Arts & Entertainment

About

New In Town

There's a new professional theater compa-
ny in town. Tipping Point Theatre, based
in Northville, officially opens it doors Aug.
25-Sept. 29 with the comedic stage farce
Don't Dress for Dinner.
Written by Marc Camoletti and adapted
by Robin Haedon, the play follows
Bernard, a wealthy Frenchman who is
planning a luxurious weekend with his
chic mistress. He's hired a chef to pre-
pare gourmet delights, packed his wife
Jacqueline off to her mother's and invited
his best friend Robert to provide the alibi.
Frivolity ensues when it is revealed that
Jacqueline and Robert are secret lovers, the
cook is mistaken for the mistress and the
mistress in unable to cook. Bernard and
Robert must improvise at breakneck speed.
Award-winning actress, director and
teacher Gillian Eaton of Plymouth directs
this production. A graduate of Britain's
Bristol Old Vic Theatre, she played
Jacqueline in the London national tour
of Don't Dress for Dinner. She has helmed
several productions for Jewish Ensemble
Theatre.
Playing Bernard is Jewish actor Loren
Bass. The Ann Arbor resident is a veteran
of several acclaimed portrayals for JET.
Tipping Point's other productions for the

Geddy Up

2007-08 season are
the holiday musi-
Loren Bass
cal Forever Plaid:
Plaid Tidings (Nov.
10-Dec. 22), by Stuart Ross; Almost, Maine,
a John Cariani play about the human
heart set in a small, mythical town (Feb.
2-March 1); and the Michigan premiere of
Manuscript, a suspenseful dark comedy by
Paul Grellong (April 26-May 24).
The Tipping Point Theatre is located at
361 Cady St. in Northville. Performance
times are 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and
2 p.m. Sundays. Ticket prices are $22.50-
$24.50, with senior and student discounts
available. Season passes to all four plays
are available for $75 until Sept. 29.
For more information, call (248) 347-
0003 or go to www.tippingpointtheatre.org .

42 w s
I

9•

Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News

Seeing Scarlett

(I)

(11111)

42

Scarlett Johansson, 23, is a great
success as a sex
symbol and as a paid
celebrity endorser
of various products.
Her movies, howev-
er
er, have not exactly
at the box
office. But there's a
Scarlett
ton of talent behind
Johansson
her new film, The
Nanny Diaries. The
film opens Friday, Aug. 24.
Johansson, whose mother is
Jewish, plays a college student who
is paying for school by working as
a nanny for rich New York families.
As the movie begins, Johansson's
character starts working for "Mr. and
Mrs. X," played by Oscar nominees
Paul Giamatti (Sideways) and Laura
Linney (Kinsey). Mrs. X is a snob-
bish and insufferably demanding
boss, and the couple's child is a little

August 23 • 2007

Geddy Lee (born Gary
Lee Weinrib) was just
16 when he formed
the first incarnation of
Rush, whose more than
30 years in the busi-
ness has garnered the
rock band more than 35
million albums sold and accolades for its
virtuoso musicianship, epic soundscapes
and dramatic lyricism.
Born in Toronto on July 29, 1953, to
parents who had immigrated
there in 1947 and opened a
discount variety store, Lee,
unlike the children of many
Holocaust survivors, began
hearing the horror stories
as early as age 8. As Lee told
rock writer Scott Benarde
(Stars of David) on the occa-
sion of Rush's 30th anniver-
sary tour, his parents did
not bottle up or hide their
Geddy Lee
experiences.
The couple gave their children a Jewish
education, and Lee had a bar mitzvah at
13. Today, however, while considering him-
self a cultural Jew, his parents' experiences
continue to resonate in his life and music.

brat. (Singer Alicia Keys makes her
dramatic film debut as Johansson's
character's former roommate.)
The book from which the movie is
taken barely had a romantic angle.
But Hollywood loves a love story, so
the movie has Johansson's character
seriously interested in a handsome
young Harvard student who lives in
the same building as the "X" family.
Diaries is written and directed
by the husband-wife team of Shari
Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini.
They earned a Best Screenplay Oscar
nomination for their previous film,
American Splendor (2003). Splendor,
about real-life Jewish cartoonist
Harvey Pekar, got great reviews
and is a wonderful little movie. Paul
Giamatti starred as Pekar.
Giamatti, who is not Jewish, does
play a lot of Jews, including his
Oscar-nominated role as Jewish box-
ing manager Joe Gould in Cinderella
Man. Last year, he told an interview-
er that while he is an atheist, his
wife is Jewish and their son, now 6,
would probably be raised Jewish.

Getting Defensive

The attorney representing Kevin
Federline, the ex-husband of troubled
singer Britney Spears, hired a for-
mer Israeli commando, Aaron Cohen,
to hunt down and serve legal papers
to three of Spears' associates.
Federline is seeking primary custody
of the couple's two very young chil-
dren and wants these associates to
testify regarding Spears' personal
problems. (Presumably, Aaron Cohen
is not related to Isaac Cohen, a male
model whom Spears briefly dated
before her notorious head-shaving
incident last February.)
Quite a few former Israeli mili-
tary personnel can be found in
Hollywood-related security jobs.
Almost all are trained in the Israeli
martial art of Krav Maga, and some
teach the technique to celebrity cli-
ents or in Los Angeles area schools.
A new book on Krav Maga,
Complete Krav Maga: The Ultimate
Guide to Over 230 Self-Defense
and Combative Techniques (Ulysses
Press; $21.95) by authors Darren

The seeds for the song "Red Sector
from the 1984 Rush album Grace Under
Pressure, were planted in April 1945 when
British soldiers liberated the Nazi concen-
tration camp Bergen-Belsen. Lee's mother,
Manya (Mary) Rubenstein, was among the
survivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib, was
liberated from Dachau a few weeks later.)
The whole album Grace Under Pressure,
Lee told Benarde, "is about being on the
brink and having the courage and strength
to survive."
In 1995, Lee, his older sister and young-
er brother accompanied their mother back
to Germany to celebrate the
50th anniversary of the libera-
tion of Bergen-Belsen. "The
Holocaust doesn't go away:' Lee
told Benarde. "My mother still
has a tattoo on her arm, but
that was a great trip for her,
a completion of something.
It made her feel fantastic to
stand on those grounds with
her children. For the first time
she felt like a victor, like, 'I'm
here and you're not!'"
In support of Snakes and Arrows, Rush's
first album of original music in nearly five
years, the band — Lee (vocals, bass), Alex
Lifeson (guitars) and Neil Peart (drums)
— tours to DTE Energy Music Theatre

Levine and John
Whitman has just
been released. All
the moves – from
. AV 11114,G A beginner Yellow
Belt to advanced
Brown Belt are
described and illustrated. The self-
defense system emphasizes instinc-
tive movements, practical techniques
and realistic training scenarios.
The hosts of the History Channel
program Human Weapon recently
traveled to Israel to learn the his-
tory and techniques of Krav Maga
– which they call the "deadliest and
most effective hand-to-hand combat
system to disarm and destroy assail-
ants." The Krav Maga episode airs 10
p.m. Friday, Aug. 31, on the History
Channel.

DARREN LEVINE

JOHN WHITMAN • • •

Sitting Pretty

New Gap clothing magazine ads that
start running soon will feature pho-
tos of a dozen celebs in Gap attire
shot by legendary photographer
Annie Leibovitz. Among the dapper