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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
From 1 years ago.
Information or opinions might not be up to date.
6 Minute Read
Footnote originally הערת שוליים is an Israeli film written and directed by Joseph Cedar. The film is about a very strange dramatic bureaucratic situation, where two professors, a father and a son, are in the same field, and one of them gets a honorary award for his achievements. But the bureaucrats made a mistake and told about the award to the wrong one of them.
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This is kind of a dual character study. We have two professors obsessed with historic ancient Hebrew texts. The son Uriel ( Lior Ashkenazi ) finds in the ancient texts a sort of confirmation, to the contemporary orthodox teachings. While his father Eliezer ( Shlomo Bar-Aba ) sees the same texts as a sort confirmation that something along the way went wrong. And that the contemporary teachings are false as a result.
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It is not clearly stated, but there is a theme to Eliezer's character, suggesting that he might be autistic to some degree. He is annoyingly pedantic about every single word everywhere. He can't stand people that disregard certain words, or phrase themselves not precisely. This is, by the way, why he thinks the contemporary teachings are false. He was researching the field for many years with an incredible obsessive attention to every single word. And he just simply cannot hold the same opinions as religious Jews anymore.
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There is a sort of villain character ( if you want to call it that ) Yehuda Grossman ( Micah Lewensohn ) who is a kind of religious person in charge of the academia. Who due to, what seems like, ideological disagreements with Eliezer, denied Eliezer an ability to be recognized in any way. And on one occasion, personally, sabotaged Eliezer's own work.
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It seems like the film's thesis is something along the lines of: Religious Jews follow a broken telephone version of the real Jewish tradition. And therefor to be a proper Jew you have to be a different, better, person. As in, in a clever way, the film suggests a sort of denouncing of the orthodox way. But in another clever way, disguising itself as preaching the proper orthodox way. Which it doesn't actually seem to preach at all. Eliezer says that he thinks things are wrong. He says why thinks that way. But never tells the audience what is wrong specifically. So maybe the message is simply: Orthodox = wrong?
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The movie ends strangely, as if to say, it fails to end properly. It could be said that whether Eliezer gets his price is not important as long as he knows the truth. Because the movie cuts before we know for sure. But then I think the real reason the movie ended this way is that Cedar, trying to make the film more realistic, wrote into the script the real names of the current Israeli politicians ( at the time ), which he teases, will be the ones handing the awards. But then he cuts. Because apparently he knew from the very beginning that he will not get the real politicians to participate in the movie. I was kind of waiting for Eliezer to get onto to the stage and do something stupid. There was a tension about it present in the whole ending. But then the movie just ends. What?
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I do think Cedar tried to inject in that ending some profound ( or pretentious ) meaning. And it does feel like it is at the very least pretentious, teasing you, the audience, as being not smart enough to find it profound. It is not a kind of punch-line joke ending that I have in all of my films so far. It is not trying to entertain the audience. It is trying to make the audience stop and realize that they didn't get it. And then pretend to get it, out of fear of being found out as stupid.
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The film has very good cinematography by Yaron Scharf and a kick-ass musical score by Amit Poznansky that goes for a very Spielberg like John Williams like feel. And to top that off Cedar's direction is actually rather cool. There are shots in that film that I have never seen anywhere else, yet the shots work really well. For example the first time Eliezer tells his wife ( Alisa Rosen ) that he got the award, he leaves the room and the camera is on his headphones that he left. But then the camera flies on its own to that other room, where he talks to his wife, in a majestic camera move. Good stuff! And then toward the end as Eliezer comes into the ceremony building, everything just becomes so dreamy and surreal for a bit. Also good stuff!
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Writing-wise it feels like there are some loose threads that are never explored beyond the superficial initial encounter. At one point in the movie, somebody steals a bag with stuff ( including documents ) of Uriel. Yet, all the movie does with it is, it uses it as an excuse for the filmmakers to push Uriel though a comedic sequence leading to something he sees. Which is then promptly forgotten about.
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The movie has a kick ass tight script with very much attention put to words people say and write. And it has a lot of good payoffs based on those kinds of things. Yet some things feel like setups to something, while they are never payed off. Which is weird. It doesn't break the film. It is still rather good despite some of the things feeling random. But I couldn't help myself and think of various things that could be done with those setups.
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I will review more films from Israel. I'm trying to learn what I'm dealing with, as an Israeli film-maker myself. This was a good film. I hope the others will be good too.
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Happy Hacking!!!
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Footnote 2011 is a suprisingly good Israeli film
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/he/thumb/5/58/Footnote.jpg/250px-Footnote.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
👁 14 ❤ 1 💬 99
Footnote originally הערת שוליים is an Israeli film written and directed by Joseph Cedar. The film is about a very strange dramatic bureaucratic situation, where two professors, a father and a son, are in the same field, and one of them gets a honorary award for his achievements. But the bureaucrats made a mistake and told about the award to the wrong one of them.
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The Voice of Hind Rajab or how a 5 year old was shot
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The heart was blackened with tears from Kaouther Ben Hania's feature film The Voice of Hind Rajab. The choice of the story being told about Hind Rami Iyad Rajab was lead by the individual need to speak out. The director wasn't the only one to do so in big screen form.
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Last Breath's story is too short for a feature film
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Last Breath directed by Alex Parkinson is based on a real event when a diver named Chris Lemons got stranded on a bottom of the sea for a long time without oxygen. And the movie is about the tense rescue operation that was done to try to save him.
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Mickey 17 Is Painfully Obvious with the References
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In my opinion the gimmick on which the film was sold is not the main point. It's not even why the film was made in the first place.
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The Driver 1978 is not quite the original Drive from 2011
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A lot of people say that Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 film Drive is a remake of 1978 film The Driver by Walter Hill. And to some extent it is true. Both are about a getaway driver. And both drivers are these tough, melancholic characters played by a guy who's first name is Ryan. But that seems to be about it.
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Knock Knock 2015 is more of a Lars Von Trier movie
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Before there was 2025 Balerina there were two other movies ( I know of ) which were collaborations of Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas. One is the 2016 film Exposed which I am still yet to see. And then, before that, marking their first collaboration, there was a 2015 film by Eli Roth called Knock Knock, which I was curious to see for multiple reasons.
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Alita: Battle Angel is Robert Rodriguez's Pearl Harbor
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In my review of Michael Bay's Bad Boys II I brought up an interesting theory people have about the film. The amount of Bayhem! it holds in could be a direct response to the out-of-the-comfort-zone feel Bay must have had experienced making Pearl Harbor. Basically, the film was so different from what Bay usually does, he had to crank the next movie's Bayhem! up to 11, to make it feel right again. After Robert Rodriguez directed Alita: Battle Angel with an estimated budget of about $200 million, he had to come back to his comfort-zone too. And 3 months later ( that same year in 2019 ) he released Red 11. A micro-budgeted horror film made on almost exactly $7,000.
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The Island 2005 is Michael Bay's Minority Report
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/The-island.jpg)
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As far as my speculation goes, I think, it is safe to assume, the following happened: In 1994 ( before doing Bad Boys ) Michael Bay signed a 10 year contract with Jerry Bruckheimer which expired in 2004 ( after Bad Boys 2 ). Knowing that the contract is about to expire, 2 years prior ( in 2002 ) Steven Spielberg, in an attempt to get on good terms with Michael Bay, added a small reference to Bad Boys into his film Minority Report. And then took Bay under his supervision for the next 10 years. Starting with the 2005 film The Island. And through the Transformers franchise. Bay returned the favor by showing a concept car designed for Minority Report ( Lexus 2054 aka Lexus Minority ) multiple times in the background of The Island. Still that's just a theory. I don't actually know what happened. But it seems plausible.
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Kill Bill is quite a chill
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Kill Bill is a reference loaded film. The director lives in cinema, after all. At one point, the Bill of Kill Bill (David Carradine) reviews Superman, during a monologue with the presence of the protagonist Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman). The said review made sense inside of the given scene, it made sense within the given plot. What if anything it was a flex. Q. Tarantino spoke through Bill about Superman and millions of people heard him. It could be argued, his most popular review... was part of a martial arts movie.
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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974 or the pioneer in ultraviolence
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If today we have a lot of films to choose from when we want to shock ourselves beyond believe: from barely serious, yet distrusting films by Eli Roth through intense hyper-violence by Coralie Fargeat or depressing looks at the world by Lars Von Trier all the way to deranged films like The Serbian Film, in 1970s you had probably only one true contender for such a level of derangeness. And it was the Tobe Hooper's 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
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Peter Berg's Battleship 2012 is a strange mix of stupidity and amazingness
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6e/Battleship_Poster.jpg)
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👁 10 ❤ 3 🔄 1 💬 5
After Michael Bay made a hit out of Transformers, Hasbro ( who made the toys, Transformers were based on ) decided that it would be a good idea to make more, similar films, based on other Hasbro toys. So they chose to adopt, fucking Battleship. Really?
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