February 2, 2010

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Dear Yenta,

My girlfriend lives in Europe. My ex-girlfriend lives in New York. I live somewhere in-between and am alone, in love with both, and extremely confused. The ex was my college sweetheart and has been there on and off for many years. I know if I move to Europe and choose my present girlfriend that I am cutting off the old one forever.

To commit to this new woman is also scary in and of itself. How do I know I love her? Or that I will love her? I only just left college and am still unsure who I am. I also love mountains and there are no mountains near the Euro-girl, and I am worried I will resent her for taking away my passions.

Help?

-Split

Dear Split,

Some women are like drugs. You will want them and crave them and only feel good when you have them, and at all other moments of the day it is torture to not be with them. You sound like a woman addict who could use some detox and rehab. This means taking some time outside the matrix of dating and figuring out who you are and what you want, so these women don’t dictate or determine that for you.

Also, look at what love means to you. It should, in theory, expand your sense of positivity, outlook, possibility and self. If you are only feeling this “love” with the women, and constant agony without, it is worth evaluating whether this love is expansive or reductive. Are you shrinking to keep a woman in your life?

And if you love mountains, find mountains on the weekends and the woman you love in the week. It is a myth that you should have one or the other. In choosing to satisfy your own needs you might find that it is easier to love and commit to one woman at a time. Generally, self-care is the number one prescription for a healthy relationship. If you are sated in advance, then your woman becomes a perk or a partner, rather than a co-dependant fiendish need.

What do YOU want, YOU need? Worry about number one, and who number two is will become crystal clear.

The Israeli film “Ajami” has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film.

At an announcement ceremony Tuesday morning, nominees for best foreign language film included Germany’s “The White Ribbon,” the likely front-runner after taking the same prize at the Golden Globes and top honors at last May’s Cannes Film Festival. Also nominated were the Cannes runner-up, “A Prophet,” and Israel’s “Ajami,” Argentina’s “The Secret in Their Eyes” and Peru’s “The Milk of Sorrow.”

Ajami interweaves the stories of Arabs and Jews in a depressed neighborhood in Jaffa, at the southern end of Tel Aviv.  It was made without professional actors by first-time directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani.  It is largely in Arabic—a first for an Israeli Academy nominee.

At a screening of the movie last month at the Creative Artists Agency, Copti, a mechanical engineer by profession, told The Jewish Journal he attended a film making workshop Shani was leading where the two began talking about a film set in Copti’s neighborhood of Ajami.  The two collaborated on a year-long process that involved recruiting non-professional actors and leading them through what Shani called “psychological execises” to inhabit the characters they would play.

The results are all on screen: Ajami is gripping, fresh and raw—it works both as a slice of life drama, in the style of the 2009 Italian movie Gomorrah, and as a reflection on the greater forces—Israeli v. Palestinian, religious v. secular—that affect the characters’ lives.

By focusing on the personal, said Copti at the CAA screening, the filmmakers hoped to illuminate the universal. 

Go see Ajami at the Laemmle Theaters later this month and you’ll see they succeeded.

Here is what Jordan Elgrably wrote about the movie last week on Ajami Gets Best Foreign Film Nomination Read More »

In a quick ten minute announcement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak and actress Anne Hathaway announced the 2010 Oscar nominations.

Here’s a roundup of some of the nods that matter to the Jews: (Criteria for films mattering to Jews means they either were created or performed by Jewish people or had some kind of Jewish theme or content)

UP IN THE AIR: Best Picture (Daniel Dubiecki, Jason Reitman, Ivan Reitman), Directing (Jason Reitman), Adapted Screenplay (Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner), Lead Actor (George Clooney), Supporting Actress X 2 (Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick)

***Reitman’s screenwriting nod is controversial due to major dispute between Reitman and co-writer Sheldon Turner about who’d get credit. Reitman took sole credit all along until the two writers had to go to arbitration before the WGA—and Turner won. See ‘A screenwriting dispute over Reitman’s ‘Up in the Air’

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS: Best Picture (Lawrence Bender), Original Screenplay (Quentin Tarantino), Directing (Quentin Tarantino, Supporting Actor (Christophe Waltz)

***Tarantino should get an honorary Jew menschen for his historical revision of WWII in which a bunch of strong-armed Jewish bandits take Hitler and Himmler down in a fiery blaze. See “Revenge of the Jews, Tarantino Style”

A SERIOUS MAN: Best Picture (Joel and Ethan Coen), Original Screenplay (Joel and Ethan Coen)

***Some accused the Coen bros’ most Jewish film of being soberingly stereotypical. Based on their Midwestern Jewish upbringing, the film raises timeless questions about faith and certainly didn’t portray rabbis with any kind of reverence.

AN EDUCATION: Best Picture (Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey), Lead Actress (Carey Mulligan), Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby)

***This film has generated a fair amount of anti-Semitic discussion for featuring a skeezy, unscrupulous Jewish character in the lead. But is it realism or anti-Semitism?

THE HURT LOCKER: Best Picture, Directing (Kathryn Bigelow), Original Screenplay (Mark Boal)

***Screenwriter Mark Boal is Jewish so look out for an upcoming profile in our Feb. 26 Oscar issue

AJAMI: Foreign Language Film (Israel)

Israel’s Ajami is co-written and directed by a Jew and an Arab and features dialogue mainly in Arabic. The New York Times said of the film, “In a conflict where each side lives and breathes its own victimhood, feeling the hurt of the other is a challenge. ‘Ajami’ meets it.”

ALSO NOMINATED in the Supporting Actress category is Maggie Gyllenhaal for CRAZY HEART

Stay tuned to Hollywood Jew for continuing Oscar coverage through the March 7 ceremony…

Watch the live video feed below and follow along as we tweet live during the nominations.
Feb. 2 at 5:30am