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 European war museums reeling from Nazi artifact thefts
The robberies sound like a strange mix of George Clooney films — part “Monuments Men,” part “Ocean’s Eleven.” In recent months, Nazi memorabilia was stolen from several war museums in Denmark and the Netherlands. Thieves made off with mannequins dressed in Nazi uniforms, in one instance blocking off a major roadway and evading the police….
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Culture They set out to find ‘The Meaning of Hitler.’ How did they fail so badly?
Can any one film begin to answer the question of what, exactly, Hitler means? That’s the goal of the new documentary “The Meaning of Hitler,” named for and based on the 1978 Sebastian Haffner book of the same name. From the outset, its ambition proves problematic: Directors Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker chronicle various talking…
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Culture Is Jon Ossoff’s ‘Star Wars’ fan film better than ‘The Rise of Skywalker?’
A few years ago, in a state runoff far, far away, a Republican Super PAC used Jon Ossoff’s collegiate a cappella “Star Wars” fan film in a ludicrous attack ad. During Ossoff’s 2017 bid to represent Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, the Congressional Leadership Fund uncovered footage of the current candidate for U.S. Senate cosplaying as…
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Culture Alton Brown makes an Auschwitz joke — then apologizes
Last night, Food Network host Alton Brown — a lifelong conservative but a Biden voter this time around — tossed a query out to the internet about the future dress code of America: “Do you think the camp uniforms will be striped, like the ones at Auschwitz or will plaid be in vogue?” What the…
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Culture Alexander Vindman and his twin share their story of service
In a Veterans Day message, Lt. Col Alexander Vindman and his twin brother, Lt. Col Yevgeny Vindman, told their story on behalf of all refugees, military and civilian. In the video for HIAS, the 139-year-old Jewish nonprofit that aids refugees from around the world, the brothers, who were smeared as disloyal by the Trump administration,…
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Culture Can eyewitness footage from the West Bank change minds about the occupation? Not hers
The camera phone made everyone a documentarian. For the disenfranchised, this transformation was born of urgency. Armed with nothing more than a basic smartphone, people all over the world now have the means to command their own narratives of oppression — their own lived experience — and share them directly with millions. Recently, in America,…
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Culture Can a drama about the Yom Kippur War heal a divided Israel?
On Yom Kippur 1973, a 7-year-old Yaron Zilberman was roused not by shofar calls, but air raid sirens. “I got confused,” said Zilberman, who believed the clamor had something to do with the holiday. “Of course you don’t have any sirens on Yom Kippur — for Veterans Day or Yom HaZikaron you’d commemorate all the…
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Culture 6 films that predicted the 2020 Election
There is every reason for us to fear the movies that will inevitably be made about the 2020 election. The early crop of Trump entertainment, from the bloated, neoliberal hagiography of “The Comey Rule” to whatever the hell this is does not exactly set a high bar in cinematic history. At a time like this…
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