Gedenkstu vi ikh hob dikh gelernt haltn a shpayer in di hent?

[sovay]

Some thoughts on returning from Defiance (2008):

1. What idiot let Liev Schreiber get away without an Oscar nomination?

2. I felt there should be a koan for the Bielski Otriad: if two Jews have a philosophical argument in the middle of a forest, when is the third going to pitch in (and is he going to punch someone)? This is not a complaint. A Holocaust film without hagiography is one that works for me.

3. Now that we've proved that general audiences will watch a film with Jewish partisans, who can we get to adapt A Verse from Babylon, please?

I wish I could play my formerly purchased music from iTunes. "Yisrolik" and "Shtil di nakht" are both locked. strange_selkie?

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked this movie--I feel much more inclined to see it, now. Saw a couple of negative reviews from folk who seemed vaguely clueful, but I'll take your verdict over theirs, any day.

I'm sorry to hear that iTunes is thwarting you.

[sovay]

Saw a couple of negative reviews from folk who seemed vaguely clueful, but I'll take your verdict over theirs, any day.

I do not know if it was the best movie that could have been made from the story of the Bielski partisans, but right now I consider it fairly awesome. If it had been a novel, I would have stopped at a bookstore afterward and bought it.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

If it had been a novel, I would have stopped at a bookstore afterward and bought it.

That sounds to me like a good argument for it.

There was a reviewer in some newspaper (the Fairfield country free rag, maybe?) who seemed to be thinking that the movie was based on one in particular non-fiction book about the Bielski partisans and that it didn't do the story justice on that grounds.

As I think about it, that paper seems to have a general policy of tearing on things, to show how sophisticated they are, or perhaps how feral and edgy--I'm not sure why I should take anything they say seriously in the first place.