Filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky’s “Oy Vey, My Son Is Gay,” slated to be released this fall, offers the exact story line that the title suggests: overbearing Jewish mother from Long Island (Lainie Kazan) hurls eligible Jewish bachelorettes at her nice, but (no-so-secretly) gay son, Nelson (John Lloyd Young). But Nelson is already in a relationship — with…
Not to be too self-referential (as if there’s any such thing), but I’d just like to point out that in my recent paean to Adam Sandler’s (goyish) wit and (Jewish) wisdom, I rendered the following verdict: “‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan’ is a stupid movie; I couldn’t stop laughing.” Now, I’m happy to report,…
Minneapolis’s Star-Tribune reports that native sons made good (filmmakers), the Coen brothers, are holding a casting call at the JCC in their hometown of St. Louis Park: Their new film “A Serious Man,” about a Midwestern Jewish family in the late 1960s, will hold an open casting call to fill those roles with performers from…
Israeli news site Y-Net reports that Woody Allen is expected to go to to the Israeli Red Sea resort town of Eilat for its film festival. The thought of the consummate New York nebbish in Eilat brings to mind that scene in “”Annie Hall” of a very uncomfortable Woody Allen in sunny Southern California. I…
American Apparel is apologizing to Woody Allen after he filed a $10 million lawsuit against the trendy T-shirt monger for its unauthorized use of an image of him dressed in Hasidic garb on a pair of billboards. “We deeply admire Woody Allen as a filmmaker and an inspiring social and political satirist,” the company said…
The holy rebbe is pissed. Last spring, trendy underwear maker American Apparel, known for its sexually charged advertising, put up a pair of billboard ads that were unusually tame. The billboards, in Los Angeles and New York, featured an image of Woody Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew from his masterpiece Annie Hall, alongside Yiddish…
Oded Turgeman, director of the new short film “Song of David,” doesn’t do things the easy way. As a burgeoning film director, he applied to Jerusalem’s most prestigious film school, with a commander in a combat unit as his only prior life experience. Then he moved to America to attend the American Film Institute —the…
The New York Post’s Page Six features these two celebrity quotes today: “”YES, I have always loved a good blonde, and who wouldn’t?” — Mel Brooks “PART of the bar mitzvah is that you become a man supposedly at 13 years old. And as I was a man, I decided never to go to a…
Natalie Portman speaks at length with the Times of London about a variety of topics, including her dating patterns, why being an only child made her career possible and why Stephen Fry was her all-time favorite co-star. She also touched on her Jewish identity. Asked whether her ethnic background has been a stabilizing influence, she…
Entertainment Weekly reports: Larry David, the mind behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is set to be the lead in Woody Allen’s next, as-yet-untitled feature, which is scheduled to shoot in New York City in the spring. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but David will act alongside Evan Rachel Wood. E.W. notes that…
The Academy Awards have been announced and two films with Jewish content received nods in the foreign-language category: “Beaufort” http://www.kino.com/beaufort/], a film about Israeli soldiers in Southern Lebanon by Israeli director Joseph Cedar, and the upcoming release “The Counterfeiters” based on the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, known as “Hitler’s Jewish counterfeiter.” We previewed the…
