Esther Kustanowitz: October 2007 Archives

In Entertainment Weekly, in a post titled "You Are What You Watch," writer Gretchen Hansen related an anecdote: She'd been sitting on a train next to a man watching a slasher film, who said he loved that film, that it was "the best." But what she imagined she heard him say was "you're next, blondie."

Even though she realized she had an overactive imagination, she also wondered if maybe she was onto something. She challenged readers to "tell me you've never made snap judgment about someone based on their favorite movies or television show."

I love sci-fi stuff, from Quantum Leap to the X-files, and of course the Buffy/vampire oeuvre. I love Heroes and Lost and 24. But does this mean I'm a geek (ok, maybe I am), or occult obsessed (um, no) or that I aspire to be a member of CTU (not really--that whole "setting up a perimeter" thing gives me heartburn, and even CTU's desk jockeys are terrorist targets)? And what about the truly dreadful "I Love New York 2"? Does watching something so vapid and insulting mean that I'm a dreadful person?

Can we just watch something, or does it have to have some sort of greater meaning about our spiritual or moral makeup? Are we what we watch, no matter how random and unplanned? Or are we what we intend and plan to watch? Or doesn't it have an impact at all?

And on a larger level, does what's popular in the culture reveal something about what our society is becoming? Let us know what you think--and what your entertainment tastes say about you--in the comments box below.

For a group of three mothers who left India to start life anew, living in the new world brings new experiences and presents new challenges. Their daughters, Kiran, Preity, and Rani, call their mothers "The Hindi Bindi Club," also the name of Monica Pradhan's novel about coming home, to a suburb of Washington D.C. for the holidays, to food, family, gossip and reflections.

The mothers have remained close for decades, sharing treasured recipes, honored customs and the challenges of adjusting to a new world. Meenal Deshpande’s daughter Kiran returns home after a failed marriage that occurred despite her father’s disapproval. This will be her first trip home in five years. She arrives home craving tradition, wanting a family of her own, and wondering if a semi-arranged marriage is the answer.

Saroj Chawla’s daughter Preity is happily married with two delightful children. Most would describe it as the perfect life. But Preity is not haunted by the present. A past encounter with her soulmate is keeping her up at night, remembering and wondering.

Uma Basu McGuiness’s daughter Rani, is a rocket scientist-turned-artist, a career move which, while painful for her parents, has proven successful. Instead of celebrating her success with an opening night exhibition on the horizon, she is drowning in depression, her creative juices having run dry.

Yes, we were tired of the news being "the Britney Channel." But over the weekend, a new kind of celebrity non-news hit, with the outing of a Harry Potter character.

In case you haven't been paying attention, here's the recap: Albus Dumbledore. Gay. And in love with Grindewald, a rival wizard, whom he defeated in battle.

All that talk about powerful wands, and we never suspected a thing.
[spoilers after the jump]

Nobody's perfect. Especially not Jews, according to Ann Coulter. But that news is SO last week. This week, the hate is on Gwyneth Paltrow for her comments about the character she plays in "The Good Night," the new movie directed by her brother Jake.

Gwyneth, previously adored by the Jewish community for her mere lineage of being the daughter of the talented Blythe Danner (who played the mom in the "Brighton Beach Memoirs" movie and is therefore an honorary Jewess) on one side and for her connection to the Paltrovich rebbe on her father's side, slides down the approval index for her comments about "Dora, the protagonist’s waking-life girlfriend," as New York Magazine reported:

Gwyneth is barely recognizable: pale, with a cape of dense brown hair, bundled in shapeless cardigans. “It was me physicalizing my New York Jewish half,” jokes Gwyneth. (Her rep as a shiksa goddess notwithstanding, the actress is in fact, as a friend likes to call her, “Gwyneth Paltrow, the descendant of ancient rabbis.”)

To see how much is "barely recognizable," check out the picture above. She has brown hair. What a transformation! And nice that she thinks that "New York Jew" means messy and unattractive.

I have to admit that I go into any Steve Carell movie just happy to be there (a theory I am not testing with "Evan Almighty"--why mess with the perfect track record in my head?). Carell's most recent effort, "Dan in Real Life" is being marketed as a comedy about a newspaper columnist who gives readers advice but still has problems. Anyone watching the trailer would think: ah, this is going to be about his home life and what a wreck it is. Nominally, that person would be right. But soon after we meet the widowed, sad-eyed Dan and his three spunky daughters, the family leaves the home-based comedy and travels into what seems like a different movie entirely, perhaps from a different age: the "home for the holidays" comedy.

Oops, she did it again. No visitation. That's none. Not supervised, and certainly not unsupervised. According to the latest news in the Huffington Post, Britney gets no visitations with her children until she complies with a court order. The parameters...

Celebrity divorces: they're seldom pleasant. As we've seen, there's name-calling, slander, lawsuits, and fighting over custody. (Actually, that does sound a lot like most non-celebrity divorces as well: just without coverage in the Enquirer.) When we see a couple that...

It's as riveting as it is deeply weird. It borrows musically and thematically from just about everywhere--from cowboys to klezmer to 80s Peter Gabriel videos. It's been viewed over 754,000 times since it debuted this past weekend. It's been "favorited"...

Children of the John Hughes generation know Mare Winningham as the earnest-faced innocent from St. Elmo's Fire (cue David Foster's evocative love theme); or as Meredith Grey's doomed stepmother on Grey's Anatomy. (Oops, I guess that was a spoiler. Sorry....

In contemplating Brad Pitt, people often focus on the external; from his big screen debut in "Thelma and Louise" to some of his more current projects, we view him as a thing of beauty. Which he undoubtedly is, partly because...

When "Knocked Up" took America by storm, many people (Idol Chatterers among them) wondered, in a movie about a pregnancy which resulted from a one-night stand outside of marriage, where was the abortion discussion? Ellen, who blogged this originally, found...

You might not know it to look at her, but the ultimate blonde beauty, Barbie, is Jewish. And despite the "blonde jokes" that might plague her, Barbie's actually got a lot to teach us about Jewish history and identity....