I Arts & Entertainment

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Arquette, was raised in a mix of tradi-

Ors I NateBloom

special to the Jewish News

.12 Golden Performers

w

The Golden Globes, airing 8 p.m.
Sunday, Jan. 16, on NBC are seen as 'a
reasonable predictor. of the Oscars.
(10 Here are the "on-camera" Jewish nomi-
nees:
In the feature film category,
Gwyneth Paltrow, who
was raised in her father's
Jewish faith, is up for best
actress for Proof
Meanwhile, Rachel
Weisz (The Constant
Gardener) and Scarlett
Johansson (Match Point)
Gwyneth
compete for the best sup-
Paltrow
porting actress award.
Reports just out say -
Weisz and her fiance, Jewish film direc-
tor Darren Aronofsky, are expecting
their first child. The baby is due this
summer.
Zach Braff (Scrubs) competes
against Larry David (Curb Your
Enthusiasm) for the Globe forbest
actor in a TV comedy

Patricia Arquette

(Medium) vies with

Kyra Sedgwick

(Closer) for best actress
in a TV drama:
Patricia, like her
famous siblings,
Rosanna and David

tions, including her late mother's
Jewish faith. However, it appears that
only Rosanna (who had her only child
with her Jewish ex-husband) firmly
identifies as Jewish.
Sedgwick was born to a Jewish
mother and a Protestant father. The
actress told author Abigail Pogrebin
that her mother was a "self-hating" Jew
and the pivotal event in her own Jewish
identity came when her mother re-
married a Jewish man who acquainted
Kyra with the beauty of the Jewish
faith.
The actress firmly identifies as
Jewish and celebrates Passover with her
teenage children. (Her husband, actor
Kevin Bacon, is a non-practicing
Catholic.)
Sedgwick confided to Pogrebin that
she regretted not giving her children
more of a Jewish religious background,
but she felt she couldn't "change gears"
some years into her marriage and alter
the couple's understanding that their
home would be essentially secular.

A Little Nepotism

Rob Reiner came in late as a
replacement director for Rumor Has
It, a film that had obvious script
problems. The comedy, which
opened Dec. 25, stars Jennifer
Aniston, Kevin Costner and Shirley
MacLaine,If you scan the film's
Kyra ledgwic k credits, you'll see the busy character
actor Jordan Lund in a supporting

role. Lund, who is
Reiner's brother-in-law,
has had small roles in
other Reiner pictures.
A descendant of the
Jordan Lund
famous Italian 17th-
century rabbi Moshe
Chaim Luzzatto, Lund is married to
Rabbi Suzanne Singer, an Emmy-
winning PBS producer who left TV a
few years ago to study for the rab-
binate. Her mother, a French Jew, sur-
vived Auschwitz. Suzanne's sister,
Michelle, is married to Rob Reiner,
Michelle Singer, a photographer, met
Reiner when he was directing When
Harry Met Sally, and Reiner credits
their romance with inspiring the film's
happy ending, which wasn't in the
original script.
.
Married since 1989, Rob and
Michelle Reiner have three chil-
dren and no prenuptial agree-
ment. As Rob just rold a TV inter-
viewer, "I don't have pre-nups. I
fall in love and go for it."

DVD Choices
The weather outside is frightful, Kat
so watching a recently released
DVD might be delightful. Here are
some choices with a Jewish con-
nection:
Murderball, says the Kansas City -
Chronicle, "is a superb sports movie
and a first-rate documentary. [Jewish
filmmakers] Dana Adam Shapiro
and Henry Alex Rubin's movie

[about wheelchair-bound rugby
players] has all the thrills, intrigue
and insight of great fiction."
The 40-Year-Old-Virgin finally
gave director/co-writer Judd
Apatow the hit that eluded him on
TV.
Jewish actors Paul Rudd and Seth
Rogen have big sup-
porting roles as the
friends of star Steve
Carrell, while Jewish teen
actress Kat Dennings
has a juicy part as co-
star Catherine Keener's
daughter.
Judd Apatow
If you like Virgin,
check out Apatow's
short-lived 2001 TV
series about college life, Undeclared.
The just-released 17-episode DVD
includes a never-aired
episode, and the humor
is at the level of the best
teen comedies, like
Clueless.
You might explore the
sci-fi film adventure
Serenity, with a Jewish
Dennings
wedding in space, featur-
ing David Krumholtz.
Coming out Tuesday,
Jan. 3, is The Wedding Crashers. It
includes a comic Jewish wedding
sequence. Australian actress Isla
Fisher, who has been studying to con-
vert to Judaism, co-stars.

.

Miniseries follows storyteller
Bruce Feller on a search for
his biblical heroes.

Curt Schleier

Special to the Jewish News

Bruce Feiler, far -
left, and his
expedition team

plan their course
travel while
filming.

44

December 29 • 2005

4 IN

rew Levin is delighted to
be doing this interview
"You're the first Jewish
paper I've spoken to',' he says on
the telephone from his Los
Angeles office. "All I've done so far
is interviews with the Christian
press.
. The interviews are about
Walking the Bible, a three-part
PBS miniseries based on Bruce
Feiler's bestselling book of the
same name, published by
HarperCollins.

•

It takes viewers to the locations
mentioned in the first five books
of the Bible — from Genesis ("In
the beginning") in Mesopotamia
(now part of Turkey) to Exodus.
There are stops along the way at
the top of Mt. Ararat (where, some
say, Noah's Ark landed) and in
Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Israel.
Levin, 52, the series' executive
producer, is an Emmy award-win-
ning documentarian. This project
came about after a friend recom-
mended that he read Feller's best-
selling book.
"After I read it, I thought I could
really make this into a series',' he