Day: October 23, 2012

A Great Symphony for a Great Nation: LFM Reviews Orchestra of Exiles

By Joe Bendel. They debuted under the baton of Arturo Toscanini and often worked with guest maestro Leonard Bernstein. Founded as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) is one of the world’s most prestigious orchestras. Yet their founding members were very nearly caught up in the tragedy of the Holocaust. Bronisław Huberman’s tireless efforts to save Europe’s most accomplished and at-risk Jewish musicians – and the subsequent creation of Israel’s national symphony – are documented in Josh Aronson’s Orchestra of Exiles, which opens this Friday in New York.

Huberman was a child prodigy who played around the world. Yet he was also a politically aware Zionist, who had no illusions about the state of Europe in the early 1930’s. Obviously, the colonial territory the British called Palestine held great significance for him. For years, Jewish immigrants had come there, hoping to realize the Zionist dream home by home. However, the British occupiers halted Jewish immigration in response to Arab riots at a time when it was most needed.

Hoping to establish a symphony for the yet to be recognized nation, Huberman doggedly attempted to work around the various restrictions imposed by the British. Indeed, much of his heroics involved the paper-chase for this or that travel document. There was an important goal in sight: as a principled anti-Fascist, Toscanini had agreed to conduct their premiere performances.

Exiles captures the spirit of a certain group of people at a certain point of time for whom life and art were intrinsically intertwined. Indeed, the founding of the Symphony was critically important for the early émigrés, who dearly missed the refined culture of pre-war Europe. Aronson maintains an appropriately respectful tone throughout, but he stages a number of unnecessary dramatic recreations. For the most part, they are not very dramatic – aside from Alex Ansty’s agreeable appearance as the larger than life Toscanini.

With helpful context provided by an elite cast of interview subjects, including Itzhak Perlman, Indian-born IPO conductor and music director Zubin Mehta, and the Grammy Award-winning Joshua Bell (who currently performs on Huberman’s Stradivarius), Exiles is classy and authoritative. Regrettably, it comes at a time when the civilized world is becoming less civilized. Just over a year ago, an IPO performance in London was disrupted by extremists who were never prosecuted, partly due to the Royal Albert Hall’s refusal to pursue trespass charges (bad show, chaps). While conventional in its approach, Orchestra of Exiles is an elegant and informative film. Recommended for classical music connoisseurs and those who want (or need) a fuller appreciation of Israeli cultural history, it opens this Friday (10/19) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 23rd, 2012 at 10:43am.

A Space Race with China: LFM Reviews Control @ The New York Television Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition

By Joe Bendel. When we think of space, we think of lofty ideals, passed on down to us from JFK and Star Trek. However, an oppressive belligerent power will act the same up there as they do down here. Indeed, China’s saber-rattling off the coast of Taiwan will bedevil an American manned space mission in Josh Bernard & Bracey Smith’s Control, which screens as part of the 2012 New York Television Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition (IPC).

The NYTVF is the only meaningful festival of its kind showcasing independent talent looking to break into episodic television, in the same way scores of film festivals act as launching pads for indie films in search of theatrical distribution. There are real development deals to be won at this year’s festival. The dollar figures may not be much by studio standards, but they would constitute a significant step up compared to the budgets of many competing pilots. In the drama category, Smith & Bernard’s Control may well be the pilot to beat, which is not all that surprising, considering their Pioneer One (see here and here) won the drama competition two years ago.

The American and Chinese navies are engaged in a war of nerves in the South China Sea. Simultaneously, an American spacecraft is racing to beat their Chinese rivals to a resource-rich asteroid. Long in development, the American mission continued, even when China precipitously laid claim to the asteroid, in open defiance of international law. Apparently a quasi-private enterprise conducted with official government sanction, the mission obviously just became a whole lot more complicated.

The flight director isn’t helping much, either. Not only did he call the president a feckless ditherer on national television (but in more colorful terms), he is also carrying on a not so secret affair with the chief medical officer, who happens to be married to the flight captain.

Of all the genre-related pilots screening in the Drama 1 programming block, Control is by far the one that leaves audiences most eager to see more. Shrewdly, Bernard & Smith end on a monster cliffhanger that cannot possibly be as bad as it seems. Though the flight director resents the U.S. military’s secret involvement in the mission, he might be happy to have them around when it is all said and done. Based on the pilot, Control has the potential to become a cool submarine-warfare in space story, much like the classic Romulan episodes on the original Trek.

The tone of Control is sort of like a cross between Apollo 13 and Ben Bova’s geopolitical sci-fi thriller novels. To their credit, Smith & Bernard do not appear to have many naïve notions with respects to the current (and presumably near future) Chinese Communist regime. It also looks reasonably realistic, thanks to the control room full of computers bought on the cheap due to a tech firm’s bankruptcy (finally, the stimulus plan delivers).

Perhaps most importantly, despite all the intrigue and political infighting, it looks like it will still tap into the warm fuzzy feelings many viewers get when they think about the Space Program, particularly in its Apollo-era heyday. Showing loads of potential, Control is definitely worth seeing when it screens again this Friday (10/26) as part of the 2012 NYTVF’s IPC Drama 1 program at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Posted on October 23rd, 2012 at 10:42am.