Year: 2012

Cinema Media

Lenin in October has Seattle Jewish Film Festival audiences rolling in the aisles

What could be more fraught with hilarious peril than a scenario in which a man, with lofty dreams of owning his own restaurant, comes into a large inheritance with a stipulation that goes against, if not his own beliefs and ideals, then certainly those of the community around him. Alright, this may not sound so funny, but add some Bolshevik revolution into the equation, and trust me, it’s a knee slapper.

Cinema Media

Nicky’s Family: The Untold Story of “the British Schindler”

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been dreading the inevitability of a Holocaust film coming up on my docket for this year’s Seattle Jewish Film Festival. Having read the synopsis for Nicky’s Family, I was looking forward to the screening in theory but I could not ignore the nagging fear that it was going to be the same old story, different screenwriter. Prior to this year’s SJFF, I hadn’t heard of Sir Nicholas Winton or his harrowing tale of saving hundreds of Czechoslovakians during the days ramping up to World War II. I was unprepared for the impact the film documenting his life would have on me.

Fiction

Walk

He left all his sticks. Which he should regret because they are his life’s work, but he needed his hands free to open and close doors and be ready to ward off Antoinette if necessary, which was not necessary, and his hands are not hands that are adept at juggling. Instead of regretting his sticks, he is happy he left them.

Music

Hollow Earth Radio and Nonsequitur bring trio improvisation to the Chapel

In improvisation, duos are a sort of conversation. Big bands are something like a game of follow the leader. In a sense, improvising trios are a combination of both. They retain much of the conversational intimacy of a duo through a kind of shared leadership of conversation that rarely if ever occurs in the classic quintet format, or even in the quartet. Many things can happen in trios that would be virtually impossible in another format.