ToI movie maven Jordan Hoffman on new indie film 'Fantasy Life'
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to The Reel Schmooze with ToI film reviewer Jordan Hoffman and host Amanda Borschel-Dan, where we bring you all the entertainment news and film reviews a Jew can use.
In today's escapism episode, movie maven Hoffman begins with a recommendation of a new, very Jewy podcast, Classical Music Happy Hour with pianist Emanuel Ax.
We then discuss the 2025 independent film, "Fantasy Life," written and directed by Matthew Shear. His directorial debut is produced by and stars Amanda Peet, Shear, and a slew of Jewish (or Jew-ish) actors, including Alessandro Nivola, Judd Hirsch, Bob Balaban, Andrea Martin and Zosia Mamet.
Next, we turn to the classic Larry David series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which Borschel-Dan had never seen. Hoffman assigned her the iconic "Palestinian Chicken" episode. See how she liked it.
Check out who got the "oy," the "meh" and the "not bad" marks in this week's The Reel Schmooze.
The Reel Schmooze is produced by Ari Schlacht and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's The Real Shmooze, bringing you all the entertainment news and movie reviews a Jew can use. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm your host, Amanda Borschal Dan, joining you from Jerusalem with our movie maven, Jordan Hoff Hoffman straight from New Jersey. |
| 0:22.3 | From New Jersey. That's right. I'm a little lower than you this week, but I can work that out. |
| 0:27.4 | Sit up straight, Jordan. Yeah, I know. My God. So we were, you know, things have been a little nuts. |
| 0:32.7 | We're going to kind of put that on pause for the next 40 some odd minutes and just talk about movies because |
| 0:38.1 | you can't talk about war all day long. We weren't in last week, but I'm glad to see you're back |
| 0:45.1 | and I hope things mellow out and I don't know how many weeks I'm going to say I hope things |
| 0:50.4 | mellow out, but hopefully few. Hopefully things will be mellow by next week, but we'll see. |
| 0:55.8 | We'll see. |
| 0:56.5 | I have a feeling, Jordan, that as long as the state of Israel exists, we're going to say, |
| 1:01.3 | I hope things mellow out. |
| 1:02.6 | And so may it be forever, Jordan? |
| 1:04.5 | Well, there's different stratas of wishing for mellowness. |
| 1:08.6 | There's wishing for mellowness, you know, on an average day several years ago, |
| 1:13.2 | or there's right now early March, 26, a particularly non-mellow time. |
| 1:21.1 | So let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for mellowness. |
| 1:25.0 | And actually, I have a little bit of a recommendation for mellowness. Truly, this is my jangle for this week, which I didn't even tell you about. And I think you will love this particularly because correct me if I'm wrong, I forget what instrument it was, but you did study classical music at some point in your life, right? Correct. Violin. Okay, just straight up violin. Great. |
| 1:45.1 | And you were good. You weren't just somebody who could play aloeetta. You actually were good. |
| 1:50.3 | Maybe you still are good. I don't know. I know I'm not. So there you go. You would perform, though. |
| 1:56.0 | I mean, you like maybe, you know, what, what was your favorite thing to play? I mean, was it, |
| 2:03.4 | oh, I think my favorite thing to play by far was Klesmer. And that I only started to play after |
| 2:10.0 | I left the music school at Indiana University. So up until then, it was straight up classical |
... |
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