**EDITOR’S NOTE: In honor of the 75th anniversary of the kindertransports, we remember the dramatic story of 50 Jewish children’s rescue from the Nazis, which started in Vienna and wound up Philadelphia. ** In early January of 1939, New York businessman Louis Levine traveled to Philadelphia to meet with Gilbert Kraus, the man he believed…
Last week I was marooned on my couch with a virus and finally watched the first season of “Girls,” Lena Dunham’s HBO drama about twentysomethings finding their way in New York City. Dunham is very serious about her enterprise, and even the show’s light-hearted moments — which are few and far between — are laden…
HBO has released a trailer for its upcoming Phil Spector biopic, about the legendary record producer and convicted murderer. The film, written and directed by David Mamet, stars Al Pacino as Spector and Helen Mirren as his defense attorney. Based on the trailer, though, the main attraction seems to be the many phases of Spector’s…
Whether or not they are fans of the new hit HBO series “Girls,” former Camp Ramah-niks may want to tune into this week’s episode on Sunday at 10:30. In the episode, titled “Camp Friend,” their summer home-away-from-home gets a shout-out. Now, would that technically be product placement or guerilla marketing? Doesn’t matter — either way,…
I’ve felt for a long time that the problem with the rise of bromance/male slacker comedy isn’t that it elevates immature dudes into leading men, but rather that it pairs them up with too tightly wound ladies. It’s what David Denby called the “slacker-striver” pairing, and it was popularized by Judd Apatow. In short: putting…
One of the things I love about New York is the way the culture constantly beams my surroundings back to me. It gives life a different feel than it has in other places; the extra layer of reality bestowed by art seems to rub off a little bit when it’s my reality also. Seeing iconic…
Today, there are any number of ways one can make it in America, yet generations of Jews still gravitate toward the shmatte business. HBO’s “How To Make It In America,” which starts its second season October 2, is the story of a Fashion Institute of Technology dropout named Ben Epstein (played by Bryan Greenberg), struggling…
Courtesy of HBO Dick Cavett calls Mel Brooks more than a comedy star; he’s a “super nova.” Mel Brooks calls Dick Cavett “spectacularly gentile.” The two share the stage on the appropriately titled HBO special, “Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again,” an hour-long, anecdote-filled, hilarious love fest debuting September 9 at 9:00 p.m. Brooks…
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