Marin connection to ‘Toy Story 3’
“Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich, 41, recently appeared at the Golden Globe Awards to accept the award for best animated film. I didn’t mention the Marin resident in my Golden Globes coverage because I didn’t know he was Jewish until my friends at the Cleveland Jewish News clued me in.
Unkrich grew up in a Cleveland suburb and earned a degree in cinema from the University of Southern California. In 1995, the new Pixar animation studio, located in Emeryville, asked him to take a very temporary assignment — editing some of the footage of the first “Toy Story” movie. He stayed on with Pixar, and in 1999, he was promoted to co-director of “Toy Story 2.” He also was the co-director on two other Pixar hits: “Monsters Inc.” and “Finding Nemo.” He was the sole director of “Toy Story 3,” and was one of the co-writers of the film. Now he’s up for two Oscars: best animated film and best original screenplay.
Unkrich has appeared in the pages of j. before. Back in 2004, the Faces column reported that he “hosted a preview of Pixar’s newest animated film, ‘The Incredibles,’ as a special fundraiser for the Osher Marin JCC’s early childhood education program.” This past May, the bat mitzvah announcement of his daughter, Hannah, appeared in j. Unkrich and his wife, Laura, have three children and are members of Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael. Hannah, by the way, did the voice of Molly, the sister of Andy, the lead human character, in “Toy Story 2.” (How cool is that?)
Post-game ‘Glee’
The “Glee” episode airing on Fox on Sunday, Feb. 6 (right after the Super Bowl ends, around 7 p.m. PST) is a real blow-out: It cost between $3 and $5 million, and is sponsored by General Motors with limited ads. Most of the musical numbers will take place during the half-time of a championship high school football game, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” will be performed.
The “Glee” Super Bowl episode is directed by Brad Falchuk, the show’s co-creator. His mother, Nancy Falchuk, is national president of Hadassah. Featured in the episode is recurring character Dave Karnofsky, a big bullying football player. It was revealed in a November 2010 episode that the Karnofsky character is a “deeply closeted” gay teen.
I recently was able to confirm that actor Max Adler, 25, who plays Karnofsky, is Jewish. Last November, Adler and fellow cast member Josh Sussman, 27, who plays Jacob Ben Israel, co-narrated the Anti-Defamation League’s “Concert Against Hate” in Washington, D.C. The event honored those who stood up to bullying based on race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
‘Reagan’ recommended
The 100th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s birth occurs on Feb. 6. HBO and the BBC have combined to put together what appears to be an excellent documentary on the late president. “Reagan” premieres 9 p.m. Monday, Feb. 7. The director is Eugene Jarec ki, 41, an acclaimed documentary maker. Eugene’s (Jewish) father was a child when he fled Nazi Germany in 1939 with his parents. His Jewish mother is a second generation American of Russian Jewish ancestry.
Also noteworthy: Two Israeli filmmakers received awards last weekend at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Erez Kav-El won the world cinema dramatic screenwriting award for “Restoration,” about a man coming to terms with his estranged son as his antique furniture-restoration shop suffers financial problems. Talya Lavie received an Inaugural Sundance Institute Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award, which supports emerging independent filmmakers from around the world, for her film “Zero Motivation,” about three women working in an administrative office at a remote Israeli army base.
Columnist Nate Bloom , an Oaklander, can be reached at [email protected].