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February 10, 2005

Jewish Movies

Here's a nice site on Jewish themed and influenced films. It's mainly a review site, but the reviews are very well thought out and well written (and there's a ton of them). On Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights: "But while this film shows in bittersweet detail what looking beyond one's culture is good for, it never questions why both boys don't fall for Jewish girls. If virtually every -coming-of-age Jewish movie didn't feature the hero always falling for a "Shiksa", I wouldn't question it either, but Jewish girls in these films are either nonexistent, or they are featured as overly aggressive (in this film, they are just nonexistent)." On the 1959 Ben Hur: "...these noble, Hollywoodized characterizations create a wider gap between the races (and the truth) when one is confronted with the way Semites really looked, and I personally think that faith is something that deserves an honest representation. I'm not trying to be "PC". If people want to believe that this Semite Jew named Ben Hur really looked like Peer Gynt on steroids, that's fine. Faith is also illusion, and this is after all just a story of one person's experience of being touched by Christ. It's metaphorical. But in my mind, as a movie, this is just a case of bad acting (Hawkins is good) and bad direction. But the Academy gave it 11 awards. What do I know?"

The site also has a nice collection of Goldwynisms. My favorite: "If I look confused it's because I'm thinking."

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