‘HSM,’ ‘W.’ and more
Opening Oct. 17 were “W.” and “The Secret Life of Bees.” “W.” is Oliver Stone’s take on the life of George W. Bush. Richard Dreyfuss chews up some scenery as Dick Cheney and Elizabeth Banks, 34, plays Laura Bush. Banks, a Jew-by-choice, might finally have the star breakthrough role she has been looking for with this movie. (Oliver Stone’s late father was Jewish, but he identifies as a Buddhist.)
In “Bees,” Oscar-nominated British actress Sophie Okonedo, 37, plays one of a trio of South Carolina black beekeeping sisters who take in an abused teenage white girl (Dakota Fanning). Okonedo, who identifies as Jewish, was raised by her white English Jewish mother after her black Nigerian father returned to Africa shortly after her birth.
“High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” opens Friday, Oct. 24. The whole series has been a pop culture phenomenon since the original film premiered on the Disney Channel in 2006. To me, the series’ success isn’t a shocker: Cast some talented and attractive young people, throw in some teenage romance and angst and spice it up with pretty good dancing and songs, and you’ll probably have a youth market hit. MGM did this in the golden age of Hollywood. Disney cleverly revived the formula and was wise enough to spend just enough to do it right.
Ashley Tisdale, 22, appears again as Sharpay Evans, the school’s bad girl. Heartthrob Zac Efron, 21, reprises his role as “good guy” Troy Bolton. (Efron, who was raised in no religion, has some Jewish ancestry on his father’s side. He has never really made his background clear in media interviews.) Much of the original music is by David Lawrence, the son of singers Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence.
Small screen notes
Ed Asner, 79, plays the role he has perfected — a gruff guy with a secret heart of gold — in the new Hallmark Channel original film, “Generation Gap.” Asner plays the grandfather of a troubled teenage boy. The boy’s single mother sends him to Asner for the summer in the hope that a strong male role model will straighten him out. (Airs Saturday, Oct. 25 at 9 p.m.)
Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin, 26, has just been cast as the title character in the upcoming Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation “The Irena Sendler Story.” It recounts the experiences of a real-life Catholic Polish social worker credited with rescuing thousands of Jewish children during World War II.
Sendler died earlier this year at age 98. She smuggled the children out of the Warsaw ghetto in bags or through sewers and hid them with families around the city, efforts that eventually led to her arrest and torture by the Gestapo. The telefilm will air on CBS in April.
Nobel Hebrews
Since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901, 178 awards have gone to Jews (including about 25 Nobels given to “half” Jews). This total represents 23 percent of all the Nobel Prizes and includes 2008’s Jewish Nobelists — Paul Krugman, 55, and Martin Chalfie, 61. Krugman, the winner of the economics Nobel, is a Princeton professor, New York Times columnist and frequent TV news guest.
Chalfie, a neurobiologist, is head of the Columbia University biology department. The grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was raised in Skokie, a heavily Jewish Chicago suburb, where he was a high school friend of
H. Robert Horvitz, the co-winner of the 2002 medicine Nobel. Chalfie went on to Harvard, where he was captain of the varsity swim team. Chalfie shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry with two other scientists for their work with a natural green fluorescent protein that glows and allows researchers to illuminate tumor cells, trace toxins and monitor genes.