This year’s Oscar nominations are stirring angst in certain corners of the Internet, because of something that looks suspiciously like a new trend: movies about Jewish con men. Granted, it’s just a couple of movies. Hollywood makes all kinds. Everyone knows they’re fake. That’s why it’s called the Dream Factory. Sure, some movies try to…
I discovered “Girls” when it was well into the second season. I had lived in New York for several months to attend the Columbia University School of Journalism. The initial excitement of being in the City That Never Sleeps had waned. I had gotten used to discovering that almost every other person I met was…
In his classic 1988 account of Hollywood’s Jewish roots, ‘“An Empire of Their Own,” Neal Gabler argued convincingly that Hollywood (and therefore, world cinema as we know it) would not exist today without the contributions of the Jewish pioneers and studio heads who first turned movies into our country’s great popular art form. But if…
Since its publication this past summer, Ben Urwand’s book, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, has sparked intense debate. Its claim that Hollywood’s major (Jewish-run) film studios colluded with the government of Nazi Germany to protect their economic interests has elicited angry responses from critics who have objected that the book’s thesis is deceptively sensationalistic…
For activists on both sides of the battle over boycotting Israel, there’s no business quite like show business. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which aims to isolate Israel because of its occupation of the West Bank, has often had trouble gaining traction on other fronts. But the performing arts have emerged as the one…
When one thinks of how Hollywood has related to the Nazis, among the first movies that come to mind are “Casablanca” and “The Great Dictator,” in which the America movie industry portrayed the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in particular in a critical manner. A new book being published in the United States claims, however, that…
Actor Dustin Hoffman has undergone treatment for cancer, the Oscar-winner’s publicist confirmed on Tuesday. Hoffman’s publicist, Jodi Gottlieb, declined to say what kind of cancer or when the “Tootsie” star was diagnosed. The news was first reported by People Magazine, where Gottlieb said the cancer had been “detected early and he has been surgically cured.”…
Between James Deen’s mainstream debut alongside Lindsay Lohan in the indie-noir film “The Canyons” and the upcoming biopic “Lovelace” (based on “Deep Throat” star Linda Lovelace) it seems everyone’s talking about porn. Plenty of porn stars have tried to shed their taboo image for a more squeaky-clean Hollywood career. But in an interview with Vulture,…
