PJ Grisar

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By PJ Grisar April 15, 2025 There's a meme, often invoked about ambitious film projects, that "men will literally do [insert absurd undertaking] instead of going to therapy." In the case of Spielberg, it's: "direct a series of blockbusters that are really about his parents' divorce." With Hitchcock it's: "terrorize actresses to the point of breakdown than reckon with his issues with blonde women." For Nathan Fielder, in the second season of The Rehearsal, this formula has reached its...

2 weeks ago | forward.com | PJ Grisar

William Finn, the Tony-winning musical theater composer and lyricist, who wrote offbeat odes to Jewish and queer identity, has died at 73. Playbill reported his death after a long illness. Known for musicals like The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and A New Brain, which documented a health crisis, Finn rose to prominence in 1992 with Falsettos, a portrait of a dysfunctional family that opens with the number "Four Jews in a Room Bitching" and culminates in a bar mitzvah.

2 weeks ago | forward.com | PJ Grisar

If names are destiny, Mommy the Galápagos tortoise is finally fulfilling hers - just like another aged matriarch before her. The longtime resident of the Philadelphia Zoo, and her partner, Abrazzo, became first-time parents in their 10th decade, recently birthing four hatchlings in an apparent record for the species. But did Mommy laugh when she found she was with child? Millennia before Mommy earned her given name, Sarah was told, at the age of 90, that she would conceive against all odds.

2 weeks ago | forward.com | PJ Grisar

Early in the new film V13, there's a psychoanalytic answer to the diner scene in Heat. A shabby young painter, selling his landscapes for 20 crowns, rubs elbows with a well-dressed sophisticate at a greasy spoon. His would-be patron notices how his street scene is missing a statue of Athena. The painter remarks that Athena - goddess of reason - is an avatar of hypocrisy, admired by politicians who claim to detest the slavery permitted in ancient Greece, while upholding a more modern bondage.

2 weeks ago | forward.com | PJ Grisar

This article contains spoilers for episode 13 and 14 of The Pitt. In the 15th hour of a shift from hell, Dr Robby went missing. When a medical student found him, in a heap in the pediatric room, he was crying. Under his breath, Robby said " Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad."Played by Noah Wyle, Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch has, throughout Max's hit medical show The Pitt, invoked concepts from different cultures, including a Hawaiian ritual for saying goodbye to loved ones.