Film
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Culture Did Jewish theologians predict Doctor Strange’s alternate realities?
Here's what the multiverse of Midrash has to say about Marvel's latest box office hit.
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Culture It was the strangest Oscars in recent memory. Was it also the least Jewish?
The slap heard round the world stole the thunder of an evening that ended with an iconic moment of silent applause. And yet, it is the Flash’s shattering of the sound barrier that stays with me. The 94th Academy Awards featured, for the first time, an audience-polled segment ranking iconic sequences in film. As picked…
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Culture In a delightful new Purim film, Esther is a secret agent in Argentina
In its long history, the Purim story has had its fair share of reboots. Because, in every generation, a new Haman arrives to oppress us, that genocidal adviser has worn the face of Hitler and, when Stalin suffered a stroke on Purim, averting his own dire plans for Jews, he wore a different mustache entirely….
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Culture In two rarely-shown films, a different view of Israel
Nina Menkes made two films set in Israel nearly 30 years apart. Both are about not belonging anywhere. The director, who just debuted the documentary “Brainwashed” at Sundance, comes to her setting and subject in earnest, if perhaps at some remove. Born to European immigrant parents, who fled the Nazis and fought in the Palmach…
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Culture ‘The Automat’ remembers when a nickel could buy the American dream
It was my grandmother who tipped me off to “The Automat,” a new documentary about the rise and fall of Horn & Hardart restaurants. It’s no wonder why. These eateries, which for over a century drew a diverse crowd of New Yorkers and Philadelphians with the promise of cheap, quality food and mechanical pageantry, seem…
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Culture Woody Allen’s latest is playing in a New York theater — but is anybody going to see it? Anybody?
On Tuesday I opted to spend a gorgeous afternoon in New York City going to a movie. The movie was “Rifkin’s Festival,” Woody Allen’s latest and a film that presently has a 42% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 50% audience score. Given this tepid reception, I wondered who was going to see Allen’s film, which…
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Culture 2022’s Oscar nominees are full of Jewish connections
This week’s parsha concerns God’s instructions to the Israelites in the wilderness on the design of priestly temple garments, how to properly light the menorah and how to build the golden altar of incense. So perhaps it’s fitting that the Moses-y desert parable “Dune” is now nominated for the Oscar gold in costume design, cinematography…
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Culture Is ‘Rifkin’s Festival’ Woody Allen’s love letter to cinema — or something more cynical?
“Rifkin’s Festival,” Woody Allen’s 49th feature, has a marketing problem. I’m not really alluding to the obvious issues. Not the HBO series about the alleged – and denied by Allen – sexual abuse of his daughter Dylan Farrow (full disclosure, I was a talking head in said series). Or even something like the #MeToo press…
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Film & TV In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Steven Spielberg finds himself at odds with Jewish thought about aliens
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Sports This year’s biggest World Cup upset came from its most Jew-ish team
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News Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu?
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Fast Forward U.S. and Iran announce direct Lebanon track without Israel
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Fast Forward Years after a boycott fight, Ben & Jerry’s Israel debuts a flavor celebrating Israeli resilience
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Fast Forward Mamdani calls AIPAC ‘monsters’ in rally ahead of NY primaries
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Fast Forward Jewish groups push back against Trump’s Iran deal — but more quietly so far than in 2015