The Arts

Notes from the woodcutter: Woody Allen

  By Loren Kantor STUDIO CITY, California — From 1977 to 1986, Woody Allen had a filmmaking run so impressive it’s been equaled only by the likes of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges. Allen’s films included Annie Hall, Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, Zelig, Purple Rose of Cairo and Hannah and Her Sisters. Woody was an antidote to the Spielberg/Lucas […]

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Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Violinist mixes humor with classics and pop

Editor Donald H. Harrison is back from a roundtrip cruise between San Diego and the Hawaiian Islands. This is the sixth in a series of articles based on that experience. By Donald H. Harrison ABOARD MS ZAANDAM– Violinist Michael Bacala says he was inspired as a child by the Rocky movies starring Sylvester Stallone,  especially

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Donald H. Harrison, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Travel and Food

Play probes war correspondents’ ethics and adrenalin rushes

By Carol Davis SOLANA BEACH, California—I am in constant awe of war correspondent Richard Engle. It seems that wherever there is a skirmish (and I use the word cautiously) anywhere around the world his is the face I see reporting on it. He is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News and just as recently

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Voices powerful in lagging ‘Samson and Delilah’ production

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO—The San Diego Opera Company has brought back (by popular demand) Camille Saint-Saëns’ beautiful Samson et Dalila. The last time we were treated to this 19-century French opera was in 2007. No question this tale is of biblical proportions. The sets, rented from the San Francisco Opera, (Douglas Schmidt) are ‘gargantuan’

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Biography examines Joe Kennedy’s attitudes toward Jews

By Joel A. Moskowitz, MD LA JOLLA, California — The father of JFK and Bobby and Ted Kennedy was intimately involved in the world events leading up to World War II.  And David Nasaw’s book The Patriarch: The remarkable life and turbulent times of Joseph Patrick Kennedy tells it all.  Published by Penguin Press this

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, USA

Multiple local awards for ‘Iliad,’ ‘Allegiance,” ‘Parade’ and ‘Scottsboro Boys’

By Carol Davis LA JOLLA, California — A total of 22 productions from nine theater companies were honored by the San Diego Theatre Critics at their annual awards ceremony and reception held Feb. 4 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, in La Jolla before an audience of nearly 500 people. Leading the way

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, The Arts

Barry Rubin offers 11 of his books free to downloaders

Editor’s Note: Prof. Barry Rubin, director of the GLORIA center in Israel which keeps close track of geo-political developments in the Middle East, is an occasional columnist for San Diego Jewish World.   He now is offering free to readers 11 books he has published over the years. HERZLIYA, Israel (Press Release)– The GLORIA Center has

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories

‘Clybourne Park’ studies psychology of housing discrimination

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO — The Clybourne Park neighborhood in playwright Bruce Norris’s biting comedy is the very same neighborhood that the Younger Family of the late 1950’s, in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, was about ready to move into, in that groundbreaking drama so many moons ago. The Youngers are an

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

‘Educating Rita’ in some ways better than ‘Pygmalion’

By Carol Davis SOLANA BEACH, California—-Some might deem Willy Russell’s 1980’s comedy Educating Rita dated and irrelevant. It is, however, very current and well, quite relevant given the current state of our much maligned public educational system. Russell’s play takes us to a University in the North of England at a time when some major

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast