A century ago the world was in the throes of the Great War, women didn’t yet have the vote and the movie industry was in its infancy. Two Jewish refugees from the wine-growing Tokaji region of Hungary — Adoph Zukor and William Fox (born Fuchs) — were beginning to make their mark on the fledgling…
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there were lots of Nazis. But no Jews. The Empire in the “Star Wars” franchise, the totalitarian regime which serves as the antagonist throughout the series, is modeled on the Nazis both visually and throughout the films’ narratives. References to fascist totalitarianism give the genocidal…
Winter is dark and terrible, but it is also the best time of the year because of the Oscars. From the most handsome actor to the richest producer, everyone in Hollywood dreams of the Academy Awards, and these dreams consist of golden Oscar men holding hands and frolicking with each other in a nude roundelay,…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The film “Finding Babel” portrays theater professor Andrei Malaev-Babel’s journey across the former USSR seeking traces of his grandfather, Russian-Jewish author Isaac Babel. The film was recently released on Vimeo in English-, Russian- and Ukrainian-language versions. In the English version of the film, Isaac Babel’s quotes are…
Israeli actors Gera Sandler and his wife Ronit Asheri-Sandler, now starring in Clifford Odets’ “Awake and Sing!” with the New Yiddish Rep at the 14th Street Y, can’t help comparing New York and Israeli audiences for Yiddish-language Theater. “In New York you’ll see people of many backgrounds sitting in the theater, also a surprising number…
James Franco has won rave reviews for his work on “The Disaster Artist,” a Tommy Wiseau biopic he directed and in which he stars as the legendarily weird creator of “The Room.” The project has, apparently, given him the biopic bug; today, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that Franco’s next project will be a film about…
Best known for the zany TV comedies “The State” and “Stella” and feel-good films “Wet Hot American Summer” and “The Big Sick,” Michael Showalter might not be the person you’d expect to find behind an ambitious new noir. Yet as producer of the TBS comedy “Search Party,” the second season of which premiered on Sunday,…
There are three billboards right outside the town of Ebbing, Missouri, that have the power to start a war between the police department and one furious woman. “Still no arrests?” reads the first one, followed by “How come, Chief Willoughby?” and finished off with “Raped while dying.” Mildred Hayes, played by a scathing Frances McDormand,…
Throughout “Finding Frances,” the movie-length finale to the fourth season of his Comedy Central show, “Nathan for You,” we see Nathan Fielder sitting in a moving car beside his septuagenarian co-star Bill Heath. Viewers of the show’s third season may remember Heath as a Bill Gates impersonator brought in to assist with a fraudulent film…
As Thursday’s puckish sun rises on the horizon, the mind of man turns to film. So things have stood since time immemorial, or at least since two weeks ago, when the Forward debuted Movie Thursday. If you’re disconsolate over your inability to find movie news, analysis, and recommendations never fear: Movie Thursday will be your…
Louis C.K. says that the “stories are true.” We knew that Louis C.K.’s world was dark and conflicted. But we hoped that he had transmuted all of those roiling observations and desires into comedy gold. Now it turns out that he had some desires that found an end not in comedy, but in tragedy. Rather…
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