If you’re already married, contemplating marriage or in a long-term, committed relationship and planning to remain there, I have one word for you during this Film Awards season: Amour.

Amour – nominated last week for a Best Picture Oscar – is a movie about an elderly, long-married couple in which the wife is dying. That’s not a spoiler; it’s the film’s premise. And it cuts right to the chase about what it’s like to grow old with someone.

Suffice it to say that if you thought On Golden Pond was depressing, fasten your seat belts. This is a refreshingly honest, unvarnished and difficult-to-watch film about love and aging.

There aren’t enough about those, if you ask me. Away From Her – a bittersweet 2006 meditation on a man losing his wife (played by an utterly ethereal Julie Christie) to Alzheimer’s Disease – certainly counts. As does – in my book at least – last year’s vastly under-appreciated Iron Lady, in which Meryl Streep depicts Margaret Thatcher in her twilight years not as ruthless and unstinting but as frightened, uncertain, and nostalgic for her dead husband.

In general, however, when we think about films that present us with the dark underbelly of marriage, we conjure up things like Judd Apatow’s new auto-biographic comedy, This is Forty. I haven’t seen that film yet, but I already know that when I do, I’ll be going primarily to share a laugh with my husband (and all of us who’ve grown up in the Age of Apatow) over what it’s like to be married and middle-aged.

Read the rest of this post at The Washington Post’s She The People blog…

Image: Old Couple…in Amsterdam Tram by basheem via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Every few years, it seems, we are collectively forced to revisit the cultural maelstrom that is Roman Polanski.

Sometimes it’s because a new film by the European director has come out. Sometimes it’s because Polanski is (once again) fleeing arrest somewhere. And sometimes it’s because we all need to pause and revisit the term rape.

This time, however, our cultural re-connection with Monsieur Polanski comes in the form of news that the then-13-year-old girl whom he drugged and raped in Jack Nicholson’s home all those years ago is publishing a memoir to tell her side of the story.

Samantha Geimer – yes, she has a name – has penned a memoir entitled “The Girl: Emerging From the Shadow of Roman Polanski.” In her own words, “I am more than Sex Victim Girl, a tag the media pinned on me. I offer my story now without rage, but with purpose — to share a tale that in its detail will reclaim my identity…I am not a stick figure. I know what it is like to be a woman and a victim in the realest possible way.”

Read the rest of this post on The Washington Post’s She The People blog…

Image: 65th Festival de Cannes by PanARMENIAN photo via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

As a parent, it’s sometimes difficult to know which of life’s hard knocks are appropriate for children to know about and when it’s time to introduce them.

I myself came under considerable criticism a few years back when I spoke to my then five year-old daughter about the Holocaust. And I’ve raised more than a few eyebrows (including two of my own) for letting my son read the entire Game of Thrones series when he was ten. (If you want a quick primer on sex, violence and everything short of videotape, do give those books a go…)

But one decision I have not regretted was encouraging our children – now 8 and 11 respectively – to watch the Seven Up! Series with me and my husband.

If you’ve never seen Seven Up!, drop whatever you’re doing right now and go rent it at the library/netflix/love film. You will not be disappointed. Seven Up! began as a documentary about childhood in the class-torn Britain of the 1960s, centered around the famous Jesuit aphorism: “Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man .” The Director, Michael Apted (an assistant on the first film), interviewed 14 seven year-olds from strikingly different backgrounds in England and traced their evolution, the hypothesis being that knowing them at seven would give us insight into the “man” (woman) in adulthood. He then went on to make a new film every seven years, the most recent installment  being 56 up!

Across the films you are privy to the remarkable dreams of childhood, the dashed hopes of adulthood, along with the inevitable personal crises, marital difficulties, and economic challenges that invariably accompany the process of growing up.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Sure, there are some pretty depressing stories in here – including one bright-eyed youngster who proudly announces that he’d like to grow up to become an astronaut but ends up homeless and mentally unstable. But there are also real rays of hope: kids who look like they’ll fall into drugs and crime but don’t, tough women who really enjoy their lives despite not having a lot of money, and poor little rich girls who look like they’re destined to remain lonely and miserable but somehow manage to pull it together and lead a happy family life.

My husband and I wanted our kids to see these films because as much as they shine a spot light on some of the gritty truths of adulthood, equally they teach kids that everything isn’t pre-determined at birth, that happiness isn’t just about having money, and perhaps most importantly of all, that life can be full of surprises-some awful and unfortunate, yes, but some exhilarating and inspiring.

Sure, I’d love to shield my kids from evil and sorrow. But they will confront them. And I want them to be ready.

How about you? What books/plays/music/films have you shown your kids that offered a glimpse into the realities of being a grown up?

Image: OB/FM 12 by Slinky789 via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Britain’s phone hacking scandal truly is the gift that keeps on giving. On Sunday, news broke from the Cannes Film Festival that “Rebekah Brooks: The Movie”will be coming soon to a theater near you.

Most people know Rebekah Brooks as Rupert Murdoch’s erstwhile girl Friday in the British arm of his media empire, News Corp. Until July of last year, she served as chief executive at the London-based News International, before abruptly resigning over her alleged role in the phone-hacking scandal.

Brooks was charged last week on three separate counts of obstruction of justice, including conspiring to remove boxes of archive records from Murdoch’s London headquarters, concealing material from detectives, and hiding documents, computers and other electronic equipment from the police. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, although the average term served is 10 months.

There’s no question that Brooks is the perfect subject for a film. With her flowing, auburn ringlets and mysteriously cool — almost detached — demeanor, she looks like she stepped out of a Botticelli portrait.

Read the rest of this post at The Washington Post’s She The People blog…

Image: News International’s Rebekah Brooks Under Fire by ssoosay via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

We all have our guilty pleasures. Some of us read trashy novels. Others play children’s video games when no one’s looking. One of my friends still enjoys eating pop tarts as a grown up.

Me? I watch the Oscars. And when I saw watch, I mean consume, absorb and otherwise tune out the world.

So even when it’s a year – like this one when, let’s face it – the Academy Awards were kind of meh, I still derive tons of pleasure from watching them.

This year had its own collection of classic moments. And so if, like me, you couldn’t watch the Oscars live, here are five things worth remembering:

1.Unforgettable Past Oscar Moments. Before we even hit the red carpet on Sunday, my eyes were glued to this fabulous montage of Oscar Fails over on Slate V. Narrated by someone pretending to be that omniscient voice that tells you the winner’s past Oscar history as s/he approaches the stage, this clip includes some of the greatest Oscar moments of all time, including David Niven’s terrific ad lib all those years ago.

2. Sasha Baron Cohen Drops His Ashes.  And speaking of the red carpet, if you haven’t yet seen Sasha Baron Cohen’s hilarious Oscar stunt before the ceremony got underway, it’s a must-view. To me, what’s particularly noteworthy about this video is not Baron Cohen, who is always larger than life and outrageous. It’s the two incredibly dimwitted E! commentators reacting to Ryan Seacrest. It’s times like these that it really hurts to be an American.

3. Angelina’s right leg. Much has been made of Angelina Jolie’s right leg, which made a prominent appearance at the awards ceremony, jutting out as it did – in all its slenderness – from her Versace dress.  But did you know that this leg also inspired a Twitter account? Yes, that’s right. Tweets from @AngiesRightLeg soared on Sunday night, especially following this reaction to Jolie’s limb from the Oscar-winning writers from The Descendants.

4. JLo’s NipSlip. Not to be out done, Jennifer Lopez’ wardrobe malfunction also inspired its own Twitter feed, @jlosnipple. But I’m with Big Little Wolf on this one: whatever we saw, J Lo looked fantastic – full-bodied and owning it -  unlike Angelina who – once full-bodied herself – has gotten painfully thin.

5. Jimmy Kimmel’s Movie: The Movie. For the past few years, late night host Jimmy Kimmel has had a great time spoofing the Oscars. This year, he made an 8-minute long fake movie trailer for his forthcoming hit: Movie: The Movie, starring everyone from Meryl Streep to Tom Hanks to Samuel L. Jackson to Tom Hanks (as a robot). Laugh out loud funny. The joke is always on us.

What am I missing?

Image: Oscar by lincolnblues via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Most of my British friends won’t see The Iron Lady on principle. “Her again?” is their feeling — not about its star, Meryl Streep, but its title character, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

As middle-aged, generally left-leaning types who came of age in the 1980s, when Thatcher ruled supreme, they loathe “Maggie” and everything she stood for. In their minds, she ruined the British public education system, decimated trade unions and privatized the nation.

I myself nearly gave the movie a pass, though not for political reasons. Other than Streep – whom everyone agrees gives an amazing performance – most people, whether reviewers or friends – seemed to feel pretty “meh” about the film itself. So I figured that I could just wait and rent it once it came out on DVD.

It was my 80 year-old mother, herself a former actress, who set me straight and motivated me to go see “The Iron Lady” in a theatre. And I’m so glad that she did.

Read the rest of this post at The Washington Post’s She The People blog…

Image: Margaret Thatcher Waxwork by soulmate02 via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Britain has had quite a time of it over the past few months. Between sluggish growth and persistent unemployment, riots, strikes and the Euro crisis, many are wondering aloud whether what this country really needs is another Margaret Thatcher-style leader who would restore order and stability.

With Meryl Streep’s face plastered all over bus and tube stations advertising the new film “The Iron Lady,” it almost feels like Baroness
Thatcher herself has returned to save the day.

Many of us remember Mrs. Thatcher for her lengthy and dramatic stint on Downing Street in the 1980s, during which time she privatized state-owned industries, crushed trade unions and went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

But there’s another way in which Mrs. Thatcher made herself a household name the world over: she exemplified an unapologetic model for how to be a prominent woman in public life.

Read the rest of this article on The Washington Post’s She The People Blog…

Image: Baroness Thatcher portrait by Downing Street via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Every so often you read a book or watch a film that you need to put down or look away from because it cuts too close to the bone.

So it was for me the other night when my husband and I finally finished watching the 1981 British television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited, an 11 episode meditation on privilege, family, religion and sexuality, all set in England between the Wars.

Most people – even those who haven’t read the book or seen the series – use  “Brideshead” as shorthand for the flamboyant excesses of the British aristocracy on its last legs. And make no mistake, there’s no shortage of champagne flutes, dinner jackets and preposterously polite banter. In short, it’s the kind of thing that Americans tend to lap up. (See: Upstairs, Downstairs, Gosford Park and most recently, Downton Abbey.)

The actors are to die for. The series launched Jeremy Irons’ career and also features outstanding performances by Diana Quick, Anthony Andrews, Lawrence Olivier and more. Plus, any film that dwells on extensive bouts of family conflict, alcoholism and unspoken homo-eroticism? I’m there.

So that was all well and good. But as the series wore on, it became increasingly clear that this wasn’t just another voyeuristic journey into the heart of Oxbridge-bred England. Rather, it was essentially a protracted tale of one family’s inexorable, inter-generational and self-destructive struggle with Catholicism.

I’ve written before about my own personal struggles with my family’s faith. How my husband and I have tried, through the years, to reconcile my religious Catholic upbringing with his cultural Jewish identity. And how that has led me to become, begrudgingly, over time, a sort of reluctant secularist.

What Brideshead Revisited added to that equation was the pain and guilt that goes along with that decision. I wanted desperately, as I watched, to identify with Charles Ryder, the protagonist of the story. He is the stoic, eternally rational hero who can’t quite fathom why this otherwise well-educated and cultured family in which he has become enmeshed – The Flytes – is so hopelessly caught up in their Roman Catholic faith.

Instead, I ended up identifying with Julia, his beloved, who tries her very best to leave her religion (and thus, to some extent, her family) by embracing Charles (and divorce and modernity) and the skepticism it implies. In the end, however, it’s too much for her and she can’t quite bring herself to do it. It breaks her heart, but she chooses the Church over her true love. It is her destiny.

I won’t do that. I left the church long ago and save a few masses here and there and the occasional compunction to pray on airplanes, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Catholicism. Or any other religion, for that matter.  Even Judaism.

But I experience that as a loss. And it’s a painful one.

And that’s why I envy all the atheists I know, who make up about 90% of the people around me, including my husband. They don’t share this anguish. It doesn’t keep them awake at night.

I would love to have that peace of mind.

But I don’t.

And that, my friends, is one price of adulthood. At least mine.

Image: IMG_2994 by Franie Frou Frou via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

I’m pretty consistent in my film tastes. I tend to go for dark, Indie films about failed efforts at personal redemption or fictional feature films that capture some signature moment in political history.

But my husband is a huge fan of documentaries. And so – benefiting once again from the division of labor that characterizes our marriage – I’ve seen my fair share of those as well.

While I doubt I’ll ever become a documentary junkie, over the years I’ve grown to enjoy them more and more. Here are five documentaries worth seeing:

1. The Thin, Blue Line. This may have been the very first documentary I ever saw with my husband. It’s an Errol Morris film – which makes it worth viewing in and of itself – that dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer’s murder in Dallas. Apparently, the film was so powerful and convincing that it helped free an innocent man from prison. But I like it because it plays like a murder mystery thriller. Stylistically, it’s also interesting. Interviews with suspects and their acquaintances,  law enforcement officials and lawyers are interspersed with a stylized re-enactments of the murder. Among other things, you’ll come away questioning the very notion of “truth.”

2. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. This is another good film to see if you are interested in questioning the fairness and efficacy of the American judicial system. The film examines the famous, ongoing case against Roman Polanski, who had sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl 34 years ago, a crime for which he remains a fugitive from justice in the United States. However you feel about the controversial European film director  – and for the record, I side with those who see him as a child rapist – this film makes you appreciate the horrible miscarriage of justice that his circus of a trial was. (It also shows just how bizarre, wounded and self-destructive a character Polanski really is.)

3. One Day In September. Shifting from domestic to international politics,  this 1999 Oscar award-winning documentary about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich is guaranteed to keep you glued to the screen. Again, however you feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you won’t be able to look away as the narrator carefully walks you towards the bloody, suspenseful climax. Which is pretty impressive, given that we all know in advance how the whole thing turns out. You will also come away in awe of the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

4. Promises. This is an utterly different – but equally worthy – documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What makes it so compelling – sad and hopeful in equal measure – is that it examines the conflict through the eyes of seven children who live in Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Israeli neighborhoods of West Jerusalem. Some are secular; some are religious. Some are more militant; some are more peaceful. Above all, however, we see them as kids. And it is this universal bond of youth which cuts across the geo-political struggle that wages around them. Powerful stuff.

5. Hoop Dreams. If you only manage to see one documentary on this list, let this be it. This is, quite simply, an amazing film and something that all teen-agers should be required to watch. It narrates the lives of two African-American boys who are spotted for their talent on the basketball courts on the West side of Chicago and follows their lives as they try to realize their dream of playing in the NBA. In addition to the whole sports-as-ticket-out-of-the ghetto theme, you are also exposed to all of the other realities of inner city life that surround these boys, including drugs, crime, teen pregnancy and poverty. I saw it when it first came out but we watched it as a family this summer with my two children (ages 7 and 10) and we’re still talking about it. I’m also delighted to learn that the film-maker, Steve James, has a new documentary out this summer about gang violence in Chicago called The Interrupters. Can’t wait.

What have I missed?

Image: Hoop Dream by playhockeyeh via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

When I was back in the States over the holidays, I had an interesting dinner conversation with a friend of a friend. I can’t remember how it got started, but suddenly there I was, listing my favorite all-time movies.

And in constructing my list out loud, I realized how many of my favorite films have to do with politics in some way, shape or form.

So since it’s Oscar season — and that always gets me thinking about the kinds of movies I like and why — I thought I’d share with you five political movies worth seeing:

1. Reds. This may be my all-time favorite movie, period. It’s about a radical American journalist – Jack Reed – who becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and tries to bring its ideals to the United States. (He’s also the author of Ten Days That Shook The World, if that rings a bell.) Why do I like this movie so much? I find the history of communism – especially in the United States – to be pretty interesting stuff. But this is also an epic film, told over generations, which intersperses a story of global political change with Reed’s rocky but ultimately, loving relationship with his wife, Louise Bryant. Oh and the cast? Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton and a surprisingly toned-down and moving Jack Nicholson.

2. Julia. Another film about war, this time World War Two. This play centers on a friendship between two women – American playwright Lillian Hellman and her lifelong friend, Julia. When Julia joins the anti-Facist resistance movement in Vienna, she asks her old friend Lillian to smuggle some money to the cause while travelling through Europe. This is fundamentally a movie about the love between two friends (set against a broader backdrop of Nazi Germany, anti-Semitism and Hellman’s on-again, off-again relationship with Dashiel Hammett.) Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave star, but don’t miss the five-minute scene with Maximilian Schell. Priceless.

3. All The President’s Men. Yeah, I know. Like Godfather II (which I also love), they re-broadcast this baby far too often on TV. But what a great movie. It’s goes right to the nexus of corruption, money and power in Washington. Best of all, the whole thing has a thriller-like feel. Personally? My favorite scene is the one where the Dustin Hoffman character stays up all night drinking coffee and pumping some lady for information. Makes one proud to be a journalist.

4. Nothing Personal. If, like me, you have a quiet obsession with The Troubles in Northern Ireland, I’d highly recommend a small but powerful film that flew a bit under the radar screen called Nothing Personal. It’s a very intimate portrait of a handful of people on both sides of this conflict and how their lives – political and personal – intersect in complicated and dangerous ways. Warning: the ending will kill you.

5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. So this is a pretty harrowing film all around. It’s about illegal abortion under authoritarian rule in Romania. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I realize; definitely mine. But the reason I list it here under political films is that despite the grisly subject matter, the film is a statement – and a re-enactment, of sorts – of what it’s like to live under authoritarian rule. At a political moment when we’re all trying to figure out what’s going on in Egypt, this one is worth a watch. But be sure to fasten your seatbelt first.

What am I missing? Do weigh in in the comments section with your own favorite political films…

Image: Movie Theater by jimdeane via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.