Mexican Shiva, & Glory Road

Friday night I watched My Mexican Shiva. A patron at HWPL had told me about it months ago; he said friends that lived in retirement in Mexico told him about it. Then it hadn't been released in the US. It's Mexican title is Morirse está en Hebreo, which baffles me: Dying is in Hebrew? I must be translating it incorrectly. Maybe Dying in Hebrew.

Funny, bittersweet, to the point, good, yet falls short just a bit. Moishe dies and his family arrives to sit Shiva. (Not chiva, says one character; Shiva). There are family complications, beginning with the resentment Moishe's daughter, Esther, feels toward Julia Palafox, Moishe's lover. The details are taken care by Jevreman, who ensures proper Jewish custom is followed. The dramas played out during the seven days are sad, funny, poignant, human.

Much better on second viewing; much.

This was recommended to me by Michael Simon as we worked together at the Information Desk yesterday, and talked about basketball. It is a feel-good, hockey, corny story that makes for a good film. The tagline from the studio is: Don Haskins, a future Hall of Fame coach of tiny Texas Western University, bucks convention by simply starting the best players he can find: history's first all-African American lineup. But it is more than that. In the mid 1960s, in El Paso, new coach Haskins recruits seven black players. He drills them, works them, teaches them fundamental basketball, suppresses their fancy footwork and behind-the-back dribbling, sustains them, and, finally, drives them to the national NCAA championship against powerhouse Kentucky University (coached by Adolph Rupp, and one of whose players was Pat Riley).

Good film.