Month: May 2012

Events

A London Israeli film and television festival is launched – Seret 2012

10 May 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Traffic Lights

Ooh. This looks interesting:

SERET (‘movie’ in Hebrew) is the name of the new London Israeli Film & Television Festival, which is holding its inaugural event from 14 to 18 June 2012. Fourteen screenings will be held, showcasing the largest, most diverse and most exciting array of Israeli film and television ever seen in the UK. Alongside the screenings, SERET will also be holding a conference for those in the film and television industries.

In the last ten years, a growing number of Israeli films have been nominated and won awards in major film festivals around the world including Footnote, Strangers No More, Lebanon, Ajami and Waltz with Bashir. Israeli television is also making an impact internationally with programmes such as Hatufim (Prisoners of War remade into Homeland) and BiTipul (In Treatment) currently being screened on Sky Arts.

SERET seeks to showcase the outstanding contribution that Israeli film and television make to the arts, as well as promoting the richness and diversity of Israeli life and culture through these media. With a programme designed to appeal to a wide range of film lovers, there will also be opportunities to hear from some of the directors of the films featured.

Confirmed films for this year’s festival include Off White Lies (2011, Director: Maya Kenig), Invisible (2011, Director: Michal Aviad), In the Fifth Heaven (2011, Director: Dina Tzvi-Riklis), I shot my love (2010, Director: Tomer Heymann), Footnote (2011, Director: Joseph Cedar), Sharaqiya (2012, Director: Ami Livne), 2 Night (2011, Director: Roi Werner) and Lipstikka (2011, Director: Yonathan Segal).

There will also be screenings of episodes from hit television programmes including Pilpelim Tsehubim (Yellow Peppers) and Ramzor (Traffic Light). Several of the screenings will be followed by Q&As with the directors and those so far confirmed include: Michal Aviad, Tomer Heymann, Dina Tzvi-Riklis and Roi Werner.

During the festival SERET will also provide support to the objectives of the Anglo-Israel Co- Production Treaty (2011), through the staging of a conference for those in the film and television industries.

Tickets for screenings can be booked through the festival website www.seret.org.uk, where there is also more information on each film.

Not much by way of TV by the looks of it, but I’m curious to see what Ramzor is like, given that Traffic Light wasn’t too bad, but seemed a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Nostalgia Corner: Tabatha/Tabitha (1977)

10 May 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Tabitha

There were two big US fantasy sitcoms of the 1960s that took on board women’s changing roles in society, not by showing them at work but by showing them as more than just ‘mere’ housewives and people with ideas of their own: I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched.

I Dream of Jeannie saw Barbara Eden appear at first to be ‘every man’s dream’ – a sexy blonde genie with magic powers, willing to do whatever he commanded.

However, as a pre-JR Larry Hagman was about to discover, even slaves have minds of their own and Barbara Eden’s Jeannie very definitely had a will of her own, throwing Hagman’s life upside down – the star of the show was clearly Eden rather Hagman and Tony the astronaut spent most of his time keeping up with Jeannie, rather than the other way round.

Here’s a little minisode version of the first episode to give you an idea. Surprisingly, it was written by Sidney Sheldon (yes, the fabulously successful author).

Meanwhile in Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery played Samantha, an apparently normal young American woman, who meets and falls in love with a very normal American man Darrin (Dick York at first, then Dick Sargent). Except it turns out that Samantha is a witch and with just a wiggle of her nose, she can make more or less anything happen.

Samantha wants to be a normal housewife but somehow, usually thanks to the efforts of her mother Endora, she always ends up having to use her powers for some reason or other. And as with I Dream of Jeannie, this was a show very much about the female lead rather than the male lead, what she wanted, what she was prepared to do to fit in with society and more.

Here’s the pilot episode:

In both series, the set-ups evolved, with Jeannie eventually marrying Tony and having a family with him, and Samantha also having a daughter, Tabitha, and a son, Adam.

Five years after Bewitched ended in 1972, and we’re in a post-Rhoda world, where the single young, sexually liberated working woman is now a valid subject for a comedy. And although it was just five years later, Tabitha has apparently grown up into a young woman working in the LA television industry. Cue an ABC sitcom called Tabitha starring Knots Landing‘s Lisa Hartman and Robert Urich from Vega$ and Spenser: For Hire. Here’s the opening credits that explain everything.

Continue reading “Nostalgia Corner: Tabatha/Tabitha (1977)”

How much more Scandinavian content is there to remake?

10 May 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

The Bridge

So today’s news brings us not one but two Scandinavian crime remakes. First, we have the US’s Lifetime channel remaking Denmark’s Lulu and Leon, which sees a woman take over her husband’s criminal empire when he is put behind bars.

We also now have Sky Atlantic co-producing a remake [subscription required] with Kudos and France’s Canal+ of Sweden and Denmark’s The Bridge. Presumably it’s going to be The Chunnel/Le tunnel sous la Manche) and have exciting cultural clashes in both French and English between the reserved, rules-bound English detective and the more rules-free, salt of the earth French detective (Jean-Hugues Anglade from Canal+’s Braquo gets my vote).

There’s already quite a platter of English-language remakes of Scandinavian shows now, particularly in the US, what with The Killing already on its second season on AMC, Those Who Kill being remade by A&E, NBC remaking Borgen and so on.

Is there much left? Does anyone know? Any predictions on what the next remake will be, those who know?

Thursday’s “Fox renews Touch, cancels Alcatraz & The Finder; plus NBC and Fox’s new shows” news

10 May 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Film

Theatre

Canadian TV

  • Murdoch Mysteries to air on CBC instead of Citytv

UK TV

US TV

  • Fox renews Touch, cancels Alcatraz, The Finder, Breaking In and I Hate My Teenage Daughter
  • NBC renews L&O:SVU
  • Happy Endings‘ Gail Lerner joins Animal Practice as showrunner
  • Cougar Town‘s Josh Hopkins to guest on TBS’s Men At Work
  • Tuesday ratings: New Girl finishes up 27% on last week, Cougar Town up 15%

US TV pilots