Eytan Fox loves Eurovision. The filmmaker known for tragic romances like Yossi & Jagger and The Bubble has made a sweet confection about an unlikely group of Tel Aviv neighbors who'll represent Israel in an international song contest. This musical comedy is sugary and sincere, like the cupcakes Anat (Anat Waxman) prepares with national flags rendered in colorful icing for the annual viewing party. Friends arrive at her apartment, but the usually upbeat baker is experiencing marital problems and can't revel in the garish competition (known in Cupcakes as UniverSong). Singer-songwriter Efrat (Efrat Dor) brings out her guitar, begins improvising a cheery ballad, and everyone else joins in — with perfect lyrics and no false notes. Fox counters the...
- 3/25/2015
- Village Voice
Band of Girls: Lavie’s Acerbic, Confident Debut
Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life on an Israeli military base through the perspective of several female soldiers. Groups of humans not taken seriously and treated with demeaning abandon tend to disengage from rational behaviors, and Lavie explores the rampant pettiness born out of being kept in certain positions without any opportunity to grow. Some have criticized Lavie for abstaining from composing the film as a more complicated and transgressive portrait of the reductive nature of war, in general. Coming from an area where cinematic offerings are saturated and inflected with the constant, aggravated unrest transpiring there, Lavie’s film is already a subtly wicked statement, and her focus on the trivialities of one group of women on one military base serves as the subtle microcosm for the enduring...
Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life on an Israeli military base through the perspective of several female soldiers. Groups of humans not taken seriously and treated with demeaning abandon tend to disengage from rational behaviors, and Lavie explores the rampant pettiness born out of being kept in certain positions without any opportunity to grow. Some have criticized Lavie for abstaining from composing the film as a more complicated and transgressive portrait of the reductive nature of war, in general. Coming from an area where cinematic offerings are saturated and inflected with the constant, aggravated unrest transpiring there, Lavie’s film is already a subtly wicked statement, and her focus on the trivialities of one group of women on one military base serves as the subtle microcosm for the enduring...
- 12/4/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
If you still have an affinity for books, there can be few more choice summer reads than Edmund White's 2005 autobiography, My Lives. Divided into nonlinear sections devoted to his relationships with his parents, his hustlers, and his female entanglements, there's also a chapter entitled "My Europe." Herein White notes how while in the Paris of the 1980s, he became aware that petite green beans are tastier than their larger cousins. He also recounts how the social theorist Michel Foucault, a pal of his, noted that while "'gay philosophy' and 'gay paintings' were meaningless notions...writing gay fiction was legitimate since it enabled us to imagine how gay men should live together."
Foucault apparently "felt that relationships between gay men were tenuous, undefined, still to be invented, and that gay fiction was the place where a vision of association could be worked out in concrete detail."
The same could be said of Lgbt cinema,...
Foucault apparently "felt that relationships between gay men were tenuous, undefined, still to be invented, and that gay fiction was the place where a vision of association could be worked out in concrete detail."
The same could be said of Lgbt cinema,...
- 7/26/2014
- by Brandon Judell
- www.culturecatch.com
English-language thriller set on French Riviera in the 1950s due to shoot July 2015.
Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s upcoming thriller The Beauty of Sharks was one of the hot projects at the inaugural edition of the Paris Coproduction Village, which unfolded off the French capital’s Champs Elysees last week.
Two French buyers were rumoured to be circling the thriller about a group of Us expatriate hustlers living on the French Riviera, who are trying to get a piece of an elderly socialite’s millions.
It is based on an original screenplay by UK writer Rob Green who recently worked on Billy O’Brien’s horror romance Scintilla.
The feature is produced by Filip Jan Rymsza of Royal Road Entertainment, which is based out of Los Angeles with satellite offices in New York and Luxembourg. Rymsza, who has a dual Us and Polish nationality, also takes a co-writing credit.
“The plan is to raise finance both out...
Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s upcoming thriller The Beauty of Sharks was one of the hot projects at the inaugural edition of the Paris Coproduction Village, which unfolded off the French capital’s Champs Elysees last week.
Two French buyers were rumoured to be circling the thriller about a group of Us expatriate hustlers living on the French Riviera, who are trying to get a piece of an elderly socialite’s millions.
It is based on an original screenplay by UK writer Rob Green who recently worked on Billy O’Brien’s horror romance Scintilla.
The feature is produced by Filip Jan Rymsza of Royal Road Entertainment, which is based out of Los Angeles with satellite offices in New York and Luxembourg. Rymsza, who has a dual Us and Polish nationality, also takes a co-writing credit.
“The plan is to raise finance both out...
- 6/16/2014
- ScreenDaily
All together now!
With Eurovision fever at its height just now, everybody is in the mood for dancing, so it's just the time for Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's feelgood pop fairytale Cupcakes to come out on DVD. The story of six neighbours who enter the Universong Contest by mistake, it's an energetic film with characters who learn to make sense of their personal lives through their international celebrity experience. I caught up with Eytan to ask him about the film and about the Israeli band Ping Pong whose own Eurovision stardom he helped to create.
Time for a little respect.
"The film was inspired by that story," he acknowledges, though noting that the narrative develops in a different direction. "The two men in the group were friends of mine, young journalists who wrote for radical alternative art magazines in Israel. They were very serious people who formed a little...
With Eurovision fever at its height just now, everybody is in the mood for dancing, so it's just the time for Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's feelgood pop fairytale Cupcakes to come out on DVD. The story of six neighbours who enter the Universong Contest by mistake, it's an energetic film with characters who learn to make sense of their personal lives through their international celebrity experience. I caught up with Eytan to ask him about the film and about the Israeli band Ping Pong whose own Eurovision stardom he helped to create.
Time for a little respect.
"The film was inspired by that story," he acknowledges, though noting that the narrative develops in a different direction. "The two men in the group were friends of mine, young journalists who wrote for radical alternative art magazines in Israel. They were very serious people who formed a little...
- 5/9/2014
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival has chosen its line-up, and it includes Oscar candidates, the honoring of a Hollywood legend, and a tribute to another. The festival's opening night gala will feature a tribute to the late Sid Caesar, a comic pioneer whose "Your Show of Shows" paved the way for future sketch comedy series such as "Saturday Night Live." With that in mind, the festival has chosen the rare 1973 documentary "Ten From Your Show of Shows" as the opening film. The opening night festivities will continue with an appearance by Carl Reiner, one of the many men who honed their writing craft on "Your Show of Shows" (also including Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen), and will be presented with the Lajff Lifetime Achievement Award by "Everybody Loves Raymond" creator Phil Rosenthal. The festival will continue with a number of notable films, including the new musical comedy...
- 4/11/2014
- by Max O'Connell
- Indiewire
UK Jewish Film Festival kicks off its 17th edition tonight; 53 UK premieres presented.
The UK Jewish Film Festival opens its 17th edition tonight at the BFI Southbank with the UK premiere of The Jewish Cardinal by French director Ilan Duran Cohen.
The festival runs across five cities - London, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester - from Oct 20 to Nov 17. The closing night gala will screen the UK premiere of Eytan Fox’s Cupcakes.
More than 80 films and other special events are planned. There are 53 UK premieres.
Programme highlights include an IMAX screening of Ari Folman’s The Congress, horror film Big Bad Wolves, Seth Fisher’s Blumenthal starring Brian Cox, Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight starring Juno Temple, Lucia Puenzo’s thriller Wakolda, documentary Dancing In Jaffa and Tracie Holder’s Joe Papp in Five Acts.
The festival has also started a new VOD channel sponsored by Think Jam (link here).
Festival founder and executive director Judy Ironside...
The UK Jewish Film Festival opens its 17th edition tonight at the BFI Southbank with the UK premiere of The Jewish Cardinal by French director Ilan Duran Cohen.
The festival runs across five cities - London, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester - from Oct 20 to Nov 17. The closing night gala will screen the UK premiere of Eytan Fox’s Cupcakes.
More than 80 films and other special events are planned. There are 53 UK premieres.
Programme highlights include an IMAX screening of Ari Folman’s The Congress, horror film Big Bad Wolves, Seth Fisher’s Blumenthal starring Brian Cox, Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight starring Juno Temple, Lucia Puenzo’s thriller Wakolda, documentary Dancing In Jaffa and Tracie Holder’s Joe Papp in Five Acts.
The festival has also started a new VOD channel sponsored by Think Jam (link here).
Festival founder and executive director Judy Ironside...
- 10/30/2013
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
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