Joshua Harmon applied for admission to the Juilliard School’s prestigious playwriting program three times. Three times he was told sorry, try again. On his fourth attempt, “Bad Jews” got him in. No, that’s not a reference to crooked admissions officers. “Bad Jews” is Harmon’s play about relatives battling over a special chai pendant that belonged…
At first, Jerry Wexler (1917–2008) was bupkes. But eventually he became the king of the music biz and even coined the phrase, “rhythm and blues.” In the 1960s, he wanted in on the “Muscle Shoals Sound,” which was named for a small town in Alabama where hit records were coming out of Rick Hall’s FAME…
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…
ABC’s newest comedy is called “The Goldbergs.” At least, now it is. Created by Adam F. Goldberg and loosely based on his life growing up in a Jewish family in the 1980s, the show was originally called “How the F***| Am I Normal?” Its new name is likely more acceptable to newspaper TV listing editors,…
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…
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…
For 40 years, the Ontario Jewish Archives has chronicled one of North America’s most vibrant Jewish communities. Now, the Archives is raiding its vault with an anniversary exhibit of 30 rarely seen images that focus on historically Jewish neighborhoods, local political activism, and society portraits — a field dominated by Jewish photographers. Once a staid…
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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