PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture Netflix’s ‘The Spy’ Raises The Bar For Mossad Thrillers – But It Doesn’t Break New Ground
In July of 2018, the Mossad recovered a battered Eterna-Matic Centenaire 61 wristwatch from Syria. The timepiece belonged to Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy who, over several years in the 1960s, gained the confidence of Syrian generals and politicos before they publicly hanged him for conspiracy in 1965. The watch was returned to his widow….
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Culture How Michael Bloomberg Keeps Reinventing Himself
Michael Bloomberg might be a more compelling figure on paper than he ever was in person. Coming from a family of humble means in Medford, MA, and betraying no great promise as a student, Bloomberg managed to make his way into Johns Hopkins’ prestigious engineering program and, from there, Harvard Business School. He got a…
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Culture Yes, Really: There’s A Sculpture Of Hitler Praying At Winston Churchill’s Birthplace
Update, September 14, 10:40 a.m.: This article has been updated subsequent to the September 14 theft of Catellan’s “America,” a 19-karat gold toilet. Winston Churchill’s birthplace has just received an unlikely visitor: One Adolf Hitler. The Italian artist and provocateur Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture “Him,” which depicts a kneeling, child-sized Führer, has been placed before a…
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Culture Venice Audiences Horrified By ‘Painted Bird’ Film
Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel “The Painted Bird” has never been a story for the faint of heart. Following a young boy’s brutal tale of survival during the Holocaust in a vague Eastern European locale, the book includes sequences of incest, rape, murder and the terrible pecking-related death of the titular bird. Now, a film adaptation…
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Culture Bruce Lee? Yes. Shammai? Yup. The Talmud Meets Kung Fu In A New Play
In a dramatic episode in the Gemara, the part of the Talmud containing rabbinical commentary on the Mishnah, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai is smuggled out of the walls of besieged Jerusalem in a coffin. Once free of the city, the rabbi encounters the general Vespasian in a Roman camp and misidentifies him as “king.” Providence…
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Culture Does Roman Polanski’s New Film Make The Dreyfus Affair About Him?
Since it was first announced, Roman Polanski’s new film about the Dreyfus Affair, his first since the #MeToo movement began, has been raising eyebrows. “An Officer and a Spy (J’Accuse),” retells the story of French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, whose wrongful 1894 conviction for treason sparked a decade-long controversy that became a flashpoint of French…
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Culture Q&A: How The Israeli Baseball Team Bested The Skeptics
Is there any greater underdog story than that of the Jews? How about the Israeli baseball team? In 2017, 28 American Jewish pro ball players — some retired, some in career slumps — packed their bats to play in the World Baseball Classic in Seoul. They were 200-1 projected losers; they ended up sweeping the…
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Culture Richard Linklater Is Making Sondheim’s ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ — It Will Take 20 Years
Richard Linklater has had a weird and varied career. He’s given us tender-hearted indie two-handers with his “Before” trilogy. He’s given us broad family comedy with “School of Rock” and the remake of “Bad News Bears.” He’s given us roto-scoped reflections on dreams in “Waking Life” and coming of age campus dramedies with “Dazed and…
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