The shortlist has leaked for casting the lead of the new Star Wars spin-off about a young Han Solo, and one of the three young men is Alden Ehrenreich. Even if he doesn’t land the role, you should know (and have an intense crush on) him.

Ehrenreich, 26, was raised in a Reconstructionist Jewish family in Los Angeles, and he has maybe the most Jewish big break since Paul Muni left Yiddish theatre. Young Alden was in a video sketch for a friend’s Bat Mitzvah, and as fate would have it, Steven Spielberg was at the party and liked Ehrenreich’s performance. Soon, an agent, TV appearances, and eventually, film roles.

Ehrenreich’s roles include a lead in the aptly-named Beautiful Creatures, but he’s been in the spotlight lately for his phenomenal turn in the Coen Brothers’ newest film, Hail, Caesar!  Ehrenreich plays cowboy actor Hobie Doyle, known for singing and doing his own stunts. The studio arranges for Hobie to take the lead in a highbrow romantic drama, and he is adorably out of his league.

Enough talk.  Want to fall in love? Just watch this clip:

Final notes to make you melt: When the Hollywood Reporter asked Ehrenreich who his dates would be for the Hail, Caesar! premiere, he responded, “My mom and my nana.” Aw!

Besides, Harrison Ford is of Jewish descent, so it only makes for a young Member of the Tribe to take on the mantle of the scruffiest rogue in the galaxy.

We hope that the force is with young Alden, and that we can see him hanging with a young Chewbacca in 2018.

The post The New Han Solo Could Be Jewish appeared first on Jewcy.

• Are slavery movies the new Holocaust flicks? Rachel Shukert thinks so. [Tablet]

• What Woody Allen’s character’s diction in Hannah and Her Sisters reveals about New Yorkers’ inability to pronounce the letter R. [Slate]

• See the couch where Hitler killed himself. Or don’t. [NY Daily News]

• Live like a Coen brother (Ethan) for only $2.34 million. [Curbed]

• A guy named Ira Isaacs is going to jail for four years for making a video in the style of the infamously obscene ‘Two Girls One Cup.’ [The Scroll]

• Lena Dunham and Jon Stewart commiserate over mean Internet things. [The Daily Show]

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• Well, this is awkward. 18% of people surveyed think Obama is Jewish.

• Willa Paskin talks to Morgan Saylor, the young actress who plays Dana Brody on Homeland.

• Alicia Silverstone stars in Vamp, which is basically Clueless for the Twilight era.

• Mover over Gwyneth, Elizabeth Taylor invented Goop first—and it was a cocktail.

• John Goodman is hanging out with the Coen brothers again.

• Before your power goes out, watch Drake’s graduation speech:

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Television writers face a quandary when writing historical fiction. References to famous historical events can seem quaint or like a substitute for originality. Downton Abbey especially relies on historical tragedies to set its plot in motion: the show begins with the sinking of the Titanic and continues, in the second season, with World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic. Nearly any show set in England in this period should acknowledge these events, but when is it a narrative necessary, and when is it a crutch? And when are scriptwriters just trying to make their audiences feel smart for recognizing historical Easter eggs?

I’ve been thinking about these questions while watching Boardwalk Empire, HBO’s crime drama about bootleggers, gangsters, and corrupt politicians, centered in 1920s Atlantic City. (Season 3 of the show premieres September 16.) A friend recently suggested to me that TV writers might lean heavily on history in order to make viewers feel intellectually engaged while they sit glued to their flatscreens. But there are times when historical verisimilitude can be unsettling. When the Jews of Boardwalk Empire are called Christ killers and other epithets, do we call it a nod to historical accuracy, or is it something more pernicious, a way of vicariously enjoying bygone racism?

I haven’t found tidy answers to these questions, but I’ve enjoyed watching the Jews of Boardwalk blast their away across the screen, even as I sometimes wince at their hackneyed Yiddish accents. Jewish gangsters were big machers in the bootlegging era, and chief among them in the HBO series is Arnold Rothstein, who was also known for fixing the 1919 World Series. Michael Stuhlberg—who starred as the sad sack Larry Gopnik in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man—plays Arnold Rothstein as a courtly but dangerous powerbroker, an inveterate gambler but a deeply cerebral and successful one, with a sociopath’s dead-eyed smile.

His deputies are Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, the latter played by Anatol Yusef. The real-life Lansky didn’t even crack five feet, and his HBO incarnation isn’t much taller. Yusef’s Lansky is streetwise and good at talking himself out of squirrely situations, but his voice—all rounded vowels and Yiddish street theater, it overflows with “oy veys”—can grate. It’s a sign of how parody can come to replace the real thing. A linguist might be able to rate Yusef’s accuracy, but otherwise, he resembles the ye olde New York accents we all take on when imitating our elderly grandparents.

For a study in contrasts in Jewish power, you couldn’t ask for a better pair than Agent Eric Sebso and Manny Horvitz. Played by William Forsythe (whose accent is of the fresh-off-the-boat variety), Horvitz is a burly, silver-eyed butcher who, after surviving a shotgun blast from a would-be assassin, kills the intruder with a cleaver to the skull. Forsythe carries himself with tremendous physicality; he has that heft that could conceal a pack of hard-earned muscle or just the residue of too many years feasting on brisket. He reminded me of Flannery O’Connor’s description of a diner owner in A Good Man Is Hard to Find: his belly looks “like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt.”

By the end of Season 2, Horvitz has thrown his lot in with Nucky Thompson, the show’s main protagonist and anti-hero, played by Steve Buscemi. I couldn’t tell you quite how Horvitz got to that position, as Boardwalk Empire is so filled with deals and counter-deals, many of them never consummated, that it’s often difficult to tell who owes whom money and who wants whom dead. The show is, frankly, a bit of a mess, with a couple dozen characters forming a spiderweb of relationships. But Boardwalk Empire is also like Horvitz: brash, violent, often witty and menacing, and steeped in an old-world charm.

Pour out some Manischewitz for Agent Sebso, who never really stood a chance in this rogues’ gallery. Sebso (Erik Weiner) is a government agent charged with enforcing prohibition in Atlantic County. He’s partnered with Agent Nelson Van Alden, a fanatically religious Christian whose profound discomfort with Atlantic City (“Sodom by the sea”) leads actor Michael Shannon to new frontiers in bitter beer face. Sebso isn’t so clean himself—he’s secretly on Nucky Thompson’s payroll and kills a witness on his orders—but his default mode is simpering and pathetic.

In the penultimate episode of Season 1, after Van Alden has begun to cast doubts about Sebso’s role in the death of the witness, Sebso asks how he might regain his partner’s trust. “Repent,” Van Alden replies, leaving the Jewish Sebso baffled. Later, the two are investigating a still in the woods, where they stumble upon a black church group conducting baptismal rites in the river. Filled with fundamentalist fury, Van Alden repeatedly dunks Sebso in the river, demanding that he repent. One dunking goes on for too long and Sebso drowns. Van Alden is shaken but convinced that he’s committed a godly act.

This is one of the most extraordinary scenes Boardwalk has produced. It works so well, in part, because the show’s frequent displays of violence tend to be so bloody, the camera focusing on a slit throat gushing blood or showing us each pounding as a man’s face collapses in on itself. Here the death is visceral but not exploitative, atavistic without being pornographic in its bloodlust. Instead, Agent Sebso’s death reveals the show’s deep religiosity. For all of its characters’ waxing about loyalty and building criminal empires, Boardwalk Empire is, at heart, about faith versus reason, puritanism versus individual freedom. Agent Sebso dies, in a sense, because he is Jewish—he literally can’t repent, he is beyond baptism—but also because his corruption is too simple, making him a natural sacrificial lamb. He doesn’t have the loquacious swagger of Meyer Lansky, the debonair menace of Arnold Rothstein, or the brutish presence of Manny Horvitz. In a show obsessed with re-enacting out America’s sordid history, Sebso is only a footnote.

Related: Vigor Juice [Tablet Magazine]

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Director Jeff Feuerzeig met The Dude 12 years before The Big Lebowski. The Dude being Jeff Dowd, who actually was called that, and who inspired the Coen Brother’s cult hero in the 1998 film. Now, Feuerzeig has given The Dude his own movie: a documentary called The Dude

He explains,

The Dude and I never did work together, but over the years we’d cross paths on the festival circuit, and it always warmed my heart that such a character, this true believer, was still carrying the torch for Independent film. When the Coen Brothers made The Big Lebowski in 1998, I sat in a darkened theater trying to reconcile the Dude I knew with the fictitious character Jeff Bridges was playing on screen — Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski — but I was not surprised in the least that the Coens found inspiration in the Dude. Jeff Dowd is a right of passage in the indie film world — baptism by the Dude — his spittle and good vibes setting you free to create a world of your own.

Watch the director’s cut:

THE DUDE (Director’s Cut) from Jeff Feuerzeig on Vimeo.

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We probably should have asked Jesse Eisenberg if he expected to be nominated for an Oscar when we interviewed him a few months back.  Eisenberg’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network netted him a  a nomination alongside fellow M.O.T. James Franco and Jeff Bridges — who isn’t Jewish, but seems to work pretty well with them.  The Coen Brothers, who directed Bridges in True Grit, and Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan, are all in the running for Best Director.

Hailee Steinfeld, who was fantastic as Mattie Ross in True Grit, is up for Actress in a Supporting Role, and even though the Jewish Journal says “Israel does not make the cut,” Natalie Portman looks to become the first Israeli-born actress to win the major award. We’re pretty sure that “Team Portman” will be in full effect on February 27th.

Look down the list of all the nominees.  It’s a litany of Jewish names among dozens of actors, actresses, writers, directors and other brilliant film people

The post Jewish Oscar Nomination Roundup appeared first on Jewcy.

• Looking over the last 365 days (give or take…) in the Jewish world at The Forward.

• An Israeli rabbi threatens civil war should the government evacuate even the smallest West Bank settlement.

• “Coen Brothers Movies Ranked by Most Thorough Realization of a World.”

• Taking a look at the career of comic book writer Harvey Pekar

The post Daily Jewce: The Jewish Year, Israeli Civil Was Is Threatened, Coen Brothers Films And More appeared first on Jewcy.

The Coen brother are back, and this time to tackle the story of a little girl and her search for justice in their remake of what was arguably the last of the great John Wayne movies, True Grit.  The film follows Mattie, played Hailee Steinfeld, who, after her father’s murder sets out to find his killer and bring him to justice.  The story begins with Mattie descending on the town where the murder took place, sweeping it with her young woman gusto as she makes arrangements for her father’s burial and sets out to find the right man to hunt her father’s killer.  Ruben “Rooster” Cogburn played by Jeff Bridges, is that right man, the only bounty hunter in town with enough of what it takes (by Mattie’s estimation) to ensure the killer’s capture.  Josh Brolin plays Tom Chaney, the elusive murderer who killed Mattie’s dad and Matt Damon appears early on abruptly as LaBoeuf, a somewhat effete and bumbling Texas Ranger, who’s also hunting Chaney for a bounty stemming from a different crime.  Most of the film revolves around the hunt across Indian Territory in which we get to know Cogburn, a drunken lout of man who just happens to have the aim and bravery it will take to get the job done, as well as Mattie and LaBeouf.  In Mattie, Cogburn finds a kind ear, who’ll listen to him natter on about his ex wives and the child he alienated, and in Cogburn, Mattie finds a father figure, if not a romantic interest.  One of those truthful details about this film, is that they don’t shy away from the fact that women, even as young as Mattie were sexualized in the days of the old west.  LaBoeuf, seems to also hold a bit of a candle for Mattie and the hunt for Chaney at times turns into a pissing contest between the two opposites of Cogburn and LaBoeuf.  When we eventually meet Chaney, we see Josh Brolin playing a character who feels oddly reminiscent of his portrayal of George W Bush in W, just a slightly more cartoony old west version.  Chaney turns out to be part of gang of thieves led by Lucky Ned who’s expertly portrayed by Barry Pepper.  Pepper’s character is a perfect example of one of the Coen’s conflicted villains, willing to kill a fourteen year old girl one minute, and making sure that she is comfortable and safe the next.  It’s this ability to portray real, human characters juxtaposed with the almost hard-boiled genre-ized backdrop of the film, that makes for such a well executed feat.  The hunt, which makes up the lion’s share of the film amounted to an adventure that evoked in me a real sense of pathos.  I found myself quickly caught up in the journey and was quite surprised.

The other major component of the film is the beginning in which Mattie takes care of her dead father;s business.  Steinfeld perhaps deserves the most recognition of her portrayal in this film, as her hard facade and youthful insecurities are so well illustrated throughout — especially early in the film.  She stomps around town demanding that her father be properly buried and sells her father’s property, always touting her “good lawyer” upon any resistance.  This part of the film also truly to displays how charming the Coens attention to setting can be.  None of our heroes or villains are too pretty and their teeth are rotten in accordance with the times.  A scene early in the movie portrays a public hanging for the entertainment of the blood thirsty towns people where the condemned get a moment to profess their last words.  The moment is brutal, ugly and honest; and because of that, it’s also funny.

True Grit may be a remake of a John Wayne western, but many claim that the Coen’s remake is more true to the novel, which is said to read like a Coen brothers script itself. What makes this film worth re-making, is that the Coen’s didn’t really make a Western here, they told a compelling story with a well established backdrop.  Most importantly, they did something that was nearly impossible in 1969, in keeping the all of the nasty bits within the story alive, well and burnish free.

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