PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture Put Aside The Politics In ‘Operation Finale’ — Is It Any Good As A Film?
In “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Hannah Arendt famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil.” During his 1961 trial in Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Nazi’s Final Solution, presented himself as a bureaucrat, a man who had just followed orders. “Operation Finale,” Chris Weitz’s limp dramatization of Eichmann’s 1960 abduction by the Mossad in…
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Film & TV ‘Schindler’s List’ Will Return To Theaters This December
This December, Universal Pictures will re-release “Schindler’s List” on the occasion of the Oscar-winning film’s 25th anniversary. As Slate reports, the Holocaust drama that earned Steven Spielberg his first Academy Award for Best Director will return to theaters on December 7. The film, about the German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson, who was nominated for…
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Culture Orson Welles’s Last Movie Will Finally Debut, Decades After His Death — And Here’s The Trailer
The cinematic powers that be have blessed us: Behold the first trailer for a new Orson Welles film. You read that right. Though the auteur behind “Citizen Kane” has been dead for over three decades, a troupe of strivers, among them the film’s co-star Peter Bogdanovich — himself a celebrated director — have managed to…
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Culture The Venice International Film Festival Opens Tonight. Here’s What To Expect.
The Venice International Film Festival starts today and runs through September 8. And of course, Jewish directors are bringing their A-game. In competition for the famous Golden Lion award are three pictures by already-celebrated Jewish auteurs. Joel and Ethan Coen are presenting “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” a Netflix-produced Western anthology starring Tim Blake Nelson…
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Art A Henry Moore Sketch Is The Latest Find In The Gurlitt Hoard
A drawing by the British sculptor Henry Moore, estimated to be worth over $90,000, has been discovered in the most notorious hoard of Nazi-looted art found this century. As The Guardian reports, Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Bern asked the BBC program “Fact or Fortune” to determine the origins and authenticity of the watercolor sketch, which depicts several…
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Culture Chicago’s Jewish History, In One Synagogue
Chi-town? More like Chai-town. On August 23, Chicago’s WBEZ 91.5 devoted an episode of their program “Curious City” to the history of Jews in the Windy City. The program began with a question from listener Elias Saltz: “Where were the largest Jewish neighborhoods in Chicago, and what were they like and where did they go?”…
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The Schmooze Jack Black Is Having The Most Jack Black Day Ever
Funnyman Jack Black is 49-years young today and he’s celebrating like the queen he is. 49….drinking white wine A post shared by Jack Black (@jackblack) on Aug 28, 2018 at 10:57am PDT A photo from his personal Instagram shows the “Tenacious D” frontman and Oscar nominee (robbed for “Bernie!”) lounging poolside in a Hot Wheels…
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Art How Hard Is It To Trace Nazi-Looted Art? Heirs’ Showdown With German Foundation Gives Insight.
When the Viennese cabaret artist and art collector Fritz Grünbaum was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in 1938 — he would die there in 1941 — his art collection numbered more than 400 works, many by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. Much of his collection was confiscated by the Nazis after his deportation, after…
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