The Band's Visit

I have a secret confession to make. I will probably have to give back the VRWC decoder ring after I make it but I missed reading the NY Times online. I admit to not being prepared to pony up out of my own pocket for 90% of the content online at the NY Times. Most of it I couldn’t abide, but there were always stuff I did enjoy reading from the Johannesburg Journal to ones just like this one about a new Israeli film called The Band’s Visit:

JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 — “The Band’s Visit” tells the story of an eight-man Egyptian police orchestra that gets lost in Israel and lands in a dead-end desert town, where bemused and amused locals take the musicians into their homes, and into their weary hearts.

Offering a glimpse into a better world, one where the distance between strangers can miraculously melt away, “The Band’s Visit” triumphed at the Israel film academy’s 2007 awards and has reaped accolades at film festivals abroad.

So it seems unfortunate — or perhaps simply typical, given the unforgiving nature of the Middle East — that a film trying to bridge the region’s bitter divides has been blocked from film festivals in the Arab world and become the focus of a rancorous dispute at home.