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Friday April 22, 2005

Celebrity Jews

by nate bloom

Beam me to Arkansas

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra premiered an oratorio April 9 called “Exodus,” composed by the orchestra’s musical director, David Itkin, and featuring the symphony and a 300-voice choir made up of members of several local choral groups.

Itkin told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he was inspired by his family’s seders. He said to the best of his knowledge, this is the first time that the biblical story and elements of the seder were combined musically.

The oratorio’s narrator was William Shatner, who replaced Leonard Nimoy when Nimoy opted out for personal reasons. Shatner told the Democrat-Gazette that he was, of course, familiar with the material. Passover is “a tradition handed from father to son for generations,” Shatner said.

Itkin explained to the paper: “When Nimoy canceled, we researched many possible actors … we kept on coming back to Shatner.” While he said, “people are going to draw the wrong inference — that there’s some sort of weird biblical Star Trek connection here,” Shatner “was clearly the best choice, and he showed real, genuine interest in the project when it was proposed to him.”

Shatner’s narration was a smash, with the Democrat-Gazette noting, “[He] used all his tools of emotion, volume and keen timing in telling parts of the story and was utterly serious, not showing a nanosecond of his Priceline.com persona.”

Foreign tongues

Advance reviews are good for Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack’s new thriller, “The Interpreter,” opening Friday, April 22. Nicole Kidman stars as a U.N. interpreter whose life is in danger when she overhears a death threat against a world leader. Sean Penn co-stars as a federal agent assigned to protect Kidman, while French Jewish director/actor Yvan Attal has a small but pivotal role as a mysterious photographer.

Now in the theaters is “Happily Ever After,” a rave-reviewed French film about marital infidelity directed by Attal. It co-stars Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg, a gorgeous actress who’s his real-life romantic partner and the mother of their two children.

Attal’s next film will be a hard-hitting attack on French anti-Semitism. He told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, “Since 9/11 the anti-Semitism has increased, and for the first time in my life I don’t feel like the other French.”

Rocking seder

“Matzoh and Metal: a Very Classic Passover” is the title of a VH1 special airing Sunday, April 24, featuring heavy metal Jewish musicians Leslie West (Mountain), Scott Ian (Anthrax) and J.J. French (Twisted Sister). As well as showing the guys at a seder, the program will feature classic rock videos.

Pesach humor

Marjorie Ingall, writing for the Forward, noted that director Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street” and “Crossing Delancey”) showed film clips of her upcoming documentary, “Only Faster,” during a recent NYC comedy benefit. Silver’s film profiles six great Jewish female comics: Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Molly Picon, Judy Holliday, Madeline Kahn and Gilda Radner.

Also appearing at the benefit was the very funny Judy Gold who, Ingall said, “killed” with this line: “I had a yeast infection during Passover and wasn’t allowed to attend the seder.”

Columnist Nate Bloom , an Oaklander, can be reached at middleoftheroad1@aol.com.

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