Curt Schleier is a freelance writer and author who covers business and the arts for a variety of publications. Follow him on Twitter at @tvsoundoff.
Curt Schleier
By Curt Schleier
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The Schmooze Doug Liman on Action Movies and Shabbat With Dad
Doug Liman made his reputation directing “Swingers,” a film that helped establish the viability of independent film, not to mention the careers of Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. His personal favorite is “Go,” a movie he knows “no one saw.” But certainly Liman is best known as an action director: “Bourne Identity,” “Mr. & Mrs….
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The Schmooze How Shep Gordon Became a Real ‘Supermensch’
Comedian Mike Myers found the perfect vehicle to make his directorial debut: “Supermensch The Legend of Shep Gordon.” The title makes it sound like another Myers comedy, a Jewish “Wayne’s World” or “Austin Powers.” In fact, it is an extremely well-executed documentary about one of the most captivating figures in the history of rock and…
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The Schmooze From the Nursing Home to Jerusalem
David Gaynes’ documentary, “Next Year in Jerusalem,” answers the old question of whether the glass is half empty or half full. At the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield, Conn., where the film was shot, both are the same. Gaynes brought his camera to the nursing home, where the average age is 91, as…
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Culture What’s a Jewish Boy Like Him Doing in a Basketball League Like This?
As a high school sophomore, Michael Jordan was relegated to his junior varsity basketball team. In an entirely unrelated event, Idan Ravin did not make his 7th grade squad. Of course, the team Jordan didn’t make was one of the top high school teams in the country, while Ravin’s failure took place at a Jewish…
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The Schmooze To Somalia and Back Again
Michael Maren has lived an Indiana Jones kind of life: Peace Corps volunteer, war correspondent from Africa, kidnap victim of a Somali warlord, author, and now filmmaker. However, anyone expecting a hard-hitting documentary exposing the troubles of foreign aid (the subject of his book, “The Road to Hell”) is in for a surprise. In fact,…
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The Schmooze Portraits of Holocaust Heroism
The title characters of filmmaker Michael King’s inspirational documentary, “The Rescuers,” are a dozen people, mostly diplomats, who saved thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust. In many cases, they defied their own government’s specific instructions in order to arrange exit visas for families otherwise headed for extermination. Some of these stories are already reasonably…
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The Schmooze How Shabbat Dinner Can Save America
In the film “Fed Up,” opening May 9, the untenable reality pours down like a mid-summer rain: In the United States, more people die from obesity than starvation. 87% of food items on supermarket shelves have added sugars. Teenagers are having gastric bypass surgery. We’ve become a corpulent nation, which is not news to anyone…
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The Schmooze A Holocaust Movie Without a Soul
“Walking With the Enemy” has brave Jews standing up to the Nazi death machine. It has helpless Jews loaded onto cattle cars. It has good Germans unwilling to participate in the eradication of a people. It has both Hungarian anti-Semites and Hungarian nuns who sheltered the oppressed. In short it has everything a good Holocaust…
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