Unicorns, a four-part series on KAN 11 about the Israeli hi-tech industry that airs Saturday nights after Roni Kuban’s interview show, is a comprehensive look at how a small country became a tech powerhouse, the so-called Start-Up Nation, and about whether Israel can continue its success in this sector.
This series, the early episodes of which are available on KAN's website, is interesting because it doesn’t have a gee-whiz attitude about Israeli success in this field, but examines, with a critical eye, how this industry developed and where it’s going.
The first episode goes back to the 1980s and looks at how the US might as well have been another planet, until the Internet leveled the playing field in the 1990s. It examines the first Israeli tech companies, notably ICQ by Mirabilis, a very early instant messaging application, which was originally given away for free and acquired hundreds of millions of users before it was bought by AOL for $400 million in 1998.
In one especially funny interview, one entrepreneur talks about a course that was created for Israelis to help them communicate in Silicon Valley. One of the first lessons: Not to tell people, “You’re wrong,” as soon as they are done speaking. But he said that while Israelis’ blunt communication style often ruffled feathers, it saved time, and some companies actually encouraged their Israeli employees to “Israel-ize” their company culture.
The series isn’t only about the successes. It’s also about how the influx of hi-tech money has changed Israel, creating a disconnect between the 1% of tech billionaires and the rest of us, and about how the government has not worked to nurture the tech industry here, as governments have in other developed countries, but instead has showered money and tax breaks on other preferred sectors, such as the ultra-Orthodox.
Anyone interested in the economy and technology will want to see Unicorns.
Amos Tamam is one of Israel’s most popular actors, who has given many fine performances throughout his career, and he’s especially compelling in Disengagement, the drama series about Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip 20 years ago, which is running on KAN 11 and can be seen on kan.org.il.
His breakout role was as a young teacher in Srugim trying to make his marriage work, but in this he plays a military man, Brig.-Gen. Shiloh Mazeh, who gets the career opportunity he has been waiting for when he is tasked with supervising the withdrawal. This new role also creates a dilemma, because his sister and his son live there, and he and his wife firmly believe Jews should live there, as do all in their social circle.
Tamam is very good at conveying the character’s ambivalence, as he is pulled by the conflict between his ambition, his loyalty to the IDF, his wish to make the disengagement as peaceful as possible, and his doubt about the justice of this actions. He skillfully embodies the mixed emotions that so many felt at the time, and he has one of his most interesting roles in years here.
The point of view of the settlers and those sympathetic to them is front and center here, although his former Srugim costar, Ohad Knoller, plays a rival military officer who is in favor of the disengagement, and whose wife protests in favor of leaving Gaza.
The series, by Srugim creators Hava Divon and Eliezer “Laizy” Shapiro, clearly reserves its strongest sympathy for its hero and those who are troubled by the disengagement, but it does present other points of view.
The new Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Scheme, has gotten mixed reviews – I found it overly precious and uninvolving – but his early movies were wonderful, and you can see his two best films, The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, on Disney+. Both were cowritten with actor Owen Wilson, and maybe it’s no coincidence that in both of these films, Anderson’s visual and stylistic quirks harmonized with the script to create distinctive characters you could care about.
I especially recommend The Royal Tenenbaums, which features one of Gene Hackman’s best performances as the conman father of a family of faded child prodigies who tries to win their love again. Everyone in the cast is as good as they’ve ever been – Anjelica Huston as his composed ex-wife, Luke Wilson as a lovelorn tennis player, Gwyneth Paltrow as a blocked playwright, Bill Murray as a tone-deaf neurologist, Owen Wilson as a cocky best-selling novelist, and Ben Stiller as an anxious businessman. The tagline was especially memorable: “Family isn’t a word, it’s a sentence.”
Binging amid Israel-Iran war
THERE ARE always so many new series being released that I rarely revisit anything, but the fourth season of The Bear, available in Israel on Disney+, came out just as the war with Iran was winding down, and I binged it very quickly, hungry to see what happened in the story.
Since then, I have watched it again and found that there were moments and scenes I didn’t completely absorb the first time that are terrific. Many of these revolve around Jamie Lee Curtis’s performance as Carmy’s narcissistic/alcoholic/bipolar mother, as she starts to get her life together and to make amends – slowly – with her children.
It’s some of the best acting I’ve seen from any actress of her generation, and it impressed me even more on the second viewing. From her origins as a scream queen, Curtis has progressed to being one of America’s finest actresses, in a category with a handful of others, such as Meryl Streep.
The show has been especially wonderful in episodes that focus on a single character or a particular event, rather than its major plot about the fate of the Berzatto family’s restaurant, and the seventh episode of the fourth season, “Bears,” may be its best ever; it’s certainly the most upbeat.
The characters all gather for the wedding of Tiff (Gillian Jacobs, who was so good in Transatlantic), the ex-wife of Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the troubled but charming guy who runs the waitstaff side of the restaurant.
His young daughter, Eva (Annabelle Toomey), sits under a table and refuses to come out, feeling ambivalent about having a new stepfather and picking up on her father’s anxiety over feeling he is being replaced.
The main cast and some supporting characters crawl under and discuss their own fears with her, and for those who have come to love these people, it’s a beautiful moment, as the adults show this child that fear is natural.
Later, several couples who have overcome much in their relationships dance, and the soundtrack plays Emmylou Harris’s cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher than the Rest,” the perfect song for this moment.
It may be a sly reference to the fact that Jeremy Allen White, who plays Carmy, will portray The Boss in an upcoming biopic.
It reminded me of how often The Bear and many other top television series over the years – notably The Sopranos, Weeds, Parenthood, The Wire, and Mad Men – have used interesting music to underscore the drama and, in the process, widened the musical horizons of many viewers.
The Bear soundtrack mixes music by Taylor Swift, Nine Inch Nails, the Replacements, Sonny and Cher, Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan, Doris Day, Curtis Mayfield, Paul Simon, Mavis Staples, Refused, Squeeze, the Ramones, Dean Martin, and lots of other songs, many of which I never heard of, and the music complements the action beautifully.