Oscar season has come and gone, leaving behind a list of winners, a few great catchphrases (“your eggo is preggo”… um, and something about milkshakes), and people like me with an even longer list of movies to see this winter (thanks a lot, academy.) As was reported by Jewcy, this year’s best foreign film award went to legitimately good and simultaneously Jewish film, The Counterfeiters, hailing from Austria. What you might not know is that Brazil’s submission to this Oscar category, the un-nominated O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Féria (“The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”) is also creating a little bit of buzz these days in the realm of Jewish media.

The film was released over a year ago in Brazil before making appearances at film festivals abroad in 2007, including at Cannes and Tribeca. It even picked up a few awards. It has been shown in limited screenings in the US since last month. But the question remains: is it actually any good?The Year My Parents Went on Vacation: I can't believe my parents are dumping me at grandpa's house.

Set in 1970’s Brazil, “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation” is the story of Mauro, a Brazilian pre-teen who is too distracted by Pelé and Brazil’s World Cup campaign to understand the turmoil taking place in his country under its military dictatorship. When his parents, members of the left-wing resistance movement, are forced to go into hiding, they deliver little Mauro into the care of his grandfather under the pretense that they are going on vacation. But their intended plans go awry, and Mauro is transferred into the care of his grumpy, yet kind hearted neighbor, Shlomo, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe and active member of his neighborhood’s Orthodox community. Mauro and Shlomo end up forming a unique friendship, learning about each other’s cultures and about themselves.

It’s a familiar sort of story. Maybe too familiar, according to New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott. Although he believes the movie to be “charming,” Scott feels that audiences have heard this story before. Luckily, its likability is able to transcend the plot’s tiredness at times. Writes Scott:

“The Year My Parents Went on Vacation” is most seductive when it focuses on the details of daily life in the lower-middle-class São Paulo neighborhood Bom Retiro. The rhythms of commerce, worship and domesticity — the sounds of apartment house courtyards, synagogues and shops — frequently overshadow what turns out to be a fairly conventional and sentimental story. Though the milieu is, for most viewers, novel, the emotional elements of the film, to say nothing of its characters, are reassuringly if also somewhat disappointingly familiar.

Jan Stuart of Newsday agrees, saying that in certain parts of the film there “contains a glimmer of a great movie wanting to break out.”

On the other hand, the Forward loves this movie, calling it “a Jewish cinema gem.” One bit of insight that reviewer Elissa Strauss adds to the previous reviews is that although the film drags at times, it is not because it is filled with boring Jewish stereotypes.

Through this boredom emerges a surprisingly un-exotic portrait of Jewish immigrants. At no point are we bombarded with violins, forced to drool over warm challah or seduced by the flickering flame of a Sabbath candle...As a result, the Brazilian Jews in the film are neither saintly nor suspect. If anything, they are ordinary: They cook, they clean, they work, they sleep. The non-Jewish Brazilians in the movie receive the same treatment, and the characters move beyond the sensuality and violence that usually mark their cinematic portrayals. For both groups, the mundane is rather becoming.

This characteristic, in itself, has the potential to make this movie worth seeing. Although it isn’t perfect, “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation” is delightful at best and less than two hours long at least.

The street art duo Os Gemeos, comprised of twin brothers from Brazil, has recently taken its cartoonish works to Lithuania. For more on Os Gemeos, including an extensive gallery, head to the Lost Art website.

Good news for Brazilians seeking a sex-change: your national health care system has you covered. The Brazilian government is, in fact, opposed, claiming that it doesn’t have enough money to pay for the operations (the Ministry of Health estimated that about 1 in 10, 000 Brazilians would sign up for the surgery, which costs about $1000 US dollars), but a court ruling is the thing, asserting that a safe (the chief judge said that the ruling would prevent transsexuals from self-mutilation in attempting to perform the surgery themselves) and publicly-subsidized surgery is a constitutional right.

Of course, in order to receive the subsidized surgery patients will have to be approved by a panel of doctors after extensive medical and physical examinations have taken place. Still, this raises all sorts of interesting questions. Is feeling like a woman trapped in a man’s body, or vice-versa, a physical condition (“I am a woman”) or a mental condition (“I feel like a woman”)? Does one type of condition take primacy over the other? Is it unfair that, as it stands in the US and elsewhere, sex-changes (like psychoanalysis) are generally a luxury? Should—can—the government protect you from yourself?

By using public health care to fund sex changes, people—patients?—would be implicitly defining their pre-operation states as an illness*, which I’m pretty sure many of them would be uncomfortable with, if only because it damns those that don’t have the operation. In less ambiguous, more insidious, matters, Brazilians have shown a purely ugly and physical approach to sexuality—trends which have indeed affected American culture. If the US ever achieves national health care, will we cover sex-changes? What about cosmetic surgery? Therapy? Who gets to decide? The experts (often influenced by factors other than their expertise) or the people-patients?

*Personally, I’m with Hamm: “We’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.”

FEEL GOOD STORY OF THE WEEK:

15-year-old Toronto Jewish boy collects shoes for children in Ethiopia. [The Jerusalem Post]



BRAZILIAN JEWS DONATE WINTER COATS BUT RABBI JACKS TIES

THE NEWS:

São Paulo's Jewish community donated 10,000 winter coats to a government-run campaign. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]


THE CHATTER:

The Jewish community there (of Brazil’s 120,000 Jews, half live in São Paulo) is mourning the loss of a 14-year-old Jewish girl who died in a plane crash on July 17th. [Yeshiva World News]

With the donation of their anoraks, are the Sao Paulo Jews making up for the egregious thievery of their most famous rabbi, Henry Sobel? [The Economist]

“It has been a tumultuous time for Brazil’s best-known rabbi. Henry Sobel, the head of the São Paulo Israeli Congregation (the city’s largest Jewish community), took leave from his post after he was arrested in Palm Beach, Florida for stealing $680-worth of designer ties. He returned on bail to São Paulo in early April and checked himself into hospital, explaining that medications for insomnia had altered his perceptions.”



ISRAELI ENERGY IN THE CALIFORNIA DESERT

THE NEWS:

An Israeli company will build what is being called the world’s largest solar energy park in Southern California’s Mojave Desert. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

THE CHATTER:

Last August, the US approved a $20 million annual grant for joint US/Israel renewable energy projects. [Treehugger]

Solel Solar Systems, based in Beit Shemesh, Israel, will build and operate the park in California, and it will generate enough energy to power 400,000 homes. [Santa Cruz Sentinel]

 

RYAN BRAUN GOES TO THIRD BASE AND OFTEN ALL THE WAY

THE NEWS:

Ryan Braun, the half-Jewish son of an Israeli who is the Milwaukee Brewers’ new sensation at third base, is connected to Jewish baseball history. [The New York Times] For almost 40 years, his grandfather Bob Robinson has lived in a house that once belonged to Hank Greenberg, a Hall of Fame slugger and one of the game’s best Jewish players. Braun likes the baseball auspiciousness of his grandfather’s home. Sportsfigures are superstitious. You know, having same pre-game meal or wearing the same jockstrap for months at a time.

His offensive prowess is inarguable, but he’s a sub-par fielder with a team-leading 13 errors. Just trying to say he’s human while being one of the best power hitters in the game.

 

RABBI SHMULEY SPITS MAD GAME

THE NEWS:

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s new dating Web site, LoveProphet, is launched. [The Jewish Daily Forward]

THE CHATTER:

Kavorka: what Boteach has and all us gawky Jewish boys wish we had. [Urban Dictionary]

The Rabbi’s wife is Australian and he has eight, count ‘em eight, children. [Shmuley]

Shmuley’s book, “Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments”: encouraging awkward Jewish singles the world over. [Shmuley] [Amazon]

 

JEWS PSYCHED: BIRDS DEAD FROM FLU HALF OFF AT MARKET!

THE NEWS:

Bird flu hits Israel. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

THE CHATTER:

Avian flu, known as the H5N1 virus, has reached across Europe, Africa and Asia since 2003, killing at least 100 people who caught it from infected fowl, and killing or forcing the slaughter of tens of millions of poultry in Asia. Scientists fear it may mutate into a strain communicable between humans, triggering a global pandemic.

Israel’s first known outbreak of avian flu was in March 2006, and a blogger wrote, “Containment of epidemics is one area where Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is absolutely essential.” [The Head Heeb]

From Frank Gannon in Shouts and Murmurs, “Beyond Bird Flu: Other Potential Epidemics.” [The New Yorker]

A Brazilian lefty cartoonist, Carlos Lutuff came in second in Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Contest for this charmer. Norman Finkelstein is a fan, and according to Britain's Socialits Workers' Party, "[A]ccusations of antisemitism levelled against him by the right are baseless. Latuff’s work stands firmly in an anti-imperialist and anti-racist tradition." Lutuff's "anti-imperalist and anti-racist" take on 9/11 after the jump. (Hat tip: Harry's)

Lutuff's Winner: For which he got $4,000 + Trophy + Honorable Mention

 

The Actual Death of Captain America?

 

Lutuff's comment on 9/11

 

Still more

Zac Posen's out. We're serious. Read about the rise of hottest new Jewish designer: Alexandre Herchcovitch and try to comprehend how his "Shmatte Chic" style trend is taking the fashion world by storm. I think Jewlicious said it best with their, "Not since the days of Madonna wearing Jean-Paul Gauthier’s hasidic garb has tznius been so hot. Hipster t-shirts are one story, and the rise of shmatte chic is another." Slate's Alana Newhouse also put in her two cents.

It's a line, based on mistranslation, from Whit Stillman's Barcelona (also germane tagline: "Americans. Anti-Americans. In Love."), though I think the term applies to the truly bizarre spectacle of seeing President Bush getting chummy with Lula, the Marxisant president of Brazil, who was just re-elected to office without all the viva la revolucion fanfare of someone else we might name...

Guess how Hugo whiled away his time while the White Devil shook hands with a comrade across the continent, which must have been the political equivalent of being uninvited to dinner between your girlfriend and her visiting ex? The Times does a little research about the Venezuelan autocrat's bedfellows:

The stadium rally with Mr. Chávez was sponsored by union groups with ties to the Peronist government in Argentina, and a faction of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group led by Hebe de Bonafini.(She has expressed satisfaction at the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that Americans deserved a taste of their own medicine, and has also recently made anti-Semitic remarks.)

Now, you really do have to love this scene. A moon-faced "socialist" with an almshouse political economy rallies against the environmentalist-friendly energy reforms being advocated by George W. Bush. He enlists someone whose first name is Hebe but with less than Hebraiotrophic tendencies and a fondness for Al Qaeda to co-sponsor the gig; ditto the Peronist government in Argentina, which, last I checked, is rooted in the first "third way" ideology whose founder offered safe haven to Nazis before and after being cuckolded by Che Guevara.

Brecht couldn't have fashioned anything sillier.

Bush and Chavez Spar at Distance Over Latin Visit - New York Times

A Brazilian newspaper will rectify its usage of "jew," due to backlash from a recent article whose headline read: "What to do when daylight-saving time ‘Jews' body and soul."

In Portuguese, jew used as a verb is judiar translates as to mock, spoil, mistreat.

According to one of the protestors, Professor Israel Blajberg, the stance against using the word as a verb in such a context “is an important contribution of JB to the battle against discrimination.”