Arts

August 12, 2008

Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on

It was at college that he first met Allen Ginsberg. "He was 17. He was a bit crazy, and he was more eccentric than I was," Gold said.



Featured

Nan Tepper and Larry Ohlson performing in Neil 
Simon's "Lost in Yonkers." Photo by Ed KriegerWednesday, August 6, 2008

Deferred dream comes true for actress Nan Tepper

"I had been a student, wife, mother, news executive and caregiver, but I had always promised myself that one day I would be an actor."

Slim GaillardWednesday, August 6, 2008

Paul Shapiro’s ‘vout’ mishegoss

In 1945, the hippest Hollywood nightlife destination was Billy Berg's, on the corner of Vine and DeLongpre. A tall, suave black man named Slim Gaillard, who favored pinstripe suits, held court there. Black entertainers were seldom booked west of Western Avenue in those days, and Gaillard's appearances at Berg's were, in a very real sense, where Hollywood's racial integration began.

Latest

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

The soldier in the center ring

As far as he has traveled, from Israel to Southern California, Ben-Binyamin has come an even greater distance in recent years in his transition from the IDF to the circus, a change he refers to as "extreme."

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Armageddon Survival 101

"It starts when you open your eyes in the morning. Maybe you're awakened by the sounds of random gunfire, or the howling of souls being cast into the lake of fire," Kutner writes. "But at least it's not that godawful clock-radio buzzer."

Steven Schub, left, and Morlan Higgins 
in "The Accomplices." Photo by Ed KriegerWednesday, July 30, 2008

‘Forgotten Hero’ of the Shoah Peter Bergson gets his due times two

(From left) Helena Bonham Carter, Eddie Marsan, 
Gregg Sulkin and Ben Newton star in "Sixty Six." 
Photo by Giles KeyteWednesday, July 30, 2008

Comic rewrite of bar mitzvah fiasco fuels ‘Sixty Six’

"It was one of the most hilarious speeches I had ever heard," Bonham Carter recalled of Weiland's spiel. "Afterwards Paul was absolutely mobbed with people who thought he should turn the story into a movie. And I asked if I could play his mum."

Jamie MasadaWednesday, July 23, 2008

The costliest word in show business . . . the 'N-word' [VIDEO]

Jamie Masada of the Laugh Factory on Sunset says Jesse Jackson owes $50 to the Museum of Tolerance for using the 'N-word' on TV

Otto Tausig as Max KohnWednesday, July 23, 2008

Geriatric love, (I.B.) Singer style

To Max's surprise and delight, the bereaved widow proves quite amorous, insisting, as do his other female companions, that a man is never too old for some active love-making

Anat CohenWednesday, July 23, 2008

Jazz clarinetist Anat Cohen—so many roads

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

JDub throws off the label and opts for change

JDub was never supposed to be just a record label, and as JDub records celebrates its fifth anniversary with a free concert on July 27 downtown at California Plaza, it is more clear than ever that the organization's founders have greater ambitions than merely putting out good Jewish CDs

Paul S. Castro, right, executive director of Jewish Family 
Service of Los Angeles, welcomes Jeff Nagler as the new 
JFS president at a June 16 installation ceremony.
See story belowThursday, July 17, 2008

The hip Jewish museum by the Bay, Nagler new JFS chief

The new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is a hip amalgam of modern art. Daniel Liebeskind's peculiar architectural dazzle looks like a giant Rubik's Cube in metallic steel, standing on its tip beneath the city's downtown skyscrapers. Beside it is the Jessie Street Power Substation, a brick and terra cotta structure in the classical revival style, a landmark building first erected in 1881 that Liebeskind adapted to the project.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Shut up and read this book review

Levey's experiences are so amusing, the uninitiated might think he made them up. As anyone who has spent considerable time in Israel knows, though, he didn't need to. Levey's cast of characters merely exemplifies the saying, "Jews are just like other people -- only more so."

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Prolific Israeli producer-director tries Hollywood

Israeli producer-director Uri Paster has four movie and theater projects planned this year

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

A Mensh on the radiowaves to recovery

Over the next 13 years, Mensh snorted cocaine (sometimes off the turntables at his disc jockey gigs), added acid and Quaaludes to the mix, and imbibed to the point that he blacked out, only to awaken in a ditch or a stranger's car or bed.

Kids enjoying the arts and crafts at the 
free family festival. Photos by Gary LeonardWednesday, July 9, 2008

In which the writer discovers Nextbook’s new read on culture


"A man should live, if only to satisfy his curiosity." The Yiddish proverb, tacked to the wall of my study, came to mind when curiosity -- and the assignment to entertain my visiting young grandsons -- led me to the Nextbook festival. It's a personal embarrassment, or the fault of the organization's anti-promotional attitude, that I had never heard of Nextbook, or as its logo has it: nextbook>.

(From left) Dominic Rains, Oren Dayan and director Ellen Shipley rehearse "Desert Sunrise." 
Photo by Russel BoastWednesday, July 9, 2008

Israeli and Palestinian shed their armor in ‘Desert Sunrise’

The play opens in the south Hebron hills in the West Bank with Tsahi, an off-duty Israel Defense Forces soldier, pointing his gun at Ismail, a Palestinian shepherd. Having just broken up with his settler girlfriend, Tsahi is lost and seeking a way back to the main road. Ismail, waiting for his girlfriend, is the only one who can help Tsahi find his way.

Leigh Silverman
Photo by Joan MarcusWednesday, July 9, 2008

Leigh Silverman:  Nurturing novel ideas, one play at a time

One day, when Leigh Silverman was 15 and the youngest student in a college summer drama program, her teacher pointedly asked her to stay after class.
"She said, 'Leigh, you shouldn't be an actress; you're terrible,'" Silverman, now 33, recalled with a laugh. "I was horrified. But then she said I had good insights about the plays, and that instead of acting I should be her assistant.

Scene from the filmWednesday, July 9, 2008

Israeli film ‘My Father My Lord’—Abraham’s binding of Isaac redux

In the Israeli film "My Father My Lord," the secular or casually religious Jew encounters a world whose mindset and lifestyle might as well be thousands of miles and centuries away. It is the world of the charedi, or ultra-Orthodox, community, in which every action, every thought, is determined by God's law, as elucidated by the sages.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

The heart and the drive

He was famous for being the first man in Hungary to own a car, and my grandmother kept a clipping from the Royal Hungarian Automobile Society with a picture of him seated at the controls of his Benz with a little girl on the rear rumble seat. Beneath the photo was the caption in Hungarian, German and French, proclaiming "Hatsek Bela le premier automobiliste Hongrois sur son voiture Benz en 1895."

Prayer scene from "A Jihad for Love," a documentary that will be screened at Outfest.Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Islamic tales of forbidden love, lovers

Early in "A Jihad for Love," a new documentary directed by Parvez Sharma and produced by Sandi Simcha Dubowski, we meet Mazen, a 20-something Egyptian man who has fled Cairo for Paris to avoid the three-year prison sentence authorities want to impose on him because he is gay.

Books
Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on

It was at college that he first met Allen Ginsberg. "He was 17. He was a bit crazy, and he was more eccentric than I was," Gold said.



Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Armageddon Survival 101

"It starts when you open your eyes in the morning. Maybe you're awakened by the sounds of random gunfire, or the howling of souls being cast into the lake of fire," Kutner writes. "But at least it's not that godawful clock-radio buzzer."

Director Isabel Coixet on the set of "Elegy"Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Waxing (Philip) Roth

I decided to watch every film adapted from Philip Roth's work. My mission started simply enough: a search on imdb.com turned up eight works on film and TV, stretching back to the 1950s. Some had never been released on video, some are only in VHS, some were available at the local video store, some had to be tracked down in specialty shops or in university or museum archives. My quest led me across Los Angeles and afforded me the pleasure of visiting some of the city's most beautiful libraries and research facilities, as well as some of its best-stocked video stores.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Shut up and read this book review

Levey's experiences are so amusing, the uninitiated might think he made them up. As anyone who has spent considerable time in Israel knows, though, he didn't need to. Levey's cast of characters merely exemplifies the saying, "Jews are just like other people -- only more so."

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

‘Simplexity’ explains the methods to the madness

A handshake might seem to be a simple, even thoughtless social exchange. But behind the meeting of hands are a lot of neural firings, tactile feedback, control of muscles, depth perception; it's a ritual that grows out of a long tradition of greetings and social cues.


Featured Stories

Food
Eating Bambi (recipe included)

Most of the anti-Semitic mail I get these days doesn't concern Israel, Hollywood or even the threat of a nuclear war in the Middle East -- it's about meat.

Music
Jazzman Frishberg charts own tuneful territory

One of the great joys of L.A. jazz, from the mid-1970s to the mid-'80s, was the blossoming of jazz pianist Dave Frishberg into a singer-songwriter of quirky, yet warmly satisfying, material.

Torah Portion
How to comfort and be comforted

Parshat Vaetchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) God tells Moses that although he's faithfully led His people through the desert these past 40 years, and although the Jews are now standing at the very border of the Holy Land, Moses himself will never be allowed entry, and will die and

Religion
Randy Pausch’s last lecture links morality and purpose

"Brick walls are there for a reason," wrote the late Dr. Randy Pausch, author of the best-selling book, "The Last Lecture."

Opinion
The Great Awakening

The Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church will hold back-to-back public conversations this Saturday, Aug. 16, with the two presumptive presidential
candidates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. The conversations, on the topic of "Compassion and Leadership," will be