CELEBRITY JEWS
NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST
TWO BRAND NEW FILMS & DIAMOND SHINES AT 80 Locked Down, a new comedy/drama film, began streaming on HBO Max on Jan. 14. Here’s the basic plot: Linda (Anne Hathaway) and Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are a London married couple. They are on the brink of divorce when the COVID pandemic hits. By coincidence, Linda, a fashion executive, and Paxton, a delivery driver, have access to Harrods, the famous British department store, while it is closed because of the pandemic. Linda knows that a very valuable diamond is in the store vault. The couple decide to steal it but give half what they get to COVID charities. Ben Stiller, 55, has a smallish supporting role as Solomon, Linda’s boss.
Director Doug Liman, 55, scored a coup when he got permission from Harrods (which was really closed) to film in the store (a first) and he eventually cajoled them into letting him shoot in the store’s secret vault. Liman has helmed many hit films, including The Bourne Identity (2002), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Palmer, another new film, begins streaming on Apple TV+ on Jan. 29. Justin Timberlake stars as Eddie Palmer, a football star whose pro career is destroyed when he is imprisoned. After his release, he returns to his hometown, and things don’t go well until he forms a friendship with a boy whose mother abandoned him. He also begins a romantic relationship with an African American teacher. The supporting cast includes June Squibb, 91, as Eddie’s caring grandmother.
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ARTS&LIFE
Neil Diamond
Palmer was directed by Fisher Stevens, 57. You probably know him as a still busy character actor (including costarring in the hit Short Circuit movies and recent recurring roles on Succession and The Good Fight). He is also an accomplished director. Neil Diamond, who turned 80 on Jan. 24, gave an extensive interview to Parade Magazine (Jan. 10) and the news is surprisingly good. In July 2018, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and immediately
stopped touring. He now lives a comfortable life in an expansive cabin in the Colorado Rockies with his wife and dog. Unlike Linda Ronstadt, who also has Parkinson’s, his voice has not been affected by the disease. Last November, he released “Classic Diamonds.” Diamond reworked 14 of his biggest hits for the CD. He paired his voice with a symphony orchestra. He told Parade he is now working on an album of completely new songs. Also, he told Parade that “America,” written for the 1981 film remake of The Jazz Singer, was among his favorite songs. The song, he said, “was the story of my grandparents coming to America for that freedom. My grandmother, ‘Bubbe Molly’ came to America in steerage … when she was 12, escaping Jewish oppression in Russia … It’s a musical expression of being free.”
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later performing as a conductor there, had studied on scholarship at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. Among the countries where Bernstein and Chamis worked together were the United States, Israel and England. “In principle, music does not need words, but this project has so much behind-the-scenes material,” Chamis said. “If listeners read before about the history and culture, they will COURTESY OF FLAVIO CHANMIS
“Chichester Psalms I.” The original composition had Hebrew text. “Because Bernstein’s music is already sophisticated and a jazz band arrangement is sophisticated by definition, this album is sophistication by the sophisticated,” Chamis said. Bernstein and Chamis met in Vienna, where Bernstein was conducting and Chamis was a university music student. Chamis, raised in Brazil and
Flavio Chamis and Leonard Bernstein in Vienna in the 1980s.
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experience the CD in a much deeper sense.” BERNSTEIN’S ‘REACTION’ Chamis feels comfortable commenting on the way he believes Bernstein might have reacted to this recording because the two were personal friends as well as professional colleagues. “I believe he would find things he didn’t know existed in his music, and that is why he would like it,” Chamis explained. “Jazz musicians explore new realms within the compositions of others and bring their own ideas out of that. It is communication, and I believe Bernstein would have been communicating with the jazz musicians today.” Chamis, who worked with Bernstein during the last years of the honoree’s life, was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center during Bernstein’s last
summer at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Chamis met his wife, Tatjana Mead Chamis, at Tanglewood, and the two decided to move to Pittsburgh when she was offered a viola position with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Raising three children, the couple became members of Temple Sinai, where they add their talents to temple services and programs. “Bernstein was always open to new improvisation, and that’s probably why his music was so alive,” said Chamis, a Latin Grammy nominee. “He was always looking at the music in a new way — trying to find new things in the same old pieces. “Every time was like a jazz improvisation because he found something different, something new, something fresh. He was not a jazz musician, but there was jazziness in him.”
