Courtesy of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival Talk about baring all for your art. German-Jewish director Dani Levy does Woody Allen one better in “Life Is Too Long,” which made its North American premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in May. A dyspeptic “Stardust Memories,” “Life Is Too Long” both exposes Levy’s fragile psyche…
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics In his new movie, “Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen did what he does best. He created a character out of a city and added his signature sleight-of-hand magic. Think “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” when a handsome leading man steps through a screen to romance a depression-era Mia Farrow, or…
The Independent takes a look at Habonim, the Socialist Zionist youth group that was once home to Mike Leigh, David Baddiel and Sacha Baron Cohen. The Brooklyn Rail revisits the work of Russian Jewish filmmaker Dziga Vertov, on the occasion of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Israeli singer Amir Benayoun (profiled in…
Filmmaker Ethan Coen is set to publish his second poetry collection, titled “The Day the World Ends,” next near. Shtetl Magazine reviews “The Joyful Child” by Montreal novelist Norman Ravvin. NPR profiles mother-daughter klezmer duo Elaine Hoffman Watts and Susan Watts. Woody Allen spills the beans on life in show business. The U.S. National Archives…
Sidney Lumet, the acclaimed director more than 50 films, died April 9 in Manhattan at the age of 86. Best known for taut psychodramas such as “Serpico” (1973), “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975), “Network” (1976) and “The Verdict” (1982), Lumet’s work demonstrated an enduring interest in social realism and the difficulty of obtaining justice, a concern…
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish. On March 12 the Yiddish theater lost one of its most beloved stars. Shifra Lerer, an Argentine-born actress who toured the world and who later appeared in films by Woody Allen and Sidney Lumet, died in Manhattan at the age of 95. I met Shifra during my…
The latest issue of Habitus features eight poems by Esther Dischereit. The winners of the 2011 Rappaport Prize, a one million dollar award given annually to two Israel painters, have been announced. Woodie Allen talks about his controversial marriage. Cynthia Ozick accepts the Jewish Book Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Philip Glass is so prolific that…
For many Jews and non-Jews, American Jewish culture is defined by stereotypes such as the pushy mother, the shleppy father, chopped liver swans, too much food (“just in case…”) accountants, doctors, and holidays in the Catskills or Florida. But a new generation of Jews are so hip, Americanized and assimilated that they are not even…
