Golden moments
The Golden Globe awards are a reasonable predictor of Oscar nominations and a fun celeb-watching event. They air on NBC at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 15. Here are the Hebrews up for a Globe in the film categories:
Maggie Gyllenhaal is up for best actress in a drama (“Sherrybaby”), while Sacha Baron Cohen (“Borat”) is nominated for best actor in a comedy.
British director Stephen Frears is nominated for best director for “The Queen.” Another British Jew, Patrick Marber, is nominated for best screenplay for “Notes on a Scandal.” The film, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, just opened in very limited release, and is from a novel of the same name by British Jewish writer Zoe Heller.
Digging the outdoors
Josh Bernstein’s archeology TV show, “Digging for the Truth,” is the highest-rated series that the History Channel has ever run. It begins its third season on Sunday, Jan. 22.
The companion book to the series is just out and is entitled — “Digging for the Truth: One Man’s Epic Adventure Exploring the World’s Great Archaeological Mysteries.”
In his book, Bernstein, 35, vividly describes his trips to 10 exotic locales — including searching for the Ark of the Covenant in Egypt, Israel and Ethiopia.
Bernstein has the enthusiasm of someone who is very interested in his subject — but hasn’t had that spirit dulled by years of doctoral study. Josh “only” has an undergraduate degree in anthropology.
One of a pair of identical twins, Bernstein was born in New York to an Israeli father and an American Jewish mother. While in high school, he became very interested in the outdoors and spent some time at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School in Utah.
After graduating from Cornell in 1993, Josh moved to Jerusalem and spent a year studying Jewish mysticism at the Pardes Institute. He then considered entering the Jewish Theological Seminary, but was put off by the prospect of spending so much time indoors. Instead, he told his Pardes teachers that he was going to look for wisdom in the desert, like Abraham and Moses — and they responded, “Good for you.”
In 1994, Bernstein started working for the Boulder survival school and eventually became its owner. He appeared as a survival instructor on a reality TV show and that led, in a roundabout way, to an offer from the History Channel to host “Digging for the Truth.”
Bernstein will visit three Bay Area bookstores: Keplers, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24; Stacey’s, 581 Market St., San Francisco at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan 25; and Books Inc., 301 Castro St., Mountain View at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25. For more info: www.joshbernsteingroupies.com/news/signing_tour.html
Fresh takes
Tony Shalhoub (“Monk”) just told the press about his new film, “American East,” which is now filming. Shalhoub plays an Egyptian-born Jew who opens a Los Angeles coffee shop with his best friend, a Muslim Arab American. Their friendship is a source of some consternation to both guys’ friends and families.
Shalhoub, who is of Lebanese Christian Arab background, says the film will show the bad effects of 9/11 on Arab Americans — but it will be a humanistic story that shakes things up through unexpected pairings, like a Jew and an Arab being friends.
BET, the cable station, has just started showing repeat episodes of the HBO series “The Wire” (Thursdays at 9 p.m.). This gritty series about urban cops and drug dealers has been hailed by many critics as better than “The Sopranos.”
The show was created and often is written by David Simon, formerly a Baltimore Sun police reporter. He also created “Homicide: Life on the Street.”