Cinemascope

Hey Cinemascopian readers. I’ve just finished the work on my first documentary as a director. It’s called “Sharon Amrani: Remember His Name” and features short scenes directed by Israel’s top directors, among them Joseph Cedar (”Beaufort”), Dover Kosashvill (”Late Marriage”) and Nir Bergman (”Broken Wings”, “Intimate Grammar”). I hope you’ll soon catch it in a film festival near you. My blogging is now mainly restricted to my Hebrew site, which is one of Israel’s most popular blogs. English readers can catch up with my insights on Twitter.

I hope to come back to the English blog in the near future. Till then, see you around.

If you hear one leaked album today, make it LCD Soundsystem’s upcoming “This Is Happening”. Now streamed legally. (Hey there Mr. Murphy, I’m getting my copy as soon as this one’s out).

And by the powers of the Gods of the Music/Cinema synergy, “Greenberg” is out tomorrow in Israel, featuring LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy handling the non-electro-mostly-retro score. It’s a good week to be an LCD Soundsystem fan.

What, we’re crude, noisy rude and have awful accents? Naaah. But this Borat-ish view of Israel made me laugh out-loud. Sacha Baron Cohen, flexing his Hebrew again, is the Israeli tour guide. All the Israeli and Jewish cliches are there - no, not camels again! Get over it (and hey, Lawrence of Arabia takes place in Jordan, our next door neighbor) -but it’s all very funny. This is the perfect episode to watch as Jews all over the world celebrate Passover tonight, and just before Easter:

A Spanish TV report exposes first images from Ari Folman’s “The Congress”, his half-and-half Live Action/Animation adaptation to Stanislaw Lem’s sci-fi novel. Robin Wright-Penn is playing herself, sort-of. And fans of “Waltz With Bashir” will recognize Boaz popping up in “Congress” as well. Folman presented a clip with several scenes from “The Congress” in a co-production forum for animated films in Belgium earlier this month. “The Congress” is still in production.

Here are some screen shots from the movie and the embedded video of the Spanish report:

When it comes to the Best Song category at the upcoming Oscars, general consensus is that “The Weary Kind”, from “Crazy Heart” (performed by Ryan Binghan, written by Bingham and T-Bone Burnett), will win the Oscar. And you know, I wouldn’t cross out Randy Newman’s “Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog”. Disney used to rule this category when hand-drawn animation was king, but Randy Newman seems to be the almost-constant-anti-winner. So, who will it be? Dixieland or country? “Crazy” or “Frog”? Listen to both of them:

“Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog.
Written by Randy Newman. Performed by Anika Noni Rose

“The Weary Kind” (Theme From “Crazy Heart”)
Performed by Ryan Bingham. Written by Bingham and T-Bone Burnett.

After years of stealing ideas from ad agencies overseas, Israeli ad-men finally get a taste from their own soft drink: In 2004 an Israeli TV ad for a chocolate drink showed actor Michael Hanegbi sleepwalking through the desert to the tune of Ravel’s Bolero until he gets his hands on a chilled bottle of Yotvata Chocolate Milk Drink. Yesterday, Coca Cola ran a 30 minute spot during the Superbowl with the exact same premise, and the exact same music. There seems there’s no way this could be a mere coincidence.

The original TV spot, directed by Israel foremost commercials director Shachar Segal, was so popular, it spawned a slew of spin-offs by the same dairy company and made Hanegbi quite famous. The original ad is unavailable online, but here is one of the subsequent spin-offs:

And here is the bigger budgeted, better directed Superbowl Coke ad from last night. Coincidence?

Mel Gibson knew what he was doing when stayed away from the media for a couple of years. Now he’s back and everyone’s just keeping on yabbing at those anti-Semitic slurs he reportedly made in 2006. But Gibson, it seems, is taking the rather offensive route in handling those members of the press who bring it up, during his press tour for “The Edge of Darkness”. As was the case with KTLA critic Sam Rubin.

But if Gibson had to have asked Rubin whether he has “a dog in this fight” (which in Yiddish translates into “Are you a Jew?”), he probably knew that when sitting across a journalist from Israel, she’d have quite a few dogs in this fight.

Yesterday, “Yedioth Achronot”’s weekend entertainment supplement, “7 Nights”, ran an interview with Gibson conducted in Los Angeles by reporter Tal Orion. Gibson chose to break the ice with a joke the demonstrates his loose tongue.

Here is Gibson’s joke:

A man walks into a diner and asks for a Titburger. The waitress says “I beg your pardon?” so the man, getting a grip on himself, says he meant “a hamburger”, then apologizes and tells the waitress that he often says things he doesn’t control. “Just this morning”, the man says, “I wanted to ask my wife to prepare me an omelet but it came out ‘You bitch, you ruined my life!’”.

So, who’s ruined whose life exactly?

When the interview was nearing its end, Ms. Orion got the nerve to ask THE question. This time Gibson wanted to brush the question away once more, blaming it on anyone but himself, and then he takes a different approach and tries to flirt and kiss it away:

- People in Israel are very suspicious of you right now.
“Why?”, he exclaimed.
“Last question!”, his publicist said suddenly, and a number of assistants rose to their feet.
- Maybe because of those unnecessary remarks you made in 2006. You blamed the Jews for all the wars in the world.
“I was drunk. I was upset. And it got out because that cop ran to the press and blew it out of proportion and made a mess of things. I apologized not once but three times. So what’s the problem? Do I need to apologize again?”
- Do you feel you should apologize once more?
“You tell me, should I? Do I need to apologize to you? If I do, I will definitely do it. If you ask me to. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”
“Your time is up”, the publicist says, but Gibson, on his way out of the room, returns to me and says “I apologize”, and plants a kiss on my cheek. “I’m really sorry. I hate being the bad guy”.

With Avatar hitting 1 billion dollars (worldwide) in 17 days, it’s not hard to assume that over 100 million people all over the world are right now humming these bars, from the score by James Horner:

Capturing the shots that made me gasp at the movies in 2009.

#3: Spike Jonze’s “Where The Wild Things Are”. Two shots this time:

First, if you check out the three shots I picked so far you’d notice I have a soft spot for back-lit photography. Only noticed this myself now. I guess I do.

But I love Lance Accord “naturalistic” cinematography here. Using available light and hand held camera to capture a fantasy world. The use of lens flare in the “wilder” moments - shots that could not be captured while freeze framing the DVD screener - is exceptionally beautiful. This is one of the best shot movies of the year.

Capturing the shots that made me gasp at the movies in 2009.

#2: Katherine Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” (click to enlarge).

I’m usually not a fan of Barry Ackroyd’s gritty, over-lit, under-stylized cinematography, as displayed in the films of Ken Loach or in “United 93″. But this shot - framed by the fire from a suicide truck - blew me away.

Previously: #1: “Vincere”