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Yentl.The publication of My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand's 970-page memoir, has offered fans of the actress-singer-icon a long-awaited glimpse into her life. It’s a lot of book, a maximalist feast of details and anecdotes that paints a lavish portrait of the woman who became a generational star. It’s easy to forget just how much of Streisand's career was besieged by misogyny, whether it was critics' repeated derision of appearance or co-stars like Walter Matthau berating her on set. Streisand certainly never forgot, and her memoir offers frequent reminders of the sexism that hampered her path to success at every turn. Her memoir conveys an achingly detailed portrait of endurance by a wildly ambitious woman. Wherever she went, she was derided for trying to do or be “too much,” and she took pleasure in proving her detractors wrong in her inimitable style. When she chose to get behind the camera and direct,...

Ruth Seymour, the longtime leader of Santa Monica-based public radio station Kcrw died Friday, station president Jennifer Ferro confirmed to Deadline. She was 88.

Seymour was at the from station 1977 to 2010. In that time she transformed it from a quality radio outlet run out of a junior high school classroom to one of the most influential NPR stations in the country produced in a state of the art studio at Santa Monica College.

Seymour initially came on as a consultant and became General Manager in 1978. Her ascension to a management role roughly coincided with the station moving to a powerful new transmitter, which greatly expanded its reach.

At about the same time, National Public Radio launched Morning Edition. Seymour decided to make a morning block of the 2-hour show, running it three times 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. The move helped Kcrw become a mainstay in many Angelenos’ lives.

“That way...

When Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” opened on Nov. 18, 1983, directing was very much a man’s world. In the 1970s, there had been a few inroads for women. Italian director Lina Wertmuller was nominated for best director for 1976’s “Seven Beauties” Stateside, actress Barbara Loden, who was married to Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed and starred in the acclaimed 1970 indie drama “Wanda,” which won best foreign film at the Venice Film Festival. She never followed up with another movie and died of breast cancer in 1980.

There was also Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”), Claudia Weill (“Girlfriends”), Martha Coolidge (“Not a Pretty Picture”), Joan Tewkesbury (“Old Boyfriends”) and Joan Darling (“First Love”). But those filmmakers ran into brick walls when they tried to set up projects with the major studios. The late Silver told Vanity Fair in 2021 that a studio executive didn’t mince his word: “Feature films are expensive to make and expensive to market,...

One look at an iconic, fictional TV home can instantly evoke nostalgia for viewers of a beloved series, and 10 of them, like the Rosenheim Mansion from American Horror Story, still exist for anyone who wants to see them in real life. TV homes are one of many elements that make a show memorable for audiences and are celebrated alongside the theme music, characters, dialogue, story, and wardrobe. The exterior shot of a home is often shown at the beginning of an episode and occasionally during transition scenes as a way to make a good first impression and to welcome viewers into a new fictional world.

Most productions opt to re-create a show's central gathering place in a studio with digital technology, theater sets and camera angle tricks. However, there are TV projects, old and new, that continue to film episodes on location and in existing homes. Several of these iconic...

With final Oscar balloting closed on March 7, we’re continuing with our sixth annual series of interviews with Academy voters from different branches for their unfiltered takes on what got picked, overlooked, and overvalued in the 2023 award season. Interview edited for brevity.

Best Picture

Well, this year is the year of the repeat for me. I watched more movies a second time to try and figure out why I didn’t like them the first time.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” I watched three and a half times. I thought it was a generational thing. But then everyone else I know loved it. So I watched it once in the theater and I go, “I don’t really get it.” And I tried it a second time on the [Academy screening] portal. And I gave up halfway. And then it won all the awards. And I said to myself, “I’m not sure,...

Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short have returned to New York City’s Belnord apartment complex this month as work begins on Season 3 of Hulu’s Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated comedy “Only Murders in the Building” (with some exciting new additions to the cast), where exteriors for the show’s “Arconia” building are shot.

Yes, the Arconia is a real building in New York City. And it’s grown massively in popularity since the TV show debuted.

Built on farmland in 1908, the Belnord is one of the grandest apartment-style homes on the Upper West Side. The landmark building, which earned a spot in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, has housed notable residents like actors Zero Mostel and Walter Matthau, author Isaac Bashevis Singer and the father of method acting Lee Strasberg, who was often visited by actress Marilyn Monroe.

Today, the Belnord’s apartment units range...

Image Source: Hulu

New York City living can be luxurious for some, and Hulu's murder-mystery comedy series "Only Murders in the Building" is no exception to this rule. Starring Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, and Martin Short, the show takes place at the fictional Arconia luxury condominium, situated in NYC's elite neighborhood, the Upper West Side. The series follows residents-turned-true-crime-podcasters Mabel (Gomez), Charles (Martin), and Oliver (Short), who - in the first season - take it upon themselves to track down a killer who murdered their neighbor, Tim Kono.

In season two, which premiered on June 28, the trio finds themselves at the center of another murder investigation set in the Arconia. As it turns out, the massive NYC condo which their fictional residence is based on has a storied history of its own.

While "Only Murders in the Building" was indeed filmed on the Upper West Side and near surrounding NYC landmarks like Central Park,...

Sam Adams, a literary agent whose career began in the postwar years at Warner Bros. and ended with the deal to bring The Handmaid’s Tale to the big screen, has died, according to multiple reports. He was 94.

Adams’ client list included Handmaid’s author Margaret Atwood, the recently-deceased Peter Bogdanovich, Saturday Night Fever director John Badham, TV giant Stephen J. Cannell, Oscar-winner Alvin Sargent, Casablanca star Paul Henreid and Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Adams got his start in Hollywood delivering messages at Warner Bros. while he was still at Beverly Hills High School. At Warners, he met the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis and Edgar G. Robinson. His stint at the studio was interrupted by 18 months of active duty in the army.

After the war he turned to journalism, serving stints at the William Randolph Hearst-owned Los Angeles Examiner, the Armed Forces Radio Services,...

American poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate Louise Gluck was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature Thursday, the world’s highest literary honor, “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,” said the Nobel Committee.

She is the first American woman to win the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993 and one of only 16 women since the awards, established in the will of Alfred Nobel, began in 1901.

Nobel Committee chair Anders Olsson praised Gluck’s striving for clarity. “Glück seeks the universal, and in this she takes inspiration from myths and classical motifs, present in most of her works.”

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by The Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, said in a video presentation Thursday, that he had informed Gluck of the award earlier in the day. “It came as surprise. A welcome one.

Natalie Portman, who was nominated for an Oscar for her insightful portrayal of Jackie Kennedy, stars in a new PETA video spotlighting the legacy of maverick animal advocate Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991), who won the Nobel Prize in Literature 40 years ago this autumn.

Video: Natalie Portman Wants Everyone to Treat Animals With Kindness

“Isaac Singer grew up in the same part of Poland as my family,” says Portman in the video. “And like them, he fled the horrors of the Holocaust. But the cruelties he witnessed made Singer one of the most powerful writers of the 20th century.” The heroes in his bestsellers championed women’s issues and gay rights and especially animal rights. “I did not become a vegetarian for my health,” Singer once declared flatly. “I did it for the health of the chickens.”

In his autobiographical novel Shosha, the Jewish icon famously wrote, “We do to God’s...

The story of a lower-class father attempting to raise his young son doesn’t sound like groundbreaking material, but “Menashe” puts that bittersweet formula into an exciting new context. Shot exclusively in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community in Borough Park with a script almost entirely spoken in Yiddish, the narrative debut of cinematographer and documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein has the precision of an ethnographic experiment. The movie exists within the confines of its insular setting, and features a cast of real-life Hasidim riffing on the traditions that govern their everyday lives, but manages to mine a degree of emotional accessibility that extends far beyond the neighborhood’s borders.

The title character is portrayed by Menashe Lustig, a gentle, portly figure whose circumstances inspired the melancholic plot. His performance is so heartbreaking in its authenticity that the movie often borders on documentary, and yet it maintains an engaging pace as it builds...

A bunch of script deals have been going down in the last few days ahead of the Sundance Film Festival launching shortly in Park City.

Thigns kicked off when Broad Green acquired "The Perfect Guy" writer Tyger Williams' script pitch "Bad Influence". The story follows a single mom who faces off against her son's ex-girlfriend after a passionate romance turns to obsession. Jennifer Gibgot and Adam Shankman will produce.

Next up, Wildhorse Studios announced they are teaming with Macmillan Publishers to develop a TV series adaptation of the Isaac Bashevis Singer novel "Shadows on the Hudson" with filming to begin later this year. The story follows a group of prosperous Jewish exiles in New York City during the late 1940s and a romance between one man's daughter and his best friend that threatens to turn their community upside down.

Finally, Escape Artists have optioned Wallace Stegner's critically acclaimed 1987 novel...

A shoe-mender finds magical powers in this mawkish Adam Sandler vehicle

Adam Sandler movies tend to be unspeakable; this at least has the virtue of being differently unspeakable. It’s a folksy Jewish-themed parable about a lonely New York cobbler who discovers a magical shoe-stitching device (must be an Isaac Bashevis Singer sewing machine) that grants him chameleon powers. The shape-shifting premise takes a queasy oedipal turn when, in the guise of his long-absent dad (Dustin Hoffman), he has a romantic dinner with his elderly ma. It’s saccharine stuff until it detours bizarrely into violent intrigue, as Sandler tangles with a local black hood (an altogether racist cipher, improbably played by Wu-Tang Clan rapper Method Man).

The Cobbler is directed and co-written by Tom McCarthy, who made 2003’s much-admired The Station Agent, but his penchant for whimsy here congeals to the consistency of stale lokshen pudding. Much play is...

Adam Sandler's latest vehicle begins promisingly before losing its footing entirely. Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy (the film-maker behind The Station Agent), the film sees Sandler in Isaac Bashevis Singer mode. He plays Max Simkin, a woebegone New York City cobbler who discovers he can take over the bodies of the customers whose size 10-and-a-half shoes he repairs.

Follow-up to the Act of Killing goes from Venice to Telluride and Toronto.

In one of the first confirmed deals on a Venice Competition entry, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look Of Silence has been sold to Italian distributor I Wonder.

The deal was confirmed by Tel Aviv-based sales company Cinephil here on the Lido.

The Look Of Silence, Oppenheimer’s follow-up to his 2012 Oscar nominated doc The Act Of Killing, has been receieving rave reviews since its debut in Venice earlier this week. German director Werner Herzog called it “profound, visionary and stunning.”

Many other deals are expected to be announced when the film screens at Toronto International Film Festival next week (it also screens in Telluride).

I Wonder also handled the Italian release of The Act Of Killing.

The Look Of Silence is one of several titles on Cinephil’s autumn market slate. The company is also handling Vanessa Lapa’s Heinrich Himmler The Decent One, screening...

As we are full-on in the Lent season, our definitive list will focus on films about religion or some aspect of it. The #1 qualification to be on this list is to deliberately focus on religion, a religious figure, or have the presence of a religion/faith as an integral plot point. For example, most of Luis Bunuel’s films can be viewed as attacks on the church, but they aren’t literally about Christianity; therefore, they won’t be included. So, on this list, we’ll look at as many different faiths as possible (though, there are obviously a lot more movies about Christianity than any other religion). We’ll even dabble into cults and sects that don’t really exist. Final rule: no documentaries. We’re keeping this fictional.

courtesy of salon.com

50. Sound of My Voice (2011)

Directed by Zal Batmanglij

Sound of My Voice stars Brit Marling (also co-writer) as Maggie,...

Have I mentioned lately how much I like comic book stores? Even as more and more of my friends buy their comics digitally (and I buy more of my prose books digitally), I still like to get my comics in hard copy. I like to get them on Wednesdays when I can. I like to get a big stack and find a comfy chair.

And yet this morning, when I woke up with an uncharacteristic and bewildering tummy ache, I didn’t reach for a pile of singles to take with my to the bathroom, or to my comfy chair. Instead, I wanted to read original graphic novels.

So I was interested to read a conversation among comic shop retailers about how they like original graphic novels – or OGNs, as they call them.

If I might over-simplify, most don’t. I mean, they like them, but most of their business comes from customers like me,...

Director: Andrew Taylor. Writers: Andrew Taylor and Donovan Scheirer. Cast: Nathan Howe, Lindsay Adams, James Aaron, Anthony MacMahon, Danielle Spilchen, Donovan Scheirer. The fact that the tale "Two Corpses Go Dancing" is adapted from short story to theatrical form is to be commended. To see an extended version may well create interest in Polish-born author and folklorist Isaac Bashevis Singer’s fantastical works. His tales tend to look at what human nature does in adversity. And, when considering this dramatist lived through both World Wars, most of his life experiences can be read in the worlds he created. While not all of his stories are rooted in fantasy or horror – a good body of his works are based in real life – his short stories are characterized, if not personified, at Nobelprize.org to contain, “demons, spectres, ghosts and all kinds of infernal or supernatural powers from the rich storehouse of Jewish popular imagination.

Maurice Sendak, the author best known for Where the Wild Things Are, has passed away at the age of 83.  When he was 12, Sendak saw Walt Disney's Fantasia, and was inspired to be come an illustrator.  He worked for other authors before he wrote and illustrated his own children's book, Where the Wild Things Are, in 1963.  He then won the Newberry Award, a distinguished honor for children's literature, for illustrating Isaac Bashevis Singer's 1966 book Zlateh the Goat.  Sendak was deeply protective of having Where the Wild Things Are adapted into a movie, but finally gave his blessing to director Spike Jonze, who created the wonderful 2009 adaptation.  Sendak's books have touched the lives of multiple generations, and he will be greatly missed.  Please click over to The New York Times for a full obituary chronicling Sendak's rich life. After the jump, you can find Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs's 2009 documentary...

"Please don't go. We'll eat you up, we love you so"

- Maurice Sendak, "Where The Wild Things Are"

Only a few days after the death of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, more sad news has arrived today, with The New York Times reporting that Maurice Sendak, author of beloved children's classics "Where The Wild Things Are" (which was turned into an acclaimed 2009 film by Spike Jonze) and "In The Night Kitchen," among others, has passed away at the age of 83.

Sendak, the child of Polish Jewish immigrants, was born in Brooklyn in 1928, and set his heart on becoming an illustrator after seeing Walt Disney's "Fantasia" at the age of 12. He worked on books for other authors for years, most notably Else Holmelund Minarik's "Little Bear" series, before gaining fame of his own accord in 1963 for "Where The Wild Things Are," the story of an unruly boy in a wolf...

One thing's for sure: The frosting on her birthday cake will be like buttah. As Barbra Streisand turns 70 on Tuesday, you'd think her reputation would be secure. She's conquered every medium, she's one of only a dozen or so members of the Egot club (people who've won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), and she's one of the most popular and best-selling singers of all time. Still, despite her two Oscars, her Hollywood career has never gotten its due. In part, that's because, in 44 years of screen acting, she's made just 18 movies. Young audiences who know her only as Ben Stiller's exuberant mother from the "Fockers" movies can't be blamed for not knowing that she was once a groundbreaking dramatic and comic star, a reliably funny and sexy leading lady, a pioneering jill-of-all-trades filmmaker, or a celebrated (and reviled) movie diva. She's made just six movies in the last 30 years,...

The movie Yentl has a special place in many of our hearts. Barbra Streisand's Yentl, who pretends to be a man (Anshel) in order to pursue her dreams in a male profession, is something most women relate to. And for les/bis, seeing a decidedly un-macho Anshel on a honeymoon with Amy Irving's Hadass stirs up feelings that have little to do with the actual plot. Although the film makes clear that Anshel is sexually attracted to Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), the chemistry between Hadass and Anshel is palatable.

In Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, the Isaac Bashevis Singer short story that provides the basis for the film, the exploration of gender identity is more overt. Yentl believes that she was born into the wrong gender and assuming the identity of Anshel is a complex journey that takes a much different direction than Streisand chose for her film. In fact,...

Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land

edited by Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle with Hershl Hartman

Abrams Comicarts, 240 pages

It always seemed to me like mine was the last secular “Jewish generation” in America. Born in the mid-1950s, in the depths of Brooklyn in a neighborhood adjacent to the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Crown Heights, surrounded on all sides by three generations of family, including grandparents and great-grandparents born in the old country, the entire world seemed Jewish. Even when my family moved (briefly) to West Virginia (population 5,000, only seven of which were Jews), then back to Brooklyn, to Canarsie and East Flatbush, the feeling of Jewishness never went away. The neighborhoods were now a mix of Irish, Italian, and Jewish, even a sprinkling of Afro-Americans, but when the family gathered, Yiddish was still spoken among the adults when the topic wasn’t fit for kinder, children. As a result,...

HBO has acquired two literary adaptations from producer John Lesher, both scripted by folks known for the work in features. According to Deadline, Oscar-winner William Monahan (The Departed) will adapt Keys to the City: The Tales of a New York City Locksmith. The book is a collection of fourteen stories about the characters that author Joel Kostman encountered during a twenty-year stint as a locksmith; Kostman is on board as consultant.

Meanwhile, Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married) is hard at work milking a series out of The Three Weissmanns of Westport, Cathleen Schine’s homage to Sense and Sensibility. As the book begins, Betty Weissmann’s husband of nearly fifty years announces he is divorcing her. She then moves to a beach cottage in Westport, Connecticut and reconnects with her daughters, who suffer from their own problems. Hit the jump for full synopses of both novels.

A synopsis for Keys...

Actress and singer Mina Bern has died, aged 98.

Bern, one of the last remaining stars of Yiddish theatre in the U.S., passed away in New York on Sunday, after suffering heart failure.

With her second husband, late actor Ben Bonus, she toured the U.S., Canada and Latin America starring in Yiddish revues.

The couple brought shows to Broadway, including Let’s Sing Yiddish Light and Lively and Yiddish, and in the 1960s operated a theater on Second Avenue.

In 2002, Bern starred in a production of Yentl, based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. In 2005, she performed a one-woman show about her life. She also took roles in Hollywood movies including Crossing Delancey in 1988, Avalon in 1990 and I’m Not Rappaport in 1996.

In 1999, she was awarded an Obie award for “sustained excellence".

She is survived by her daughter, Renya Pearlman, two granddaughters and four great-grandchildren.

By the Hollywood Reporter

Director Steven Spielberg, singer/actress/director Barbara Streisand and composers Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein are among the 18 initial inductees of the Nation Museum of American Jewish History's Hall of Fame, which opens in Philadelphia in November, 2010.

The other honorees from the arts are author Isaac Bashevis Singer and poet Emma Lazarus.

The group also includes Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Mordecai Kaplan, Sandy Koufax, Estee Lauder, Isaac Leeser, Jonas Salk, Rose Schneiderman, Menachem Menel Schneerson, Henrietta Szold and I...

Director Steven Spielberg, singer/actress/director Barbara Streisand and composers Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein are among the 18 initial inductees of the Nation Museum of American Jewish History's Hall of Fame, which opens in Philadelphia in November, 2010.

The other honorees from the arts are author Isaac Bashevis Singer and poet Emma Lazarus.

The group also includes Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Mordecai Kaplan, Sandy Koufax, Estee Lauder, Isaac Leeser, Jonas Salk, Rose Schneiderman, Menachem Menel Schneerson, Henrietta Szold and Isaac Mayer Wise.

"The 18 finalists represent a consensus between the public vote and the Museum's historians and curatorial staff. We wanted the public's input on who should be recognized for their accomplishments in a major museum exhibition, and they made excellent choices," the museum's president and CEO Michael Rosenzweig said.

The international public voting was conducted during a one month period this summer during which more than...

Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY -- German writer-director Jan Schutte's "Love Comes Lately" is based on three short stories by Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, but you would swear they derive from a much duller author. The slow-paced and often melancholy film contains none of the verve and vitality of Singer's stories. Schutte has taken on a salutary goal -- to make a film about aging characters that neither mocks nor pities them. Yet one longs for the wit and wisdom of Singer's own distinctive voice.

As it is, "Love Comes Lately" will probably get relegated to Jewish film festivals and ancillary markets.

Otto Tausig plays Max Kohn, an elderly Austrian-Jewish writer, perhaps a notch or two below the prestige of Singer but not lacking in awards or literary credentials, living a comfortable though somewhat anxious final years in his adopted Manhattan. He pecks away daily at his manual typewriter, suffers from nightmares involving sexual inadequacy yet has a longtime girlfriend (Rhea Pearlman), who pesters him with her paranoid jealousies over imagined infidelities. Or are they imagined?

A slim story covering his swing through New England by train to deliver a couple of university lectures -- where he surprises himself at one stop by bedding a long-ago student turned professor (Barbara Hershey) -- gets interrupted by two other stories he is supposedly writing and editing. These stories feature alter egos also played by Tausig.

Each is a tale of thwarted romances. Unaccountably, younger women keep flinging themselves at this octogenarian. Must be literary groupies.

The first one is a little bizarre involving a horny, crippled motel maid (Elizabeth Pena), a crazed hotel manager, a murder and another pushy widow (Caroline Aaron), who is left dangling. The second is a more complete story albeit a tragic one involving a lonely recently widowed woman (Tovah Feldshuh), who briefly comes on to the astonished neighbor.

The three-part film feels insubstantial and sketchy at every turn. About all that Schutte achieves is a decent understanding of the inner life of his central character, of Max's fantasies, fears, longings and despair. Everyone else seems like projections of that inner life but not part of any real life at all.

LOVE COMES LATELY

A Zero West production in co-production with Zero Fiction Film, Dor Film

Credits:

Writer/director: Jan Schutte

Based on stories by: Isaac Bashevis Singer

Producers: Martin Hagemann, Kai Kunnemann

Executive producers: W. Wilder Knight III, Alex Gibney

Director of photography: Edward Klosinski, Chris Squires

Production/costume designer: Amanda Ford

Music: Henning Lohner

Editors: Katja Dringenberg, Renate Merck

Cast:

Max Kohn: Otto Tausig

Riesle: Rhea Pearlman

Ethel: Tovah Feldshuh

Rosalie: Barbara Hershey

Esperanza: Elizabeth Pena

Running time -- 86 minutes

No MPAA rating...

There's nothing particularly magic about "Aaron's Magic Village", an artfully animated but weakly told tale based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Stories for Children".

Despite its generous ethnic seasonings, including song lyrics by Sheldon Harnick ("Fiddler on the Roof") and enthusiastic, Yiddish-peppered narration by Fyvush Finkel, the family-oriented animation feature (originally dubbed the catchier "The Real Shlemiel") is curiously bland, unsatisfying fare.

Sneaking in a limited theatrical release before its video arrival via Columbia TriStar, the picture lacks the element of universal appeal that would have enabled it to travel beyond a regigious market.

Recently orphaned, 10-year-old Aaron (ably voiced by young "All My Children" veteran Tommy Michaels) and his trusty companion Zlateh the Goat (Tovah Feldshuh) goes to live with his Aunt Sarah (Feldshuh again) and Uncle Shlemiel (Ronn Carroll) in the Polish village of Chelm.

Upon his arrival, Aaron discovers that his uncle, like the majority of Chelm's dumb and dumber denizens, isn't exactly the brightest bulb on the, uh, Hanukkah bush. As a result, it's up to the youngster to stop the evil Sorcerer (Steve Newman) and his gigantic clay-and-water Golem from destroying the world, starting with Chelm.

Of course, Aaron ultimately succeeds in his mission, with a little help from good old Zlateh and the Lantuch (Ivy Austin), a centuries-old imp in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

Directed by Paris-based animator and "Sesame Street" vet Albert Hanan Kaminski, the film is visually rich in background detail -- a computer-generated sequence involving the Golem's destruction of Chelm is particularly impressive -- but the stitched-together Singer stories (by Kaminski and Jacqueline Galia Benousilio) feel choppy and unsubstantial.

On the audio end, the assorted vocal talent is in fine form, with Finkel delivering his wall-to-wall narration with sing-song gusto.

Speaking of songs, those written by Harnick and composing legend Michel Legrand (who previously collaborated on "Umbrellas of Cherbourg") are likable and gently melodic but ultimately forgettable. It's far more likely the kiddies will be tapping their feet out of restlessness.

AARON'S MAGIC VILLAGE

Avalanche Releasing

An Albert Kaminski film

A Benousilio-Volkle production

in association with Columbia TriStar Pictures

Director Albert Hanan Kaminski

Screenwriters Albert Hanan Kaminski

and Jacqueline Galia Benousilio

Adapted from "Stories for Children" by

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Producers Dora Benousilio and Peter Volkle

Music and songs Michel Legrand

Lyrics Sheldon Harnick

Color/stereo

Voices:

Narrator Fyvush Finkel

Aaron Tommy Michaels

Aunt Sarah, Zlateh the Goat, Matchmaker

Tovah Feldshuh

Uncle Shlemiel Ronn Carroll

Gronam Ox Harry Goz

The Sorcerer Steve Newman

The Lantuch Ivy Austin

Running time -- 80 minutes

MPAA rating: G...