Adam Hootnick: director of 'Unsettled'Unsettled, an award-winning independent documentary about the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, opened this month at theaters in NYC and LA. I saw the film in January, at Limmud NY, and called it "amazing." The movie follows six young Israelis in the weeks leading up to the disengagement: Three who live in settlements inside Gaza and don't want to leave, two soldiers who will have to remove the settlers, and a peace activist who's pro-disengagement. It's fascinating, poignant and surprisingly fun. Last week I asked director Adam Hootnick about his experiences making the film, watching people's reactions, and making all-important decisions about the soundtrack (he used to work for MTV.) Here's what he had to say.

I first heard about this film from a woman who went to my yoga studio in Nashville. I was wearing a shirt with Hebrew on it and she said, “Are you Jewish? Did you see Unsettled at the Nashville Film Festival?” She wasn’t Jewish, but had been really affected by it, and really wanted to talk about it. What have you found to be the most surprising and interesting reactions you’ve gotten to your film?

That’s a great story – those are the responses that I find most exciting, if not surprising. I guess it’s not surprising because I always believed that this was not just a Jewish story, not just an Israeli story, and not even just a Middle East story (even though it would be hard to convince theatrical distributors and broadcasters of that….) It’s a story about conflict resolution, and about the fact that human situations are rarely black and white. This is a story about a group of people who are all supposed to be on the same side, but it’s not that simple. It’s a story about people finding ways to not kill each other. So I have not been surprised to find that people from a lot of backgrounds – a former Pakistani ambassador, rabbis, professional negotiators, the Egyptian guy who approached me after a screening to give me a hug – believe this is a story that can have an impact.

How did you come to this project? How long did you spend preparing and how long were you shooting?

I had lived in Israel for a year after college, teaching at the American school there and then working at NBC News in Tel Aviv. Most of my friends were Israeli guys around the same age as I was. They were just out of the army (pretty much everyone has to serve in the IDF) but otherwise they were just like my American friends (almost none of whom went to the military) – they listened to the same music, did the same stuff in their free time. As it became clear that the withdrawal was going to happen, I started thinking about what it would be like for my friends to be sent on this mission against other Israelis. I wondered about the American parallel as well: what it would be like if the US Army was sent to clear out a county of Texas to turn the land over to Mexico? Even without all the religious and geopolitical overtones present in the Middle East, what would it be like to be a soldier sent on a mission to take people from your own country out of their homes?

Having worked for several years as a producer at MTV, telling stories about young people in conflict, I realized this was probably going to be a very compelling story. And, of course, there was also a deeper level, a universal question about how to reconcile religion and democracy when the two seem incompatible. Obviously that’s not just a question in Israel. In terms of preparation, it all happened pretty fast. I didn’t make the decision to leave until May, and I flew to Israel in July. I was over there shooting for two months.

Don't break the chain: A scene from the movieDid you have any expectations for how things were going to go during the pullout? Were you particularly surprised by any of the things you saw?

I had no idea what to expect. In retrospect everything looks like it went smoothly, but in June of 2005 the protests across the country were getting intense – people throwing oil and tire spikes onto highways, riot police, water cannons, etc. There were rumors about settlers stockpiling weapons to resist the evacuation. So nobody knew what was going to happen.

Almost everything I saw and experienced surprised me. A few things were negative, including the rare episodes of serious physical violence I saw during the pullout, and seeing some Israelis resort to Holocaust symbolism and calling other Israelis Nazis. But the vast majority of the surprises were incredibly uplifting. I was amazed at the willingness of people on all “sides” of this issue to open up their lives to me, sacrificing their privacy at some of the hardest moments they had ever faced, because they believed it was so important to try to tell the outside world who they were and what they were going through. I was inspired by witnessing, again and again and again, the spectacle of people who responded to this conflict, even in its most intense moments, by saying, essentially, “I hate what you are doing, but I don’t hate you.”

There is a scene that didn’t make the film (because of time constraints) where one of the soldiers goes into a house and meets three guys who are about to be evicted, and they ask to exchange phone numbers with all of the soldiers because they want to try to stay in touch afterward to try to make sure they don’t end up on opposite sides of a battle within Israeli society. These moments of trust and dialogue really bolstered my faith in humanity – I feel very lucky to have witnessed them.

What was the hardest part to shoot?

Two days were hardest. The first was the day the army first went to try to deliver eviction notices, when I saw some of the most violent scuffles take place. Until I saw people start clawing at each other, I had never processed how scared I was that people might start hurting each other. Suddenly I was overcome, more than anything, by sadness, and I just had to put the camera down for a few minutes. I called my co-producer and co-cinematographer, Mickey Elkeles, who is this big, soft-spoken former soldier who had been injured in combat a number of times, figuring he’d tell me to toughen up. He was a little choked up, too. The second was the day I watched one of my characters – who by this time I knew quite well – being removed from her home. Regardless of how you feel about the political issues, it’s a complicated moment, and I wrestled with a lot of questions about my own presence there, putting my camera in people’s faces while this was happening.

How did you choose the six people who you focus on in this film?

I approached it the same way I approached casting any story I did at MTV. I wanted to find regular kids who represented a cross-section of the backgrounds and perspectives that existed, to show what it was like to be one of the young people at the front lines of this conflict where, at least in theory, there was no enemy.

There are some unexpectedly funny moments in this film. When I saw it at Limmud NY everyone was in hysterics as we watched an American reporter try to give the same rehearsed speech over and over as he was pushed forward in a sea of settlers. Were there any other moments when you found yourself laughing unexpectedly?

I was laughing pretty much anytime I was with Lior, the long-haired Gaza surfer-lifeguard. Lior: in a rare clothed appearanceI think in the two months I was shooting the film I only saw him wearing a shirt three times. And usually he was wearing a speedo, which is always funny. Maybe it’s especially funny in Gaza.

In many ways I found Ye’ela to be the most interesting character in the film. Her sister was killed in a terrorist bombing, but she was working to return Gaza to the Palestinians. Her situation was so extraordinary, but somehow her message of reconciliation was less articulate and intense than the settlers protesting the situation. And Tamar and Yuval, the other two pro-disengagement characters, both also seemed to be very ambivalent about their positions.

Did you see that as a pattern across the board? The people who were anti-disengagement were vehement and passionate, and the people who were pro disengagement had more ambivalence?

I think there was definitely more ambivalence on the part of people who were pro-disengagement. While most of them believed it was wrong to have an ongoing settlement and military presence in Gaza, they were not positive that this decision would lead to peace, in the short term or the long term. They were more likely to frame their position in pragmatic terms, rather than emotional ones. They also were not being removed from their homes, and not forced to confront religious convictions that they considered sacred and inviolable, as was the case with many disengagement opponents.

However, I strongly disagree with the characterization that Ye’ela was less articulate, particularly given that she was speaking in a second language. (If her communication in English is unclear, that is my fault as a filmmaker for asking her to communicate in my first language rather than her own.) But I think that when she talks about why she favors compromise with Palestinians, even after Palestinian terrorists killed her sister, and why she believes settlements in Gaza unreasonably put soldiers at risk, how she doesn’t understand how a settler could face the mother of a soldier killed defending settlements, she is quite lucid and intense. No less so than is Meir, the lifeguard and religious student, when he explains that while he believes in peace with Arabs, the Torah is the only true religious text, and negotiation on the borders of Israel can never be permitted.

I know you worked as a producer for MTV, and there’s a lot of really interesting music in ‘Unsettled.’ How did you choose the songs you wanted for this film?

The music is like a seventh character, in a way. I wanted to use a lot of Israeli pop, rock, funk, and hip hop, because in a way it might communicate to young American viewers how much we overlap with other cultures. The hip hop and rock anthems are approachable to viewers who might never have heard a Middle Eastern sound, but can dig something that’s a little bit foreign. And as soon as I heard the lyrics to Matisyahu’s “Youth” – I knew that song had to be in this film. Fortunately, he agreed.

Is there a message you want people to walk away with when they leave ‘Unsettled’?

Not really. Except that I hope people will see something they hadn’t seen before, and have some stereotypes dented a little bit. I hope they will see that people sometimes can resolve painful, passionate disagreements without killing each other. I hope they will think about how they would respond if they were in the shoes of someone else. All the typical indie-filmmaker stuff.

Where are the next few places you’ll be screening the film?

NYC, at the Pioneer Theater, starting Friday May 9th, and LA, at the Laemmle Music Hall 3, starting Friday May 16th. People who aren’t in one of those cities can get it on DVD now, too.

Smart People: Now in theatersNo publisher will touch a manuscript with the word “intellectual” in the title, or so goes one chestnut about how stupid our culture has become. When British studio heads were looking to adapt Alan Bennett’s play "The Madness of George III" for celluloid, they felt it necessary to change the title to The Madness of King George lest too many Americans wonder what had happened to Parts I and II. Still, give us a chance and we may just lift our knuckles off the floor long enough to sit through cerebral entertainment. Sideways proved that an intelligent script featuring a sadsack oenophile snob – and Thomas Hayden Church! – could galvanize a national market for Pinot Noir. Smart People isn’t nearly as good, but it’s heartening to know that even a lackluster script featuring a sadsack literary snob – and Thomas Hayden Church! – can strike a foothold in Hollywood.

Dennis Quaid plays widower Lawrence Wetherhold, a name with Middlemarch-ian cadences wholly appropriate to his profession: He teaches Victorian literature at Carnegie Mellon. Actually, he doesn’t so much teach as hector Victor literature. An edifice to self-absorption in tweeds, Wetherhold could not care less about his students, their names, or their CliffsNotes-prompted opinions about great books. He is shopping around a manuscript with something much worse than “intellectual” in the title, about the untold history of literary theory, and that no one apart himself takes seriously.

Wetherhold suffers a minor seizure after attempting to retrieve his briefcase from his impounded car, which in his blithe indifference he parked across two faculty parking spaces. Since he can’t legally drive for six months, he needs a chauffeur. His doting, overachieving Young Republican daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) has got SATs and anti-stem cell research leaflets to attend to, so she fobs the task off onto to his wastrel adopted brother Chuck (Hayden Church), who needs a place to stay.

There’s also a surreptitious poet in the family in the form of Wetherhold’s son, enrolled at Carnegie Mellon, but he’s indisposed with daddy issues and hormones (he’s the kind of character Michael Chabon would have made gay). In the course of his physical recovery, Wetherhold undergoes an implausibly emotional one facilitated by the lady doctor who treated him (Sarah Jessica Parker). She took his insufferable course a decade ago and developed a schoolgirl crush that has now metamorphosed into Florence Nightingale syndrome for tenured assholes. If only he remembered her, and hadn’t given her a C…

Thomas Hayden Church: bracing himself for the reviewsHigh-minded misanthropy was better attained by Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale, a film that at least had the courtesy not to indulge in a treacly redemption fantasy. It’s hard to fathom that any woman in her right mind, much less an ER physician with little free time on her hands, would give Wetherhold a second chance after their disastrous first date. Or that a literature prof would not have long ago been shaken violently out of his solipsistic torpor by a right-wing daughter who feeds him career advice from Dick Cheney’s playbook. Hayden Church has a few scene-stealing moments as the least maladjusted, and least accomplished, member of this patchwork bourgeois family, though a disturbing subplot centered around sexual tension with his niece distracts from his winning efforts to inject a little fun in everyone’s drab Pittsburgh lives. Otherwise, the dialog in Smart People is only ever medium-clever.

Though I think debut director Noam Murray shows great potential as a satirist as sharp and merciless as his protagonist. He hits a perfect note in a throwaway scene set at the Penguin Group offices in Manhattan, where Wetherhold’s book has finally, against all expectation, found an unlikely champion. The editor has made some creative changes to market this pompous tome: he’s going to call it You Can’t Read and make everyone hate its author. “The thing is like a fucking bully…NPR will go after you, and pretty soon you’ll find yourself defending it on Charlie Rose.” An entire, funnier, film might have been made out of this untilled soil of tabloid book publishing.

Ben Stein: Schoolboy rebel Ben Stein has worn many hats throughout the course of his professional life. He has been a writer, a professor, a lawyer, a Hollywood consultant, and, famously, an actor and gameshow host. He even had a stint as a speechwriter for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Now Stein is simultaneously taking on some new roles: Documentary filmmaker, self-proclaimed rebel of our generation, and…Intelligent Design proponent? Beginning April 18, he’s bringing his rebellious self to a theater near you with his new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary about the freedom of speech (or lack thereof) surrounding the Intelligent Design/Darwinism debate.

Stein lays the foundation for his quest in the opening to the film’s impending-doom-filled trailor:

Like most people, I also have questions. Very big questions, like how did we get here? Where are we going? Is there a meaning and purpose in life? Or are we, the universe, and everything in it, merely the result of pure dumb fate and chance? For most of my life, I believe the answers to these questions were fairly straightforward. Everything that exists was created by a loving God.

Fair enough. Respecting that very smart people, namely Darwinist scientists, believe otherwise, Stein remained untroubled by the matter, acknowledging that Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Inquiry entitles everyone to express his own opinion and to pursue his own research. But then the primordial soup hit the fan. Stein heard about Richard Sternberg, former managing editor of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a scientific journal affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute, who lost his job and suffered academic and professional persecution simply by allowing an article by Discovery Institute mastermind Stephen C. Meyer to be published. Stein regarded this event as a tragedy, with dangerous implications.

“We believe in a free society,” Stein says. “This isn’t Nazi Germany.” He claims that we are living in a “Era of Darwin” in which people must learn to shut up and play along with the paradigm of evolution, or to face dire consequences. And, according to Stein, everyone is in on the conspiracy, including the media, the academy, and the court systems. The logical conclusion: Darwinists are afraid and are hiding something.

The Mouse Trap: Too complex to work without one of its parts His main argument is that in the time of Galileo, Intelligent Design theorists would have had no problem propagating and vocalizing their ideas. Too bad that in making such an argument, Stein completely overlooks the fact that Galileo was placed under house arrest, had his books banned, and was forced to discredit all of his research, simply for having the audacity to say that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.

Ultimately, Stein concludes that “Darwinism is not only improbable, it might actually be dangerous.” In a November 2007 interview with Bill O’Reilly, Stein says that he sees gaps in Darwinism that no one is attempting to fill except for Intelligent Design Theorists. Whether or not these theorists turn out to be right is irrelevant, he says—the simple fact that they attempt to provide a counterpoint is noble in itself.

Even if this is a fair argument, it is hard to pick out amid Stein’s use of Design-smattered terminology. In the interview, he refers to Darwin’s theory as a “relic” left over from 19^th century imperialism which states that humans evolved from monkeys (Darwin never said this, by the way) and that life started when some lightning hit a puddle of mud, a theory about which Stein says, “that has never struck me as convincing.” When he says that the cell’s perfectly moving thousands of parts can only be explained by the hand of a benevolent God, he sounds like Michael Behe in “Irreducible Complexity.” These little comments makes it seem like Stein has already made up his mind about which camp is emitting the most truth.

With the releasing of Expelled, Stein sets himself up to be the voice of the subjugated Intelligent Design theorist. And he’s expecting to change some opinions and to raise some controversy. He says:

I now realize that it was my duty to get the word out, to warn others before it’s too late. So I’m gonna begin by warning you. Feel free to watch this film if you must, and I hope you do. But you’ve got to know that doing so could land you in a heap of trouble. Some of you are gonna lose your friends for watching this film. Some of you may even lose your jobs. In fact, if you’re a scientist with any hope of a future, I suggest you leave right now…but if you do leave, will anyone be left to fight this battle? Anyone? Anyone?

Advanced screening reviews are, uh, mixed – according to the Expelled newsroom, Richard Dawkins gave it a thumbs down, but Rush Limbaugh thought it was great! But the question remains: Is it even possible to criticize the movie without being written off as narrow-minded? I guess we shall see, starting April 18.

Low on motivation? Lacking inspiration? In the market for an extra dose of faith in your own abilities, or even in humankind as a whole? Sometimes those elusive needs can be met in the dim enchantment of a movie theater, and this spring offers a bounty of heartening, galvanizing documentaries that will spur you to action. Here are five films sure to rouse even the most cynical critics.

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.

Scarlett Johansson: following in the footsteps of other do-gooder masked crusaders Actress Scarlett Johansson announced a plan today that will combine two of everyone’s favorite things: tzedakah and big swanky Hollywood parties. ScarJo will purportedly auction off two tickets to the premiere of her upcoming movie, He’s Just Not That Into You, on eBay. All proceeds from the sale will go to international social justice coalition, Oxfam.

Two winners will not only get to chill with the celebrity Jewess at the premiere, but will also be treated as stars for the day, getting glammed out with a Hollywood makeover, and arriving in style by chauffeured car service. Tikkun Olam has never looked so good!

Johansson is full of surprises lately: A few weeks ago, she told us she was planning on being the next Tom Waits, and now she's venturing into the world of charity. Might she be trying to keep up with her socially conscious co-star, The Other Boleyn Girl Natalie Portman? Maybe, but at least it’s for a good cause.

Related: Walk A Mile In Natalie Portman's Shoes

Welcome to Jewcy’s live coverage of the 80th Annual Academy Awards!

I am your humble guide for the evening, a movie obsessed girl from Los Angeles who actually happens to know more than a few people involved in making the things. Throughout the show, I’ll be providing gossip, commentary, and maybe even a little insight, with little to no sense of propriety; this much I promise you. Also, I will be drinking! Things could go anywhere!

Especially because Hollywood has been nutso-crazy of late. To review, a 100-day Writer’s Strike ended only a few weeks ago and a really attractive and talented young actor who people actually liked and respected just died. This leaves Hollywood people in a weird state, and they are an emotive bunch to begin with. Might this lead to a more exciting show than usual? Maybe! Or maybe it will be the same parade of self-congratulation as every other year, but I promise I’ll make it fun. So, without further ado, let’s get to it…

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Hey, everyone needs a hobby: Woody Allen also plays the clarinet

For fans of Woody Allen, the elephant has been in the room for fifteen years now. We remember it's there, right? That Allen took up with his quasi-stepdaughter, Soon-Yi Previn when he was 56, she 22? That he had nude photographs of her? That Mia Farrow accused him of molesting their adopted daughter (a judge found the charges "inconclusive")? Sigh. We -- especially those of us who are, despite it all, fans -- remember.

And yet, for someone whose mature films were once so autobiographical, this notorious, unavoidable aspect of Allen's personal life has seemed absent from his artistic production. On the contrary, many of the films of the last decade and a half (and there has been roughly one each year) have been fluff, like the caper Small Time Crooks, the musical Everyone Says I Love You, the mob farce Bullets Over Broadway -- and those were the good ones. This has led many critics to conclude that Allen's introspective phase is over. The old man is going through the motions.

A closer look at Allen's late films, however, belies that claim. In fact, Allen's new film, Cassandra's Dream, is but the latest in public confessions of moral failure and deep ethical ambivalence. It's in code, but if we look closely at this series of Allen's films -- and this article will have spoilers for Match Point, Cassandra's Dream, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Scoop -- we can see they are exactly about "the elephant in the room."

The first, and best, of the late films is 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors. (Notice that, if Farrow's accusations were at all true, this was exactly when Allen became inappropriately interested in the minors living in his home.) That film introduced the central question of the late work: whether there's anyone minding the moral store, whether criminals ever get their comeuppance. Crimes and Misdemeanors also explicitly blends tragedy and comedy, a formal choice that reflects its ethical content. For flawed people, does life end tragically (as it ought to) or comically (as it oughtn't, but often does)?

Don't worry, Sam: You've got a friend who can loan you some eyesIn Crimes, the contrast is stark. Martin Landau, in perhaps the most brilliant performance of a brilliant career, plays Judah Rosenthal, who contracts to kill his wife  mistress (murder is the quintessential immoral act in the late films), and gets away with it. At first he is wrought with guilt, but eventually, the guilt passes. Meanwhile, Woody Allen's character, a good man, loses everything, and the film's moral conscience, a rabbi played by Sam Waterston, goes blind.

In the film's climactic scene, Rosenthal tells his story, in third person. He’s guilt-ridden and believes God is monitering him. “Little sparks of his religious background which he'd rejected are suddenly stirred up,” he says. He’s driven almost to confess. “And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted... he's Scot-free. His life is completely back to normal.’’

Knowing now what we didn't know in 1989, it's not a huge stretch to see Allen reflecting on his own situation in these words. Did he commit a crime? Or just a misdemeanor? Who knows. Maybe all he did was fantasize about a much younger woman who was effectively, if not legally, his stepdaughter. But perhaps there were pangs of guilt already. And yet, as Alan Alda's smarmy character says in the film, "comedy is tragedy plus time." Time passes, and Oedipus gets over it. The tragic, ethical sense of what ought to be gives way to a comic, aesthetic play of what just is.

Flash forward to 2005's Match Point, widely regarded as Allen's return to form, and featuring Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Chris, a tennis pro who, by chance, falls in with a wealthy playboy and ends up marrying his sister Chloe -- all the while lusting after the playboy's fiancee Nola, played by Scarlett Johansson. Eventually, Nola and Chris have an affair, Nola becomes pregnant, and refuses to have an abortion. Chris is trapped: he depends on Chloe's family for his job, his life, his dreams of making it in the world. And so he ends up killing Nola (and a neighbor) in cold blood.

Case in point: Pigeons plus time equals creative pun Chris is almost caught when he fails to destroy a piece of evidence -- a gold ring that bounces on a railing like a tennis ball bouncing on the net. But luckily for him, the ring gets picked up by a drug addict, substantiating rather than undermining his alibi. He escapes. It's a comedy. Cue jazz music and white-on-black credits.

As in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the bad guy gets away with it, though this time the emphasis is less on his cool lack of conscience than on his dumb luck.

The same themes are repeated in Cassandra's Dream. In it, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play two working class English brothers, Ian a striver like Match Point's Chris, and Terry, down on his luck. Their wealthy uncle promises them all the money they need -- if they kill a business associate who's about to testify against him. Eventually, the brothers do the deed. But then Terry spirals downward, consumed with guilt, while Ian represses the guilt and gets on with fulfilling his ambitions.

That haircut is a crime AND a misdemeanor: Farrell and McGregor Finally, when Terry is about to crack, Ian plots to kill him before he confesses. But at the last moment, Ian repents, and instead of poisoning Terry, merely punches him. In the ensuing fight, Terry accidentally kills Ian, and then kills himself out of remorse. It's a tragedy. Cue brooding Philip Glass music and white-on-black credits.

Cassandra's Dream is perhaps even darker than Match Point, which was even darker than Crimes and Misdemeanors. In Crimes, the comedy unfolded despite the murderer's remorse. In Match Point, remorse is irrelevant. In Cassandra, it's downright harmful: the tragedy is precipitated precisely because of Terry's last-minute pang of conscience. If he'd been more cruel, there would have been a happy ending.

The lesson is clear: comedy is tragedy plus time -- unless you brood about it.

In this light, even some of Allen's lesser works begin to take on a new light. For example, Scoop's murderous villain is only discovered by a comic mix of supernaturalism and shtick (and Allen's character pathetically dies as he tries to save the heroine). Melinda and Melinda revisits the comedy/tragedy dichotomy, suggesting that luck determines the outcome much more than our own actions. And so on.

So, the elephant is in the room, and in the frame. By now, "Woody and Soon-Yi" have become a fixture on the New York cultural scene; we're no longer shocked. But whether there was misconduct early on, or only unseemliness, Allen has not overlooked the obvious, which is that he is a 72-year-old married to a 30-year-old who wasn't quite his stepdaughter but almost sort of was. Allen is unpunished, but perhaps unforgiven as well, at least by himself.

Let me out!: The elephant plots its escape On the surface, Allen's agonizing agnosticism is squarely at odds with traditional Jewish conceptions of justice, Allen's obvious foil. This is the "religious background which he'd rejected." But Allen hasn't rejected its most salient feature, which is not the pat answer that God sees everything, but the wrestling with the problems of justice and evil in the first place. Judaism is a religion of Job, not just Sunday School, and Allen's extended meditations on the presence or absence of moral order are the essence of the Jewish ethical conscience.

We all know that God does not punish the wicked -- at least not in ways we can see. And yet, we who were raised in the Jewish tradition still experience Jewish guilt, itself both comic and tragic. Is there really no moral order in the world? Is remorse an ally or an adversary? Will there be an accounting at the end, or is religion for suckers? Is it better to remember the past, or let it go?

Allen has now worked out at least three different permutations of these questions in his late films, each one with a different sense of pathos, a different perspective on the mystery. Of course, all this is speculation. Maybe there's really no big deal about the Allen/Previn marriage. Maybe Allen couldn't care less. Or maybe that's what he's trying to figure out.

Debra Sugarman: Filmmaker, photographer, and production designer.Debra Sugarman's documentary, Dear Mr. President, is about an arts camp she founded in New Mexico designed to bring Israeli and Palestinian youth together.  I met Debra on the set of a documentary called The Voices Project; she was the production designer and I was the costume designer, and she helped me build new garment racks, alter dresses, and preserve my sanity.  Afterwards, I asked her some questions about Dear Mr. President and the arts camp that she had founded.

You started an arts camp for Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, and Israeli Jews. Why did you do this and what has that process been like?

My family all gave time and money to improving Jewish life or to Israel. So I learned from that role model: we should give back to the community. I started doing it when I was very young, as a teenager. I worked specifically with mentally and emotionally disturbed kids. I quit doing it because it was really wiping me out and started doing what I am good at, which is art. Then, I began thinking about what I wanted to do to give back, and I really wanted to connect with something that I knew, which was Israel. My family is from Israel, my grandfather was one of the first settlers of Israel, and he worked for the Haganah. So, since I don’t identify as being a Jew religiously at all, but I relate to it as being my ethnicity, I decided that the best use of my time would be to find a way to connect the youth of Israel and Palestine. I think that teenagers are tomorrow’s leaders— I know they are in fact. So the decision became, how do I work with boys and girls that are teenagers without them being attracted to each other, when they should be breaking down barriers between their enemy cultures, not thinking “oh they’re hot.” So that’s how the camp became all girls, and I also think that both cultures under-serve women, though that’s changing a lot. Then the idea of using art and dialogue at a camp came from my life experience being an artist, and having art ameliorate healing in my life as a child.

What was the inspiration for the film Dear Mr. President?

The girls and I watched a film that a guy that was volunteering at the camp had produced. It was about a guy on a road trip across the US looking for this doctor, who later told him that he wouldn’t live long. So we watched Daniel’s film and afterwards, we talked about going in an RV next summer and calling the film some funny, superfluous title like “Looking for Daddy” or something. That’s how the seed was planted. From there I just thought that we should create a mini version of the camp, and used the RV as a stage. Then my friend Devon came up with the idea that we should deliver a message to the president, and that’s how we came up with the title Dear Mr.President. So the goal became to go from one side of the US to the other with these girls, and to meet up with the president.

On the trip, one of the girls, an Israeli Jew, asks another, a Palestinian, “Why would I trade places with you? Why would I choose to suffer?” Do you think this mentality is at the core of the conflict?

Dear Mr. President: The girls have a moment. First, I want to say that Amit (Israeli and Jewish), who said that, to Hameen(who lives in the West Bank), didn’t mean it the way that it sounded. As you saw, she made amends with Hameen and let her know that. But Amit was a very brilliant girl, all of those girls were very bright, and her point is well-taken, so in answer to your question I think it’s a kernal, it’s not the core issue. But yes, who wants a perceived enemy to be stronger than they?

In your trip across the country with the five girls, you visited many historical sites, including Wounded Knee. What were your reasons for this, and how were the girls affected by these landmarks?

I knew that I was going to have to stop in South Dakota for a million reasons, not the least of which is the history of native culture. Stopping at Wounded Knee, I felt like we had the potential to discover something about a culture that had been obliterated, but that still exists. When Amit read what was on the plaque at Wounded Knee, it really resonated with the Palestinian girls. That feeling of entrapment and of capture. It was what they feared most: that their land, their lives, and their families’ lives could be gone completely.

You have said that young women will make very good leaders. How do you think the women in your film can change politics in the Middle East, and why do you think that they would make good leaders?

One thing that happened with the camp, and consequently happened with the girls, was that they learned what it takes to build a new paradigm. When I picked the girls in the film, I got very lucky because all of the girls, were incredibly, uniquely intelligent. I think that when given the opportunity, young women, and the female gender in general, become multi-taskers. If we go the route of say, my mother, she was finishing up school, answering the phone, making meals, putting the baby to bed, being a good wife— I mean we are just genetically pre-disposed to multi-tasking really well. We haven’t been given the largest leadership roles, say, in the United States, or in our generation, but it’s really changing. It’s also changing over in Israel. I think that things take time. We’re talking about huge cultural shifts. How do you get a male-dominated society to get in touch with their feminine energy enough so that a woman runs their country or their world? How does that happen?

More on Debra Sugarman

Pickles was the most challenging and touching documentary that I saw at the Other Israel Film Festival. A moving film about the limitations of faith and culture, it follows the lives of eight Muslim widows who start a pickling factory in Israel.

Each woman in the film has her own struggle: Samira is estranged from her daugher, whose husband's family won't let the two women interact; Matza's son dies of a botched operation; Fatma begins a career in marketing once she is well into her fifties. Working in the factory gives them the opportunity to share these stories with each other. As they form a community, the women begin to question their roles in society. I interviewed Nitza Gonen, the producer of the film, to learn more about the significance of the film, its legacy, and the ideas behind it.

Women at work: In the pickles factory.What inspired the film Pickles?

One day, Dalit, the director, read an article about eight Muslim women in a northern village in Israel who started a pickle factory, and this story was very unusual because it was about widows. A widow isn’t supposed to go out of the home, she is supposed to watch over her children. She lives off social security and is watched over by her husband’s family. She is very miserable. She is not supposed to remarry. If she does, she cannot bring her children with her, and she must give them to her former husband’s family. There are few films about the inner lives of Muslim women. We wanted to lift the veil—and show that on the other side they were having a revolution.

As an Israeli Jewish woman making a documentary about Muslim widows, what were some of the obstacles that you faced during the production of the film? How did you deal with the language barrier? Were the villagers or women’s families suspicious of the motives of your film?

First, I don’t speak Arabic—none of us on the film crew speak it. We needed a common language so we got a translator. She was a Muslim woman who taught us the different cultural codes. The widows were very nice to us. They knew we had good intentions and that we were just trying to expose their lives to the world. The problem was with this woman in the municipality. Her role was to care for the women of the village and when she saw that we were making a film she interfered and forbade us from shooting private moments in the home and in the factory. She represented women trying to keep up their modesty and tradition, so I don’t blame her. Somebody had to protect the widows. But they couldn’t disobey her. She had lots of influence and she helped them to take care of their families. It was difficult because we didn’t want to raise conflict, so we missed some interesting situations.

In an interview with PBS, Dalit Kimor, the director, said that "Not one political word was said when we were filming" between the filmmakers and the widows. Why did you choose to do this? Do you consider your film political?

We didn’t want to make a political film. The widows weren't concerned with politics—on the first day of filming, Arafat died, and no one talked about him in the village. No one was occupied with his death. No one was praying for him in the mosques. They didn't speak about it. We didn't speak about it. We wanted to make a social human film. In Israel every film is political. Choosing Arab women as a subject of a film is political. Some people have criticized the film for not being political. It is completely innocent of politics.

Nitza Gonen: In her house in Israel.You have said that the women had never heard of the word feminism and yet were creating a small revolution. Was this film made from a feminist perspective? Did a feminist thread evolve during the production of this film?

Neither Dalit nor myself are feminists in the classic sense. Feminism is old news—we are feminists, but we are beyond this term. We didn't aim to make a feminist film, but the film talks about the rise of feminism in Arab society in Israel. The widows made a revolution in the village and the young women respect them. Now they are thinking of going to work, to school, and developing careers—and they weren't thinking of this before. These women did something for feminism without knowing it. Feminism is not the subject of the film, but it is the subtext.

After the production of Pickles, did any of the women stay in touch? Was a social network established? Did the pickle factory leave a legacy for the women in the film?

Widows are supposed to live in loneliness, and the factory gave them the opportunity to have a social club. In the film they cry together and tell jokes and comfort each other, and this it is not something that was in their lives before. So when the factory closed they had to go back to their former lives—but not Fatma. Because she was the marketing director she had a lot of contacts, so she is still making pickles, with her daughters. They have started their own business. Her daughters want to go to school, so she is saving money so they can study.

What has been the response to Pickles internationally and in Israel?

People liked the film very much, although it's unusual because when Israelis make films on Arabs it's always about identity, conflict with Palestinians, or about Palestinians, and this film was not dealing with this. In Israel, our subject was not dealing with the hard stuff. The big success of the film was abroad. People were surprised to learn how Arab women were living, to discover that they are like us, like everybody. The Muslim world in the eyes of the West—it's a kind of riddle. We see them as fanatics or fundamentalists, but we don't see their lives. The film revealed a lot about this without saying it.

Through the production of Pickles, you started a dialogue between secular Muslim women and secular and non-secular Jewish women in Israel. Have you done other work to increase dialogue or contact between Muslims and Jews in Israel? What are your thoughts on Jewish and Muslim relations in Israel?

We are both Mediterranean and we come from the same area. We have many shared characteristics: hospitality, human warmth, we are straight-forward. Before 1948, Arabs and Jews lived together and sometimes had good relations. Through progress I think that we will have better relations. On the last film I worked on, the director of photography and director were both Arab. I would like them to join all fields of life in Israel. We share the same country and there is no excuse for being apart.

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Also in Jewcy:

The Other Israel Film Festival

The mission of the Other Israel Film Festival is to expose the lives of Muslims that live in Israel. I am behind the mission of the festival. I am interested in the Muslim perspective in Israel and I am interested in the art that Muslims are generating. Do they feel like second-class citizens, how do Muslim women view themselves, and what is the Other Israel?

This is the first year of the festival, and I believe that it was an inspiring one. I have been to my share of festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, and I've thrown my own. There were technical problems with the festival, like the films being re-sized as we watched them, but I understood these problems as a festival's growing pains. The Other Israel Film Festival got a group of films and filmmakers together that got the other side seen and heard, and I commend them for that.

Here are some highlights of the festival.

The Syrian Bride

Nervous on your wedding day?Every bride is nervous on her wedding day. She might trip on her dress or Aunt Ethel might get wasted at the reception. A million things might go wrong, but eventually, her nervousness recedes, she kisses the groom, and the two begin a married life.

Mona is nervous on her wedding day for different reasons. As a Palestinian, once she marries her Syrian fiancé, she can never return to Israel or see her family again—the Israeli government has also prohibited her father from attending her wedding. So Mona must turn her back on her family in order to get married. This is more than most brides have to deal with on their wedding day.

The Syrian Bride exposes the difficulties of not being a citizen of your homeland. My biggest critique of the film is that it could have gone further, and investigated what it means to live with resignation— to know that you are not in control, do not have basic privileges, and are denied happiness because of your lack of identity. The Syrian Bride alludes to these themes, but the lack of resolution leaves loose ends where solid conclusions are necessary.

Pickles

Women starting a feminist revolution through...Pickles?According to convention, Muslim widows are dead to the world. They cannot remarry or work outside of the home, or do anything other than raise their children and mourn their husband's death. They must live the rest of their days with their husband's family as well. The family watches over the widow and ensures that she does not disrespect her husband's memory.

These are the makings of a barren, miserable, and lonely life.

However, this is not the case for a group of eight Muslim widows. They start a pickling factory to earn money for their families, and in so doing, they give meaning to their lives. They have a place to go to, a job to do, and soon, a social network forms. However, none of the women is prepared for the difficulties that await them.

This is a moving documentary about the limitations of faith and culture, and the inherent disadvantages of living in a chauvinistic society. Pickles asks: must we accept these limitations? It is an articulate and intimate portrait of Muslim life.

Roads

The road from poverty.Amores Perros begins with two young men in a speeding car, escaping a car full of thugs, as a dog bleeds to death in the backseat. Roads begins with two young boys in a speeding car, escaping a car full of thugs, as a sheep bleeds to death in the backseat. Coincidence?

Roads is about a young Arab boy working for a heartless drug-dealer. One day, he decides to take the money and run. Then, he gets his best friend and a Jewish drug-addict involved. Will he escape his life of poverty or get stopped along the way?

Perhaps if Roads were not a rip-off of Amores Perros, I could appreciate it. Then again, the terrible plot-development, sloppy editing, and lazy camera work were no picnic to sit through. As a filmmaker, I've learned that a great idea does not make a great film; good storytelling, strong acting, and careful attention to detail make a great film. It takes vision and a high level of technical skill to pull one off—and you must make your stories your own. Roads lacks the originality that makes a film worth watching.

(Welcome, Stumblers!)

The Kingdom, still playing in major movie houses, may be the most important recent contribution to the public discussion of U.S.-Saudi relations. Surprisingly and even hearteningly for those who follow developments in the desert monarchy, the film begins with the “W” word – Wahhabi – referring to the ultrafundamentalist Sunni Muslim sect that provides ideological support for the Riyadh regime.

American media, guided by academic Middle East Studies experts, have assiduously evaded discussion of Wahhabism, its murderous career over the past 250 years of Islamic history, and its complicity in incitement, recruitment, and financing of terrorism in Iraq today. Western journalists, academics, and politicians have even chimed in with Saudi claims that Wahhabism does not exist – only Islam, or “Salafism,” an abuse of the Islamic vocabulary. Wahhabis call themselves “Salafis” for the same reason Stalinists called themselves “progressives;” because when they are open about their affiliations and goals, they are repudiated.

The Kingdom is directed by Peter Berg, better known as an actor, with co-production by cinema genius Michael Mann (my favorite of Mann’s earlier films is the 1995 classic Heat, with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, followed by Collateral in 2004.) Jamie Foxx, who costarred in Collateral, is the lead in The Kingdom, as an FBI agent who, by means best described as “direct action,” takes over investigation of a terrorist bombing at a compound for Westerners on Saudi territory.

The picture has flaws – some of its Arabic translations are inaccurate. It is more than a bit difficult to imagine an American investigative team charging through Wahhabiland in such an energetic fashion. But The Kingdom has all the basic facts about the Saudi environment right, beginning with its references to Wahhabism. It correctly identifies the Saudi website alsaha.com as a major jihadist communications outlet that uses up-to-date technology to support the terrorist offensive. And most important, it includes an oleaginous American diplomat (Jeremy Piven) as reluctant to offend the Saudi authorities, and the armed bodies of men protecting the Saudi order as mainly ambivalent about extremism, when not sympathetic to it.

The Kingdom is a classic action epic, about which it is superfluous to analyze plot and characterization. Bombs blast away and guns go off, blood splashes in all directions, Foxx is tough and resourceful, a female FBI special agent played by Jennifer Garner is almost as tough, and an apparently Jewish special agent (Jason Bateman), is briefly kidnapped and threatened with beheading in front of a jihadist videocam.

But even with its improbabilities and other shortcomings, right now The Kingdom has almost the character of a documentary reportage rather than a dramatic film. Last week, a few days after seeing it, I attended a Capitol Hill press conference on the Saudi state held by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) – and had the sense I was walking into a scene left out of the movie.
On Monday, October 22, a new anti-Wahhabi coalition of American Muslims (www.al-baqee.org) will hold a demonstration at the Royal Saudi Embassy in Washington, protesting against Wahhabi terrorism in Iraq, and condemning the support for such atrocities originating south of the Iraqi-Saudi border. I am scheduled to speak at the rally, and plan to end my remarks by exhorting all present to see The Kingdom and urge others to do the same. Non-Muslims can hardly imagine the liberating effect of the seeing the truth about Wahhabism on the big screen.

I would close with my only caveat about the film: its ending proposes, Hollywood-style, moral equivalence between the combatants on both sides of the terror war. But no parallel, much less an attitude of neutrality in the conflict with the Wahhabis, is acceptable. America seeks to protect innocent people and has become a powerful ally of those who advocate pluralism in Islam; Wahhabis murder and lie without restraint. The main Wahhabi lie is the claim that Riyadh, the Wahhabi capital, and the rest of Saudi territory, aside from the Hejaz region of west Arabia including the cities of Mecca and Medina, are holy Islamic territory. Riyadh and the Wahhabi hinterland of Najd are not and never were sacred to Muslims; Najd was cursed by the Prophet Muhammad himself as a source of “earthquakes, conflicts, and the horns of Satan.”

For non-Muslims who will not easily contend with the learning curve required to understand the much-evoked “battle for the soul of Islam,” as well as for Muslims thirsty for truth about the crisis in the global umma, The Kingdom is a welcome relief from polite dissimulation about Saudi Arabia.

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ALSO IN JEWCY

Ali Eteraz on Saudi Arabia:

• The Quran I Hate, and the One I Love
• The Threat That Is Iran

Other Shvitz bloggers on Saudi Arabia:

• Challenging the Religious Police
• Jihadi Jonestown
• Fun with Pig and Ape
• Abdallah Will Be Joining Us Shortly, As Soon As He's Done Executing His Prisoner.

Stephen Suleyman Schwartz has covered the Saudi peninsula before in "The Walter Duranty of Saudi Arabia."

If your politico-religious ideology recommends a peculiar fear of and hostility toward cartoons, take that as warning sign numero uno that you're into something pretty batty. Mehdi Halhor, the Iranian government's adviser on cinematic affairs, condemned the recent success of the animated feature Persepolis at the Cannes Film Festival and called it an example of "Islamophobia."

The film, adapted from Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, looks fantastic:

The Barber from Brooklyn: Your Bubbe's worst nightmareA little while ago I saw a film about how photoshopped pictures in magazines can affect body image. The film is called “Wet Dreams and False Images” and it centers on a Brooklyn barber who insists that the girls he sees in ads and magazines are “all natural.” After watching the movie there was a discussion of how body image issues might be relevant to the Jewish community, and how we can avoid idolizing the pictures of models that we see every day. One of the women in the crowd said something to the effect of, “Well, our girls aren’t likely to end up with men like that barber anyway, so it’s not really a problem for us.”

Okay, so clearly that’s ridiculous on a number of levels. Barbers from Brooklyn are definitely not the only people who venerate half naked women in perfume ads. And anytime anyone speaks for the entire Jewish people I’m already annoyed. But here’s what really made me squirm: “Our girls aren’t likely to end up with men like that.”

Oh, really? I went to thirteen years of Jewish day school. I am highly educated, and observant. On paper, at least, I am a pretty good candidate for a Nice Jewish Girl. And while I can’t say the barber in the film did anything for me, my romantic interests have strayed quite a bit out of the ‘short cute Ivy League lawyer from New Jersey’ prototype.

Everyone?: Except me, I guess.The idea that Nice Jewish Girls won’t want to go out with Hispanic guys, or won’t drink too much, or won’t fail physics--I think that’s as much of a problem as all of the body image stuff. The flipside of the rich spectrum of observancy we find today is that we have all the problems everyone else has. And sure, it would be great if being an NJG precluded one from needing decades of therapy, or shacking up with a bad guy, or smoking up, but that’s just not the case. So instead of pretending that we’re not members of the club, and that our daughters won’t have to deal with all of this, we need to start being realistic. This means accepting that sometimes “our girls” will end up with barbers from Brooklyn, and that’s not the worst thing in the world. It also means accepting that “our girls” might bring home Nice Jewish Boys who aren’t doctors, lawyers, or academics. And that’s okay, too.

But denying that we have the problem, or any small facet of the problem? That doesn’t help anyone, least of all, “our girls.”

Harry Potter portrayer Daniel Radcliffe discusses his faith.

Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe will star in a film based on Yorum Kaniuk's acclaimed novel, "Adam Resurrected." In the film, Goldblum plays "a former circus clown who is spared the gas chamber so he can entertain Jews as they march to their deaths." Later in his life, he relocates to the Negev to an aslyum for Holocaust survivors. Dafoe's character is hardly against type. He plays a Nazi officer saved by Goldblum.

According to Jewlicious, the film will begin production this Spring.

Bob Dylan Upset With "Factory Girl": Get in line.Adding to the growing laundry list of problems facing the much-hyped, supposedly Oscar-buzzworthy film, "Factory Girl," is the fact that Bob Dylan is doing everything in his power to make sure it never sees the light of day. From ContactMusic.com:

DYLAN is furious at the producers and scriptwriters of FACTORY GIRL, which stars SIENNA MILLER playing EDIE SEDGWICK, an ANDY WARHOL protege who took an overdose in 1971, claiming the singer played a part in her suicide.

DYLAN's lawyer has written a letter to the producers of the film, stating that the screenplay which depicts the end of an alleged relationship between the two, who met while living in Manhattan in the early 1970s, prompted her "tragic decline into heroin addiction and eventual suicide".

The musician now wants the film pulled until the legal side has been determined, with lawyers admitting DYLAN has "deep concerns" he has been defamed.

Wow, so I guess the most annoying thing about this project isn't Sienna Miller as I had originally thought. Seems like there are layers upon layers of annoyance, which this film seems to be heaping upon the public. Now, I kind of want to see it.

DYLAN SLAMS FILMMAKERS OVER SUICIDE SUGGESTION [ContactMusic.com]

Kim Jong-il is famous for his love of film and his aspirations as a director, and I detect the Dear Leader's fingerprints all over this one. Who else could make "You are a country of murderers!" sound so much like a compliment?

I have to admit, the video's got a point. "Bloody massacres" are one thing, but the stolen Olympic medal was just uncalled for.

If you can get through this video without humming "Fucking USA!" to yourself, you win a free Comcast account.

Hat tip to user SimpleLiquid.