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 ‘Ishtar’ Is Still Far From Perfect — But It’s Still Unlike Anything Else
Elaine May’s 1987 flop, “Ishtar,” might well be the most accomplished punching bag in cinematic history. The reasons aren’t hard to figure out, but are almost too numerous to name. Well before the film hit theaters, reports of infighting between May, her cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, the post-production team and the cast leaked to the press…
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Culture Former Mueller Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann To Write Book On Special Counsel Investigation
What do you do when you conclude a highly secretive, nearly two-year-long investigation into a sitting president? Get a book deal, of course. Andrew Weissmann, one of the top prosecutors on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, is breaking his silence on the inner workings of Mueller’s probe into the president and his advisors, The…
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Culture Q&A: Author Julie Salamon On Leon Klinghoffer And The Hijacking That Horrified The World
In October 1985, guerrillas connected to the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked an Italian cruise ship called the Achille Lauro. All of the passengers survived — save for Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled 69-year-old Jewish-American retiree. Klinghoffer was shot twice by the leader of the hijackers, Majid al-Molqi, and tossed into the ocean by two crew members…
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Culture David Mamet’s Harvey Weinstein Play Is As Bad As We Expected
In January, we reported with all due chagrin that David Mamet was premiering a play based on Harvey Weinstein on London’s West End. That play, “Bitter Wheat,” opened June 19 and early reviews have us even more confused — not about the play’s quality, but about its baseline reason for existing. In the production, John…
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Culture Chagall’s ‘The Lovers’ Covered At The Met In Recognition Of Refugees
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is making a bold statement with one of its boldest holdings. “The Lovers” by Marc Chagall is covered this week in recognition of World Refugee Day on June 20, Artnet reported. The move is part of a partnership between the Met and the International Rescue Committee to draw attention to…
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Culture 8 Women Accuse Screenwriter Max Landis Of Sexual And Psychological Abuse
The following contains explicit accounts of sexual and psychological abuse Celebrity screenwriter Max Landis, writer of the films “Bright” and “Chronicle” and son of director John Landis, has been accused of physical and emotional abuse by eight women in a sweeping exposé published by The Daily Beast on June 18. Many of the women, some…
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Culture Anti-Semitism Allegations Prompt Penguin To Independent Inquiry Of Controversial Book
Days after defending a book deemed anti-Semitic by online critics, Penguin Random House announced an independent inquiry into its content led by Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger. The book, Colonel Pedro Baños’s “How They Rule Us,” came under scrutiny after the British author Jeremy Duns discovered that the volume originally contained a number of allusions to…
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Culture For Pauline Kael, Who Reinvented Film Criticism, On Her Hundredth Birthday
In a blistering essay in a 1980 edition of the New York Review Of Books, Renata Adler accused New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael of doing lasting damage to the critical enterprise. Critiquing Kael’s collection “When The Lights Go Down,” Adler wrote that the book revealed the pitfalls of the critic-in-residence post. By giving Kael…
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