Holiday feast
Around this time every year, a torrent of quality films hits the theaters. Why? Because people have time to go to the movies and, more importantly, the movies will stay fresh in Oscar voters’ minds when it’s time for them to vote early next year.
Here are some of the films with Jewish directors opening soon that might garner a major film award.
“Young Adult,” which opened in the Bay Area on Friday, Dec. 9, stars Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, a self-centered writer who returns to her hometown determined to snare her happily married high-school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson). She forms a bond of sorts with a former classmate, who sometimes acts as her conscience (Patton Oswalt). The screenplay is by Diablo Cody (“Juno”). Jason Reitman, 34, directed. Reitman has made three films, all of which have been critical and box-office hits, and he received a best director Oscar nomination for his last two, “Juno” and “Up in the Air.”
Opening Wednesday, Dec. 21 is the 3D motion capture film “The Adventures of Tintin,” directed by Steven Spielberg, 64, and based on the famous comic books by Belgian writer and artist Hergé. In “motion capture” films, actions of human actors are recorded and used to animate digital characters.
Spielberg also directed the non-animated “War Horse,” which opens on Wednesday, Dec. 25. Based on a children’s novel about World War I, it follows an English horse that is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. It eventually serves in both the British and German armies and, as you might guess, ends up having an extraordinary odyssey.
Neil Diamond shines
The Kennedy Center Honors for excellence in the arts were awarded on Dec. 4. The gala celebration, which President Barack Obama attended, will be shown on CBS at 8 p.m. Dec. 27. Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond, 70, is among the five honorees.
During the event, Caroline Kennedy got on stage with Smokey Robinson and other pros to sing Diamond’s hit song “Sweet Caroline.” Diamond says that Caroline, President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, was the inspiration for the song’s title, but it was not about her.
Behind the spray
No doubt you heard about or saw video of the incident at U.C. Davis on Nov. 18: A campus police officer heavily pepper sprayed peaceful Occupy demonstrators. On Nov. 28, Jon Stewart (“The Daily Show”) had a report on the incident. It ended with a clip of U.C. Davis’ chancellor, Linda Katehi, who speaks with a Greek accent, apologizing for the incident.
After the clip, Stewart held a pen under his nose, mimicking a Hitler mustache, and said in a German accent: “The chancellor has spoken! An apology has been issued by the chancellor! Now you must return to your homes at once. The chancellor has spoken!”
Stewart’s jibe led Sacramento Bee editorial page editor Stewart Leavenworth to note (Dec. 2) that Stewart badly misstepped. U.C. Davis officials, Leavenworth wrote, told him that Katehi’s father is a Greek Jew whose family was among the 10 percent of Greek Jews who survived the Nazi occupation. The inference was that her father survived in hiding. (It appears, from Leavenworth’s report, and other sources I found, that Katehi’s Greek mother is not Jewish.)
Leavenworth’s report adds a level of harshness to Stewart’s depiction of Katehi. Moreover, Katehi has publicly stated that when she was a college student in the ’60s, she faced the thugs of the Greek military junta, who suppressed dissent on her campus; she also says that she had ordered U.C. Davis police to not use violence against Occupy demonstrators.
Columnist Nate Bloom, an Oaklander, can be reached at [email protected].