According to Chief Curator Stephanie Smith: “Feast is emblematic of the larger trend of blurring art and life-art that moves beyond the space of the museum.” In this case, while “calling attention to larger social and political issues,” Smith said, “the boundaries of what constitutes ‘art’ have expanded [to include] meals as a material for art.”

In his Enemy Kitchen project, for example, Rakowitz (whose grandfather fled from Iraq in 1946) asks Iraqi immigrants to cook some of his mother’s favorite recipes with him. American veterans of the Iraq War then act as servers, using paper plates modeled on Saddam Hussein’s china!

According to his website: “The project functions as a social sculpture: while cooking and eating, we engage each other on the topic of the war and draw parallels with our own lives.”

Prior to Feast, Rakowitz’ work has appeared in worldwide venues including Innsbruck, Istanbul, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney, and Torino, as well as MoMA (New York). But, says Smith: “This is the first time Enemy Kitchen has been part of a public project and not just a private workshop.”

To learn more about Feast, visit the Smart Gallery website.

I downloadeded the photo of Rakowitz’s Iraqi family from his website.

Skokie Public Library is currently hosting a national traveling exhibit called “In a Nutshell: The Worlds of Maurice Sendak.” Born in 1928, Sendak was raised in Depression-era Brooklyn. Both of his parents were Polish immigrants and as the SPL website notes: “threads of Jewish family, geography and culture are woven through the more than 100 picture books he illustrated.”

Although I love Sendak’s work (especially Brundibar, his collaboration with playwright Tony Kushner), I haven’t made it up to Skokie Public Libary myself yet. But the exhibit comes highly recommended by my friend Alan Todres (a member of the Chicago YIVO Board): “not least for the influence of Yiddish language and culture on the author/artist.”

In addition to the many events planned in connection with the exhibit, the library will show the documentary short Tell Them Anything You Want: A portrait of Maurice Sendak on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. Tell Them Anything was co-directed by Spike Jonze, who also directed the lovely award-winning adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are starring James Gandolfini-named one of the top ten films of 2009 by the National Board of Review.

For complete information, visit the SPL website.

Award-winning Israeli jazz violinist Miri Ben-Ari will headline a fundraiser at Lincoln Hall on Thurs, Feb 9 at 8 p.m. The beneficiaries are the American Friends of the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled, the American Friends of Magen David Adom, and the Anti-Defamation League.

I love Miri’s CD The Temple of Beautiful, so I will definitely be there. Look for more details next month.

Meanwhile click HERE to order tickets for yourself.

One of the oddities of this year’s Award Season was a late-breaking critics’ push for Margaret in mid-November. Margaretplayed here (and in a few other metros) in October, but busy as I was with film festivals, I didn’t see it until December (at a Chicago Film Critics Association screening). Now the Gene Siskel Film Center is bringing it back for another “special run” beginning Feb. 17.

Written and directed by playwright Kenneth Lonergan (whose first film was the much-loved Indie You Can Count on Me starring Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo), Margaret is the story of a troubled high school student named “Lisa Cohen” (played by Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin). Without going into either a detailed plot synopsis or an overview of Margaret’s controversial history (as it was edited down from the 3-plus hour “Director’s Cut” to the version released in theatres), I must tell you that I left the CFCA screening literally shaking with rage. Even giving Lonergan the benefit of the doubt and assuming much was lost in the editing process, rarely have I seen such despicable caricatures of Jewish women on screen-terrific actors, yes, but horribly misused.

For tickets, visit the Gene Siskel Film Center website.

Click HERE to read the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem Lonergan invokes in the title (“Margaret are you grieving, Over Goldengrove unleaving?”).

Another year, another set of Oscar nominations.

First the good news: Joseph Cedar’s Footnote scored another nomination for Israel in the Best Foreign Language Film (BFLF) category, making this Israel’s fourth nomination in the last five years, and ten total since the founding of the state in 1948.

Israel received six BFLF nominations between 1964 and 1985, and then nothing until Beaufort was nominated in 2008. Based on a novel by Ron Leshem, Beaufort was also directed by Cedar (who co-wrote the screenplay with Leshem). Beaufort placed #2 on my own “Top Ten” list for 2007, and I am also a big fan of his first two films (Time of Favor and Campfire), so even though I haven’t seen his new film Footnote yet, I have high hopes for it. Reliable sources in Jerusalem tell me it will open here in Metro Chicago sometime in February.

Agnieszka Holland also received a BFLF nomination for In Darkness which played here in November as part of PFFA ‘11 (the Polish Film Festival in America). This is Holland’s third BFLF nomination, and the third time she has been recognized for her complex, multifaceted reflections on Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust.

Although Holland’s mother was Catholic, her Jewish father served in the Soviet army during WWII, and most of his family perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. Meanwhile her mother, Irena Rybczynska, was honored by Yad Vashem in 1990 for her work with the Polish Underground. In Darkness is already scheduled to open here for a commercial release on Feb 17.

Now the bad news: neither of these films is likely to win the BFLF Oscar on Feb 26. The heavy favorite in this category is A Separation from Iran (which also received a nomination in the Best Original Screenplay category).

And the story is even worse on the home front. This was already a bad year for the Jews at the multiplex, but yesterday’s list of nominations was even worse than anticipated because two seeming shoe-ins were snubbed.

Albert Brooks was named Best Supporting Actor by the Chicago Film Critics Association in December for playing” Bernie Rose” in Drive. Now I actually hated Drive, but Brooks was so surprising—and so good—in this role that he almost makes this otherwise excessively violent mess worth watching.

Here’s what I said in my blurb about Brooks’ performance for the CFCA Awards Ceremony at the Broadway Playhouse on Jan 7:

“Now it’s your turn to clean up after me, Izzy.” From his first scene eating take-out at Nino’s Pizzeria (“Where are the chop sticks? Bring me chop sticks.”), to his final attempt at negotiation in The Great Wall (“The girl is safe. No one knows about her.”), Albert Brooks creates a thoroughly unique character in Drive.

A Jewish mensch who knows the game, Bernie Rose still tries to retain some compassion for life’s losers. Amazing all of us who still thought of him as a nebbish forever “Lost in America,” the CFCA proudly names Albert Brooks our Best Supporting Actor of 2011.

Note this wasn’t just the local opinion. Applause for Brooks’ performance in Drive was widespread. He was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category by critics in London, San Diego, and Toronto, and he won the award from critics in Austin, Boston, Florida, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Washington DC. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe award and an Independent Spirit Award. So not seeing his name on the Oscar list yesterday was a huge surprise

Also missing was 50/50, which received two Golden Globe nominations (Best Motion Picture—Comedy/Musical and Best Performance by an Actor—Comedy/Musical) along with a huge number of nominations for Will Reiser’s screenplay from critics groups nationwide. Ironically 50/50 was released on DVD on Tuesday, but unfortunately the film won’t receive the Oscar bump everyone rightfully anticipated.

OK, yes, this is the film about the guy who learns he has a 50/50 chance of survival when a curt physician announces he has cancer. Sounds grim, I know, and yet this is an incredibly well-told, life-affirming story, and I highly recommended it. Although no one in the film ever talks about being Jewish—much less turns to a Rabbi for advice or consolation—it has a Jewish vibe through and through. Almost all of the principals in front of the camera as well as behind it are Jewish, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt certainly earned the “Actor of the Year” award he received from the Hollywood Film Festival.

50/50 was directed by Jonathan Levine who brought us the wonderfully quirky Indie The Wackness a few years back, and I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. Kudos to the folks at the Aspen Filmfest who gave him the Audience Favorite Feature award way back in February!

That leaves Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which was nominated for four Oscars yesterday: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Art Direction.

I’ve already spoken at length about Midnight in Paris in last month’s post (buttressed by a review of Manhattan plus one final rant), so I’m not going to rehash all of that again. But I ask you to be skeptical in your embrace of someone who has buried his very Jewish persona in the body of a surfer dude so he can continue to romance inappropriately young women vicariously on screen. More power to him, I guess, but I can’t ignore what I see just because everyone keeps telling me his whimsy is charming.

At The Great Wall

Missing on this year’s list of Oscar nominations: Albert Brooks!

Brooks was named Best Supporting Actor by the Chicago Film Critics Association in December for playing” Bernie Rose” in Drive. Now I actually hated Drive, but Brooks was so surprising—and so good—in this role that he almost makes this otherwise excessively violent mess worth watching.

Here’s what I said in my blurb about Brooks’ performance for the CFCA Awards Ceremony at the Broadway Playhouse on Jan 7:

“Now it’s your turn to clean up after me, Izzy.”

From his first scene eating take-out at Nino’s Pizzeria (“Where are the chop sticks? Bring me chop sticks.”), to his final attempt at negotiation in The Great Wall (“The girl is safe. No one knows about her.”), Albert Brooks creates a thoroughly unique character in Drive.

A Jewish mensch who knows the game, Bernie Rose still tries to retain some compassion for life’s losers. Amazing all of us who still thought of him as a nebbish forever “Lost in America,” the CFCA proudly names Albert Brooks our Best Supporting Actor of 2011.

Note this wasn’t just the local opinion. Applause for Brooks’ performance in Drive was widespread. He was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category by critics in London, San Diego, and Toronto, and he won the award from critics in Austin, Boston, Florida, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Washington DC. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe award and an Independent Spirit Award. So not seeing his name on the Oscar list yesterday was a huge surprise

The Driver: “My hands are a little dirty.”
Bernie Rose: “So are mine.”

Photo Credits: © Richard Foreman Jr

Courtesy of Summit Entertainment

Ryan Gosling with Albert Brooks in Drive.

OK, yes, this is the film about the guy who learns he has a 50/50 chance of survival when a curt physician announces he has cancer. Sounds grim, I know, and yet this is an incredibly well-told, life-affirming story, and I highly recommended it.

Although no one in the film ever talks about being Jewish—much less turns to a Rabbi for advice or consolation—it has a Jewish vibe through and through. Almost all of the principals in front of the camera as well as behind it are Jewish, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt certainly earned the “Actor of the Year” award he received from the Hollywood Film Festival. 

50/50 was directed by Jonathan Levine who brought us the wonderfully quirky Indie The Wackness a few years back, and I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. Kudos to the folks at the Aspen Filmfest who gave him the Audience Favorite Feature award way back in February!

Photo Credits: © Ed Araquel/Filmdistrict

Bottom Photo: Seth Rogen (left) with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 50/50.

Cedar received his first BFLF nomination for Beaufort in 2008, right after it appeared in the #2 position on my “10 Best” list for 2007.

Mazel Tov, Joe