For film lovers the cinema can be a kind of temple. For 15 years the Kane Street Synagogue has been taking that truth to heart, hosting the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival in the same building in which its congregants meet for services. This year the festival is adding a short film series, screening an Israeli…
In a busy awards season, it’s easy to forget the BAFTAs. But the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has not forgotten the Jewish people. The Academy’s 2019 Film Awards list was released Tuesday. The full list is here, but below are the (mostly) Jewish highlights. “The Favourite,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ comedy about Queen Anne’s…
Well before our people sighted the tropic climes of Fiji, plumbed its waters for bottling and produced a photo-bombing icon, we were debating the nature of selling H20. As reported earlier, Fiji Water’s shifty business practices ought not be forgotten, but what does scripture have to say about them? To learn the answer, the Forward…
Who won this year’s red carpet at the Golden Globes? If you ask the internet, it was Kelleth Cuthbert, aka “Fiji Water girl,” a raven-haired model in a blue dress who was discreetly intrusive in offering parched celebs Fiji Water from a tray. While we can all have fun with the pretension of the bottled…
Last month, members of Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germany’s major far-right party and the largest opposition group in the country’s legislature, were offered a curious Christmas gift: Free tickets to “Schindler’s List.” They weren’t thrilled. As The New York Times reports, Cinexx, an independent theater in Hachenburg, declared it would give free admission for a…
Sonny Bono was one half of the folk duo Sonny & Cher, a Republican Congressman from California and the wearer of a notable mustache. He’s less well-known for his connection to copyright law. In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, sponsored and named by his widow, Congresswoman Mary Bono, who took her late…
Bob Einstein, a staple of sketch, scripted and improvised comedy for five decades died on January 2, 2019, at the age of 76. The New York Times reports that Einstein’s manager, Lee Kernis, confirmed that the comedian had been battling cancer. Einstein, the son of comedian Harry Einstein and actress and singer Thelma Leeds, was…
Who was the biggest male star in Hollywood in the 1950s and ‘60s? John Wayne? Too typecast in Westerns. Marlon Brando? Too weird and rebellious. James Dean? Died too young. It may be hard to remember or to imagine today, but the biggest star in Hollywood back then was a clean-cut, all-American, handsome guy named…
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…
