Greenberg's View
Editorial Cartoon: The First Offering
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Trying to determine the worst offender may seem a Sisyphean task considering the past year’s almost farcical uptick in anti-Semitic rants. It’s like separating your least favorite jelly beans from an overstuffed crate. But to their credit as artists, this bunch has at least provided Jew-hating vitriol so colorful and diverse, no one will get bored with the same bean (OK, Mel, you get to be the exception).
Elizabeth Taylor, who died Wednesday at age 79, spent much of her life in the public eye – famous for her violet eyes and her jewelry – and she managed over the years to transition from child star, to legendary beauty, to Oscar-winning actress, to tabloid fodder for her passionate affairs, her tumultuous marriages and divorces, to philanthropist being among the first notable Hollywood personality to speak about AIDS and, as co-founder of AMFAR, one of the earliest AIDS research and support organizations – no small achievement.
Academy Award-winning actress Elizabeth Taylor, who maintained a support for Israel after converting to Judaism in the late 1950s, has died.
In the opening montage of Sunday’s Academy Award ceremony, hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway played with a dreidel, which proved to be a good omen that a good night awaited Jewish talent.
I had this fantasy about Aaron Sorkin. It’s probably only natural that I should want to know him, because he is, after all, the most intelligent and sharp-witted writer working in Hollywood today. His prestige began with “A Few Good Men” (1992), surged with the “The West Wing,” which he created in 1999 and for which he wrote until 2003, and was cemented with “The Social Network,” which deftly showcases his extraordinary writing talent — although he’s also had a few flops — and his uncanny gift for cultural relevance.
Famously a jack-of-all-trades to the movie business, Sid Ganis, 71, has held top posts at two major studios — Paramount and Columbia —worked side-by-side with George Lucas and independently produced hits such as “Big Daddy,” “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” and “Akeelah and the Bee.” Add to that a four-year stint as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he currently serves as vice president, and it all equals — as they say in the biz — a Hollywood “heavyweight.”
Running a television show is the sort of job that rarely leaves you with free-time on your hands, but during the writers' strike of 2007, “24” executive producer Howard Gordon suddenly found himself with just that – free time, and no scripts to write. So he decided to try his hand at a novel instead. Gordon's debut effort, an international thriller titled “Gideon's War,” hits shelves this month.
In the half century that this reporter has been writing about Hollywood, the Oscars and domestic and foreign films, not a year has gone by without prominent movies and documentaries focusing on the Holocaust, the Nazi era or World War II.
Actress Natalie Portman, who is expecting her first child, announced she will marry the baby's father.
“I hate lying,” Jon Lovitz, the comedian, actor and comedy club owner said without a touch of humor in his voice. “I just can’t stand it. I don’t see the advantage of it. It makes me physically ill.”
A Chasidic man from Brooklyn is suing talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Actor Mel Gibson made "anti-Semitic and homophobic" remarks long before he was caught on tape making those kind of comments, actress Winona Ryder said.
Werner Hanak-Lettner, a curator for the Jüdisches Museum Wien (the Jewish Museum Vienna) has lately been asking a lot of people the question, “Does Hollywood feel like a Jewish place?”
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.