Academy Award-winning Broadway and film composer Alan Menken, recipient of the 2013 Oscar Hammerstein Award for “Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre,” was welcomed on stage at the Hudson Theatre by Bernadette Peters singing “Some Enchanted Evening” from the Rodgers–Hammerstein musical “South Pacific.” She was the first of a roster of performers toasting Menken that included…
(Haaretz) — In a new series of illustrations entitled “The Trials of Disney Princessdom,” illustrator Rayut Siman Tov depicts Disney’s perfect princesses in human settings, complete with bodily defects and the ravages of the beauty industry. To become human, the little mermaid in Hans Christian Anderson’s iconic story had to give up her tail for…
For the last four weeks, cable television has been running amok, amok, amok with more showings of the Halloween classic “Hocus Pocus” than you can shake a dead man’s toe at. The 1993 film has become a millennial favorite and to celebrate the fact that it’s been 20 years since the Sanderson sisters put a…
Disney has come under fire for “feminizing” and “sexing up” Merida, the spunky Scottish princess of the Pixar film “Brave,” in order to add her to its much-maligned princess collection. Martha Kempner describes the abortive makeover perfectly: Disney changed her hair from wild curls to silky tresses that cascade suggestively over one shoulder. Her simple…
Hollywood’s newest superhero is an Israeli émigré whose powers include an uncanny cheapness “that has become the stuff of lore.” The Los Angeles Times just profiled Ike Perlmutter, the chief executive of publisher Marvel Comics, and now one of the largest shareholders in Disney after the conglomerate bought his company. As the Times notes, superheroes…
Given the widespread protests over Israel’s newly enacted anti-boycott laws, a great many friends of Israel are wondering aloud why the fuss — specifically, why is this law treyf while the anti-boycott measures passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 have not aroused all these protests?…
I’m feeling protective of my children. Perhaps it’s the fact that my baby, Rockerchik, turned 10 last week, that Girlchik is 11 going on 15, and that my eldest will be 17 this week. Now that his college applications are all in, I’m acutely aware that he will soon be leaving home. And I am…
In response to this post about the “What’s a Coastie?” song, Renee Ghert Zand of Truth, Praise & Help shared this video. Landline TV spoofs classic Disney “behind the scenes” shorts about the making of a fictional new animated film about a Jewish American Princess called “Rachel and the Dragon.” Watch the video here. This…
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