Susan's Blog

Monday, March 10, 2008

Let’s Hear it for The Band

An Egyptian Police Band gets off a bus in a sleepy Israeli town…

Sounds like the beginning of a good joke, right? Well, it is the beginning of a great movie! Ned and I snuck out tonight to see The Band’s Visit, a small indy film from Israel, chock full of good looking Semites, both Arab and Israeli. Wow. Not only is this movie easy on the eyes, it feels good on your heart. It is poignantly lovely to watch the dynamics as the few townspeople and this band of guys slowly warm up to each other. Hotheaded politics take a backseat here: it is all human interactions, awkward, sweet, disappointed, sexy, bored, hopeful. And at the end, some lovely classical Arab music, which made my hands start to move, Taksim-like and snakey, all over Ned, who nearly dropped his popcorn! (Just kidding, we ate it all during the previews.)

I swear I am going to learn Arabic – maybe even bookra!

posted at 9:57 pm 1 comment

1 comment

Well I can recommend Pimsleur’s Egyptian Arabic. After doing the initial 10 lessons, I was able to recognize the words I learned in songs (common phrases)…and also talk pretty well in Arabic once I got to Egypt, where they thought I had a nice accent, on the few things I could say.

— added by Shannon Brooke Davis on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 4:38 pm