arts & entertainment

Oscar Time!

Our roundup of Jewish nominees
for this year's Academy Awards.

Nate Bloom
I Special to the Jewish News

T

he 85th Annual Academy Awards,
a live broadcast during which
the Oscars will be presented
for excellence in film, will air 7-11 p.m.
Sunday, Feb. 24, on ABC (the first hour is
red carpet coverage).
Oscar winner Barbra Streisand, 70,
will sing at this year's Academy Awards.
It's believed she'll perform a medley of
songs from her films and almost certainly
will pay tribute to composer Marvin
Hamlisch, who died last August. He
worked closely with Streisand from the
late '60s on, both as her sometime musical
director and as the composer of Streisand
hits like "The Way We Were"
Below is a list of Jewish nominees in the
nontechnical categories.

-

BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day Lewis, 55,
Lincoln; and Joaquin Phoenix, 38, The
Master. Both of these actors are the sons of
Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers.

-

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin,
78, Argo. This is Arkin's fourth Oscar nom-
ination (two for Best Actor in the '60s and
an Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor in
2006 for Little Miss Sunshine).

who couldn't be happier with the film. Her
whirlwind life since the movie's release
includes recently meeting a hero of hers,
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the famous Jewish
sex-advice expert. Greene described her as
a real "sweetie"

Schonberg and Boubil are French Jews
who wrote the original stage version of Les
Miserables. Kretzmer, an English Jew, wrote
the lyrics for the English-language version
of the stage show. All three wrote the new
nominated song for the film version.

BEST DIRECTOR:
Benh Zeitlin, 30, Beasts of the Southern
Wild. Zeitlin made his Lousiana-based
fantasy film for less than $2 million and is
the dark horse wunderkind of this year's
Oscars (see story on page 45);
Steven Spielberg, 66, Lincoln. After
this film, previous screen depictions of
Lincoln seem like unrealistic exercises in
hero worship. Spielberg's Lincoln is a very
human-sized man who deftly worked our
often-sordid political system to end slav-
ery forever, and he emerges more heroic
than ever before because we know what
real-life skill and determination it took;
David 0. Russell, 54, Silver Linings
Playbook. Russell, who was raised secular,
is the son of a Jewish father and a Catholic
mother; Russell originally crafted the film
as a gift for his son, Matthew, 18, who has
bipolar disorder. With eight nominations,
the film has been acclaimed for handling
the problems associated with mental ill-
ness in a sensitive fashion. "I wanted to
show that we're all in this together; Russell
told USA Today.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern
Wild
Tony Kushner, 56, Lincoln
David 0. Russell, Silver Linings
Playbook

BEST ORIGINAL SONG: "Suddenly"
from Les Miserables. Music by Claude-
Michel Schonberg, 67; lyrics by Herbert
Kretzmer, 87, and Main Boubil, 72.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: The
Longest Daycare, David Silverman, 55.
Silverman has been the top animator for
The Simpsons TV show since it began. He

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Helen

Hunt, 49, The Sessions. Hunt's paternal

grandmother was Jewish. She's nominated
for playing (real-life) sex therapist Cheryl
Cohen Greene, 68, a convert to Judaism

-

Jews

Nate Bloom

Special Showing

Special to the Jewish News

On Saturday, Feb. 23, at 8 p.m., USA
Network will present a special commer-
cial-free presentation of Schindler's
List. Director Steven Spielberg, 66,
will provide a special introduction to
his great Holocaust film, which was
released 20 years ago. USA will offer
additional information and resources at
charactersunite.com and through the
interactive second screen experience
app Zeebox, in partnership with the
USC Shoah Foundation.

Katzenberg Kudos

As part of this year's Academy
Awards ceremony on Sunday,
Jeffrey Katzenberg, 62, the CEO
of DreamWorks
Animation studio,
will receive the pres-
tigious Jean Hersholt
Humanitarian Award.
The award, which
is not given every
year, is presented to
Katzenberg
an individual whose
humanitarian efforts
have brought credit to the movie
industry. Katzenberg and his wife of
37 years, Marilyn Siegel Katzenberg,
have given many millions of dollars
to educational, medical and Jewish
charities.

46 February 21 • 2013

Alan Arkin in a scene from Argo

Film Notes

Opening on Friday,
Feb. 22, is the docu-
mentary West of
Memphis. Directed by
Amy J. Berg, it takes
a new look at the
case of three teenag-
ers who were con-

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Mark
Boal, 39, Zero Dark Thirty

BEST FEATURE-LENGTH
DOCUMENTARY:
Five Broken Cameras, about the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, co-directed by Israeli
Guy Davidi, 34;
The Gatekeepers, with interviews with
six former heads of Mossad, directed by
Israeli Dror Moreh, 52;
The Invisible War, about sexual assault
in the American military, produced by
Amy Ziering, 50.

BEST SHORT-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY:
Kings Point, about (mostly) Jewish
seniors in Florida, directed by Sari
Gilman, 47.

victed of the murder of three young
boys in 1993.
The case became famous largely
due to three HBO documentaries that
aired in 1996, 2000, and 2011 under
the title Paradise Lost. Made by Bruce
Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger, these
films showed how the convictions were
acquired through shoddy police work.
The three convicted men were
finally freed in 2011. West of Memphis
is co-produced by Damien Echols, who
was 19 when he was sentenced to die
for the child killings.

Kosher Downton?

As reported by JTA, an article in the
U.K.'s Jewish Chronicle notes that
Downton Abbey makers Carnival
Films has confirmed it is developing a
similar show with a Jewish family. The
new show will be based on Francesca
Segal's book The Innocents, which

David Silverman at the drawing board
for The Longest Daycare

Lincoln Best Director nominee Steven

Spielberg and Best Original Screenplay
nominee Tony Kushner

also directed The Simpsons Movie and co-
directed Monsters, Inc. In Daycare, child
character Maggie Simpson deals with a
bully. There is no dialogue in this film,
which was universally praised by critics
as harkening back to the tender human-
ism found in the early seasons of The
Simpsons.

BEST PICTURE: Oscar goes to the film's
principal producers. Here are the Best
Picture nominees with a "confirmed"
Jewish producer.
Grant Heslov, 47, Argo; Eric Fenner,
53, Les Miserables; Steven Spielberg,
Lincoln; Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty;
Stacey Sher, 50, Django Unchained.

❑

The 85th Annual Academy Awards

airs 7-11 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24, on ABC.

is loosely based on
Edith Wharton's clas-
sic novel The Age of

Innocence.

The book, which
won the 2012
Costa First Novel
award and the 2012
Segal
National Jewish
Book Award, is set
in modern-day, upper-crust Temple
Fortune, a tight-knit Jewish commu-
nity in northwest London.
The book opens with a scene dur-
ing Kol Nidre and follows 28-year-
old Adam Newman, who is destined
to marry his girlfriend of 12 years,
Rachel Gilbert, but ultimately suc-
cumbs to the attraction of her young-
er cousin, Ellie Schneider.
Segal, the daughter of the late Love
Story author Erich Segal, appeared at
last year's Detroit Jewish Book Fair.

❑