Film
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Behind the Scenes of ‘Jewish Arena Rock’
“The Klezmatics are the Jewish equivalent of arena rock,” ethnomusicologist Bob Cohen deadpans early in Erik Greenberg Anjou’s documentary “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground.” “They’re not heavy metal; they’re heavy Yiddish.” It’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek analysis calculated to make us chuckle (picture these mild-mannered, middle-aged folks head-banging in eyeliner and platform heels!) — and…
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The Schmooze How Lewis Black Almost Became a Rabbi
Lewis Black is a bundle of apoplectic fury on stage. His fingers shake and his voice is raised in rage as he throws thunderbolts of indignation at the audience. Consider his concert at Carnegie Hall a few years ago. It was recorded for posterity (not to mention profit) and ultimately earned him his first Grammy…
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The Schmooze France’s Jewish Triple Threat
Crossposted from Haaretz “I was boiling with anger when I heard that Mike Leigh and Ken Loach had called for the boycott of Israeli films,” says French-Jewish actor, director and screenwriter Pascal Elbe. “As a Frenchman, I see in culture, as in academia, a necessity for every dialogue. What bridges do they want to burn?…
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Books Choosing ‘The Chosen,’ on Stage and Screen
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree There aren’t too many novels that can lay claim to a second, much less a third, lease on life as both a film and a play, especially when the subject at hand has to do with religion and faith. But “The Chosen,” Chaim Potok’s novel of Orthodox Jewish life…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Stalking Grace
In a 2007 obituary for Grace Paley published in the New York Times, Margalit Fox wrote that “Ms. Paley was among the earliest American writers to explore the lives of women — mostly Jewish, mostly New Yorkers — in all their dailiness.” Lilly Rivlin’s recent documentary, “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts,” screening March 27 at the…
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The Schmooze Bob Geldof To Play Rival Bernard-Henri Levy on the Big Screen
Here’s one way to make an old rival nervous: play him in a movie. Musician and activist Bob Geldof has signed on to portray French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy on the big screen, according to French news reports. The role could serve as the latest salvo in the fraught relationship between the two men, who have…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: 150 Years of French Class
And now, a different kind of Jewish film festival. “In the Beginning Was a School…,” a two-part documentary celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, has its American premiere March 13 at the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival. Traditional in its visual presentation — talking heads intercut with archival footage, animation, video…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: In Search of the 36
In “36 Righteous Men,” Argentinian director Dan Burman, who goes in this film by his newly discovered Hebrew name, David ben Leah, joins an organized tour of Orthodox Jews visiting the gravesites of Hasidic leaders across Eastern Europe. What brings Burman, a thoroughly secular Jew, on board a bus where only strictly kosher food is…
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