The Schmooze lies at the intersection of high and low culture. Here, the latest developments and trends in Jewish art, books, dance, film, music, media, television and theater are all assimilated into one handy pop culture blog.
The Schmooze
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Friday Film: What Makes Sarko Run?
Film Still Courtesy of Music Box Films The bold French movie “The Conquest” is a rarity — a feature film with the guts to criticize the sitting head of government of its own country. Britain’s “The Queen” dared critique both Prime Minister Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 while both were still in…
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Salmonella Outbreak Linked to Kosher Chicken Liver
As of this week, chopped liver is getting even less respect than it usually does. That’s because it’s been found to be the cause of Salmonella food poisoning in 89 people in New York and several others in New Jersey. Health officials have traced the kosher liver to the Queens-based Schreiber Processing Corp., which has…
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Where Is the Occupy Wall Street Sitcom?
“Selling New York,” HGTV’s hit show about luxury real estate and boutique brokerage firms, largely succeeds as escapism. When it isn’t affirming the idea that New York real estate is still one of the most Jewish professions on the planet, “Selling New York” takes viewers into fantastic, glimmering spaces that they would otherwise never get…
The Latest
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Anti-Semitic ‘Jingle Bells’ Song Heard at Oxford
Anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head again at Oxford University in England. Disillusioned officers of the university’s Conservative Association recently leaked documents to the campus newspaper The Oxford Student, showing evidence of anti-Semitic behavior among its members. The paper found one video to be particularly offensive. It is of a student leading others in a…
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Forum Celebrates Primo Levi’s Science
Primo Levi is most commonly remembered as a Holocaust survivor and memoirist, but given his relentlessly humanist concerns, we would dishonor him by forgetting that he was also a man made of more than just his time at Auschwitz. In fact, Levi had two great loves: science — he trained as a chemist at the…
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Spielberg Censored in Lebanon
It’s not quite worthy of a Sherlock Holmes story, but the mystery continues: Who censored Steven Spielberg’s name at a movie theater in Lebanon? In a piece picked up by The Washington Post, the country’s Blog Baladi reported yesterday that the director’s name had been covered up on a poster for his next movie, the…
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Karl Marx Puppet Visits Occupy Wall Street
More than a month after the Occupy Wall Street protests began, Karl Marx has come to Zuccotti Park to see what the hubbub is all about. Admittedly, the 19th-century political philosopher was not there himself, but was present in the form of a small puppet from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The puppet is…
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Out and About
Producer Brian Grazer will replace Brett Ratner at this year’s Oscars. Variety takes a look at Caroline Hirsch, the grande dame of New York comedy. Jed Perl has some nice things to say about the exhibit of Islamic art at the Met. Steven Spielberg’s name has been blacked out of Tintin posters in Beirut. Roger…
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Ratner and Murphy Step Down From Oscars
There are plenty of changes in the works for the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony now that both its producer and host have stepped down amid controversy. Producer Brett Ratner (whose latest film, “Tower Heist,” is currently out in theaters) announced yesterday that he would step down from the Oscars following insensitive remarks he made about…
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Batali Bites the Banker Hand That Feeds Him
You don’t have to be a fan of the U.S. banking system to realize that credit default swaps are not the same as gas chambers and the gulag. Or so you would think. But celebrity chef Mario Batali evidently doesn’t see that distinction, having compared American bankers to both Hitler and Stalin while participating in…
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Books An Actor Who Broke a Leg — or Two
From the Shtetl to the Stage: The Odyssey of a Wandering Actor By Alexander Granach, with a new introduction by Herbert S. Lewis Transaction Publishers, 304 pages, $29.95 Actor Alexander Granach performed in Yiddish as a member of Berlin’s Jacob Gordin Theatrical Society early in the past century. He went from his shtetl in Galicia…
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