There are plenty of changes in the works for the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony now that both its producer and host have stepped down amid controversy. Producer Brett Ratner (whose latest film, “Tower Heist,” is currently out in theaters) announced yesterday that he would step down from the Oscars following insensitive remarks he made about…
‘Footnote’ director Joseph Cedar arrives at Cannes Film Festival in May. Courtesy of Getty Images. After sitting out the Academy Awards in February, Israel is hoping for its fourth nomination in five years with “Footnote,” a drama that combines the worlds of academia and Talmudic study. The film won top honors tonight at the Ophirs,…
Sean Penn may play Jewish again. But this time, the role couldn’t be further from his Oscar-winning performance as the late civil-rights pioneer Harvey Milk. The 51-year-old thesp, reports Deadline.com, has been offered the role of notorious L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen in “Gangster Squad,” a crime drama to be directed by Jewish “Zombieland” helmer Ruben…
Jews behind the camera, and one who works in front of it, scored big at last night’s 83rd annual Academy Awards. As widely expected, Israeli-born thesp Natalie Portman nabbed the Best Actress honor for her mad-ballerina shtick in “Black Swan.” Backstage, the with-child Portman told reporters, “[Pregnancy] has sort of been a protection against all…
Actress Natalie Portman and writers David Seidler and Aaron Sorkin were among the winners at last night’s Academy Awards. Also, the Israeli documentary “Strangers No More” took home the prize for best short documentary. “Zenga Zenga,” An Israel video lampooning Muammar Gaddafi, has gone viral. A new biography argues for the continuing relevance of Amedeo…
The crowded hallways of the Bialik-Rogozin school in gritty South Tel Aviv are about as far from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood as one can imagine. But on the evening of the 83rd Academy Awards on February 27, the school’s principal, Keren Tal, will make the transition from those hallways to the red carpet,…
Garry Kasparov tells us what it’s like to play chess in the shadow of Bobby Fischer. In a 1923 article in The Nation, “Romanian-Jewish-American-Yiddish novelist, journalist, dandy, screwball folklorist of the Gypsies” Konrad Bercovici described “The Greatest Jewish City in the World.” An Israeli forger almost managed to sell a fake Kandinsky for three million…
The Skirball Center, a sober cultural institution on Los Angeles’s ritzy Westside, was unusually alive on January 27. Music journalists, record executives and South American diplomats with an array of Spanish accents — from Argentina to Spain to East Los Angeles — bounced about the room. Along with the requisite contingent of L.A. yentas and…
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