Six years in the making, Loving Vincent expands the boundaries of filmmaking. Shot as a live-action movie with actors and then hand-painted, frame by frame, by a team of 125 artists, this is an animated drama of uncommon vitality and creativity. Scheduled to open in Toronto on October 6, it’s a visually stunning and innovative production […]
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A “Second Israel” In The Middle East
In the recent Kurdish referendum on independence, the citizens of the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq, to no one’s surprise, voted overwhelmingly, at 91.83 percent, to create a sovereign state. In the run-up to the vote, opponents of the move tried to smear the Kurds by claiming they were, in effect, in the pay […]
The history and romance of aviation are evoked at two tourist-friendly facilities in Florida — Fantasy of Flight in Polk City and the Florida Air Museum in neighboring Lakeland. Fantasy of Flight, near Disney World in Orlando, possesses the world’ largest collection of vintage aircraft and enables visitors to experience biplane and hot air balloon […]
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The Fate of Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Wallenberg, the Swede who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, was officially declared dead by Sweden in 2016. But 72 years after he vanished into thin air, the circumstances of his disappearance and the precise date of his death are still a mystery, much to his family’s anguish and frustration. Wallenberg […]
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The Eichmann Show
The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1961 was an historic event. For the first and only time, a major Nazi war criminal would face justice in the Jewish state. Recognizing its importance, the international media sent correspondents to cover it. Israel considered the possibility of filming the trial for posterity, but there was one […]
The Vietnam War was my war, so to speak. Let me explain. As it inexorably escalated from an insurgency in the 1950s into a full-blown conflict in the 1960s, prompting anti-war protests in the United States and other countries, I watched it unfold from the safety of my home in Montreal. I read David Halberstam’s […]
The Iran nuclear agreement, the object of Donald Trump’s withering wrath, could well be in jeopardy. The U.S. president has denigrated the accord, signed by Iran and six major powers in Geneva in the summer of 2015, as “one of the worst deals I’ve ever seen.” Furthermore, he has threatened to abandon it unless it is […]
Draft- dodging seems to come naturally to the ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, community in Israel. While tens of thousands of new recruits are called up annually to do their national service, risking life and limb to protect their fellow citizens, the vast majority of able-bodied haredi men shamelessly shirk their duty, claiming that their Torah studies […]
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Iraqi Kurds Aiming For Independence
In 2004, I co-edited a book, De Facto States: The Quest for Sovereignty, that was to include a chapter on Iraqi Kurdistan. The person asked to write it didn’t come through, though, so it wasn’t included. Today such an article would be an absolute necessity. It’s been a long time coming, but on September 25 […]
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The New Right In Germany
The Alternative for Germany, a marginal far right-wing political party founded four years ago, is on the cusp of a historic breakthrough. The AFD, which currently holds 13 seats in German state assemblies and in the European Parliament, is widely expected to win eight to 11 percent of the votes in the September 24 general […]