Broken Promises and parve hors d'ouvres

I hit the Israel Jewish Film Festival last night - What didn't you? - as an escort for my friend John Shear. He bought two tickets to the "gala opening" to be used as a nice, and expensive, date with a girl he had recently been seeing. Unfortunately his last contact with her went like this:

JOHN: So I'll call you next week.
GIRL: No, that's OK. Don't worry about it.

So that's how I came about a free, overpriced ticket to the Israel Film Fest.

Some highlights from the night:

Sitting alone in his seat before the movie began, Johnny was tapped on his back by a girl roughly our age.

"Are you Israeli or just a patron of the arts?" she asked.

Now there's a question you don't hear often at the cinema.

Before the movie began (we'll get to the movie in a sec), we were all instructed to rise for the playing of the national anthem and Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. Puzzled, we stood up and some woman sang the finest rendition of the Star Spangled Banner that Theater 5 has ever heard. During the national anthem, John's phone buzzed in his fashionable jeans.

I told him to pick up and say, "Hey Miller, I can't talk. I'm in the theater and they're playing the national anthem. Let me call you back after Hatikvah." Miller, if you know him, would have set a new level for confusion.

The movie, Turn Left at the End of the World (a catchy title, for sure), is about a small desert town in Israel and the assimilation of Moroccan and Indian Jews. While they were falsely promised good jobs and a new life in bustling Israeli cities, I was falsely promised hot lesbian action. We were both disappointed.

As a whole though the movie was good, though Tribune film critic Michael Wilmington said he wanted to see more bush.

OK, that's a blatant lie. He never said that. But that's what we wanted to see and we hoped he felt the same way. But since he's presumably older than 15, I'm sure he's not going to write that in his review.

Wilmington was there to receive a liftetime achievement award from the festival. This honor apparently goes to every film critic in the city. Next year I believe Johnny wins it because he's gone to this festival for five straight years.

There was significant nudity though, which made the all 65 and over crowd even more peculiar. I guess they were Israelis...or patrons of the arts.

Seinfeld note: Former ABC Entertainment TV Group Chair LLOYD BRAUN has been named head of Yahoo’s entertainment & media division. Yes, that Lloyd Braun. If you watch the credits, many of the characters on Seinfeld were named after writers and assorted Hollywood people. Alec Berg was a big writer on the show. He has a great John Houseman name.