After landing the lead in several school plays at Sinai Akiba Academy in Los Angeles, Leora Weinstock, 13, decided she wanted to be a professional actress.
Nimoy said he was eager to participate because he finds current Israeli cinema to be \”fresh, well-executed and relevant to the culture,\” compared to the \”primitive\” films he viewed in the early 1980s.
One week, I would ambitiously attempt to devour the entire \”Box Car Children\” series; another I would host a Judy Blume marathon and vigilantly try to sneak the purportedly trashy \”Deenie\” home in between my \”Sheila the Great\” and \”Blubber.\”
When it comes to film festivals, Calabasas is far off the beaten path for the Sundance crowd. But there\’s method to the madness of film lovers who beat a path to Calabasas in the first week of April.
The seventh annual Method Fest claims to be the nation\’s only festival that specifically celebrates actors and their performances. This year\’s lineup includes significant works with Jewish themes. There are films about the Holocaust, contemporary Jewish families and Israeli-Palestinian issues among the 25 feature films and 47 short films. The festival also features panel discussions, workshops and special events.
Jennifer Rosen\’s height felt all the freakier because Jews are generally more vertically challenged than, say, Swedes.
Rabbi David Baron of Temple Shalom of the Arts, the synagoue attended by the big and medium-sized names in the entertainment industry, has a starring role in the new Universal movie, \”Along Came Polly.\”\n\nWell, not exactly starring, but he plays the rabbi officiating at the wedding of Reuben Feffer and Lisa Kramer, portrayed by Ben Stiller and Debra Messing, respectively.
A newly religious female artist came to Chana Rochel Shusterman and told the Orthodox counselor that she was torn between her artistic drive and her religious sensibilities.
\”Uprising,\” the TV miniseries about the Warsaw Resistance, is being released in theaters Dec. 7, and on DVD and VHS Dec. 18. Some actors shared with The Journal their personal experiences on the set.\n\n
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, with front-runners such as T.S. Eliot, Christopher Fry and Archibald Macleish, there was a concerted effort to revive language in the American theater. The buzzword was \”heightened speech\” and, although all of these writers essentially wrote verse, producers tried to steer clear of the word \”poetry.\” They sensed that American theatergoers would recoil from any attempts to have anything as exotic as that foisted upon them. Just as, at around the same period, when they were risking capital on shows like \”The Most Happy Fella\” and the early works of Gian Carlo Menotti, they avoided the word \”opera.\” Music-drama seemed a safer rubric.
In Act Two: Scene II of Noel Coward\’s \”Design for Living,\” Gilda,the object of everybody\’s affection, gives a thumbnail critique of anew play by Leo, one of her rotating lovers.
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