities of our political landscape, Israelis prefer to poke fun at it.
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