Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the world distribution rights to Nathan Silver’s offbeat Jewish comedy Between the Temples, which bowed at Sundance.
The film sees Jason Schwartzman play Ben Gottlieb, a cantor in crisis after losing his voice and who falls for Carla Kessler, an adult bat mitzvah student (Carol Kane). However the student just happens to be his former grade school music teacher.
Ben and Carla become an odd couple in a comedy that explores the complexities of belief, connection, and what it means to be a real mensch, according to the film’s synopsis. Between the Temples is directed by Silver, who co-wrote the script with C. Mason Wells.
Sony Pictures Classics in a statement said of its pick-up: “With his distinctive and unique characters, Nathan has created a story laced with acerbic wit and humor in Between the Temples, while remaining tender throughout. Audiences everywhere...
The film sees Jason Schwartzman play Ben Gottlieb, a cantor in crisis after losing his voice and who falls for Carla Kessler, an adult bat mitzvah student (Carol Kane). However the student just happens to be his former grade school music teacher.
Ben and Carla become an odd couple in a comedy that explores the complexities of belief, connection, and what it means to be a real mensch, according to the film’s synopsis. Between the Temples is directed by Silver, who co-wrote the script with C. Mason Wells.
Sony Pictures Classics in a statement said of its pick-up: “With his distinctive and unique characters, Nathan has created a story laced with acerbic wit and humor in Between the Temples, while remaining tender throughout. Audiences everywhere...
- 2/9/2024
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
That’s almost a wrap, folks, as this year’s Sundance Film Festival concludes its eleven-day run tomorrow. While Team IndieWire has already decamped back to their various home bases (eleven is a lot of days), we’re all still enjoying what this year’s festival has to offer through both its virtual screening platform and our already-fond memories of the best films we saw at this year’s festival.
And what films are those, you might ask? We’re all too happy to share, care of the following list of 17 standout features from this year’s festival, hereby termed the best of the fest. The following list includes over a dozen films one IndieWire staffer really wanted to highlight. Narratives and documentaries, first-time filmmakers and old favorites, comedies, dramas, horror films, and so much more, this list also captures the breadth of filmmaking prowess put on display at this year’s festival.
And what films are those, you might ask? We’re all too happy to share, care of the following list of 17 standout features from this year’s festival, hereby termed the best of the fest. The following list includes over a dozen films one IndieWire staffer really wanted to highlight. Narratives and documentaries, first-time filmmakers and old favorites, comedies, dramas, horror films, and so much more, this list also captures the breadth of filmmaking prowess put on display at this year’s festival.
- 1/27/2024
- by Kate Erbland, David Ehrlich and Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
In a grimy, awkward world that painfully resembles our own, Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) isn’t coping very well. His wife passed away and he’s living back at home with his two overbearing mothers in upstate New York, isolated from the energy of the city. He’s a cantor at the local temple, but he can’t sing anymore. While he keeps kosher and remains devout, Ben struggles to feel the same connection to his faith that he once had. Ben isn’t really connecting to anything these days, not even his own body. He’s schlubby, unshaven with blemishes on his face, plodding through life in a depressed daze. It’s like he’s completely given up. In one early scene, he lays out in the middle of the road beckoning for a truck to run him over.
Then he has a chance encounter with his childhood music teacher,...
Then he has a chance encounter with his childhood music teacher,...
- 1/21/2024
- by Jourdain Searles
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
There’s a very young, very online contingent of Generation Z that propagates repeated cycles of so-called “age gap discourse”: heated, often condemnatory debate over the rights or wrongs of people dating, or merely socializing, outside their immediate age group. The discussion often takes quaintly prudish forms, permitting no adult age at which such differences cease to matter, but if it circulates most heatedly among the young, it’s been handed down to them via age-old social rules and biases — ones to which Nathan Silver’s delightful “Between the Temples” gives a cheerfully flippant middle finger. Collapsing divides between old age, middle age and adolescence into a universally relatable paean to doing whatever the hell feels right for you in your own weird situation, this scruffy shoestring indie won’t be seen by the internet’s most hawkish age-gap monitors, though it has much to gently teach them.
Premiering in the U.
Premiering in the U.
- 1/20/2024
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
In a state of arrested development after his wife unexpectedly died from a freak accident, Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is suicidal, pleading to a truck to just run him over and begging that he be fired from his job as cantor at the local Jewish temple in upstate New York. While this set-up may not scream comedy, Between the Temples is in fact hilarious, packed with endless jokes and adoration for physical gags while we witness Ben find new meaning in life through an unexpected acquaintance. Above all, Nathan Silver’s feature, from a script he co-wrote with C. Mason Wells, is a thrillingly alive, nimble piece of filmmaking: shot on 16mm by Sean Price Williams with faces of its ensemble guiding every movement, and edited by John Magary with a frenetic yet defined rhythm, Between the Temples is a witty, biting portrait of finding one’s footing in both faith and friendship.
- 1/20/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Seemingly not wasting one of its 111 offbeat minutes, sprawling and long for a comedy, but not undeserved here, Nate Silver’s “Between The Temples” begins with immediate hilarity. Ben Gottlieb (a terrific Jason Schwartzman) is a sad sack cantor living at home. In a concerned setting that resembles an intervention, his two moms ask him if he needs to see a doctor.
Continue reading ‘Between The Temples’ Review: Jason Schwartzman & Carol Kane Shine In Nate Silver’s Hilarious, But Sweet Screwball Comedy [Sundance] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Between The Temples’ Review: Jason Schwartzman & Carol Kane Shine In Nate Silver’s Hilarious, But Sweet Screwball Comedy [Sundance] at The Playlist.
- 1/20/2024
- by Rodrigo Perez
- The Playlist
My favorite thing about being Jewish — and it’s just so hard to pick between classic hits like “unleavened bread,” “having shoulder hair at 15,” and “being used by right-wing nationalists as an excuse to justify the same kind of genocide that tends to be inflicted upon us every other century or so” — is that I’ve always felt like the religion and its attendant culture places an unusual emphasis on being alive. Six thousand years of trying not to die can do that to you. We don’t believe in heaven, and we don’t believe in hell; when someone passes, we say “may their memory be a blessing,” and when we pray on Yom Kippur (one of the few days of the year that most of us go to shul), we only ask God to write our names in the Book of Life so that we can spend another...
- 1/19/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
The AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) and the 13 local unions of West Coast IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) currently operate under the Hollywood Basic Agreement, which expired this week after negotiations hit an impasse 11 days ago. The IATSE membership of those 13 locals — approximately 40,000 to 45,000 members who represent a large percentage of the crew who work in film and TV production in Los Angeles — are on day two of a three-day voting period in which they will decide whether to authorize leadership to call a strike. Voting on strike authorization closes Sunday, October 3, with results expected Monday.
Here’s what you need to know to put this strike authorization in context, understand what comes next, and which productions would be affected by a strike.
Authorization is inevitable, but it’s turnout that matters
According to a half-dozen sources inside IATSE locals’ leadership who spoke on background,...
Here’s what you need to know to put this strike authorization in context, understand what comes next, and which productions would be affected by a strike.
Authorization is inevitable, but it’s turnout that matters
According to a half-dozen sources inside IATSE locals’ leadership who spoke on background,...
- 10/2/2021
- by Chris O'Falt and Chris Lindahl
- Indiewire
Tens of thousands of Hollywood crafts workers represented by IATSE are set to begin voting October 1 on whether to authorize a strike that would lead to a nationwide shutdown of TV and film production.
It comes as the international union and local branches are working to coalesce editors, camera operators, grips, and others around a “yes” vote, seizing a moment where conversations about workers’ rights and wealth inequality have grown louder over the last year.
IATSE leaders on Monday told members that a sustained impasse in contract negotiations between IATSE and studios prompted the union to move forward with a strike authorization vote. At issue are wages that hover just above California’s $14 minimum for the lowest-paid crafts, workdays that often exceed 12 hours, overnight turnaround time as short as nine hours, employers who skimp on meal breaks, and workers paid lower wages for “new media” projects (aka streaming) versus theatrical movies and network TV series.
It comes as the international union and local branches are working to coalesce editors, camera operators, grips, and others around a “yes” vote, seizing a moment where conversations about workers’ rights and wealth inequality have grown louder over the last year.
IATSE leaders on Monday told members that a sustained impasse in contract negotiations between IATSE and studios prompted the union to move forward with a strike authorization vote. At issue are wages that hover just above California’s $14 minimum for the lowest-paid crafts, workdays that often exceed 12 hours, overnight turnaround time as short as nine hours, employers who skimp on meal breaks, and workers paid lower wages for “new media” projects (aka streaming) versus theatrical movies and network TV series.
- 9/23/2021
- by Chris Lindahl
- Indiewire
The Bloom/Spiegel Film Exchange, an alliance between New York’s Ifp Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film and the Jerusalem-based Sam Spiegel Film School and lab, has selected the nine filmmakers who will take part in its fourth edition.
The cross-cultural program will welcome Israeli filmmakers including Aalam-Warque Davidian, Margarita Belaklav, Tamar
Kay, Tal Miller, and Noa Shaham from the Sam Spiegel lab. They will be joined by Adrian Cardenas, Ben Gottlieb, Haley Anderson and Katrina Vogl from the New York-based Marcie Bloom Fellowship.
During a four-day seminar, the participants will meet with producers, directors, foreign sales agents, festival directors, programmers, poster designers, restorers and visit unique theaters and companies around the city. These meetings are meant to help them develop relationships with the film industry and encourage future collaborations.
“we started the Marcie Bloom Fellowship with the intention of bringing together a dynamic community of thoughtful, kind hearted and extremely curious filmmakers,...
The cross-cultural program will welcome Israeli filmmakers including Aalam-Warque Davidian, Margarita Belaklav, Tamar
Kay, Tal Miller, and Noa Shaham from the Sam Spiegel lab. They will be joined by Adrian Cardenas, Ben Gottlieb, Haley Anderson and Katrina Vogl from the New York-based Marcie Bloom Fellowship.
During a four-day seminar, the participants will meet with producers, directors, foreign sales agents, festival directors, programmers, poster designers, restorers and visit unique theaters and companies around the city. These meetings are meant to help them develop relationships with the film industry and encourage future collaborations.
“we started the Marcie Bloom Fellowship with the intention of bringing together a dynamic community of thoughtful, kind hearted and extremely curious filmmakers,...
- 3/13/2020
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
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