Jewish History & Culture
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Dreaming of a Blue and White Christmas (Christmas Movies from Michael Curtiz to Jon Favreau)
Christmas came early this year — Nov. 7, when New Line Cinema released “Elf,†the family-friendly comedy that, as of this writing, has earned more than $156 million (see story, p. 19). Another surprise is the success of the far-more-cynical adult offering “Bad Santa,†which had a production cost of $18 million and, since its […]
'Fabulous Invalid' (Ruth Seymour's Chanukah Program on KCRW)
I used to have this Thanksgiving Day ritual in New York: no matter what I was doing, or where I was going, I would find a way to be near a radio around 11:30 a.m., to tune in to WNEW-FM 102.7’s broadcast of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,†in its entirety, in all its musical and […]
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A Search for Intellectual L.A. (Paul Holdengraber and LACMA)
It’s a Friday night and an overflow crowd is jammed into the penthouse of the former May Co. store on Wilshire Boulevard — now Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) West — to hear a conversation between French journalist and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. Presiding over this abundance of […]
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Reading Something Into Some Books (Marboro Books, Richard Farina and Daniel Deronda)
At 14, I had never read a book outside of school assignments — certainly not for pleasure. I was more of a comic book kid. My parents were concerned and even asked one of my friends to talk to me. I just wasn’t interested. But I liked hanging out at Marboro books in Manhattan. Marboro […]
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Making L.A. Real (Developer Larry Fields and architect Frank Gehry)
This weekend the story of Los Angeles, and its future, is all about one building, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Critics have already hailed our new symphony hall as a triumph of design, determination and a marriage of form, function and acoustic feng shui. But more significantly, in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles […]
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Reality of Their Own (Reality TV Producers)
Reality TV is nothing new. Since the dawn of television, there have always been unscripted formats and game shows of one kind or another. However, the current incarnation of reality programming — shows such as “Survivor,” “The Bachelor,” and “Fear Factor” — may be the most durable and successful shows in the history of reality […]