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"Doc" The Life and Fictions of Harold Humes
• •Watching wasted genius, a life gone wrong, is compelling and poignant, but with "Doc" airing December 9, at 10PM on PBS' Independent Lens (Check your local listings for actual times), we feel much more like guests doing a post-mortem on a private party where the drinks may have been dosed.… -
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… -
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… -
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,… -
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… -
Defender of Faith
•If the bestseller charts are any indication, it's become popular to condemn religion. Books such as Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" and "The End of Faith," Richard Dawson's "The God Delusion," Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great" and Bill Maher's soon-to-be-released film, "Religulous," would have us see faith… -
Santa Monica Rising (The Broad Stage)
•Located at the intersection of 11th St. and Santa Monica Blvd., a striking modern building designed by Santa Monica architect Renzo Zecchetto sits on the site of a former elementary school playground and looks to have risen out of the ground sui generis, almost as if the Starship Enterprise had… -
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… -
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… -
Bela & The Benz
• •Hatschek Bela. The very sound of my great-grandfather's name brings a smile to my face. In Hungarian, last names go first, so although Bela was his first name, he has always been Hatschek Bela to me -- all one name -- a legendary figure in our family, a celebrated forebear… -
Making Book on LA
• •BookExpo, the annual convention of booksellers and book publishers that took place in Los Angeles one recent weekend, is the book industry's annual get-together, alternating among the publishing hub of New York and various other cities, such as Miami, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Perhaps it's the state of… -
The pariah loophole
• •The following opinion article appeared yesterday on the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times:John Demjanjuk's last appeal to avoid deportation was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19. The 88-year-old accused Nazi concentration camp guard was stripped of his citizenship and ordered sent to Ukraine, his birthplace;…