Arts I Life
MOSTLY MODERN
40"
One of the top four shows of its kind in the
country featuring 20th-century design, the
Michigan Modernism Exposition returns to the
Southfield Municipal Complex, 26000 Evergreen
Road, Friday-Sunday, Apiil 22-24.
Seventy of the nation's most prominent
Modernism merchants will offer pieces designed
by Modernism icons including Frank Lloyd
Wright, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Herman Miller,
Heywood Wakefield, the Stickleys, Salvador Dali
and other designers of the Art Deco, Art
Nouveau, Prairie, Arts and Crafts, Surrealistic and
Neo-Classical schools of design. Industrial design,
tramp art and prominent movements of the
1950s and 1960s round out the showings.
The annual preview celebration, benefiting
both ArtServe Michigan and the Detroit Area Art
Deco Society, runs 7-10 p.m. Friday, featuring
wine and hors d'oeuvres, music, a raffle, compli-
mentary valet parking and first crack at purchas-
ing the best of Modernism's furniture, jewelry,
clothing, radios, photographs, art glass, china, sil-
ver, bronzes, clocks, watches, paintings and tex-
tiles. Tickets to the preview party are $65 in
advance and $75 at the door; patron tickets are
available for $150. Call (248) 557-8288, ext. 17,
or go to www.artservemichigan.org/moderne.
Regular show hours are 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday (Passover
begins at sundown Saturday). Admission is $8/$7
CELEBRITY JEWS
NATE BLOOM
Special to the Jewish News
Hobbitt At A Seder
Actor SEAN ASTIN,
who's best known for
The Lord of the Rings,
told a Los Angeles radio
show that he'll be cele-
brating Passover this
year with his biological
father, MICHAEL
TELL, the publisher of
the Las Vegas Israelite, a
Jewish paper.
Here's the odd story:
Sean Astin
Sean's mother is actress
Patty Duke. Both actor
John Astin and singer Desi Arnaz Jr. were
involved with Duke not long before Sean was
32•1
4/21
2005
52
Best Bets
with ads or listings; one paid admission
is good for both days. Children under
12 are free. Information:
www.antiqnet.com/M&M.
SATELLITE STORY
Written, directed and produced by
Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for
Drunken Horses), Turtles Can Fly is set in a
refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan and features a
cast of local children (both professional and non-
actors). The camp's residents desperately seek a
satellite dish so they can learn about the impend-
ing American invasion and war in Iraq.
Thirteen-year-old Soran (Soran Ebrahim),
known as "Satellite" for his installation of dishes
and antennae for local villages looking for news
of Saddam, is the dynamic
leader of the children (most
of them orphans), organizing
the dangerous but necessary
sweeping and clearing of the
minefields. He then arranges
trade-ins for the unexploded
mines.
Combining both humor
and pathos, the film was the
Iranian submission for the
Best Foreign Film Oscar.
conceived in 1970. However, during the middle
of 1970, Duke met Michael Tell. Their whole
relationship, from beginning to divorce, lasted
less than two months.
Both John Astin and Patty Duke thought John
was Sean's father when they married in 1972.
Fast forward to 1994, when, by chance, Sean
meets Michael Tell's niece. They talked about the
"tangled situation." Sean then got a DNA test
that proved that Tell was his father.
John Astin reacted well to the news, and Sean
says that he considers both men his father. He
told the L.A. station that he and Michael are
"close." Perhaps their connection led Sean to
agree to be one of the narrators of the Holocaust
documentary The Long Way Home (1997).
Beam Me To Arkansas, Scotty
On April 9, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra
premiered a three-part oratorio called Exodus,
composed by the orchestra's musical director
DAVID ITKIN and featuring the symphony and
a 300-voice choir composed of members of sever-
It screens 7 and 9:30 p.m. Friday and
Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, April 22-
24, at the Detroit Film Theatre at the
Detroit Institute of Arts (Passover
begins at sundown on Saturday).
$7.50/$6.50 DIA members, seniors and
students. Reserve tickets by phone:
(313) 833-3237.
LOVELY LYRICS
"Long before Alanis and Jewel," says Billboard
magazine, "there was a breed of singer-songwrit-
ers whose earthly anthems of soul-searching,
heartache and joy touched souls in a way few can
muster today." California-raised Jewish singer-
songwriter Karla Bonoff was one of the best of
that breed.
Linda Ronstadt's recordings of her songs,
including "Someone to
Lay Down Beside Me"
and "Lose Again,"
Wynona Judd's hit "Tell
Me Why," and tracks by
Aaron Neville, Bonnie
Raitt and a host of others
brought her music to the
masses as Bonoff's own
performing career
skimmed beneath the
OUT & ABOUT on page 54
al Arkansas choral groups.
Itkin told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that
he was inspired by his family's seders and, to the
best of his knowledge, that this is the first time
the biblical story and elements of the seder have
been combined musically in such a way.
The oratorio's narrator was WILLIAM
SHATNER, who replaced LEONARD NIMOY,
when Nimoy opted out for personal reasons.
Shatner told the Gazette he was, of course, famil-
iar with the material: It's "a tradition handed
from father to son for generations."
Itkin explained to the paper: "When Nimoy
canceled, we researched many possible actors. We
kept on coming back to Shatner. People are
going to draw the wrong inference — that there's
some sort of weird biblical Star Trek connection
here. He was clearly the best choice, and he
showed real, genuine interest in the project when
it was proposed to him." -
Shatner's narration was a smash, with the
Gazette noting, "[Hej used all his tools of emo-
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