Film
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The Schmooze Journey to the Heart of Alzheimer’s
To paraphrase a famous fundraising slogan, a mind is a terrible thing to watch wasting away. But that’s what filmmaker Alan Berliner does in his moving and lovingly motivated documentary, “First Cousin Once Removed,” premiering on HBO September 23. Berliner’s subject is his cousin, Edwin Honig (1919-2011), the noted poet, translator and teacher, who spent…
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The Schmooze A POW’s Unlikely Friendship in Lebanon
The drama and tension of life in the Middle East are a potential goldmine for filmmakers. Few have excavated that terrain more successfully than Israeli director Eran Riklis. “Zaytoun” (Olive), which opened in New York September 20, is his latest movie to examine the region’s politics in micro-terms. There was an Israeli Druze cross-border wedding…
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The Schmooze ‘Jewtopia’ Isn’t the Jewish Utopia We Were Looking For
One of the toughest tickets on Broadway today is “Book of Mormon,” the hilarious spoof on the Church of Latter Day Saints. It is a hoot. But I distinctly remember how uncomfortable I was as I watched, even while laughing out loud. My personal litmus test in these situations is, what if the writers were…
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The Schmooze An Israeli Filmmaker’s Lebanon Dream
Casually clad in a black tee shirt and jeans over his stocky 59-year-old frame, Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis radiates a warm friendliness. He responds to questions with rapid-fire musings that rise above the din of the lunchtime crowd at a popular Manhattan restaurant, in nearly unaccented American English. What brought him together with The Arty…
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The Schmooze Iddo Goldberg Gets His Big Break
The reason Iddo Goldberg is chatting with The Arty Semite is ostensibly his new film, “And While We Were Here,” opening September 13. But the conversation is less about his co-star Kate Bosworth than about his grandma Luba, who represents Judaism to him. In the film, the Israeli star plays Leonard, a concert musician booked…
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Culture Israeli Films at Venice Festival Depict Wide Divide Between Jews and Arabs
In Amos Gitai’s film “Ana Arabia”, premiered in Venice this week, a Palestinian whose late wife was an Auschwitz survivor and Muslim convert treks to Arab cities to find a dentist instead of one five minutes away in Tel Aviv. In “Bethlehem”, the work of an Israeli director and Palestinian screenwriter, an Israeli Shin Bet…
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The Schmooze How Josh Pais Learned To Be Invisible
Josh Pais has been in dozens of films playing many roles, including Raphael — not the painter, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Rurtle. But for most of his career he has been a sought-after character actor in independent films. Pais’s current effort is Lynn Shelton’s “Touchy Feely,” co-starring Rosemarie DeWitt, Ellen Page and Allison Janey. Pais…
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The Schmooze Johnny Cash’s Jewish Manager
Jonathan Holiff had a tough time growing up. His father was occasionally physically and always emotionally abusive. “If there was a definition of emotionally abusive in the dictionary there’d be a picture of my father next to it,” Holiff says. He quickly adds, though, “You have to put it into the context of the times.”…
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