Film
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The Schmooze What Mel Brooks can teach us about racism
“Blazing Saddles” is generally regarded as Mel Brooks’s best movie: It was ranked sixth on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American comedies and it was nominated for three Academy Awards. “Best,” though, is a relative term. Brooks’s Borscht Belt-meets-absurdism style is so unique and so indelible that what we call the…
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The Schmooze Palestinian Film Breaks New Ground at Cannes
A tragic love story between two Palestinians living under Israeli occupation received a standing ovation at the Cannes film festival on Monday and broke new ground as the first film fully funded by the Palestinian cinema industry. “Omar” by director Hany Abu-Assad, known for the 2005 award-winning film “Paradise Now,” is a political thriller interwoven…
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The Schmooze Renee Zellweger’s Favorite Laundry Lady
Not everyone has Zack Galifianakis renting an apartment for them, or Renee Zellweger paying to furnish it. But then again, not everyone is Mimi. Mimi is an 88-year-old woman who, until very recently, lived in a laundromat on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, Calif. She is the subject of a film being made by Israeli…
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The Schmooze First Peek at Ari Folman’s New Film
The first trailer is out for Ari Folman’s new film, “The Congress” (see here for background), and though I hate to say it, it’s a little disappointing. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for ages, mainly because it seems like the perfect creative pairing. Folman, in his 2008 film “Waltz With Bashir,” used groundbreaking…
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The Schmooze A Different Kind of Cancer Story
Danish director Susanne Bier is on a roll. Her 2006 film, “After the Wedding,” was nominated for an Academy Award the next year, and her 2010 movie “In a Better World,” won the best foreign film Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2011. Her latest film, “Love Is All You Need,” stars Pierce Brosnan as…
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Culture The History of Mel Brooks, Part I
Ironically, it was Mel Brooks who asked the first question: “So, how long have you been working for the Jewish Daily Forward?” Then he wondered aloud how I spell my name, and he graded my response. “You got all the letters right,” he said, and laughed when I ask for extra credit for getting them…
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Film & TV When the Jewish Mother and Son Get Their Day on the Silver Screen
A Jewish mother gives her son two ties on the first night of Hanukkah. The following morning, when he comes down for breakfast, he is wearing one of them. The mom says, “What’s the matter — you didn’t like the other one?” — Sheldon Kimmelman in “Old Jews Telling Jokes” Even while guffawing at old…
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The Schmooze Russian Jews on the Silver Screen
My Dad Is Baryshnikov,” directed by Dmitry Povolotsky, about a klutzy Russian Jewish version of Billy Elliot, is among the latest in a tradition of Russian Jews ardently seeking reflections of their own experience onscreen. This impulse dates back to the earliest years of cinema history, as is explained in the brilliantly researched “Kinojudaica: Representations…
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Culture He works at a Holocaust museum by day. How’d he end up in ‘Marty Supreme’?
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News The ADL’s turn away from civil rights was years in the making — Oct. 7 accelerated it
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Culture The mysterious case of Barbra Streisand and the missing half-pound of Zabar’s sturgeon
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Opinion There’s a vicious antisemitic precedent for Trump’s demonization of Renée Nicole Good
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Andrew Tate insists he wasn’t really singing Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler.’ Others who were with him are doubling down.
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Fast Forward Invoking Torah, Minnesota Jews mobilize against ICE operations
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Fast Forward San Diego Jewish groups decry disinvitation of rabbi from MLK Day event over ‘concerns about potential disruption related to Zionism’
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Fast Forward Longtime dean of Ziegler School retiring as Conservative seminary plots new course
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