Currently Browsing: Tzivi’s Rants/Raves
I am not just in love with Joseph Cedar’s new film Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, I am ensnared and somewhat obsessed. I have now seen Norman three times, first at a critic’s screening in mid-March, then at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema on opening weekend in NYC (the night […]
Spare to a fault, the new Polish drama Ida leaves so much open to interpretation that it becomes a Rorschach Test. And sad to say, the things you see in it are likely to reflect what you knew about the Holocaust — or thought you knew — before you ever entered the theatre. Shout-Out to My Mishpokhe: […]
Jan Plans; God Laughs. I was in Chicago to give my annual lectures on Fiddler on the Roof for the Chicago YIVO Society’s 2013 Summer Festival of Yiddish Culture when I posted my review of Margarethe von Trotta’s film Hannah Arendt (which was opening in Metro Chicago that same week). I promised myself I would […]
Margarethe von Trotta’s new film Hannah Arendt resurrects two old controversies. The first is about Hannah Arendt’s relationship with Martin Heidegger. The second is about her relationship with Varian Fry. Click HERE for more on Varian Fry. Thoughts about Martin Heidegger are below. Hannah Arendt opens Friday (8/16) in Metro Chicago. Click HERE for our FF2 Haiku. Click HERE for my review from Penny’s […]
Margarethe von Trotta’s new film Hannah Arendt resurrects two old controversies. The first is about Hannah Arendt’s relationship with Martin Heidegger. The second is about her relationship with Varian Fry. Click HERE for more on Martin Heidegger. Thoughts about Varian Fry are below. Hannah Arendt opens Friday (8/16) in Metro Chicago. Click HERE for our FF2 […]
“These memories of Manhattan no doubt colored the way I saw Midnight in Paris in the theatre last summer, so after yesterday’s Golden Globe announcement, I went back and watched them both again. While several critics have compared the opening montages, no one that I know of has compared the final scenes.” Click HERE to read my […]
Way back in mid-December, working on my January ’11 JUF News column, I said: “As I write, several critics groups have already named The Social Network as their Top Pick for 2010, but I’m frankly not sure why–the depiction of Mark Zuckerberg as a pushy geek reaching for the next rung isn’t exactly groundbreaking…” I only get […]
Gilbert Achcar came to University of Chicago’s International House on Nov 15th to read from his new book The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. Raised in Beruit and educated primarily in France, Achcar is currently professor of international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. […]
SPOILER ALERT! PLOT POINTS FOLLOW! Three days after seeing Steve Peterson’s wonderful new play The Invasion of Skokie at Chicago Dramatists, I’m still enthralled. Watching Invasion on Sunday, I learned some new things about my family, my world, and myself. Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones basically likes the play too, but he thinks it has […]
Ruba Nadda’s new film Cairo Time is about an American magazine editor named “Juliette” (played by Patricia Clarkson) who travels to Cairo for a vacation with her husband “Mark” (Tom McCamus). But Mark never shows up, throwing her into a romance with local man named “Tareq” (Alexander Siddig). Altho Clarkson does a lovely job conveying the multiple emotions of a […]