From Australian animation (“Mary and Max”) to a restored print of 1935 Yiddish cinema (“Bar Mitzvah”), the 19th New York Jewish Film Festival is a veritable international smorgasbord of movies. Among the offerings, “Ajami” — also in sneak preview at the Boston Jewish Film Festival — is worth taking time to savor at the cinematic…
“Do you have to be handsome to play the role of a Nazi commander?” That was a question that actor Ralph Fiennes was asked during a January 9 discussion, titled “The Power of Film and the Holocaust” at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Fiennes didn’t have a clear answer. The British actor,…
Discussing his gentile upbringing outside London during the 1960s, writer Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity,” “About a Boy,” “Fever Pitch”) recalls how the word “Jewish” was used interchangeably with “cheap” in the schoolyard, and how his grandmother would call him a “Wandering Jew” when he was restless. British attitudes toward the nation’s now 280,000 Jews have…
From Jonah onwards, the Jews have been happy to write nebbishes into the part of divine liaison. Not for the Chosen People the luxury of a muscular charismatic leader to mediate between the Sacred and the profane. Given the choice between “Woody” Allen Konigsberg and “Terminator” Arnold Schwarzenegger, there’s barely a flicker of thought necessary….
A film about crime and violence near Tel Aviv has been named Israel’s official selection for next year’s Academy Awards. “Ajami,” a drama set among cops and criminals in the mixed Arab and Jewish city of Jaffa, swept the major prizes September 26 at the Ophirs, the top honors of the Israeli Film and Television…
They weren’t as bored and uninterested as they were when they won the best picture Oscar for “No Country for Old Men,” but Joel and Ethan Coen weren’t exactly thrilled to be part of a roundtable interview about their latest movie, “A Serious Man.” In the 25 years since their startling film noirish debut with…
Quentin Tarantino is a director, writer and cinematic iconoclast known for works such as “Kill Bill” and “Pulp Fiction” that revel in non-linear plots and the portrayal of violence. His most recent film, “Inglourious Basterds,” takes the viewer on a bloody stroll through a fiction in which a band of Jewish-American soldiers is given free…
Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” (complete with unexplained directorial spelling caprice) is pure Cineplex whimsy where bloodthirsty Jewish soldiers destroy the Third Reich, gleefully giving their tormentors a taste of their own medicine. Eli Roth who plays Sergeant Donny Donowitz, aka The Bear Jew, quickly embraced Tarantino’s wild re-imagining of history, which premiered at the Cannes…
דער פּאָדקאַסט גיט איצט אויך אָן די לינקס צו די געדרוקטע אַרטיקלען וואָס ווערן פֿאָרגעלייענט.
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