Nominees Announced for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards

COLLECTION
A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

More about the Shirley Jackson awards for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic" at wikipedia

$9.99 show times (click icons to enlarge)



Source: $9.99 site

More $9.99 reviews

Washington Times

"There was some talk at the end of last year about "$9.99" emerging as a dark-horse candidate in the animated-feature category at the Academy Awards. Though that never materialized, such rumors are a testament to the caliber of the film and the subjects it broaches."

The Boston Globe

"The result of [Keret's] screenwriting collaboration with Rosenthal is a movie that entertains and enlightens without being preachy - in fact, most of its beliefs are strenuously ambiguous; that's a key part of the joke."

Time Out New York interviews Keret about $9.99

... Why are people always looking for easy answers to unanswerable questions?
I think the film isn't about people looking for easy answers as much as it is the fact that people gave up on looking. Because I think that sometimes the yearning and the search is some sort of a meaning. And the difference between the character who wants to order the meaning of life and the other people around him is that you can say he's naive and unrealistic, but he didn't give up. He's obsessed with this question. The other people are already executing their plan Bs and Cs - they've already given up on whatever they once believed in ...

Here are some USA reviews of $9.99

Entertainment Weekly

The investment is worth it for a movie ticket to an original universe of characters in search of contentment

Village voice

Etgar Keret is sometimes described as Israel's Woody Allen, but this hugely popular humorist is more fanciful and morbid in his evocation of cultural schlemielery. Co-written with Keret, Tatia Rosenthal's stop-motion animation $9.99 adds a measure of creepiness to Keret's dark whimsy.

NJ.com

Rosenthal gives the entire production a lovely, fine-art look, and a real feeling that we're looking at life as it's lived - even if there are angels involved, and everyone is made of modeling clay. How often do you see that even in live-action films?

NY Times

The Israeli writer Etgar Keret possesses an imagination not easily slotted into conventional literary categories. His very short stories might be described as Kafkaesque parables, magic-realist knock-knock jokes or sad kernels of cracked cosmic wisdom. When such vignettes are strung together into a feature — as in “Jellyfish” (2007), which he directed with his wife, Shira Geffen, and now in Tatia Rosenthal’s “$9.99” — they become even more elusive and strange.

Keret interviews Israeli minister of defense Ehud Barak

You know there is a never-ending debate over the question of whether Netanyahu has really changed. What is your opinion?
Barak gave vent to a morose sigh, like those he attached in his speech to the word "opportunity," and then continued with a warm smile, almost heartwarming.
"Tell me," he said, "have you changed?"

Books: In short - Times Online

"[Kneller's Happy Campers] is like nothing else"

Christopher Bowen composed the soundtracks for both Jellyfish and $9.99.
His site contains sound-bites from both, and more.

Keret [among others] recommends a book/food combo to NY Times

The last time I reread Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" was during the Lebanon war. The other night, in the middle of the Gaza bombing, I was reading it again in a Chinese restaurant here in Tel Aviv. I started laughing and crying, which goes with sweet and sour.

Matchstick War - Meeting a Childhood Friend During Missile Strikes in Israel, Again - NYTimes.com

He explained to us that the museum had originally been devoted to weapons alone, but after he was convicted of stealing grenades for the exhibition, he took advantage of his eight-month sentence to build the Eiffel Tower and the guitar and added them to the collection

Nextbook: Etgar Keret: Money Pit

"... There are only a few winners in this conflict, and I'm one of them. Here, look." He pushed his BlackBerry at me. "Oil options went up seven dollars. I'm the man. And maybe you too can come out of this thing with a few shekels from some op-ed piece ..."

Middle East 'proportionality' - Etgar Keret - Los Angeles Times

Early in the aerial bombing of Gaza, five young girls from the same family were killed, and many more children have died on both sides of the border in recent years. The attempt to introduce their bodies into an equation that would make their deaths justifiable or comprehensible might be necessary to influence current events, but it is still enraging

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)

This audio recording also features stories by Shirley Jackson, Jeanne Dixon, and Rick Moody (read by Lois Smith, Mia Dillon, and B.D. Wong)

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.

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"

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

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.

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.

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 ..."