New York Public Television wants to celebrate the Holidays with you. Or, more accurately, it wants you to celebrate the Holidays with them The station is preparing a documentary, “Sacred,” it hopes will be a portrait of a year in the spiritual and religious life on earth. To accomplish that mission, it is crowdsourcing —…
Before home computers, before the Internet, there was Linda Lovelace. For those who may have missed the 1970s, Lovelace starred in “Deep Throat,” the first “adult” film to receive mainstream distribution. Typical porno flicks of the time were sleazy, hurriedly shot and poorly lit. “Deep Throat” was comparatively better, and even had an unusual comic…
“When Comedy Went to School,” a new documentary opening in New York and Los Angeles July 31, tries too hard to be both a history of Jewish comedy and the Catskills. It’s a lot of territory to cover, but the producers made at least one right choice: The film’s narrator is Robert Klein, 71, the…
Paul Manuel Kane had ambitious goals for “Dancing on Nails,” including discussions of race, love and family. Unfortunately, these themes play out in the context of a five-caricature play. Not characters, but caricatures, whose motivations are confusing and undermine the best of Kane’s intentions. The setting is New York in the spring of 1953. Sam…
“The Romeows” is not a misspelled attempt to re-write Shakespeare. Nor does it have anything to do with cats. It is, in fact, a gentle, heart-warming film about the enduring friendship of a group of guys, members of the same Brooklyn College house plan (class of ’59). The title stands for “retired older men eating…
Jeff Garlin gets jokes. Garlin is probably best known for his work with Larry David on the HBO comedy “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” But he’s also done stand up and will have his own TV show, “The Goldbergs,” this fall on ABC. The sitcom is about a mid-‘80s, loving Jewish family — a family like any…
Jonathan Tolin’s hilarious and at times poignant comedy, “Buyer and Cellar,” has received rapturous reviews. It recently moved into the Barrow Street Theater in Greenwich Village, where it continues to play to sold-out crowds. The idea for the show sprang from Barbra Streisand’s coffee table book, “My Passion for Design.” A self-aggrandizing tribute to her…
Believe it or not, there is something worse than being trapped in a friend’s living room while he unspools a year’s worth of home movies. What is that? Going to a theater and paying to watch home movies. That’s the prospect facing audiences at “Israel: A Home Movie,” an Israeli film by Eliav Lilti that…
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