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Naomi Pfefferman

Filmmakers reveal magician’s secretive world

How ‘The Iceman’ cameth to be

Bar Paly of ‘Pain & Gain,’ Israel’s other ‘Bar’ supermodel

Michael Shannon on ‘The Iceman’ by Israeli filmmaker Ariel Vromen

Drama in a ‘Class’ of its own

David S. Goyer talks ‘Batman,’ ‘Man of Steel’

Falafel Western wrangles opening night of Israel Film Fest

Scars of Israel’s ‘Numbered’

Listening to veterans

Harvard psychologist Dr. Paula J. Caplan recalled how her Jewish father, a captain of one of the first black tank units to serve in combat in World War II, often described his recollections of the war: He spoke not only of the heroism of his men, but also of the smell of burning flesh as he passed by enemy tanks and of seeing bodies frozen on fences or blown apart by shells.

‘Da Vinci’ goes rogue in new STARZ historical fantasy

The real Jeffrey Tambor

Jeremy Piven plays a self(ridge)-made man

Comedy-drama ‘Tribes’ communicates dysfunction of British-Jewish family

Boy on HBO’s ‘Girls’ is also a ‘restless’ filmmaker

New play, “Therapy,” explores the the lives and fears of therapist

‘The Americans’ - Straighten up and spy write

Bruce Cohen: A career full of ‘Silver Linings’

Film editor William Goldenberg faces off at the Oscars with…himself

Dysfunctional first family

Bar Refaeli makes out with nerd in Go Daddy Super Bowl commercial

For David O. Russell, it takes family

Saving the ‘Life of Pi’

Play reveals naked truth behind ‘Deep Throat’

What Judd Apatow thinks of the Jewish Journal

Benh Zeitlin: Conquering his ‘Beasts’

Paul Rudd Q & A:  ‘This is 40’

Judd Apatow mines midlife angst for ‘This Is 40’ [BONUS TRAILER]

Dan Fogelman Q & A: ‘The Guilt Trip’

Travis Fine on “Any Day Now”

Bette Midler: The Divine Miss Bubbe

Elie Wiesel on Oprah Dec. 9: Sneak peak Q & A [VIDEO]

‘Anything Goes’ is high jinks on the high seas

‘Coney Island’: A Christmas Story for Jews

‘Pi’ is approximately 3.1416% Jewish

Homes for homeless

Back in 2004, attorney Jerry Neuman was driving in Hollywood with his then-4-year-old son, Jake, when the boy noticed a disheveled homeless man on a bus bench beside a shopping cart of belongings. Jake asked his father where the man lived.

Mayim Bialik and Elon Gold on Obama victory

Brandon Cronenberg’s ‘Antiviral’ oozes into AFI Fest

Susan Polis Schutz explores ‘Seeds of Resiliency’

Comparing animal rights and the Holocaust

On Oct. 2, Alex Hershaft, a Holocaust survivor and founder of the nonprofit Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), sat on the ground with some 100 other protesters in front of the Farmer John pig slaughterhouse in Vernon, Calif., blocking the entrance from two bi-level trucks carrying 200 pigs that had arrived to be slaughtered that day.

The provocatively titled short film, ‘Jew’

Comparing animal rights and the Holocaust

On Oct. 2, Alex Hershaft, a Holocaust survivor and founder of the nonprofit Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), sat on the ground with some 100 other protesters in front of the Farmer John pig slaughterhouse in Vernon, Calif., blocking the entrance from two bi-level trucks carrying 200 pigs that had arrived to be slaughtered that day. In the next 24 hours, the pigs would be among 6,000 animals that would be stunned by electrical shock, hoisted up by their hind legs and their necks slit in the plant, which is the largest pig slaughterhouse on the West Coast.

An exhibition of Iranian Jews

On Sukkot, honoring the homeless

Mother’s Holocaust trauma behind David Geffen’s reluctance to discuss Jewishness

Remembering ‘One day in September’

Henry Jaglom discusses ‘Just 45 Minutes from Broadway’ [VIDEO]

Clara Mamet makes her way in the family biz

‘The Neighbors’: Aliens next door

Jeff Goldblum goes to the head of the class

Early in Theresa Rebeck’s comic play, “Seminar,” four aspiring writers cower in an Upper West Side New York apartment as Leonard (Jeff Goldblum), their imperious creative writing teacher, scans just one page of a short story before lambasting its author.

Jeff Goldblum goes to the head of the class

Actor feeds off ‘Mormon’s’ racy humor

Actor feeds off ‘Mormon’s’ racy humor

"My favorite kind of comedy is so wrong that it's right," actor Jared Gertner said. So it's fitting that he's starring in the blessedly twisted megahit musical "The Book of Mormon," which after scoring nine Tony Awards and a reputation for almost impossible-to-snag tickets has embarked on a national tour opening Sept. 5 at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles.

To Kaplan brothers, ‘Silence’ is golden

Henry Jaglom’s ‘45 Minutes from Broadway’

Sam Raimi’s latest horror flick draws on ‘true’ tale, Jewish exorcism

Back in 2004, the horror-flicks mogul Sam Raimi was riveted by a Los Angeles Times article headlined “A Jinx in a Box?” which recounted the strange history of a wine cabinet brought to this country by a Polish concentration camp survivor. The box contained “allegedly, one ‘dibbuk,’ a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore,” the article said — as well locks of hair, a rock, a dried rosebud, a goblet and coins.

Sam Raimi’s latest horror flick draws on ‘true’ tale, Jewish exorcism

Craig Zobel’s ‘Compliance’ and the Holocaust-inspired Milgram Experiment [VIDEO]

Rothko’s passion, tragedy galvanize Molina’s portrayal in ‘Red’

Rothko’s passion, tragedy galvanize Molina’s portrayal in ‘Red’

John Logan’s two-person play, “Red,” which spotlights the legendary Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, is set a decade before the notoriously prickly painter committed suicide in 1970. The drama, which opens at the Mark Taper Forum on Aug. 12, begins as Rothko (Alfred Molina) has accepted a hefty commission to create a series of murals for the swanky Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s iconic Seagram Building. He intends his luminous, contemplative paintings to transform the space into a “temple,” while his initially timid new assistant, Ken (Jonathan Groff), grows bolder and insists that the work will merely serve as décor for pricey boozing and dining.

‘Killer Joe’s’ William Friedkin:  ‘I could have been a very violent person’ [VIDEO]

Filmmaker forges intimate portrait of artist-activist Ai Weiwei

In 2010, Alison Klayman sat in a car in Chengdu, China, with her camera rolling as the internationally renowned conceptual artist and dissident Ai Weiwei scuffled with police, who were pushing and pulling at him and his entourage. The melee had erupted as Ai was attempting to file a lawsuit against the policeman who had beaten him so severely a year earlier that he had suffered a life-threatening cranial hemorrhage, requiring surgery to remove the blood from his brain.

It’s always about sex — or is it?  Ask David Frankel

“Nobody in this world thinks they’re having enough sex,” said director David Frankel, whose film “Hope Springs” spotlights a beleaguered 60-something couple played by Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. “Watch any night on television, or any comedian in a nightclub, and every other joke is about people who aren’t getting enough. It’s true of people Meryl and Tommy’s age, and it’s true of teenagers — everybody thinks somebody else is doing it more.”

It’s always about sex — or is it?  Ask David Frankel

Filmmaker forges intimate portrait of artist-activist Ai Weiwei

Hell hath no fury like a tough (Israeli) woman scorned

David Geffen:  prickly and terse about his Judaism

A (Slightly) Lighter Shade of Dark with ‘Dark Horse’

A (Slightly) Lighter Shade of Dark with ‘Dark Horse’

The last time I interviewed Todd Solondz—one of independent cinema’s most acidic provocateurs—he joked that his agents were thrilled with his black comedy “Dark Horse” “because there’s no child molestation, masturbation or rape in it.”

The Exorcist

Brooke Shields, Richard Chamberlain and Teller on “Exorcist’s” demon [SLIDESHOW]

Dog ‘Guru’ Justin Silver

Dog ‘Guru’ Justin Silver puts owners on tight leash [SLIDE SHOW]

Dog ‘Guru’ Justin Silver puts owners on tight leash

When it comes to canines going to the dogs, trainer Justin Silver has seen it all: the pooch whose owner treated it like a baby, complete with diaper changes; the bulldog named Beefy who refused to take a walk unless he was schlepped down the street on a skateboard; the modeling agency owner who brought her fierce terrier mix to work every day, where it tried to attack everyone in sight. When Silver asked her how many times the mutt had bitten people, she replied, “Are you counting blood bites and non-blood bites?”

Andrew Garfield:  The Jewish Spidey [SLIDESHOW]

‘The Exorcist’ at the Geffen: No green vomit, but plenty of evil

William Peter Blatty was a Georgetown University student in August 1949 when he came across a front-page story in the Washington Post titled “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” Blatty, a devout Catholic, was fascinated by the accounts of the 14-year-old’s bed violently shaking and torrents of curses in Latin whenever the exorcist commanded the demon to leave the boy.

‘The Exorcist’ at the Geffen: No green vomit, but plenty of evil

Miri Ben-Ari performs for the president today

Alex Kurztman gets personal in ‘People Like Us’

‘That’s My Boy’ reviews:  They could have been worse

Adam Shankman melds worry with chutzpah in ‘Rock of Ages’

Oh, What a Tangled ‘Web’ She Weaves

It’s all about the kids

When his late grandmother was first diagnosed with terminal cancer three years ago, Jason Aftalion was moved by the volunteers who visited her at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. "I was so touched by how they talked to her and spent time with her, so she wouldn't be lonely," said Aftalion, a Persian-American senior at Milken Community High School.

Healing others, and herself

Almost every day, Marissa Meyer, an 18-year-old senior at Agoura High School, heads out to the stable where her riding teacher rehabilitates abused horses. There she works with her 15-year-old gelding, Lucky. Helping to heal him after his difficult life at a dude ranch has been one of her passions for the last seven years and has also helped spur her interest in physical therapy and sports medicine in humans.

Women in wheelchairs ‘Push’ boundaries in real life, TV

Donna Summer memories

‘The Dictator’ reviews are in, and the verdict is…

‘Hysteria’ and the invention of the vibrator [VIDEO]

Filmmaker writes from experience for post-Holocaust drama ‘Mighty Fine’

Filmmaker Debbie Goodstein has taken to heart the adage, “Write what you know.” Her 1989 Holocaust documentary, “Voices From the Attic,” recounts her mother’s years of hiding in a garret where snow descended through slats in the roof, a baby died and food was scarce.

‘The Dictator’: Top Jewish moments

Revisiting a conversation with Vidal Sassoon

Meet the filmmakers of the French megahit “The Intouchables” [VIDEO]

‘Dictator’ scribes dish on Sacha Baron Cohen’s new comedy

‘Girls’ writer lays bare women’s insecurities

Jason Segel on the universe—and ‘The Five Year Engagement’

About a dog, lost and found

Film Festival spotlights Jewish Hollywood, old and new

To screen or not to screen

[UPDATE] Gibson’s Maccabee film on hold; screenwriter calls Mel “Jew-hater,” Gibson responds

Jeffrey Dean Morgan on playing a Jewish hotelier

‘American Reunion’ scribes on A Very Harold & Kumar Passover

Schlossberg, Hurwitz Create a Heartfelt ‘Reunion’ of Raunch

Jews navigate ‘Magic City’  of midcentury Miami

Starring in ‘Godot’ ... and Remembering Beckett

Segel’s starry-eyed man-child amuses and moves us

‘American Idiot’ a very smart idea for Kitt and Green Day

Mezzo-soprano sings of ‘Color’ despite blindness

Paul Weitz on dads, De Niro and “Being Flynn”

How studio exec-turned-producer pitched ‘Moneyball’

‘Hugo’ writer Selznic talks of the magic of film

The other silent actor: Max von Sydow plays a mute in a post-9/11 story

Revisiting Jonah Hill, Oscar nominee!

‘Better Life’ producers thrilled with Demian Bichir’s Oscar nod

‘Rampart’ director brings his Israeli military service to L.A.‘s mean streets

Roseanne for president.  Really.

Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland on “In Darkness” [VIDEO]

Ben Lewin’s ‘The Surrogate’ wins at Sundance, and beyond

Writer’s Guild to Honor ‘Extremely’ Talented Screenwriter Eric Roth

‘The Surrogate’ sells at Sundance—for $6 million!

Sundance: Helen Hunt as a sexual surrogate

Polio survivor’s new film explores sexual surrogacy

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May 17-23, 2013

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