Film
The Latest
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The Schmooze Settler Love in Palestine
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to brush up on Israeli history before watching “Gei Oni,” the new Dan Wolman film based on Shulamit Lapid’s novel of the same name. Set in the late 19th century, the story takes place during the first wave of European immigration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, when Jews fleeing pogroms in…
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The Schmooze Music Man of the Future
You might not recognize Raymond Scott’s name, but chances are that you’ve heard his music — and that it makes you anxious. That’s because Scott’s “Powerhouse” (1937), easily his best known work, has been used to accompany scenes of mechanized peril in everything from the classic 1940s Warner Bros. cartoons to “The Ren & Stimpy…
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The Schmooze A Jew in Mao’s China
Even when I have been disenfranchised from God and synagogue, I have always been culturally proud to be a Jew. A source of that pride is the Jewish tradition of helping the oppressed, and our involvement in social movements such as labor and civil rights. Until I saw the documentary “The Revolutionary” at the Philadelphia…
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The Schmooze Screenwriter Alex Kurtzman on ‘People Like Us’
Alex Kurtzman is best known for writing Big Summer Movies, the so-called tent pole films. If it has a Roman numeral in the title — “Transformers,” “Star Trek,” “Mission Impossible” — there’s a good chance that Alex and his writing partner Roberto Orsi are involved. June 29 marks the release of “People Like Us,” a…
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The Schmooze Woody Allen on Rome and Movie Making
Woody Allen’s new movie “To Rome With Love” is a montage of stories on the titillating streets of the eternal city. Allen (who hadn’t appeared in any of his films since 2006) plays Jerry, a restless, retired opera director whose world collides with Giancarlo, played to hilarity by Italy’s renowned tenor Fabio Armiliato. Roberto Benigni…
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The Schmooze An Orphan in Pre-State Palestine
In the opening frame of Dina Zvi Riklis’s film “The Fifth Heaven,” which will be screened June 15 as part of SERET 2012, London’s first Israeli Film & Television Festival, we receive an explanation of the movie’s title. “There are seven heavens in the sky,” the movie tells us, quoting the Talmud. “The fifth one…
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The Schmooze Director David Weissman on the AIDS Epidemic
There is a heart-wrenching moment in “We Were Here,” David Weissman’s documentary about the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, which stands out from the rest of the film. Ed Wolf, an activist and one of the five people extensively interviewed by Weissman, remembers a conversation he had with the father of a hospitalized and infected…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: How to Find a Childhood Hero
In the 1970s, Paul Williams was a star, penning chart-topping songs such as “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Evergreen” and “Rainbow Connection.” But Williams and his fame burned out, and six years ago he was selling CDs in the lobby of a casino. Now filmmaker Stephen Kessler has written and directed “Paul Williams Still Alive” a…
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Culture I come from a long line of Jewish Bundists. Now, Molly Crabapple is part of our family.
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Opinion American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt
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Fast Forward 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from India, the first to make the journey in years
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Yiddish װאָס קען מען זיך אָפּלערנען פֿון מאָלי קראַבעפּלס בוך װעגן „בונד“?What can we learn from Molly Crabapple’s book about the Bund?
דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט