No plaster saint, nor marble effigy of Abraham Lincoln is to be found in THE BETTER ANGELS. Based on the recollections of Lincoln’s surviving family, as spoken by his cousin about his boyhood in Indiana, this is a Lincoln before the legends had taken root, the Lincoln of great promise whose intellectual curiosity and love… Read More »
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1 is not unlike its iconic heroine, Katniss Everdeen. It’s bold, headstrong, no-nonsense, and impatient to get on with things. It begins almost directly from whence the last installment of the saga left off, and with little if any exposition about anything that happened before. For example, why those… Read More »
Bennett Miller on FOXCATCHER
During a press day, it’s usually the publicist who gives the signal that time is up. In the case of Bennett Miller, though, he was concerned that the opening and closing of the door would interfere with the sound I was recording. That’s why he set a timer on his phone, and why at the… Read More »
Jon Stewart and Maziar Bahari – Rosewater
As God is my witness, I thought that Jon Stewart knew that Aryan had more than one definition. He didn’t, but it made for a lively way to start my conversation with both him and Maziar Bahari on October 22, 2014. As Bahari pointed out, Iranians are the original Aryans, and he went on to… Read More »
Jon Favreau is CHEF
Jon Favreau is very serious about CHEF. Its his baby, after all. He wrote, directed, and co-starred in this lovely fable about a chef who has to have the rug pulled out from under him to find out what it means to be successful. Hence his willingness to sit down for an interview at 6:45… Read More »
Theodore Bikel Walks IN THE SHOES OF SHOLOM ALEICHEM
Where to begin when talking to the wonder that is Theodore Bikel? In his 90 years (and counting), hes been arrested protesting the treatment of Soviet Jewery, and protesting for civil rights in the American south. He originated the role of Captain Von Trapp on Broadway, recorded the best-selling Yiddish folk albums of all time,… Read More »
Tom Dolby — LAST WEEKEND
It was only right that when I spoke by phone with Tom Dolby about LAST WEEKEND on September 12, 2014, he was on his porch overlooking a lake. LAST WEEKEND, which Dolby co-directed with Tom Williams from his own script, is set on Lake Tahoe during an emotionally tumultuous Labor Day Weekend for the affluent Green family. One of the… Read More »
Richard Linklater — BOYHOOD
Richard Linklater’s films cant be easily pigeon-holed, and that’s because he surrenders to the driving force of an artistic compulsion, or as he put is when I spoke to him on July 17, 2014, a crazy idea. His latest film, BOYHOOD, is an example of an idea so crazy that it’s beyond brilliant. It’s inspired.… Read More »
Meeting THE GREEN PRINCE with Nadav Schirman, Gonen Ben Yitzak & Mossab Hassan Yousef
When THE GREEN PRINCE made its west coast debut at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 24, 2014, no one in the audience knew that the subjects of the documentary, former Shin Beit agent Gonen Ben Yitzak, and Mossab Hassan Yousef, the Palestinian son of a founder of Hamas, and the man Gonen recruited… Read More »
PIRATE RADIO
What PIRATE RADIO does that is so remarkable is to capture as closely as a film can what it was like to be a fan of rock & roll at a time when it was considered not just noise, but actual subversion. Of course, in a way it was. This music was the anthem of… Read More »
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