Jaffa (2009)

This is Romeo and Juliet, Israeli-style, with a great script and cast, and as is usual in a Film Movement film, spectacular cinematography.
Here's the story. Mali's father Reuven owns a garage in Jaffa, the 'old town' south of Tel Aviv that is still a cross-cultural mix of Arabs and Jews. But the Jews tend to the the employers and the Arabs the employees, as is the case with Reuven and Hassan, and then Hassan's son, Toufik. Reuvin treats father and son respectfully, but there is that relationship, none-the-less. Reuvin's son Meir is another story--he is work avoidant, quick to blame others when his work is not done, and racist. He treats the Arabs working in his father's garage like second class citizens.
Why is this a problem--well, first, Meir's sister Mali is in love with Toufik, and this has been going on for quite some time. They have kept their relationship a secret up til now, but Mali is pregnant and they plan to leave Israel to marry. All is going along according to this doomed plan until Meir and Toufik get into a fight that Meir started, but Toufik ends by decking Meir, and inadvertantly killing him.
There is nothing like untimely death to change a mediocre man into a martyr, and Meir's family wastes no time doing so. Mali is caught in the middle, and largely chooses family over love, but not quite. Her unhappiness is palpable throughout the back end of the movie, and it ends on a bittersweet note.
The movie is tragic, the story of these two lovers left to us as a paradigm for how untenable easy solutions are in Israel today.

The End of the Road by David Grossman

The author lost a son in the Israeli-Lebanon conflict in 2006, so he has an intimate reason to write about the effects of the Palestinian-Isralei contflict. He not only has lived it, he has lost to it, no matter the ultimate outcome. As the parent of a childhood cancer survivor, I am very aware of the fear of one's child's death, but I cannot imagine the actual loss. This book does not bring me any closer to that realization, but then the author does state that the book was well constructed prior to his son's death.
The book revolves around a classic love triangle--Ora and her two men, Avram and Ilan. She is married to Ilan, but she has a son with each of them, for reasons that are complicated, but suffice it to say that all three are damaged by their military experiences in the 1960's and how they ended up made sense given what happenend. Her son by Avram, Ofer, was discharged from the military and he and Ora had planned a big trek across Israel to celebrate--but then Ofer re-enlists for a dangerous mission, and Ora cannot take it. She vividly fears having someone come to tell her that Ofer has been killed. She decides to take off on the trip with Ofer's father, making herself unavailable--she calls herself a 'notifier-refusnik'. She has the magical thinking of one who cannot bear the alternative--if they can't tell her Ofer was killed then he is therefore alive.
War is hell, the book tells us, but not only because of it's brutality but because, in the case of Israel, of it's constancy. It is always there. No break, every generation has to fight it, and there is no end in sight. And it is emotionally exhausting.

Downton Abbey (2010)

This is a wonderful soap opera in Edwardian clothing that brilliantly portray the lives of 18 main characters, the upstairs and downstairs residents of a stately country house, from the spring of 1912 to the beginning of World War I in 1914.
There are many more likable characters, starting with the master of the house, the Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville as a benign dictator smart enough to realize that the world is rapidly changing around him.
The series opens with the Earl receiving a telegram about the sinking of the Titanic. His cousin and his cousin's son have drowned, leaving the future of Downton Abbey in peril. The Earl and his American wife (Elizabeth McGovern) have three daughters, none of who can inherit it, so the estate and all its money will pass to a distant cousin. Since the series is based on an original script, there are elements one wouldn't normally find in, say, an Edwardian novel adaptation, like the homosexual affair between a servant and a member of the ruling class. These subplots make the portrayed world of Downton Abbey seem all the more realistic.
Like almost all British television shows, the acting is frequently inspired. Maggie Smith plays the Dowager Countess, the mother of the Earl, as a droll snob.
The central theme of the series is the struggle between the comforts of staying the same and the potential rewards of progress. For every Mrs. Patmore, the cook who wants nothing more than to stay in service the remainder of her life, there is a housemaid such as Gwen (Rose Leslie), who dreams of becoming a secretary in a modern office. It's these dichotomies, and the way they exist within both the Abbey itself (half the rooms have electricity and half don't) and its multifaceted inhabitants that make Downton Abbey a great class study.

Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley

I love Flavia de Luce, the 11-year old heroine of this third book in the series set in the late 1950's in England, written by Alan Bradley. She is a precocious murder mystery solver who is invnetive, smart, shows a lot of common sense, and has a preternatural knowledge of chemistry. The more I read about her, the more I like her. She also has a good head on her shoulders and a firm moral compass that guides her through some things that her father wouldn't approve of her doing. In this installment, she uncovers a little bit more about her mother, who died when she was too young to really know her, and Flavia starts to get a sense that she might be a bit like her, which makes her more attached to her and more sad that she missed knowing her. The estate she lives on is the one her mother grew up on, so the discoveries are likely to keep appearing in upcoming books. I liked this one very much. The plot is completely unrealistic, but that doesn't detract from the telling of the story. The whole series would work for both young adults and fully matured reading audiences.

Love and Other Drugs (2010)

Ok, this is a straight up romantic comedy, with a teeny bit of drama thrown in, as well as lots of sex. Anne Hathaway's breasts and lovely legs make frequent appearances, followed by Jake Gylenhaal's derriere.
These are two dysfuntional people who can't seem to shake each other. Both have their excuses for who they are and why they act this way. Maggie (Hathaway) is gorgeous, talented, and has significant impairment from Parkinson's disease at age 26, which does not bode well for her future. She is self medicating her resultant depression with sex rather than booze (along with an anti-depressant). Jamie (Gylenhaal) grew up in a hyper-competative family where one sibling ishas an IPO going on while the other is arguing with their father about how to fix health care and cure cancer. Jamie stopped competing with them on their turf long ago and went with his strengths--seducing and bedding women.
Not the ideal couple for a deep relationship--they could use therapy but they choose sex, and it does eventually lead to something that might be life-changing for them. The film stops short of actually uncovering what that might look like, but it was a good, not too formulaic romance. Not to watch with anyone you would be uncomfortable watching people have sex with, because really, there was quite a bit of that.

The Promise: Barak Obama, Year One by Jonathan Alter

I admire Barack Obama and have always seen him as a centrist. When he talks about transforming government, he is not advocating radical change, but rather that we make the decisions that need to be made to ensure our future as a world leader in the economy.
The gap between the apoplectic rhetoric of the right and the reality of the Obama administration seems even more pronounced after reading Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter’s new book The Promise, which depicts Obama’s first year in office as a clinic in sound decisionmaking. Obama is seen shuttling between policy meetings that he concludes by enumerating “take home” messages, and his study where he reads briefing binders late into the night. While George W. Bush may have been our first president with an MBA, it is Obama who seems to have absorbed the management practices taught in business schools. The result is a White House that feels wonky, competent, slightly claustrophobic, and even a little boring, but never revolutionary.
Yet there is clearly something else going on. In an interview with Alter, Obama describes his approach to policymaking as a search for the correct answer to a problem. In this view, if you ask analytic questions, collect good information, and strip away ideological predilections, the right policy choices for America should become self-evident.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama was covered from more angles than any presidential candidate has been before. Why he ran was not self-evident. The answer is not forthcoming in “The Promise,” either.
Obama has made mistakes but he has learned from them (think George Washington). He is very good at politics. The second is that by parsing the difference between Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Obama made it clear that he, too, aims to have a transformational effect on America. Obama is content for now to present himself as a technocrat solving problems, but one suspects that he has a grander design in mind. For those who have faith in him, this is the promise of his presidency. But for those who don’t, this is the real threat, that the best player at the table has not yet shown all his cards.

Inside Job (2010)

I reiterate the quote from 'The Tempest' here because it is again sadly appropriate:
"Hell is empty. All the devils are here."
And not in jail.
The documentary “Inside Job,” written and directed by Charles Ferguson provides the most comprehensive brief narrative of the causes of the financial crisis that started to seriously unravel in 2008. Many documentaries are good at drawing attention to an outrage and stirring up our feelings. Ferguson’s film certainly does this, but his exposition of complex information is also masterly. Indignation is often the most self-deluding of emotions; this movie has the rare gifts of lucid passion and informed rage.
Apologists for the financial industry talk of rational actors pursuing their interests in ways that may have been greedy but never veered into illegal or unethical behavior. After all, many executives, such as Dick Fuld, of Lehman Brothers, who believed in profit-making instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, wound up losing their jobs and their companies. Doesn’t that prove their good faith?
Ferguson doesn't beleive a word of it. He uses interviews and historical information to suggest that many of the transactions weren’t rational at all. They may have been profitable in the short term, but they were destructive to the companies the executives worked for, and he demonstrates that anyone with common sense and a skeptical view of unregulated financial markets could have seen the dangers coming. None of the senior public officials with an ideological commitment to deregulation, like Alan Greenspan, Hank Paulson, and Ben Bernanke, and none of the investment-bank executives who made hundreds of millions from the C.D.O. boom were willing to speak to Ferguson on camera. So he brings forth the savants who warned of the impending crisis early on: Nouriel Roubini, of New York University, whose musical Persian-Israeli-Turkish-accented English is delightful; and Raghuram Rajan, now of the University of Chicago, who, in 2005, while serving as the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, delivered a paper warning of the disaster to come in front of an audience that included Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers, and was ignored or criticized for his efforts. Roubini and Rajan, awed by the size of the crisis they were unable to prevent, are now sombre models of contained ego and radiant pride.
Nothing like the same could be said of the academic economists, including Glenn Hubbard and Frederic Mishkin, of Columbia Business School, and Martin Feldstein and John Campbell, of Harvard, who hem and haw and evade the simplest questions about conflict of interest or bad advice--and above all think they did nothing wrong. Ferguson, interviewing them from behind the camera (Matt Damon narrates the film), questions them with increasing exasperation, and, one after another, the academics disgrace themselves. Ferguson finds a hero in none other than Eliot Spitzer, who prosecuted fraud in the financial industry in 2002. Five years ago, expensive evenings with hookers and drugs were part of the exhilarated Manhattan madness of the investment-banking life. The underlings who procured such services—hiding the costs in phony expense chits—could now be flipped and forced to testify against their bosses, who may be guilty of much more consequential malfeasance. With perfect tact, Spitzer says that he might not be the most appropriate person to suggest such a course for prosecutors. But he suggests it nonetheless.
The scariest part was that all these guys who brought this down--where are they now? in the Obama administration. It may be a case of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer or it may just be scary.

A Change of Place

We spent spring break with our extended family in Steamboat Springs Colorado (those are two of my children at the bottom of the bunny hill, unable to successfully navigate the poma lift). Our housing had an incredible view of the mountains, and it struck me how peaceful it is to be in a different place than home.
Don't get me wrong. I love my house, and I live in a peaceful place. People don't always lock their doors here. That kind of peaceful. My house is in a wooded setting, with a flock of wild turkeys in the backyard, and more deer than you can easily count, with bald eagles regularly sighted overhead. But there is something very relaxing about being in another peaceful place for a period of time. I had a lot of trouble with the altitude, and didn't do much in the way of activity as a result. No matter. That wasn't the thing I needed. It just felt very good to be away, to be with people I enjoy spending time with, and to share the experience.

Come Undone (2010)

This movie is a sober exploration of the slowly unfolding disruptive effects of adultery on family life, portrays infidelity, despite its thrills, as more trouble than it’s worth emotionally--not to mention who you hurt along the way. At the same time, the sex scenes show the power of unleashed passion to make the rest of life feel like a laborious, frustrating slog. Any one contemplating an affair should watch this beautifully filmed Italian movie.
The affair is between two married people, and they are in no way interested in leaving their spouses. The affair is an impulsive one, no thought to future consequences--so what we see is mostly the sad conflicts that they face. Miserable and agitated when not together, Anna (Alba Rohrwacher), a comfortably married accountant for a small insurance agency, and Domenico (Pierfrancesco Favino), a slightly older waiter who is less happily married with two children he adores, are seized by an irresistible attraction. The besotted lovers face the usual logistical obstacles. Where and when will they meet? And what lies can they get away with telling?
The movie shows the day-by-day emotional cost of the affair: not only to Anna and Domenico, who are increasingly guilt-ridden and prickly with each other, but also to family, friends and business associates. The lovers have to contend with intense work schedules, family obligations and financial stress.
The movie tells an old story. What is fresh about it is its unvarnished realism lends it poignancy and depth.

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Orick

The author has a self-avowed love of Henry James, and she strived in this novel to recapitulate his book 'The Ambassadors', but in reverse. She sends Americans to Europe and there is a reflection on Europe as it compares to America, but through the opposite eyes. The book is also about family dysfunction and personality disorder.
The central character in the book, the middle-aged Bea Nightingale, is sent by her estranged brother to Paris to retrieve her nephew Julian from a bohemian idyll. Taking place in the early 1950s, however, "Foreign Bodies" offers not a sophisticated Europe but a devastated one. The Paris that Bea discovers is exhausted, overrun with refugees, shattered by the after-effects of the war. It is the epitome of the Old World that Julian's father, Marvin, a California aeronautics designer, has spent his life trying to put behind him. Bea's adventures and misadventures highlight the tensions that motivate this novel, between history and progress, the elusive promises of the future and the relentless undercurrents of the past. Bea comes off looking ver good in this book, but Marvin and his children do not. Excellent read.