Jewish History & Culture
171 posts found
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The Kraft of Movie Music
"If there's music in a movie," said Robert Kraft, president of Fox Music, "whether on screen, or underscore, or someone is playing guitar in a scene, I'm involved." That includes the decisions concerning music at every level. "How it's paid for, is it creatively appropriate to the film, is it legal, is it focused on selling more movie tickets if it can be ... basically every musical aspect of a film at Fox is my responsibility," he said. Kraft is… -
Design with a "Z" (Lajos Kozma and Szalon)
Lajos Kozma. Photo courtesy Szalon Can a piece of furniture convey the story of Hungarian Jewry or reveal the genius of a little-known master? The story of a career undercut by anti-Semitism and cut short by death? This weekend's "Legends of La Cienega Design Walk" (May 7-9) offers a celebration of design through lectures, panel discussions, book signings, exhibits, guided tours, fashion shows and benefit parties, all taking place along La Cienega Boulevard, on Melrose Place and at the Pacific… -
JEWBALL: From First NBA Basket to Major League Umping
Who knew? Who knew that basketball has a storied Jewish past, or that a non-sports guy like me would ever read, no less enjoy, a book about baseball umpires, Bruce Weber's "As They See 'Em" (Scribner, 2009)? Maybe it's because Passover is a time of miracles - or is that Chanukah? Or Purim? Or the entire sweep of Jewish history? No matter. We're here to talk sports, a subject I now know a little more about. Recently, as March Madness… -
Laud the Life of Sid Grauman, Hollywood's Gold Standard
Ever wonder how the movie industry went from five-cent nickelodeons in New York to the glamour of Hollywood with red carpet premieres and the highest of artistic aspirations? Or why a certain pagoda-like Hollywood movie theater in whose courtyard rest footprints of actors is one of the most beloved and frequented tourist sites on the planet? Look no further than the story of Sid Grauman, whose birth 130 years ago will be celebrated this Saturday, March 14, by the American… -
Holocaust Movies: Winners & Losers
"The Reader" Are Holocaust movies good for the Jews? Or even, for that matter, for society at large? This year's offerings include "Defiance," a story of a group of Jews who were heroic resistance fighters; "The Reader," a story of post-war revelation about a Nazi woman who beds down with a German boy; "Good," about the moral compromises of a German university professor in the Nazi era; "Adam Resurrected," based on Yoram Kaniuk's novel about a demented Holocaust survivor living… -
"Breakdowns" & The "Maus" that roared (or Art Spiegelman through the looking glass)
Art Spiegelman, the cartoonist whose graphic memoir, "Maus," won a Pulitzer Prize, was in town recently to promote a reissue of "Breakdowns," a collection of his underground comics work first published in 1978. As Spiegelman pointed out to me, his name in German means "Mirror Man" (mine means "Pond-wood") -- and revisiting "Breakdowns," now subtitled, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" was like finding a letter you'd written 30 years ago. For this new edition, Spiegelman spent two… -
Wild about Diamond
David Wild wants you to know that he is an unabashed Neil Diamond fan. So much so that he has written a book titled, "He Is ... I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond" (Da Capo Press) that is less biography, according to Wild, than "tribute album." Being a Diamond fan (dare we call him a Diamond head?) is as much a part of Wild as, well ... being Jewish. Wild grew up in Tenafly,… -
Yoram Kaniuk: Israel's Interior monologuist
Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk first grabbed my attention in 2006 when he wrote a series of diary entries about life in Tel Aviv during Israel's war with Lebanon. Kaniuk, who will be appearing at American Jewish University on Sunday as part of the second annual Celebration of Jewish Books, painted a cranky portrait of himself as aged (he was 76 then), losing his hearing, limping and living in a Tel Aviv old-age home -- a man older than the nation… -
It's SHOWTIME for this Cantor
At the dawn of Hollywood talkies, "The Jazz Singer" told the story of a young Jewish man's conflict between a career in the entertainment industry and being a cantor. The sacred and the profane seemed two poles whose opposing magnetic draws tore the protagonist apart. But that was 1927. Today, more than 90 years later, I only had to drive to Westwood to meet Gary Levine, who has his feet planted comfortably in both worlds. During the week Levine is… -
Steven Spielberg dreams anew
Over the last two weeks, lost amid Wall Street's financial turmoil, came the announcement that Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks was leaving Paramount, having found financing from The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group ("Reliance"), one of India's largest private companies. What does the fact that no American studio or financier made a better offer say about Spielberg, his dream company and the state of the movie business today? What does it mean that Spielberg's other founding partners, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg,… -
The Immortal Mr Gold
August 12, 2008 Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on By Tom Teicholz "Still Alive! (A Temporary Condition)" by Herbert Gold (Arcade, $25). Herbert Gold, who at 84 is among the elder statesmen of the Beat Generation, has a new book out, his 28th, a memoir titled "Still Alive! (A Temporary Condition)." It is not an autobiography so much as a series of recollections of encounters with people who have been part of his life -- neighbors,… -
Waxing Roth
The movie, "Elegy," which opens Aug. 8 and stars Ben Kingsley as David Kepesh and Penelope Cruz as the object of his desire, is the latest film to be adapted from the writings of Philip Roth. This one is based on his novella, "The Dying Animal." Despite Roth's long, successful career in American letters, his track record on film has been far spottier. Yet "Elegy," directed by Isabel Coixet, who is Spanish, has created a certain buzz: Could it be…