25 Jan
Culture

A Jew Named Oscar?

Oscar nominations were announced yesterday, and Jews and Jewish-themed movies, as you might expect, were among the honorees. Woody Allen (yes, he's Jewish!) racked up four nominations for "Midnight in Paris" (though nothing for Adrien Brody, whose version of Salvador Dali is the only way we want to imagine the artist); "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close", based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, is up for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor; Steven Spielberg's "War Horse" got a nod for Best Picture, among other nominations (We sneaked into this movie for five minutes before "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and, you know, it's "War Horse."); Jonah Hill is up for Best Supporting Actor (making up for the "Superbad" snub, natch); and in the Foreign Language category, office favorite "Footnote" from Israel (a Talmudic thriller? Yes,...

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15 Sep
Arts & Culture, Latest

Battle of the Jewish Book Nerds

By Sarah Breger In an interview with The New Yorker’s Book Bench, Lev Grossman, Time’s book critic and author of The Magicians explains his long-standing feud with Jonathan Safran Foer: I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game. Then I figured out that he was Jonathan Safran Foer. True story. You don’t get over a thing like that. This is kind of like the time I sat near Nathan Englander at the Hungarian Pastry Shop in New York. He was working on For The Relief of Unbearable Urges and I was eating a cheese danish. True...

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