Amid the unspeakable inferno of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi extermination camp in Poland, a Hungarian Jewish forced laborer named Saul watches impassively as a new transport of Jews from Hungary rumbles in ominously. It’s the spring of 1944 and the Holocaust is in full swing. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary have been singled […]
Henry Kissinger had a finger in virtually every pie when he was U.S. secretary of state, managing the foreign affairs file of the world’s preeminent superpower. “There cannot be a crisis next week,” he once joked in a sardonic moment of levity. “My schedule is already full.” Kissinger was indeed a busy bee. He negotiated […]
Despite a promising story line, a credible cast and the magic of 3D cinematography, Everything Will be Fine doesn’t measure up. Wim Wenders’ film, due to open in theatres in Canada on December 11, lands with a thud. Tomas (James Franco), a novelist living in the Quebec countryside, has fallen into a funk. He’s struggling with […]
Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayeh was a petty criminal, a pimp and a drug dealer, during his misspent youth in Jordan. By the time he changed his name to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, he had become an Islamic fundamentalist and a feared terrorist. Zarqawi was the first leader of Islamic State — the jihadist organization that has since […]
The German feature film, Naked Among Wolves, plumbs the depths of Nazi cruelty and depravity. Now available on the Netflix streaming network, Phillip Kadelbach’s movie unfolds in the Buchenwald concentration camp mainly in the last months of World War II as some inmates take desperate measures to save a Polish Jewish boy from certain death. Naked Among […]
Mired in an existential crisis, the newspaper industry in Canada and the United States is desperately trying to adapt to changing times. Circulation has tumbled, ad revenue has fallen, newspapers have grown thinner and massive staff reductions have exacted a fearsome toll, as I know from first-hand experience. The ink-stained wretches — the old-school journalists […]
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is the man of the hour in international relations today. Under his stewardship, Russia has begun to reassert itself after a period of decline following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Last year, Russia occupied and annexed the Crimea and sent “volunteers” and military equipment to Russian separatists in eastern […]
Joseph Mallard William Turner (1775-1851), the illustrious painter, is the subject of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario which runs until January 31, 2016. J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free, an illuminating tribute to a British master, is comprised of more than 50 paintings on loan from Tate Britain. Nearly all of them were produced […]
Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979), the scion of a fabulously wealthy American Jewish family, was one of the pillars of the modern art movement. Bohemian, rebel, iconoclast and hedonist, she was an astute judge of talent, having recognized the potential of painters like Jean Miro, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack long before they were famous and having bought […]
There are films that soar majestically above the rest, and Brooklyn, directed by John Crowley, is one of those rare ones. Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and scheduled to open in Toronto theaters on November 20, it conjures up a self-contained universe that is both culturally distinct and brimming with fully formed characters. Set in […]