the groundhog day project

In 2000, Fievel Mousekewitz was named an official icon for UNICEF for "promoting worldwide understanding and friendship among children." However much Roger might have dismissed the movie for being too depressing— he wrote, among other complaints, "The movie has such vague ethnic grounds... that only a few children will understand or care that the Mousekewitzes are Jewish. And few of those are likely to be entertained by such a tragic, gloomy story. —the film not only performed well—it was #2 behind Crocodile Dundee its opening weekend and #18 at the box office for all of 1986 (and it didn't come out until November)—but has also endured. A few sequels, a couple video games, a comic book, and some nice retrospective articles years after release. Regarding the latter, for example, Dave Trumbore, who credits An American Tail as the first film he saw in a theater, writes for Collider , 21 November 2016: What I once regarded as a darkly serious and sometimes sil...

I have not watched many kids films for this blog. Even when going through movie fixtures from my childhood, there were a few child-friendly films but few made primarily for kids. Today, though, we've got An American Tail and I do not recall the last time I watched it. Once upon a time I loved this movie and had all the lyrics to all the songs memorized. As I wait for the first song, I get sidetracked by the history. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, some blamed Jews, and a series of pogroms followed. The Cossacks attack the town of Shostka because there are Jewish families there. The Mousekewitzes are just one. And, oh shit, I had forgotten that "There Are No Cats in America" begins with Papa explaining how his parents were killed. Damn, kids movie. And then other mice tell their sad tales in between joyful choruses. And, already I'm imagining the way a movie like this influenced me when I was just 10 years old. Refugees just looking for...

I imagine a different version of The Jazz Singer : Jess is younger (even though, apparently, Al Jolson was actually older in the original than Neil Diamond is here); if he must have the Jewish wife that he abandons (because he can't just abandon one wife), she needs to be a lot younger, too; their marriage needs to be something born out of youth, out of an urge toward tradition, and she needs to be more of an albatross like Pop than a footnote; if he is going to run away from his new life after his father disowns him, maybe we see some of Jess' grief and pain beyond him being a dick to everyone in the recording studio... Or, better yet, Jess' story is not just about him bucking Jewish and family tradition but him doing so because he and his father (and his wife) have just moved to America, or Jess was brought as a child or was born here, and marrying Rivka was something he did for his family; maybe to get them off his back about an inkling to not just be a cantor. Jess...