A scene from the animated film, Fantastic Mr Fox.

FILM REVIEW: FANTASTIC MR FOX
REVIEWED BY ADAM KAMIEN

CHILDREN’S books seem to be the new comics in Hollywood at the moment. Where The Wild Things Are, Horton Hears a Who, Coraline and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe have all been released during the past few years and Tim Burton is having a crack at Alice In Wonderland, due for release later this year.

To say that Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox is the best of the bunch is to grossly understate the matter.

While it is well known that Fantastic Mr Fox author Roald Dahl was no great friend of the Jews -– he is reported to have said “There’s a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity” – his children’s novels are universally loved.

And all the elements of Dahl’s 1970 novel are present in Anderson’s lovingly re-created stop-motion feature. It is magical, irreverent, darkly funny and affecting in the same way as the book, but make no mistake, this is a wholly original work.
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Director Wes Anderson’s animated Fantastic Mr Fox is based on Roald Dahl’s popular 1970 novel and features the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman.

Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) in Invictus.

FILM REVIEW: INVICTUS
REVIEWED BY LEXI LANDSMAN

IT’S February 11, 1990. Anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela is freed from Victor-Verster Prison in South Africa after spending 27 years behind bars.

To the moving sounds of the Zulu folk song Shosholoza (Go forward) we see a team of white players, in crisp uniforms playing on a well-kept green field.

Across the road, a group of black youths wearing torn clothing are playing soccer with a tattered ball on a barren field.

A motorcade with Mandela passes the street separating them. The black youths run to the fence, peering out the wire cheering and chanting “Mandela”, while the white players slowly walk over and frown, their expressions unmoved. Their Afrikaner coach tells them: “Remember this day boys, this is the day our country went to the dogs.”
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George Clooney in Up In The Air.

FILM REVIEW: UP IN THE AIR
REVIEWED BY ADAM KAMIEN

IN Jason Reitman’s world there is no grey. In his latest film Up In The Air, he paints a bleak picture of dispassionate disconnect and hangs it all on social networking, emailing, text messaging and other nasty by-products of the free-market malaise.

But in Reitman’s world, the remedy is simple. Take a wife and get a dog, lest any man be an island.

Up In The Air is Reitman’s third film after Thank You For Smoking and Juno and tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man who relishes his job flying around the US firing people.

He lives out of his carry-on luggage, in airports and hotels and keeps a sparse one-bedroom flat in Omaha, Nebraska, which he dreads.

He is a part-time motivational speaker, who extols his virtues of avoiding relationships and believes that “moving is living”.
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Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant star in Did You Hear About The Morgans? which has just opened in Australian cinemas.

Jewish actor Jesse Eisenberg (right) is chased by zombies in a scene from Zombieland.

FILM REVIEW: ZOMBIELAND
REVIEWED BY ADAM KAMIEN

WHEN George A Romero shocked movie-goers with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, he set a mark for zombie movies that is yet to be equalled, even by his own seemingly endless stream of sequels.

Jewish director Ruben Fleischer is the latest upstart to attempt a bold, new take on the undead oeuvre with his debut feature Zombieland, and while there are one or two aspects to like about his effort, the status quo is maintained.

The film takes place in the not-too-distant future in a world that is overrun with zombies. Through voice-over we learn that “patient zero” was infected after eating a dodgy Gas n’ Gulp burger.

Humans are an endangered species and the film follows four survivors who go by the names of their hometowns.
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Sacha Baron Cohen. Photo: AJN file

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian grocer is suing actor Sacha Baron Cohen for $115 million over his portrayal in the comedy film, Bruno.

Ayman Abu Aita has filed the lawsuit in the United States against the movie’s producers and Cohen, according to media reports.

In the movie, Ayman Abu Aita, a Christian peace activist, escorted Cohen’s alter-ego Bruno, a gay fashion journalist, to a Lebanese refugee camp.

Abu Aita was identified in a caption as “Terrorist group leader, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.”

Abu Aita says he has received death threats in the wake of the movie. He says he did not realize that Cohen was an actor filming a comedy movie, and said that Cohen misrepresented himself, saying the movie would help the Palestinian cause.
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Joel (left) and Ethan Coen (second from right) with actors in a scene from A Serious Man. Photo: Wilson Webb

THE Coen brothers’ share their thoughts about their new film, A Serious Man, working together and their careers to date.

Q: The film’s title reminds me of the song, A Man of Constant Sorrow. That could have possibly been an alternative title for your movie?

Ethan: A lot of bad things happen to our character, yes, but ethnographically, that music is a little incorrect.

Joel: You could call it a mensch of constant sorrow.

Ethan: We knew from the start that it would be a story of this character’s travails, and that it wasn’t going to be good things happening to him. We started with this Midwestern Jewish community and then developed all these bad things that happen.
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Chassidic actor Izzi Lifschutz.

LEXI LANDSMAN

YOU might not recognise his name, but you’ve probably seen his movies. Among them The Chosen, Stranger Among Us, A Price Above Rubies, and Pi.

Meet Yisrael “Izzi” Lifschutz, an actor who has accrued an enviable list of Hollywood credits, appearing on the big screen with the likes of Melanie Griffith, Alec Baldwin, and Renee Zellweger, and in television shows such as NYPD Blue and Saturday Night Chai.

For all that though, with his long, now grey beard and his distinct New York drawl, Lifschutz is best known, not as a performer, but as the founder of the Hassidic Actors Guild (HAG).

Through HAG, the 67-year-old has trained actors to accurately portray Chassidism on film without resorting to demeaning stereotypes. And it’s that experience that has now been captured in its own cinematic re-imagining, precipitating his trip to Australia.
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A scene from Haim Tabakman’s Eyes Wide Open.

FILM REVIEW: EYES WIDE OPEN
REVIEWED BY CHANTAL ABITBOL

NO doubt some will find elements of Haim Tabakman’s debut feature film Eyes Wide Open confronting.

But the controversial film about homosexual forbidden love in Jerusalem’s insular ultra-Orthodox community is a charged and well-executed drama. Backed by strong performances and a nuanced script, the film successfully breaks down taboos, while delicately exploring the clash between desire and belief.

The film, which was recently screened as part of the 2009 Festival of Jewish Cinema, charts the path of the happily married kosher butcher Aaron (Zohar Strauss) who falls in love with the young religious outcast Ezri (Ran Danker) when he turns up at Aaron’s shop one rainy day with nowhere to go.

Aaron quickly offers Ezri refuge, giving him a job and a place to stay above his shop until Ezri finds his feet.
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