IVAN, SETH ROGEN
AND HUNTERS
The new film The One and
Only Ivan begins streaming on
Disney+ on Aug. 21. It is based
on a best-selling children’
s novel
of the same name. Ivan is a goril-
la who lives in a very run-down
mall. Also living in the mall is
Stella, an aging elephant. Ruby,
an abused baby elephant, shows
up one day. Ivan, Stella and Julia,
the mall janitor’
s daughter, take
care of Ruby and try to find a way
to turn the mall around.
Most of the characters are
animated and are voiced by top
notch actors (including Angelina
Jolie and Helen Mirren). The
“live” actors include Bryan
Cranston as the kindly owner of
the mall and Ariana Greenblatt
as Julia. Greenblatt, 12, has been
acting since she was 6. From
2016 to 2018, she played the
youngest daughter on the Disney
series Stuck in the Middle.
Greenblatt, who has 1 mil-
lion social media followers, will
appear in several upcoming big
films (including In the Heights,
the film production of Lin-Manuel
Miranda’
s hit Broadway musi-
cal). The young actress is the
daughter of a Jewish father and a
Puerto Rican mother. As is com-
mon with child actors, it is hard
to find out, now, how she identi-
fies in a religious sense.
I could write a full column on
the blow-back following Seth
Rogen’
s podcast interview (July
27) with Marc Maron. Rogen,
38, seemed to imply that Israel
shouldn’
t exist, only to quickly
deny that was his position in
follow-up statements. On Aug. 5,
Rogen gave a 35-minute inter-
view to Ha’
aretz, the Israeli paper.
Ha’
aretz posted the full audio
for free listening on its website
(much of Ha’
aretz content is
behind a pay wall).
I recommend you listen to
the interview for a full, clarified
picture of Rogen’
s view of Israel
and just about everything Jewish
in his personal and professional
life (including his Jewish wife’
s
criticism of some podcast com-
ments). Google “Haaretz The
Interview Seth Rogen Sets the
Record Straight.”
I was surprised when it was
recently announced that the
Amazon Prime Video series
Hunters had been renewed for
a second season. Before the
series premiered, I was looking
forward to a show that starred Al
Pacino and Logan Lerman, 28,
as Nazi hunters in the 1970s.
But Hunters was a mess, despite
some good performances
(Lerman, especially). The plotting
was clunky and the scripts were
often second rate. Also, there
was a very real problem with the
writers inventing Holocaust hor-
ror stories. Doing this just feeds
the junk that Holocaust deniers
write. Besides, there are so
many real Holocaust atrocity sto-
ries, nobody has to invent them
for dramatic effect. Almost all
respected critics gave the show
a thumbs-down. Maybe the sec-
ond season will be better.
42 | AUGUST 20 • 2020
NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST
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