Your Email:

Friend's Email:

Note: (optional)

Subject:

Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/38418/full/38418/israeli-born-director-offers-meaning-of-life-for-9.99/ <br /><br /> <b>Israeli-born director offers meaning of life for ‘$9.99’</b> <br /> Thursday, June 25, 2009 | by michael fox <br /><br /><p>The animated characters in Tatia Rosenthal’s debut feature “$9.99” speak with Australian accents. But the movie’s soul is distinctly Jewish.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="A9.99 rosenthal, tatia" class="left" height="181" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/y06_26_09/A9.99 rosenthal, tatia.jpg" title="Tatia Rosenthal" width="126" /> <div class="caption">Tatia Rosenthal</div> </div> The Israeli-born, New York–based director co-wrote the adult-oriented, English-language screenplay with acclaimed Israeli author Etgar Keret. On the money and logistics side, “$9.99” was jointly produced by an Israeli, Amir Harel, and an Australian Jew, Emile Sherman.</p> <p>“The inception of the film has everything to do with the fact that we’re Jewish and Israeli,” Rosenthal, 38, says on the phone from New York, where she’s been based for more than a decade.</p> <p>Opening July 10 in San Francisco and Berkeley, “$9.99” is a touching existential comedy that employs stop-motion animation to depict the ordinary yet oddball lives of several residents of an apartment building.</p> <p>Characters include a middle-aged father and his aimless adult son, who finds inspiration in $9.99 books that promise to reveal the meaning of life (among other secrets).</p> <p>There is also a guy consoled by three miniature party dudes after his girlfriend moves out because he’s too immature to commit and a lonely elderly man who finds unexpected company with the most unsentimental angel imaginable.</p> <p>The voice cast includes well-known Australian actors such as Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 360px;"><img alt="A9.99" class="left" height="262" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/y06_26_09/A9.99.jpg" title="Albert (left) is visited by Angel, voiced by Geoffrey Rush." width="360" /> <div class="caption">Albert (left) is visited by Angel, voiced by Geoffrey Rush.</div> </div> Rosenthal says Keret describes “$9.99” as “a secular Chassidic tale.” That’s a lovely way to describe a work that has a fable-like quality and a number of morals, though you can’t fully grasp Keret’s meaning until you’ve seen the movie.</p> <p>With an array of generally frustrated urbanites and droll humor, “$9.99” is reminiscent of last year’s “Jellyfish,” the terrific Tel Aviv–set film written and directed by Keret and his wife, Shira Geffen.</p> <p>But Rosenthal quickly disagrees when an interviewer describes the sensibility of both movies as absurdist.</p> <p>“I think there’s a certain very strong humanistic streak in [Keret’s]  writing that is much more grounded than absurdism, in my mind,” Rosenthal says. “He finds the details of life absurd, but he has huge compassion and respect for people not giving up — for the effort and the search for meaning in one’s life.”</p> <p>Rosenthal is as steeped in Keret’s prose and worldview as anyone, so her assessment stands.</p> <p>She first read his work a dozen years ago on an airplane to New York, where she was starting film studies at NYU, and was inspired to adapt two stories into the short films “Crazy Glue” and “A Buck’s Worth.”</p> <p>The latter is available on YouTube and worth checking out as an earlier iteration of the scene that opens “$9.99,” a tense, high-stakes philosophical debate between a homeless man and a businessman.</p> <p>Rosenthal is a third-generation Holocaust survivor whose mother was born in Europe after the war and emigrated to Israel via Youth Aliyah in the early ’60s.</p> <p>Keret is second-generation Israeli, and that might have something to do with their connection and long collaboration. They spent nine years trying to get “$9.99” made and two years in production, with shooting taking place in Australia and postproduction handled in Israel.</p> <p>The apartment building at the center of the movie, along with the overall feeling of the exteriors, was inspired by Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture, Rosenthal says. That’s one of several visual cues — the influence of Israeli comic book illustrators Rutu Modan (“Exit Wound”) and Batya Kolton is another — that tip off the film’s Jewish roots.</p> <p>Above all, Rosenthal says, the film reflects the perspective and philosophy of two people raised by parents marked by the Holocaust.</p> <p>“It’s inseparable from who we are and how we grew up, in a world that’s not sure there’s a God,” Rosenthal says.</p> <p><strong><br />“$9.99” </strong>opens July 10 in San Francisco and Berkeley.</p>

Please enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below: