(JTA) — Mandy Patinkin brought a piece of his silver-screen past to the table in his first direct appeal to American Jews to vote for a candidate, Joe Biden.
Inigo Montoya’s sword plays a role in Patinkin’s appeal in a Jewish Democratic Council of America ad debuting Friday.
In an interview, Patinkin said it wasn’t the first time he used objects that melded his fictional and real universes: Saul Berenson,...
(JTA) — The daughter of a late Holocaust survivor is suing to have her mother’s appearance in Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming “Borat” sequel removed from the film, stating that the comedy mocks “the Holocaust and Jewish culture.”
Cohen, who is Jewish, interviewed Judith Dim Evans earlier this year “under false pretenses with the intent of appropriating her likeness,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed this week with the Superior Court...
(JTA) — Gal Gadot will channel a real-life wonder woman as the star of a blockbuster film about the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
The Israeli star will work on the film alongside “Wonder Woman” director Patty Jenkins, Deadline first reported.
Gadot’s husband Yaron Varsano and the couple’s Pilot Wave production company will be involved in the project as well. Universal, Warner Bros, Netflix and Apple also vied for the rights to...
(JTA) — Take your pick: Crystal method, or Kristol, Bill’s persuasion.
Billy Crystal, the actor and comedian, and Bill Kristol, the onetime top adviser to Republican officials who has become a prominent “Never Trumper” joined in an ad released this week to explain why they were voting for Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee hoping to oust Donald Trump on Nov. 3.
“We never agree on anything!” says Crystal who pretends...
There is a minor, but pivotal moment in Marcus H. Rosenmüeller’s film “The Keeper” where a rabbi makes a major and dramatic declaration. Based on the real life story of Bert (Bernd) Trautmann, the film recounts how Rabbi Alexander Altmann, a noted, former German-Jewish scholar who had fled the Nazis, advocates his fellow Manchester citizens accept Trautmann, a former decorated Nazi soldier, as the goalkeeper for their...
(JTA) — Jewish actor and comedian Rick Moranis was the victim of an assault in New York City, police said.
On Thursday, media outlets reported that someone punched an unnamed 67-year-old man in the head on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Police said the following day that Moranis visited the hospital for pain in his head, back and hip and then reported the crime. A video shows Moranis falling...
(JTA) — Actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen said he will not post to his Instagram account on Wednesday in protest of parent company Facebook’s failure to fight hate.
Cohen made the announcement in support of the Week of Action organized by the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which was spearheaded over the summer by the Anti-Defamation League, NAACP and several other civil rights groups. The groups are protesting Facebook’s unwillingness...
“Harbor from the Holocaust” shares the story of 20,000 Jewish refugees who fled Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II to the city of Shanghai.
A production of WQED, the one-hour film explores the extraordinary relationship the refugees, known as “Shanghailanders,” had with their adopted city through the bitter years of the Japanese occupation from 1937 to 1945 and the bitter Chinese civil war that followed....
(JTA) — Seth Rogen’s “An American Pickle” is one of the most Jewish Hollywood films ever.
In it, Rogen plays two Jewish family members separated by a century: Ben Greenbaum, a young app developer who lives in Brooklyn, and Herschel Greenbaum, his great-grandfather from the old country who falls into a vat of pickles and stays perfectly preserved in brine for 100 years. Call it a pickle...