On December 18 The Academy Awards announced its shortlist for some of the ceremony’s smaller categories. Jews are well represented in the Best Documentary Feature category. Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg film “RBG” made the list alongside Tim Wardle’s “Three Identical Strangers,” which told the bombshell story of Jewish triplets separated at…
While already lauded or rejected for its fidelity to the source material, HBO’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” has also been derided for feeling a little phony. In an otherwise glowing review in The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum remarked that the show “has the polish of certain well-funded historical portraits of poverty.” Her…
Women may have more earning power than men at the box office. According to a new report from the Creative Artists Agency and tech company shift7, the top films of 2014 through 2017 that had females in lead roles outperformed male-led ones. The New York Times reports that the CAA and shift7 came together through…
Now that “Schindler’s List,” Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning 1993 film, is being rereleased 25 years after its premiere and nearly two months after the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history, it’s probably time to revisit the second opinions. At the time of the film’s initial release, detractors in the Jewish community were many. So many in…
No one really wants unsolicited relationship advice from his uncle, but White House Advisor Stephen Miller is getting just that for Hanukkah. On a December 6 episode of Vox Media’s “Consider This,” Miller’s uncle, Dr. David Glosser, who made headlines earlier this year for an op-ed criticizing his nephew’s immigration policies, advises Miller to “find…
While Dick Wolf’s “Law & Order” universe has had its share of legendary Yids from Jerry Orbach’s Lenny Briscoe to Steven Hill’s Adam Schiff (the fictional DA, not the the expected chairman of the House Intelligence Committee), “Law & Order: SVU,” the only show left running, has been noticeably lacking in the Jew department since…
On December 2, Sir Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, married the lawyer Anya Deutsch in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony in downtown New York, to the strains of the theme from Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” played by an orchestral ensemble. On such a joyous occasion, one might wonder about the choice of…
Oy vey! We had to wipe a little shmutz off our tchotchkes, but you better bissel–gornisht–treyf believe it — the second season of Amazon Prime’s smash-hit show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is just as bagel as ever. Jews! If you enjoy the tempo of crack-cocaine addicts, or podcasts played at 2x speed, you will enjoy the…
Forty years ago this fall, an unassuming yet groundbreaking CBS-TV series called “The White Shadow,” about an inner-city high-school basketball team coached by a former white NBA player, made its debut, bringing the realities of racism, alcoholism, drugs, gang violence, domestic violence, student violence against teachers, student sex with teachers, teen pregnancy, teen death, sexually…
As in his earlier hit “Body and Soul” (1948), John Garfield’s final film “He Ran All the Way” (1951) begins with the actor waking up from an apparently very unpleasant dream. While the return from a nightmare is not an uncommon twist in those older Hollywood movies that veer into darker territory — the familiar…
On November 26 Stephen Hillenburg, the unassuming marine biologist who reached millions with his cartoon creation SpongeBob Squarepants passed away from complications of ALS. Hillenburg was 57. Eternally optimistic, absorbent, yellow and porous, Hillenburg’s signature creation truly needs no introduction, nor does his permanent residence in a pineapple under the sea. But how did such…
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