Israeli pride, Netflix negatives and choice chick flicks

The Pride Revolution, a three-part documentary series on KAN 11 on the LGBT community in Israel, begins running on Saturday nights at 9:15 starting May 30.

By HANNAH BROWN
A SCENE FROM ‘The Pride Revolution,’ with Gal Uchovsky taking a selfie with a group of people. (photo credit: AMIT CHACHAMOV/COURTESY KAN 11)
A SCENE FROM ‘The Pride Revolution,’ with Gal Uchovsky taking a selfie with a group of people.
(photo credit: AMIT CHACHAMOV/COURTESY KAN 11)
The Pride Revolution, a three-part documentary series on KAN 11 on the LGBT community in Israel, begins running on Saturday nights at 9:15 starting May 30. Created by movie producer Liran Atzmor and producer/journalist/television personality Gal Uchovsky, who narrates and conducts the interviews with well-known Israelis in the realms of entertainment, politics, journalism and the military, it is a touching and thought-provoking examination of the LGBT community’s struggle for acceptance and how this community has changed Israel.
In the first episode, the series looks at the military and how, paradoxically, it has gone from a place where recruits had to hide their sexual orientation if they weren’t heterosexual to a bastion of tolerance and acceptance in society. Uchovsky and some of the interviewees suggest that this is partly because the ultra-Orthodox are not involved in the army.
The next episodes look at the struggles of Mizrahi LGBT Israelis – among them Dana International, who won the Eurovision in 1998 – and how they are changing both the Mizrahi and pride communities. One gay Mizrahi couple defy all the stereotypes in that they are both religious and Likud voters, and the episode also examines the rise of Public Security Minister Amir Ohana, who is Mizrahi and gay.
The third part is concerned with why it is important for LGBT people to come out of the closet and have a voice in Israeli society, looking at how attitudes are changing now that same-sex couples are having children in greater numbers, as well as at the persecution that still exists. Uchovsky questions his own role in the revolution decades ago, as a provocateur who threatened to out celebrities who were reluctant to out themselves.
It’s a series that will generate controversy and which makes for riveting viewing.
A FEW THOUGHTS about watching a lot of crime shows on Netflix recently. Many intelligent, well-written and -acted crime dramas are marred by scenes in which the camera lingers on dead bodies, revealing signs of violence, often during autopsies. We get it, someone’s been killed, but why force us to look at mutilated bodies so closely?
The other convention of many such shows that it’s time to put to rest is that the suspect is often entangled with one vile rich family that controls everything in the city/town/neighborhood. We get to watch this vile rich family enjoying its ill-gotten wealth in lovely villas and pools, but these characters are almost always cartoonish.
Some short takes on a few series: White Lines is a sprawling series about the cocaine trade in Ibiza among gorgeous people with even nicer-looking houses that is all over the place until you figure out who the characters are and when you finally do, you don’t care. It features both a horrible corpse and a vile rich family.
Damien Chazelle, who made La La Land, got a lot of flack for portraying a white guy who knew more about good jazz music than the African-American characters in that film, so in his Netflix series The Eddy, set in a Parisian jazz club, he focuses on an African-American club owner who is a great musician. While this may provide closure for him, it doesn’t make for much drama and even the music couldn’t help me get to the end of the first episode.
On the chick-flick side of the equation, Sweet Magnolias is about three female best friends in a small, idyllic Southern town, where a woman going through a painful divorce starts a spa with her two best friends, an African-American lawyer and a restaurant owner. If your eyes didn’t glaze over as you read that sentence, give it a try.
If you’re interested in a different kind of chick flick, Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women is available on Cellcom TV and begins on YesVOD starting on June 4. It’s well done, if a bit bland.
Bridesmaids is a very different kind of chick flick – raunchy and over-the-top funny – and it’s running on HOT Cinema Time starting May 31 and features Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd and Kristen Wiig.


Related Tags
netflix