iTunes Exclusive Episode Menashe

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Greetings Empire member and or members.
If you are currently hearing the sound of my voice, it means the following conditions have been met.
At least once in your lifetime you have listened to the Clubhouse podcast live every Sunday night, seven Eastern, four Pacific.
You are one stop shop for all things pop culture.
But it also means you subscribe to this show and your favorite podcast app because it's time for another iTunes exclusive.
This iTunes is exclusive 315.
Welcome.
My name is Rob. I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast.
We've got a real interesting one for you this go round.
But I'm not alone as I rarely am for these things joining me across the desk as he tends to do from time to time.
Is the official fact checker of this show.
And a man that can be referred to as a mensch.
And that's a good thing.
You may know I'm his fond don go but his mom I name him Don Ford. I'm gonna call him Don Ford.
I wrote the bench a lot.
No, no. Mench. It's a term of endearment in the Yiddish community.
Okay. I don't know it's a good thing.
Somebody calls you your your a mensch means you're a good guy.
Okay. All right. Say I learned something new.
Whenever we do one of these it is to review something and this is no exception.
Brand new film available for you right now.
That I'm kind of glad I got the screen.
I mean, I got to attend the screening.
So Don's gonna be kind of here for moral support.
It is called Manasha.
For what's up this whole thing?
Yes, sir. Ready to sing?
Yep.
And I did a great marketing.
Got to take hold on the whole crew.
Some of our favorite people over there that take care of us.
This movie runs just under an hour and a half.
This was actually featured this year at the Dallas International Film Festival.
I did not get to see it.
But friend of the show Dev Shapiro was like,
dude, you need to check out this film.
It's really, really good.
And so it came back around.
And I got to by the time you hear this,
it will be available for you to check out in the theater near you.
Here's what you need to know.
Manasha is the title character's name.
All right. He lives in Brooklyn.
He is part of the ultra orthodox Jewish community.
I mean, these cats are old school.
These are the guys you see with the hats and the coats.
And the girls coming down the beards and everything.
But he's also a widower.
All right.
It's been about a year since his wife passed.
And he is trying to raise his son.
The problem is in the orthodox Jewish church,
you cannot, a child must be raised in a two-parent home.
So he is currently living with Manasha's brother.
I'm going to make sure I get the name right here.
And Manasha played by Manasha Loostick.
So it's the same first name.
What happened there?
I lost the whole thing here.
Background noise.
So he is living with his brother.
They don't have it.
We'll sit right here.
And of course, his brother's Mary has children and everything.
And so he's trying to hold down a job.
And he's just trying to be responsible.
But he's also trying to respect the laws of his church.
But he just wants his son.
Yeah.
That's what he wants.
This was directed and co-written by Joshua Z. Weinstein.
A guy that's been doing a lot of documentaries.
This is his first narrative.
If I'm not mistaken, let me double check on that.
But I should be absolutely right on that.
He's also done some other work.
But as a director, yes.
This is his first feature narrative.
I really, really enjoyed this film.
What I really like about it, there's a lot of things
I really like about it.
Number one, it's a very real story.
The way I put it in the comments that I gave our friends
that allied after the film was its heart warming
and heart wrenching at the same time.
This film is completely subtitled from the almost,
I would say 98% subtitled from Yiddish.
So be aware of that going in.
But watching this man's struggles and his journey,
this is these are universal themes that are used in this film.
It's not just specific to a group of people.
It's about loss and it's about wanting to be the best possible parent
you can be.
It's about wanting to be independent and be, you know,
live up to your potential, but still respect the culture
that you're involved in.
Let me get this right, though.
And, you know, we don't try to talk politics or religion,
but that's true.
We're a little religion in it.
I understand wanting the two parent home to raise a child.
The religion asked that, huh?
But with the religion, give exceptions for widowers.
No.
Now, you can sit Shiva.
And at that point the family stays together
because in the Jewish tradition,
when you do have the memorial,
because there's been a year in the film.
Once you, Shiva actually outlawed only last about two weeks.
If you've ever seen the film,
I just lost it.
It's with Tina Fey.
This is where I leave you.
That's about sitting Shiva,
where you actually are literally sitting down
for up to two weeks as a morning thing.
But this has been a year.
So that's why they're like,
look, you have to get a wife.
You have to be remarried.
It's just the traditions of his religion.
Yeah.
So he has to be married.
He doesn't, he doesn't feel that he's ready to be married.
He doesn't always wear the coats.
He doesn't dress the part completely.
He still has the hair and the beard and everything.
But they do get on him because he doesn't wear
all the traditional garb.
And so he's not a good,
they don't think he's a good example for his son.
100% don't know.
Yeah.
And the young man playing his son
was absolutely great as well.
Rubin Naborsky.
I think I hope I got that right.
He's really, really good in this as well.
They have really great chemistry.
I also really liked about this.
Again, the director, Joshua Z. Weinstein, known mostly,
I mean, this is, he's always,
always does documentaries up to this point.
He still shoots it in a documentary style.
There's no score.
There's no music.
But the script is so strong that you don't really realize it.
It carries it very, very well.
Plus being subtitled, I'm sorry,
that a lot of people keep more attention trying to read
than the attention on the movie like we normally would.
He paces it very well that you don't have to worry about that.
There's not, there's not these big, long,
diatribes on the screen.
There's maybe one or two lines
so you can read real quick
and still pay attention to what's going on.
Yeah.
That's so, but again, he shoots it in a video documentary style.
There's a lot of steady cam work in this.
And it's very, it's shot in very enclosed quarters.
So you kind of feel in there with them.
There's a lot of different layers to this story
because there's some, some cross-cultural things
given that some of the people that he works with,
you feel for them at certain points
because he just can't seem to get out of his own way.
But this film is really, really, really good.
And A24 picked this up.
I don't know if it was before the Dallas International Film Festival
or after, but this is an excellent film
that I am a huge fan of.
So first off, standard question.
Watch cage.
25 minutes, if I remember correctly,
so not horrible, but not great.
I mean, it's, yeah, yeah, it is.
I mean, it's, it's a 90 minutes good enough.
Is that a good pace?
Well, absolutely.
It really is.
I mean, it moves pretty quickly.
It takes a little while to get its feet underneath it.
But once it does, it never really dragged for me.
So was this film more about, would you say,
family and parenting over religion?
It's both.
How do you respect your culture,
but at the same time be the person you want to be
or that you strive to be?
Is this film political at all?
No.
Try to make a message.
No, there's no hidden agenda too.
Okay.
The culture of the religion is the backdrop for you
to understand exactly what he's going through.
So acting.
There's not a huge cast in this,
but everybody works very, very well together.
There at no point that I feel anybody was over the top,
like everybody was right in the pocket where they need to be again.
Manasha and his son, that dynamic is palpable.
It's organic and it's real.
And that's the most important dynamic in the film.
You also get that feeling like his brothers,
the successful real estate guy,
still wears the garb and everything,
living in Brooklyn,
but he just always feels like he can't measure up to his brother
because of whatever reasons.
No, the ending did an end well.
I will say it ends satisfactorily.
Okay.
I wouldn't say that it doesn't necessarily put everything
in a nice little package with a nice bow on it,
but it's a satisfactory ending.
It doesn't leave behind you, though.
I wouldn't say that.
Okay.
I mean, I could see how some people might think it does,
but for me, it didn't.
Okay.
Anything you would change on the film if you were the director.
No, I think again, from a pacing standpoint, it was fine.
It didn't feel like it was too long.
It didn't feel like it was too short.
I think he got the message across that he wanted to.
Did you like it?
It wasn't the addition.
Did you like the subtitle?
It didn't bother me.
It gave more context to the culture.
So more often than not,
subtitles don't bother me anyway.
This bothered me even less than normal
because the story is so good and so engaging.
So it was the right move to keep it subtitled instead of doing English?
Absolutely.
Just because you truly understand the culture that you're dealing with,
it has to be in its native tongue.
Otherwise, you lose a lot of it.
And the director didn't even speak yet.
She had a translator on set.
And he was given a lot of access inside the community that not a lot of people get.
So it's real and it's real, real.
It really gets into the religion itself.
It doesn't really get into it, but you understand enough.
If you don't know anything about Orthodox Judaism,
it gives you enough that it moves the story forward
and you can understand the context that it's set in.
All right.
Ready for the final analysis?
All right.
Final analysis.
The way we do this on the show,
we're not going to give you thumbs up, thumbs down.
We're not going to give you letter grades, numbers, anything like that.
We're going to do two questions.
Question number one is,
would I see this again?
If the answers know that we're done here?
If the answers yes,
there would be how far am I willing to go to see it?
From the best of the best of the worst of the best,
here's how it goes.
Full price at a theater,
twilight,
matinee,
early morning on a weekend,
second one at the dollar theater,
actually leaving my house to go to red box,
streaming it on Netflix or cable.
Rob.
Yes, sir.
Would you see this film again?
I would.
I would indeed.
And what level are you willing to see this at?
I would put this at a matinee.
You know, it's not very long,
so you could see it in the middle of the day
and then go have dinner or whatever.
I don't know that this film is for everybody.
Not for the kids,
but the clothes in the hair.
I don't know that the kids would truly grasp it.
It's rated PG.
All right.
There's nothing like I found objectionable.
I just think the subject matter
may be a little too deep for some younger people.
All right.
But it's got universal themes to it
that everybody can identify
with something in this film
if you're an adult.
Especially the parenting.
Absolutely.
It's an excellent film.
It is directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein
and it is Manasha.
For we head out.
You ready?
Sing.
All right.
In the great of marketing.
We're fans.
Got the call on everybody there for the invite.
Thank you guys so much for bringing this out
and having us for this.
That being said,
let's do the plugs.
Visit our website,
www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
You can find my written review there as well
and a bunch of other stuff.
Follow us on social media.
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All three words in that order
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My normal co-host for this show is Chad Womack.
You can follow him at ChadNPG69.
And I'm a fan, Don.
Go and you can email me at Don at ClubhousePodcast.com.
Email Don for information on how we can come do a live show for you.
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You can email me, questions, comments,
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because that's what they do
and Faith Ford probably waiting at the house for you.
Yeah, she's getting home right now.
Our normal show every Sunday night,
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is your one stop shop for all things pop culture.
Or just keep subscribing on your favorite podcast app
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So until next time for Don and the Empire,
I'm Rob.
Clubhouse is closed.
I spread my wings in the back right now.
They're really too close.
Some of that name is asked to when I will stay there.
We have talked about reunions and
opportunities on existing countries.
We have a question for you
saying that during the term go on
and that I might get the most attention
because also people are waiting at the door.
There is one more question
and I'm really curious about
what the Gay Lady Reimel is.
We couldn't go any further.
That can be yours.
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