Arts & Entertainment

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Gail Zimmerman

Arts Ed itor

True Bluesman

Much has been written about the corn-
mon ground between the blues and Jewish
culture. A musician since he was barely
big enough to hold a guitar, Andy Cohen
has known, studied and traveled with
some of the legendary early blues musi-
cians, including the late Rev. Gary Davis.
Once called "the shmendrick of American
blues:' Cohen, renowned for his under-
standing and mastery of country blues, is
considered a scholar of Davis' works and
Piedmont/ragtime guitar style.
A player of
classic
American
music since the
1960s, Cohen
as of late has
been teaming
up with pianist
Andy Cohen
Ragtime Jack
Radcliffe to deliver concerts combining
their ragtime and country blues reper-
toires. They throw in some bad jokes and
a penchant for silliness in their perform-
ances together, too.

Jews

40

NateBloom

Special to the Jewish News

ME

Not A Friendly Time

Good Night, and Good Luck, directed by
actor George Clooney, opens Friday, Oct.
14, in Detroit. The movie, which has
great advance reviews, covers the coura-
geous decision of CBS newsman Edward
Murrow, in 1954, to attack Sen. Joseph
McCarthy and his practice of recklessly
smearing people as Communists.
Clooney, himself, plays Murrow's
Jewish producer FRED W. FRIENDLY.
Also Jewish in real life
and showing up as film
characters are CBS
news producer DON
HEWITT (who went
on to create 60
Minutes) and the
founder/owner of CBS,
WILLIAM PALEY.
Fred Friendly

Out with a new album, Four Hands, No
Waiting, the duo take the stage 8 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 19, at the Ark in Ann
Arbor. Tickets are $12.50. (734) 761-1451
or www.theark.org .

Public Historian

A member of the executive committee
of the Society of American Historians,
documentary filmmaker David Grubin
has won every major award in his field,
including two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia
University awards, three George Foster
Peabody awards and nine Emmys. His
subjects have ranged from science (The
Secret Life of the Brain), poetry (The
Language of Life) and psychology ( Young
Dr. Freud) to art
Degenerate Art), world
history (Napoleon) and
public affairs (Koff
Annan: Center of the
Storm).
Grubin is perhaps best
known for his series of
David Grubin
presidential biographies

I'm curious to see if the film mentions
Paley's Jewish background. There was an
anti-Semitic undertone to the McCarthy
era. Consequently, Jewish entertainment
moguls rarely challenged the employ-
ment blacklists, lest their own Jewish
background become a public issue. Paley
did back Murrow and that took real
courage. However, he tolerated a blacklist
that barred the employment by CBS of
persons "somehow" once associated with
the Communist Party.
No doubt, Paley's decision to accept
the blacklist was based on a fear of los-
ing sponsors and a fear of anti-
Semitism.

Other Premieres

Former Detroiter and Hillel Day School
of Metropolitan Detroit student SELMA
BLAIR stars in a remake of the horror
film classic The Fog, opening Oct. 14.
Debuting the same day is Domino,

for American Experience on PBS (LBJ,
FDR, Truman, TR: The Story of Theodore
Roosevelt and Abraham and Mary Lincoln:
A House Divided) and last year's RFK, for
the same series.
The four parts of his latest project,
Destination America, will air 9-11 p.m. on
two consecutive Wednesdays, Oct. 19 and
26, on Detroit Public Television-Channel
56. He is executive producer of the series
that tells dramatic contemporary stories
to illustrate current immigration issues
while putting them into historical context
with historic portraits of immigrants who
came before.
Part III of the series, airing 8-9 p.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 26, tells the story of
D'vorah and Hirsch Spira, Chasidic Jews
who never wanted to come here because
they felt their religious traditions would
be destroyed but were forced to flee
Hitler's Europe.
Check your local TV listings.

Viva Vivace

Birmingham Temple's Vivace Music

starring Keira
Knightley as
DOMINO HAR-
VEY. The real-
life Harvey was a
fashion model
turned private
Keira Knightly as
detective. She
Domino Harvey
died earlier this
year of a drug overdose, at age 35. The
movie only covers the fashion model-to-
detective part of her life.
Domino Harvey was the daughter of
LAURENCE HARVEY (1928-1973), a
handsome Jewish actor whom older film
fans will remember as the star of such
classics as The Manchurian Candidate
and Room at the Top.

Sci-Fi/Sci-Fact

Opening last week to pretty good reviews
was Serenity, a science fiction movie
directed by Josh Whedon, creator of

Series begins its
2005-2006 season
with an encore per-
formance by the
Bosivert-deMaine-
Pashmakova Trio
7:30 p.m. Sunday,
Oct. 16, at the
Emmauelle
Boisvert
Birmingham Temple,
28611 W. 12 Mile
Road, in Farmington Hills.
The string trio is led by violinist
Emmanuelle Boisvert, who became con-
certmaster of the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra in 1988; she is joined by DSO
principal cellist Robert deMaine and
Bulgarian-born pianist Angelina
Pashmakova.
The trio will perform Felix
Mendelssohn's Trio in D Minor, Brahms'
Trio in C Major and Ernest Bloch's Three
Nocturnes.
"Bloch's music is notable for its strong
racial consciousness, and he avowed
throughout most of his life that he was a
Jewish composer:' writes conductor
Charles Greenwell. "All of Bloch's works are

Buffy: the Vampire Slayer. The flick has
what is probably the first Jewish wedding
in space — a scene featuring co-star
DAVID KRUMHOLTZ and complete
with glass stomping.
Inventor/futurist RAY KURZWEIL's
new nonfiction book (The Singularity Is
Near) seems like s.cience fiction. It pre-
dicts the fusion, in the near future, of
humans and machines to create power-
ful and potentially immortal life forms.
Kurzweil says today's cutting-edge tech-
nology — computers, software, gene-
splicing techniques and nanotechnology
— are poised for integration with
human biological sys-
tems to evolve a hybrid
life form (wow!).
Kurzweil, 57, is a
tech-industry legend
who invented the first
device to scan text and
render it into sound to
enable the blind to
Ray Kurzweil

October 13 • 2005

IT