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Polish Film 'Ida' Shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar
Ida, the newest film by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, has been shortlisted for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. The film tells the story of Ida, a 1960s Polish teenager just...
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From 'Boyhood' to 'Birdman,' What to Expect at This Year's Academy Awards
The Oscars are upon us! The stylists are all agog! The intersection of Hollywood and Highland is even more impassable than usual! And while it’s disconcerting how they creep up on us ever since the...
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With 'Ida' Win, 20 out of 23 Oscar-Nominated Holocaust Films Have Won
“There’s no business like Shoah business” was a bitter pun I first heard in the late 1970s, working as intern at YIVO, an institution then primarily staffed by Holocaust survivors and their children....
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The Oscar Winner's White House Connection
Upon winning an Oscar for his adapted screenplay of The Imitation Game, Graham Moore gave one of the most-discussed speeches of Sunday’s Academy Awards. He explained that he had attempted suicide at...
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Rock, Paper, Scissors: A Guide to the New Victim Politics
For all of 15 minutes last weekend, Patricia Arquette was a progressive hero. Arquette, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar Sunday evening for her role in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, used the...
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Stephen Sondheim Blasts Lady Gaga's 'Sound of Music' Oscars Performance
If you know anything about me, you’ll know how difficult it is for me to disagree with Stephen Sondheim. To me, the Venerable Steve is not just the world’s greatest living composer of musical theater...
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Article 46
Look, we warned you before last night’s Oscars that Tablet is not in the business of predicting winners. So to those of you who went ahead and relied on our cheat sheet to make your pool choices, well,...
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Article 45
Read Portman’s statement on John Galliano here. On a cool October morning, actress Natalie Portman is wearing a jean jacket and dangling beaded earrings, sipping tea in Schiller’s Liquor Bar on the...
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Seeing No Outside Intervention, Syrian Rebels Grow More Dangerous
• Syrian rebels see the world’s obvious unwillingness to get involved and, naturally, assume they must pursue heavier armed conflict, in a spiral that risks spilling into civil or even regional war....
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Israeli film 'Footnote' nominated for best foreign film
The 2012 Oscar nominees have been announced, and Israel’s well-received official entry, Footnote, is on the list for best foreign film. Also nominated was Iranian screenwriter Asghar Farhadi’s A...
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Roseanne Barr Wants To Run for President on Green Party Ticket
Enjoy the game! • Roseanne Barr announced her candidacy for the Green Party ticket. The Green Party cautioned that she’d still have to be nominated at the July convention like anyone else. [Page...
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Director Joseph Cedar Reveals the Stories Behind His Academy Award-Nominated...
The Israeli film Footnote, which was nominated for an Academy Award last week, is the fourth feature film by writer-director Joseph Cedar. Footnote is a slice-of-Jerusalem-life, set at Hebrew...
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Who's Afraid of Sacha Baron Cohen at the Oscars?
Just in case you’re lying dead in a ditch somewhere—or more alarmingly, don’t have a television—I’m taking it upon myself to remind you that the 84th Academy Awards are Sunday night....
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Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, and the Most Jewish Oscar Nominees
The Oscars air Sunday evening on ABC. Below: the five most Jewish movies in contention (in increasing order of Jewy-ness!), and which categories they’re nominated in. Because how else are you going to...
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U.S. Intelligence Continues to Doubt Iranian Bomb Program
• Despite increased uranium enrichment, U.S. intelligence, consistent with formal findings in 2007 and 2010, believes Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear bomb and indeed may have halted its...
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Why The Iranian Oscar Was A Good Thing
1. The best film won. Footnote is lovely, but it never soars above the modest confines of a touching family drama. In Darkness is artful, but it is every bit the kind of retrograde, emotional Holocaust...
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Natalie Portman, in Vintage for the Oscars, Gives Dior a Kosher Stamp
There’s a famous scene early in Gone With the Wind, where Scarlett O’Hara, fresh from the disappointingly mundane death of her first husband, the dopey and unlamented Charles Hamilton, accepts Captain...
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J. Hoberman Reviews Joseph Cedar’s Oscar-Nominated ‘Footnote’
Footnote, the absurdist tragedy by New York-born, Israeli-raised Joseph Cedar, is a movie of such cosmic inconsequence that hyperbole is inevitable. So here goes: If immersing oneself in the history of...
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Israeli Documentaries Makes Oscar Shortlist
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced yesterday they are done sifting through the 126 documentaries eligible for a 2013 Oscar. Among the fifteen finalists, two are Israeli films....
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Iran, Oscar Committee Both Hate Ben Affleck: From "Argo" to "Gangster Squad,"...
Perhaps the week’s best bon mot goes to Ben Affleck, who hours after being denied an Academy Award nomination for his direction of the film “Argo,” won the Critics Choice Award for best director. In...
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Are Slavery Movies the New Holocaust Flicks?
I hardly think I need to explain to anyone who has been to the movies in the past 30 years—or indeed, anyone reading this column—the masochistic, magnificent, cinematic pleasure of the Holocaust...
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'Zero Dark Thirty' and Israeli Doc 'The Gatekeepers' Bring Terror to the Oscars
As the Arab Spring has turned into an Islamist Winter, Western filmmakers have been exploring how free societies can best combat terrorism. Can liberal societies bound by the rule of law defeat...
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Michael Moore Aids 'Five Broken Cameras' Director at LAX
Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat, who co-directed the Oscar-nominated film Five Broken Cameras with Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, ran into some trouble at Los Angeles International Airport this...
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What If 'Lincoln' and ‘Life of Pi’ Got Sequels With Jewish Characters?
Continue reading: Life of Pi Continue reading "What If 'Lincoln' and ‘Life of Pi’ Got Sequels With Jewish Characters?" at...
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Forget Billy Crystal! Tablet's Rachel Shukert Sings Her Own Oscars Medley
The 85th Academy Awards are being hosted by Seth MacFarlane this year, leaving open the real possibility that they will not feature a parodic opening medley with all the names of the Best Picture...
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What Oscar-Nominated Documentaries 'The Gatekeepers' and '5 Broken Cameras'...
The Academy Awards are on Sunday, and in addition to spawning Rachel Shukert’s stunning Best Picture medley, they’ve also sparked an interesting discussion about two films nominated in the Best...
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Tablet's Guide to the Academy Awards
With Oscar time nearly here, we have put together a guide that will make you the smartest, more erudite, and coolest person at your Oscar party (unless you are going to an Oscar party with another...
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This Week on The Scroll
• Of course, the big story (oddly enough) was Daniel Blumen’s bar mitzvah video, which featured some rapping and some high profile cameos from Atlanta’s elite. • Tal Kra-Oz wrote about a speech by...
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Daybreak
• Influential Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind is coming under fire for wearing blackface as a part of his Purim costume, you know, a basketball player with an afro. [NYO] • Amid riots and large...
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The ADL Responds to Seth MacFarlane
Well, it’s been roughly 12 hours since the Academy Awards wrapped up and the Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement about Seth MacFarlane’s smirky Jews-control-Hollywood sketch with “Ted” that I...
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Daybreak
● For the first time in three months, a rocket fired from Gaza landed in southern Israel, striking a road just south of Ashkelon. [JPost] ● The Times reports on how Academy Awards organizers managed to...
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Today's News: Ariel Sharon's Health Deteriorating; Egyptian Protestors Killed...
• Doctors say former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose condition is worsening after eight years in a comatose state following a major stroke in 2006, is now suffering from a blood infection....
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Why Israeli Zombies, Killers, Torturers, and Human Parasites Are Invading...
Israeli cinema is no stranger to violence. In this part of the world, ravaged with wars and terror, it is only natural that real-life atrocities will be mirrored in films coming out of Tel Aviv,...
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Alice Herz-Sommer, Oldest Known Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 110
The world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer, has died at the age of 110 in London. Her devotion to music, which helped her survive two years in a Nazi concentration camp, is the subject of...
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BDS and the Oscars: How Screenwriter Ben Hecht Defied an Anti-Israel Boycott
Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht said he “beamed with pride” when he heard the news on that autumn afternoon in 1948: The British had declared a boycott against him. By day, Hecht was the highest-paid...
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A Primer On All Things Jewish About This Year's Oscar Nominated Films
In preparation for the Oscars this Sunday, a primer on all things Jewish about this year’s nominated films: Continue reading "A Primer On All Things Jewish About This Year's Oscar Nominated Films" at...
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‘Omar’ and ‘Bethlehem’ Tell the Same Story, But Only One Was Nominated for an...
Both the Israeli and Palestinian nominees for best foreign film this year focused on the highly complex relationship between Palestinian informers and their Israeli handlers, agents of Israel’s Shin...
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Why Didn’t John Travolta Know Who Idina Menzel Is?
My heart hurt for Idina Menzel—or should I say, Adele Dazeem, or Nazeem, or whatever her name isn’t. It was supposed to be her big moment, the night she broke out of the Broadway ghetto and would sing,...
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Israel's Academy Awards Entry is a Farsi-Language Film About an...
For the first time, Israel will submit a Farsi-language film as its Academy Awards entry for best foreign language film this year, reported JTA. Baba Joon, which won the award for best picture at...
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'Son of Saul' Nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
The Oscar nominations were announced Thursday morning and Son of Saul, to the surprise of likely no one, is a finalist for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Picture. Over the weekend, Son of...
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The Rich Get Richer: Inside That Ace Gift-Trip to Israel for Oscar Nominees
The Academy Award nominees—all 26 of ’em—will be receiving $200,000 gift bags this year. And they’re stacked, because what isn’t stacked when it’s worth near a quarter of a million dollars? Here’s...
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Hollywood’s Ultimate Honor Isn’t the Oscar. It’s the Irving.
Darryl F. Zanuck won the first one in 1937 and two thereafter. Walt Disney won it. So did Cecil B. DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, and, a rare outsider, Ingmar Bergman. Steven Spielberg got it eight years...
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Meet the Mexican-Jewish Cinematographer Behind 'The Revenant.' And 'Birdman.'...
Movie makers from Mexico are on a hot streak. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant, which is nominated for 11 Academy Awards, has already won three Golden Globes, including for Best...
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A Majority of Holocaust-Themed Oscar Nominees Have Taken Home Trophies
Aside from the certainty that host Chris Rock would be relentless and hilarious in mocking the absence of diversity in this year’s Oscar nominations, there were two sure bets going into Hollywood’s...
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Diverse Array of Artists, and Also Mel Gibson, Nab 2016 Oscar Nods
The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, if anyone still cares about the Oscars in the desiccated hellscape that our country has rapidly become. Damian Chazelle-helmed awards darling La La...
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Watch: Natalie Portman Teaches Hebrew Slang
The Academy Awards are right around the corner, and Natalie Portman is hot on the trail in pursuit of her second Oscar, this time for her star turn as the grieving former first lady Jackie Kennedy in...
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Forget the Oscars: These Are the Real Winners You Should Watch
Oscar weekend is finally over, and now that we no longer have to wait to see which films or which performances will end up decorated with what is perhaps the highest honor in the world of film, we may...
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The Charlie Chaplin of Jewish Death
Géza Röhrig is an unlikely movie star—a Hungarian-born poet, JTS graduate, and former kindergarten teacher whose performance in the harrowing 2015 Son of Saul, which followed a sonderkommando in...
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Hitler at the Garden
Clocking in at a concise 7 minutes and 6 seconds, including credits, A Night at the Garden is a compilation of pristine newsreel footage documenting a not-quite-forgotten moment in American history:...
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Seeing Stars
This week on Unorthodox, we’d like to thank the Academy … and our three Jewish guests! First we get glammed up with shoe designer Stuart Weitzman, who tells us about getting his big break when Aretha...
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