If you liked the American television series Homeland, you’ll most probably like Prisoners of War, the Israeli version upon which it was based. Gideon Raff’s Prisoners of War, Israel’s highest rated TV drama of all time, has won nine Israeli Academy of Film & Television Awards over two seasons. It’s popularity stems from a strong […]
The Polish philosopher Jozef Tischner wrote, “When reflected in a crooked mirror, the face of a neighbor is distorted. The neighbor is always worse than we can imagine, he is false, treacherous, evil.” Tischner’s observations may be applied to Louise Steinman, an American Jew of Polish descent for whom Poland was “a black hole, a […]
It’s hard to believe that American universities, supposedly the havens of enlightenment, were once the nests of bigotry. But that’s exactly the point of Antisemitism on the Campus: Past & Present, published by Academic Studies Press. The first volume of a multidisciplinary series on antisemitism in the United States, this book of 21 essays, edited […]
Who could have known? Heinrich Himmler was born into a “normal” German family, yet he would become one of the architects of the Holocaust. “Nothing in Himmler’s childhood and youth, spent in a sheltered, conservative Catholic home typical of the educated bourgeoisie of Wilhelmine Germany, would suggest that someone with clearly abnormal characteristics was growing up […]
Joachim Fest’s thoughtful memoirs of his boyhood and youth, Not I (Other Press), transport a reader to a terrible time and a horrible place. Born in Berlin into a conservative Catholic family, Fest was seven years old when Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. Fest’s father, Johannes, a German patriot and a supporter of the […]
Robert Ames, a Central Intelligence Agency operative, conducted the first clandestine talks between the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative body of the Palestinians. By opening this secret back channel, writes Kai Bird in The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (Crown Publishers), he “planted the seeds” of a […]
Movie director Robert Altman (1925-2006) was an original. Casting an astute and acerbic eye on American society, he was the antithesis of the conventional Hollywood filmmaker. The Toronto International Film Festival’s Bell Lightbox is presenting a retrospective on this fairly prolific auteur. Company Man: The Best of Robert Altman will run from Aug. 7-31. Ron […]
Woody Allen bores into the mystery of the occult and revels in the passion of love in his latest film, Magic in the Moonlight, set mainly on the French Riviera in 1928. A romantic comedy enlivened by scenic backdrops, opulent sets, imaginative costume design, magical tricks, chicanery galore and a great musical score, it’s one […]
I‘ve read The New York Times for many years now and consider it a great newspaper. Daniel Schwartz, the author of End Times? Crises and Turmoil at The New York Times (State University of New York Press), concurs. “I believe the Times is still the best and most influential newspaper in the world,” he writes […]
The classic road picture features two guys who travel to an exotic destination and indulge themselves to the fullest. This is what basically happens in Land Ho!, which unfolds against the backdrop of Iceland’s stark volcanic landscape. The protagonists, Mitch (Early Lynn Nelson) and Colin (Paul Eenhoorn), are brothers-in-law who drifted apart after their respective […]