SHORTCUTS
The natives often get testy when a movie set rolls into town, but the residents of Budapest seem to have grown unusually so, according to a recent item in the New York Post.
Never mind the random car towings and traffic jams, said residents of the Hungarian capital, where Steven Spielberg is filming scenes for “Munich,” his highly anticipated treatment of the 1972 Olympics. What really bugs Budapesters is the filmmakers’ condescension. “The best part,” a source quoted by the Post groused, “is [that Spielberg’s people] keep saying, ‘This is the biggest thing ever to happen to Budapest,’ which is true if you discount the whole Roman and Ottoman Empires, World Wars I and II, [and] the fall of communism.” And, of course, the 1999 film “Sunshine,” starring Ralph Fiennes.
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Much as some rabbis blamed last year’s tsunami on Israel’s planned disengagement from Gaza, Hurricane Katrina’s ferocity has now, in some corners, being pinned to the mission’s completion. “Katrina is hitting just as the bulldozers are completing the destruction of Gush Katif,” wrote Lazer Brody, an Israel-based rabbi/blogger. “My heart tells me that there’s a link between the forced expulsion of 8,500 people from their blood, sweat, and tear-soaked homes in Israeli Gaza and between the nearly 850,000 people who are forced to flee from their homes in Louisiana.”
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