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Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of those supreme American figures who made looking like a creature of contradiction seem the quintessential way to be. His contradictions were luminous, larger-than-life, and he wore them with a tall, puckishly smiling Irish pride. He carried himself like a patrician — the bow tie, the mop of gray hair falling into his eyes, the preternaturally precise diction — but, in fact, Moynihan grew up in Hell’s Kitchen during the Depression. (He devoted much of his public service to eradicating poverty because he’d known the sting of it.) He was a wonkishly effusive Ivy League academic, but he relished the hurly-burly of combat politics. He was a liberal Democrat who, in 1969, went to work for Richard Nixon (against the furious protests of his wife and many others). If he could have surveyed the perilous divisions that define American politics today, he would have said something like,...

Colliding Dreams National Endowment for the Humanities/ International Film Circuit Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. d-based on Rotten Tomatoes Grade: A- Director: Joseph Dorman, Oren Rudavsky Written by: Joseph Dorman, Oren Rudavsky Cast: Abraham B. Yehoshua, Anita Shapira, Avishai Margalit, Benny Morris, Galia Golan, Gershom Gorent, Gideon Shimoni, Hanan Ashrawi, Jafar Farah, Khalil Shikaki, Meron Benvenisti, Mordecai Bar On Screened at: Critics’ Link, NYC, 2/16/16 Opens: March 4, 2016 It’s not as though there haven’t been scores of narratives and docs about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Yet people here in the U.S. and around the world still have cockeyed views on the conflict and often blame Israel for the seemingly [ Read More ]

The post Colliding Dreams Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

In today's roundup: Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver at 40, a personal history of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, an appreciation of Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights, another on Moussa Touré's The Pirogue, revisiting Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat, Alex Ross Perry on Dennis Hopper in Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson's The American Dreamer, Nicole Brenez on Jocelyne Saab, J. Hoberman on Richard Lester, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Tran Anh Hung's The Scent of Green Papaya, Daniel Kasman on Michael Bay, Stuart Klawans on Amos Gitai’s Rabin, the Last Day and Joseph Dorman and Oren Rudavsky's Colliding Dreams, Soraya Roberts on Winona Ryder, Matt Thrift on Robert De Niro—and much, much more. » - David Hudson...

In today's roundup: Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver at 40, a personal history of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, an appreciation of Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights, another on Moussa Touré's The Pirogue, revisiting Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat, Alex Ross Perry on Dennis Hopper in Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson's The American Dreamer, Nicole Brenez on Jocelyne Saab, J. Hoberman on Richard Lester, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Tran Anh Hung's The Scent of Green Papaya, Daniel Kasman on Michael Bay, Stuart Klawans on Amos Gitai’s Rabin, the Last Day and Joseph Dorman and Oren Rudavsky's Colliding Dreams, Soraya Roberts on Winona Ryder, Matt Thrift on Robert De Niro—and much, much more. » - David Hudson...

DVD Release Date: March 12, 2013

Price: DVD $29.95

Studio: Docurama/New Video/Cinedigm

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness is a 2011 documentary film on the legendary Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, who remains best known for creating the character of Tevye the Dairyman, who later became the leading player of the hit 1964 Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof.

The movie tells the tale of Eastern European Jew Aleichem, a rebellious genius who created an entirely new literature. Plumbing the depths of a Jewish world locked in crisis and on the cusp of profound change, Aleichem captured that world with insightful humor. As scholars look at it now, Sholem Aleichem was not just a witness to the creation of a new modern Jewish identity, but one of the very men who forged it.

Directed by Joseph Dorman, the unrated Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness had a limited release to theaters in July, 2011, where...

Title: Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness Directed By: Joseph Dorman Written By: Joseph Dorman Cast: Sholem Aleichem Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 6/21/11 Opens: July 8, 2011 Sholem Aleichem, whose real name was Solomon Rabinovitz, is a character who is better known to Jews than to Christians, though one wonders whether now, with the Yiddish language dying an increasingly rapid death, there are many young Jews around who consider him a household word. Taking the name Sholem Aleichem, which is the only Hebrew that most people know “Peace be with you” was Rabinovitz’s way of signaling the importance of being read by ordinary people as opposed to folks who...

As the four subjects of this stimulating documentary discuss the politics and ideologies of 20th century America, "Arguing the World" takes on an air of fantasy. Surely these men live in an alternate universe in which people can make a difference through the sheer intellectual force of their ideas.

Joseph Dorman's film, now receiving its U.S. theatrical premiere at New York's Film Forum, is about four men who grew up together in New York, attended City College in the 1930s (which, the film makes clear, was the lower-class equivalent to Harvard) and went on to careers as some of this country's most distinguished cultural and political theorists. Each started as a social radical, enthralled with the possible future of Marxism, but they ultimately diverged in wildly separate directions. Irving Kristol became a figurehead of the neoconservative movement; Nathan Glazer became a critic of liberal social programs; Daniel Bell modified his positions but stayed true to his liberal roots; and the late Irving Howe remained a faithful leftist. The film chronicles the intellectual journey taken by each of these men, who started as friends but later became bitterly divided.

"Arguing the World" is, as one would imagine, an often-static documentary relying primarily on talking heads, but these are heads than certainly can talk. It is also fascinating in its delineation of ideologies adapting with the times and altering relationships. As the men assume their various roles in intellectual life -- writing books, advising presidents, founding magazines like Public Interest, Commentary and Dissent -- their once-close friendship inevitably suffers, though each remains respectful of the others. Ultimately, the film is most valuable for its evocation of a now-unimaginable time when ideas mattered.

ARGUING THE WORLD

First Run Features

Director-screenplay-producer: Joseph Dorman

Executive producer: Arnold Labaton

Associate producer: Gail Segal

Editor: Jonathan Oppenheim

Photography: Peter Brownscombe,

Barrin Bonet, Wayne De La Roche, Boyd Estus

Music: Adam Guettel

Color

Running time -- 107 minutes

No MPAA rating...