Public Radio International | Family Matters

On this hour of "Selected Shorts": Four stories about families and children by classic and contemporary writers ... Israeli writer Etgar Keret's "Pride and Joy," in which a childhood prodigy takes a toll on his parents. The reader is Tony Award- winner Robert Sean Leonard. From: "The Nimrod Flipout" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Los Angeles Film TV - Best Movies of 2008: Great Expectations - LA Weekly

10. $9.99 This has to be the first year that three animated movies make it into my top 10, but "animated" is an elastic definition that also covers the stop-go figures in Tatia Rosenthal%u2019s feature debut, which transposes short stories by po-mo Israeli writer Etgar Keret into a Sydney apartment building filled with lost souls looking for fulfillment, parental attention or just sexual bliss with a smooth-skinned man. Like Keret's stories, $9.99 hovers dangerously around whimsy, then veers into the depths of benighted souls, and bestows on them the moments of grace that may be the best we can hope for. Unless, of course, you're Poppy.

January Magazine: Best Books of 2008: Fiction

Writers have a particular challenge when trying to create believable plot and characters in stories which typically range from just a few sentences to a few pages. How do you reduce a universe of meaning to something the size of a breadbox? Etgar Keret makes it look so easy

Animated oddity $9.99 great value for money | Reuters

The stop-action animated film tackles the magically realist, existential short stories of Israeli author-filmmaker Etgar Keret. In fact, it's hard to think of another way to put these stories onscreen other than animation as each becomes increasingly surreal.

Animation World Magazine - interview with Tatia Rosenthal

Tatia Rosenthal tells Joe Strike about her journey to make Etgar Keret's $9.99 into a stop-motion feature, which links Israel, the U.S. and Australia

Sundance fills Screenwriting Lab - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety

The lab will offer screenwriters the opportunity to work on their feature film scripts with support from established writers and creative advisors including Lab Artistic Director Scott Frank, Marcos Bernstein, Naomi Foner, Nelson George, Michael Goldenberg, Deena Goldstone, Erik Jendresen, Etgar Keret, Kasi Lemmons, Doug McGrath, Walter Mosley, Ron Nyswaner, Tom Rickman, Susan Shilliday, Zach Sklar, Dana Stevens and Bill Wheeler.

Los Angeles Times exclusive: Trailer for '$9.99'

... On Dec. 12, "$9.99," a beautiful stop-motion animated film by Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal, will be released in American theaters, having already played to great acclaim at the Toronto and Rome film festivals. As you can get a sense from the trailer for "$9.99," which is debuting exclusively on this blog, the film is a bit of an existentialist, surrealist story - an animated "Synecdoche, New York," if you will - that was weaved together from several short stories by revered Israeli writer Etgar Keret (who himself co-won Cannes' Camera d'Or last year for the Israeli film "Meduzot") ...

36th Annual Annie Award Nominations Announced - SmartBrief

... "Kung Fu Panda" leads the field with 17 nominations ... "Bolt" received 9 nominations ... "Wall-E" received 8 nominations ... Completing the Best Animated Feature category is Sony Pictures Classics "Waltz With Bashir" and Sherman Pictures/Lama Films "$9.99"

Can $9.99 Get You an Oscar These Days? (Maybe in the Toon Category) - Thompson On Hollywood on Variety.com

$9.99, a stop motion toon for grown-ups, based on the very short stories of Israeli writer Etgar Keret (some of them no longer than a sneeze, but evocative enough to set your imagination running). That might seem like a shortage of material on which to base a feature, but consider that (a) most blockbusters can be reduced to 25 words or less and (b) director Tatia Rosenthal has gathered up a handful of Keret's ideas and packed them into a single film (by making his characters neighbors in a disaster-prone Australian apartment building), and you've got more than enough story to deal with.

FLP - Free Library Podcast: Etgar Keret & Rivka Galchen

MP3 download of both authors reading their stories, and a Q&A session (51:28)
Recorded 10/23/2008 at Central Library, Philadelphia

indieWIRE: DISPATCH FROM ROME

The best films in the first part of the festival were small films that more than delivered because they never pretend to be anything there are not. ... Equally enchanting is the Israeli-Australian animated film "$9.99" from director Tatia Rosenthal. The film uses stop-motion animation to tell the stories of a very heterogeneous group of people who all live in the same apartment building in Sydney. The screenplay by Etgar Keret and the director strikes just the right balance between quirk and simple observation, making the animated characters all lovable but flawed human beings. Geoffrey Rush's contribution as the voice of a character who might be an angel is especially noteworthy.

Keret's "Citizen K": Just Another Sinner

Someone who creates without support or reinforcement, who can write only after working hours, surrounded by people who aren't even sure he has talent, will always remember that truth. The world around him just won't let him forget it. The only kind of writer who can forget it is a successful one, the kind who doesn't write against the stream of his life, but with it, and every insight that flows from his pen not only enhances the text and makes him happy, but also delights his agents and his publisher.
Damn it, I forgot it.

New DVDs - washingtonpost.com

"[Jellyfish] provides a diverting portrait of modern-day Israel, as the filmmakers eschew history, politics and religion to focus instead on more intimate and universal issues of fate, loss and the longing to connect."

Time Out London's "Tel Aviv Heroes" interview with Keret
"Why is he a hero? You would be hard pressed to find an Israeli who grew up in the 1990s and can't remember the first time he or she read 'Missing Kissinger'"

The "Tel Aviv Heroes" project also includes interviews with Dana International, Ohad Naharin and Tzipi Livni.

Four Questions with Neal Stephenson
SXSW: Who are you reading?
Neal Stephenson: Whenever I'm given one of these opportunities, I put in a word for the late David Foster Wallace, who I think was one of the best we had. Anyone who is looking for something great to read, a big novel type experience, should look at Infinite Jest. Also, Etgar Keret, an Israeli writer of very short stories who I admire very much because I can't write short fiction. This is a great honour.

FutuRéale Magazine - $9.99 Review

Visually stunning, the film's animation is rich in detail which can be seen in the characters' eyes and in the sweat of lovers' bodies. ... One can only hope for an early release date for this movie and for more offerings from both Rosenthal and Keret in the future.
$9.99 is a truly magical cinematic experience.

Popwatch (Entertainment Weekly):

$9.99 The title also happens to be the price of a book that promises to reveal the meaning of life, an answer of interest to a mild-mannered twentysomething guy who lives at home with his blustery father. Both of whom are stop-motion animated creations, part of a vivid universe of characters in search of contentment. Using the droll, wise stories of Etgar Keret as her guide, inventive Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal concocts an artiful film that%u2019s enchanted, enchanting, and meaningful, too

Yair Raveh's Cinemascope:
"... a brand new stop-motion animated feature called “$9.99” that will have its world premiere in Toronto. It’s the feature film debut for Israeli born director/animator Tatia Rosenthal, who turned Etgar Keret’s macabre short stories into an animated movie. The film is an Israeli-Australian co-production (a first!), that was co-financed by the Israeli Film fund. Australians Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia are the voice actors ..."

Crime and Israeli army punishment

... as if the murderer had said, "OK, I accept the fact that slaughtering my wife in front of my kids wasn't really right, but to handcuff me for it, to take me to court and send a TV crew? Don't you think you're overdoing it a little?" ...

Etgar Keret's favorite radio show, "This American Life", features his story "Lieland" in this week's podcast of the show. "Lieland" is one of the stories available for free download only this week (starting next week, please ignore this sentence :) ).

Audio interview with Keret at Christofer Lydon's "Open Source Radio" (Brown university).

"Wristcutters" was released as DVD in the UK.
IndieLondon reviews the movie

Based on the short story Kneller’s Happy Campers by Etgar Keret and co-written by Dukic, the film effortlessly rises above its potentially depressing premise to provide film fans with a genuinely inventive ride. Characters are richly drawn and more than a little quirky (no one is able to smile) but it’s easy to warm to their heartache and turmoil.

Philladelphia Inquirer

Visually, Jellyfish, which won the 2007 Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is subtly surreal, full of grace and a gentle loopiness. A photograph of a seaside ice cream vendor suddenly takes on a life of its own; an airplane arcing across the sky reappears, like a toy's shadow, on the wall of a hospital room.

The film’s simple, poetic script ... as well as gorgeous imagery ... surreal production of Hamlet that amuses ... offbeat wedding photography, and other lovely touches that shows off the filmmakers’ creativity. Beautifully conceived, written and performed, this is one of the year’s best films

Constant Reader ("The Stranger", Seatle):

In his most recent book to be translated to English, The Girl on the Fridge, there are almost 50 stories packed into 171 pages, but this isn't the typical, unsatisfying flash fiction; in stories of three pages or less, Keret unveils little universes of weirdness and sorrow, but unlike, say, Carver's stories, they don't feel like they were written 30 years ago.