Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival 2009

The 4th Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, which runs April 23-30, will kick off with a screening of Joshua Sinclair’s Jump, starring Ben Silverstone (of the coming-of-age gay drama Get Real) and Patrick Swayze.
Jump will screen on Thursday, April 23, at 8:00 pm at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. Based on a real story, the film (co-written by Sinclair and Ryan James) follows the biased murder trial of the young Jew and future celebrity portrait photographer Philippe Halsman (Silverstone), who was accused of murdering his father in late 1920s Austria. Swayze plays the young man’s Jewish attorney.
Also in the Jump cast: Martine McCutcheon, and veterans Stefanie Powers, Richard Johnson, and Sybil [...]

OPERATION THUNDERBOLT – Klaus Kinski

Mivtsa Yonatan / Operation Thunderbolt (1977)
Director: Menahem Golan
Screenplay: Menahem Golan and Clarke Reynolds
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Yehoram Gaon, Sybil Danning, Assaf Dayan, Gila Almagor, Assaf Dayan, Mark Heath
 

 

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNFASHIONABLE
Despite the complex and gripping real-life basis for Mivtsa Yonatan / Operation Thunderbolt — the 1976 hijacking of a Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris Air France flight — director-co-producer-co-scenarist Menahem Golan managed to make a film utterly devoid of suspense, depth, or intelligence. With its cheap look — despite full cooperation from the Israeli armed forces — subpar craftsmanship, and one-dimensional characters, Operation Thunderbolt is nothing more than your below-average 1970s movie-of-the-week. In fact, it is so mediocre that it earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film.
It all [...]