15 Minutes Magazine

Remember Haya Harareet from the l959 Oscar winning Ben Hur playing Ben’s true love Esther? And Mili Avital, who popped up in the l994 Stargate and in the 2007 Israeli film Noodle?

To be honest they are few and far between—as rare as, say, Italian war heroes.

But now there’s suddenly a new breed of Israeli-born beauties who are turning heads and landing roles in the USA.

Take Ayelet Zurer, who beat out a slew of American knockouts to take the lead role opposite Tom Hanks in Da Vinci Code and it’s sequel Angels and Demons.

And former Miss Israel, Gal Gadot, who pops up opposite Vin Diesel in the fourth Fast and Furious movie.

True, they’re not exactly household names—except maybe in Jerusalem.

Now roaring our way is Meital Dohan, a name that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. But her zooming track record puts her high on the list.

On screen she sizzles. She’s become a cover girl and the object of much desire and fantasy following her role as the sexy rabbinic school teacher in Showtime’s offbeat hit Weeds.

Meital Dohan

On stage she generated heat in the off-Broadway play Stitching, leading one reviewer to note, "She thrashes around in ways most often seen in straight to video steamers."

Her latest movie is Monogamy, which won a top award at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, and will be unfolding in screens across the country in the next few months.

Since she began turning heads in the U.S., she has had a regular series as Yael Hoffman, the bold lady on Weeds.

In one steamy bedroom episode she taught co-star Justin Kirk a lot more than just how to read Hebrew. The role turned her into a fantasy object for young men.

Dohan, 35, graduated from Israel’s prestigious Nissan Nativ acting school, picked up the Israeli equivalent of an Oscar nomination for roles in God’s Sandbox and Giraffes, and earned plaudits for a role in the Israeli version of TV's Ugly Betty.

With a reputation for tackling daring sexual roles on stage, big screen and small, she is the darling of the Israeli paparazzi.

Monogamy sounds offbeat. What’s it about?
Chris Messina plays a wedding photographer about to marry a singer played by Rashida Jones. He has a special business on the side—taking photos of people without them noticing.

So where do you come in?
Before he gets married my character hires him to shoot pretty intimate and sensuous photos of her. And along the way he gets obsessed with my character as he desperately tries to understand her motives and behavior.

Was it easy to play?
It was challenging. I had to make sure that the watching audience also gets obsessed with me. And anyway the very word monogamy scares a lot of people.

In what way?
Statistically there are less and less people who are monogamous. With divorce growing there are more and more people who have problems with monogamy.

Are you monogamous?
I once was and I would like to be because I don’t have any problems being attached to one man. I was engaged to (Israeli) director Ben Bachar. I spent seven years with him. I was very much in love. I still love him.

Sounds like you had fun playing the rabbinical teacher in Weeds.
Yes. We got into some pretty shocking stuff. I was in season two and it was a great experience working with Mary Louise Parker, who plays a suburban mother turned marijuana dealer.

Meital Dohan

One scene with actor Justin Kirk was pretty way out.
I don’t volunteer to show my body—only when it’s necessary. For that dildo scene with Justin I thought that someone tuning in might think they’d stumbled onto a porn channel. I didn’t think nudity was appropriate in that scene. Normally I don’t have problems with taking my clothes off. I mean if a scene requires me to scream, I scream, or cry, I cry. If it’s appropriate, I’ll go naked. It’s what humans do.

Do you like that sex symbol label?
It’s flattering but I never set out with that in mind. People say a lot of things about me. It’s not a bad thing and I try to take it as it comes. And not think about it. As an actress there are other issues I’d like to bring into the consciousness of people who see my movie.

Where is home?
I grew up in a small town in Israel and now home is Israel, New York and Los Angeles.

How long have you lived in America?
A few years. When I was l7 I was an exchange student in West Virginia and Idaho.

As a lively Israeli—did they think you were from Mars?
I was the girl from Israel who wanted to be a cheerleader so they might have felt I wasn’t part of the local scenery. I was probably more of a shock to them than they were to me as I was an exotic in that environment. They just called me "The Israeli girl."

Did you have to serve in the Israeli military?
I did but they put me in the theatrical corps of the Israeli Defense Forces—where I went around entertaining the troops.

You got much acclaim for your role as the Jewish girl who falls in love with an Arab in God’s Sandbox.
It was an emotional, tragic and terrible story about a girl who falls in love with an African Muslim—and they force her to have a clitoridectomy.

You seem to be enjoying your role as a star in Israel’s cutting edge film industry.
Yes. Israeli movies are getting better every year and I’m very proud of that. We’re a new young country and we’re developing very fast and making a variety of movies not just about war. Those daring movies enable the rest of the world to better understand Israel.

Do you come from a show business background?
No. My father is Czech, and my mother is from Dutch Austrian background and was born in Israel.

Did you grow up in a very Jewish home?
We were not religious and my parents were not into ceremonies. We did celebrate Pesach and the holy days. Living in Israel everyone does. My grandmother Rachael—my father’s mother—survived Auschwitz and came to Israel. Of course, that makes me very Jewish.

Michael Douglas and Jenna Fischer of Solitary Man

Michael Douglas Has Gekko Back,
And Liberace’s Not Far Behind

H

E’S BAAACK! Gordon Gekko, the slick financier of Wall Street who in the ‘80s proudly declared, "Greed is good," is being brought back by director Oliver Stone. Michael Douglas reprieves his role as an older and wiser Gekko when Wall Street: Money Never Sleep hits the screen in December.

But first Douglas stars this summer in Solitary Man. Next year he’ll strike out in a radical switch for him. He’ll play the flamboyant pianist Liberace opposite Matt Damon as his lover.

Douglas, 66, is something of an elder statesmen of Hollywood. He heads a new family with second wife Catherine Zeta Jones, the Welsh actress, and two young children, Dylan, 10, and Carys, 7.

In Solitary Man you play Ben Kalmen, a successful auto tycoon whose life is crumbling before his very eyes. Is he related to Gekko?
I was arguing the difference before I heard my directors (Brian Koppelman and David Levien) make the comparison. Ben is more of a little fish in a big pond. Gekko’s world is a little bigger.

Is Ben going through his midlife crisis?
It’s a third act and a mortality issue. He's running on empty. He's living for the moment. There's certain desperation. But he's a car dealer and so he's a motor-mouth and doesn't necessarily think about what he's saying or the repercussions of his actions. Then I think this situation sobers him up.

At this stage in your career it seems perfect casting? How do you make it work?
Well, without blowing smoke up Mr. Koppleman's butt, it doesn't hurt that you've got a really good screenplay. So I just really always go with the script and don't worry so much about the part. It’s also an unpredictable and good story. If you're going to do these kinds of characters you really have to be unsure of where you're going as opposed to most movies where you can kind of guess the ending.

How did you prepare for the Ben role?
When I was doing Fatal Attraction, someone told me that the camera can always tell when you're lying. So I used to act painfully. I would act in such pain. I remember starting Fatal Attraction it just dawned on me. I said, Wait a minute, we lie all the time. Every day. Rather than putting the makeup on it's about stripping it off and trying to get down to some kind of truth. The character is on the page, the rhythm is there. He's a car dealer and so you have that and you know the pace that you've got to get up to dialogue wise to make it work.

Is your character using sex with young women to compensate for what he’s lost in life?
That's a part of it. He's definitely medicating, whether it's sex or anything else. He's reaching out, drowning and not thinking straight. Mind you, I think they did the scene very well. I keep defending them. Imogen (co-star, English actress Imogen Poots) is a lovely young lady. But the character is right there, too. It's not as if I'm hustling her.

How does it feel to play a guy like your screen character having sex with a l9-year-old?
Well, a few of the ladies here probably don't feel quite the same. But that's the way it goes. I enjoy provocative things. The gay and lesbian movement killed Sharon Stone for portraying a lesbian as a murderer. I don’t worry too much about it.

Does the film mirror what’s going on in society with successful men who suddenly begin to decline?
Selfishly, I sort of think about the film and the project rather than that issue. My job is to give it some resonance as to how it reflects. We all read the papers and keep in touch with what's going on. Brian actually saw the Ben character in real life. I said, I don't see anyone in New York like this. I'm not actually checking out guys in black pants and black jackets. Then the next thing you know, you go to a restaurant and there's three of them, just the way he said. They’re checking themselves out in the mirror reflection.

Didn’t your father play cynical, unlikable guys in movies? And you did also in Falling Down?
And Wall Street. My dad did the sensitive young man for about six or seven pictures before he did a movie called Champion which he got nominated for where he played a nasty in 1950. Other than Romancing, I did essentially the same thing until Wall Street and then all of a sudden I'm playing these darker, edgier guys. The scoundrel. The fun part of this one was the tragedy/comedy and I thought that it went really well. The movie kept its balance and I was just so happy to see Imogen who played that poor young lady.

Did you have to make Gekko timely for the 21st century?
We thought, Lets see, '86 or '87, and we figured out with Oliver, Alright, Gekko fought for appeals for about five years. He went to jail for eight years. He gets out in 2001. He can't trade anymore. So in ‘07 and ‘08 he's got a book foreseeing what all happened. So it just seemed appropriate. There was a little bit of pressure because it wasn't a simple entertainment/action kind of picture.

What was the most important thing you learned from your Dad?
Stamina and tenacity. My father likes to give a lot of advice. He says, "Look, son, you do the best that you can—and then fuck it."

How is your oldest son Cameron doing after his drug problems. And how has that affected you?
He's doing as well as can be expected. He has been sentenced now so it's actually now a little bit of a relief. It's been a long year, dealing with it. Life goes on and hopefully he'll be a better person.

Your wife has been a big hit on Broadway—have you had thoughts about going on stage?
I had been exploring that but now, after watching Catherine work, I'm reevaluating the situation. I don't think we're quite ready as a family unit to start up for next season. It looks my next film is Liberace with Stephen Soderbergh directing and Matt Damon in the early part of 2011.

Ivor Davis, a Southern California-based writer, has covered the Hollywood beat for four decades as a foreign correspondent for the London Daily Express and Times of London and as a columnist for the New York Times Syndicate and Tribune-Media Syndicate.

Showgirls: 15th Anniversary Sinsational Edition PRODUCT EVALUATION TEAM
PET Picks Prime Videos

By Tim Boxer

Showgirls: 15^th Anniversary Sinsational Edition offers sex and seduction down a slippery slope leading to sudden betrayal. It’s Vegas, baby, what do you expect—Wall, South Dakota? A trashy story and carnal cinema that hooks you from beginning to end. Noni (Elizabeth Berkley) is eyeball candy who lusts to replace Cristal (Gina Gershon) as the sinful star of the fleshly revue at the Stardust. (MGM, two-disc set with Blu-ray and standard DVD, 131 minutes, $29.99)

Elvis 75^th Birthday Collection is an impressive two-disc set that befits the king of R&R. To commemorate Presley’s birthday, this package presents Presley in his acting debut as the brother of a Confederate soldier in Love Me Tender, a half-Kiowa Indian in Flaming Star, a boxer in Kid Galahad, a writer in Wild in the Country, a riverboat gambler in Frankie and Johnny, plus two high-energy musicals, Clambake and Follow That Dream. His costars include Barbara Eden, Shelley Fabares, Tuesday Weld, Charles Bronson. (Twentieth Century Fox, $39.99)

The Edge, a suspenseful tale from David Mamet, involves a billionaire (Anthony Hopkins, always great), a fashion photographer (Alec Baldwin) and supermodel (Elle Macpherson, natch) stranded in the Alaskan wilderness after a plane crash. What happens is a brutal struggle for survival not only against nature but against each other’s fear and treachery. (Twentieth Century Fox, 117 minutes, Blu-ray, $24.99)

Robin Hood: Men in Tights, a spoof produced, directed and co-written by the irrepressible Mel Brooks, stars, among others, Cary Elwes as our hero, Tracey Ullman as a soothsayer named Latrine, Richard Lewis as the king, and Dave Chappelle and Isaac Hayes as Achoo and Asneeze—you know it’s got to be a riot. (Twentieth Century Fox, 104 minutes, Blu-ray, $24.99)

High Anxiety, a psycho comedy spoof of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, direct from the twisted innards of Mel Brooks’ brain. Our pal Mel also produced, directed, co-wrote and stars in this epic parody, along with costars Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman. Mel plays the head of a psychoneurotic institute who’s deathly afraid of heights. He has to confront his own demons—as well as his costars—when he’s accused of murder. Lots of laughs. (Twentieth Century Fox, 94 minutes, Blu-ray, $24.99)

The Real Story: Escape From Alcatraz recounts what really happened in 1962 when three convicted bank robbers achieved the impossible: breaking out of the Rock. The men were never seen again. But did they actually succeed in escaping from this infamous prison? I won’t spoil it for you; you have to see this exciting documentary for yourself. (Smithsonian Networks/Infinity, 47 minutes, $12.98)

Lost Keaton is a DVD consisting of 16 Buster Keaton shorts. From 1934 to 1937, in a period of decline due to the dawn of the talkies, the pratfall king made a series of silent slapstick shorts in rapid succession. Each comedy short runs about 20 minutes. (Kino, 2-disc set, $34.95)

Meshuggah-Nuns! is so dangerous to your funny bone you’re liable to plotz from laughter. Simply said, it is nunsensational. When the cast of Fiddler on the Roof gets seasick on a cruise, four nuns from Little Sisters of Hoboken bravely agree to pitch in and put on a spoof of fiddler in the cathedral with ecumenical belly laughs. Simply divine! Since the stage show debuted off-Broadway in 1985, the show and its six sequels have become a worldwide phenomenon, attracting such superstars as Phyllis Diller, Sally Struthers and Rue McClanahan to the cast. This summer the show enjoyed a brief revival at the Cherry Lane Theater, its original home in Greenwich Village. This is a concept that can regurgitate sequels endlessly, as long as humans need to stroke their funny bone with such lines as: Nuns are painting and redecorating. It’s so hot they work without their clothes. At the door a man announces, "Blind man." They open the door. "Nice knockers," he says with a broad smile. "Where do you want me to hang the blinds?" (Kultur International Films, 96 minutes)

Humble Fitness: Forever Young was shot in Montana, home of John Humble, a 60-year-old personal trainer of 35 years and certified through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. He offers his recipe and guidance to baby boomers (those over 50) to extend your health and life. He has a four-step program: resistance training to increase caloric burn and blood flow; cardio that ensures exercises are done correctly, nutrition, which is self evident; and a lifestyle change that will result in a more energetic, lean and confident you. (70 minutes, $24.95)

Lionsgate keeps grinding out DVDs for kids and grandkids—thank you, Lionsgate! Our kids love it! The latest batch includes Shaun the Sheep: One Giant Leap for Lambkind ($14.98) with six out-of-this-world stories full of fun and laughter; Thomas & Friends: The Greatest Stories ($16.98), a 2-disc set consisting of 20 stories set in a world of imagination for pre-schoolers, guided by the voices of George Carlin (before he passed on), Ringo Starr and Alec Baldwin (both still with us, thank goodness); Barney: Songs From The Park featuring 20 Barney songs, and it even comes with a CD of five songs. (Lionsgate, $14.98)