For the first time since 1987, and for the first time ever in the original French, \”The Sorrow and the Pity,\” Marcel Ophüls\’ seminal documentary about France under Nazi occupation, comes to the U.S., including Los Angeles, this week.
\”Blood Simple\” put the brothers on the map (Ethan quit his job as a statistical typist at Macy\’s), and the Coens went on to write, produce and direct a series of off-center, ironic, unsettling fables peopled with vividly drawn cartoon characters.
\”This battle came and found me,\” said Deborah Lipstadt. \”Had I not fought, he would have won by default. He then would have been able to say that he was correct. I decided to fight it with all my strength and all my might. Not fighting was never an option, to let evil go unchallenged.\”
When Jason Isaacs went in to audition for the Royal National Theatre\’s production of Tony Kushner\’s \”Angels in America,\” he knew exactly what role he wanted. He insisted upon portraying the anxiety-ridden character of Louis, who is somewhat based on the life of the gay Jewish playwright.
Given that the first Jews to arrive in what became the United States were Sephardim on the run from the Inquisition\’s Brazilian representatives, it is ironic that the music of the Sephardic Jews gets so little attention here.
Things as they are, the modernist poet Wallace Stevens liked to point out, become changed when played on a \”blue guitar.\” What his metaphor meant to describe was nothing more nor less than the transforming power of the imagination.
It is, perhaps, the trickiest quick-change of Hildy Brooks\’ career.
\”George Gershwin Alone,\” the only one-man show ever permitted by the heirs of the composer for the commercial stage, began in the shadow of the Holocaust.
For the Jewish Community Relations Committee (JCRC) and its parent organization, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, this day is a major victory. The Dodgers\’ $84 million star player has just held a press conference announcing his new role as spokesperson for KOREH L.A., an exciting culmination for the first year of JCRC\’s new literacy program.
