Schindler S List

Last week, after taking myself to the movie everyone's talking about, I drove home feeling outraged by the world's injustices and depressed because the human spirit seems eternally captive to its darker side. In the aftermath of "Schindler's List," I tossed around the notion of personal responsibility in areas large and small: What, I wondered, can one person do about Bosnia? About the semiautomatic gunfire we hear at night in our neighborhoods?

With the Oscars finally upon us Sunday, it's do-or-die for the movies ranked in the L.A. Times Data Desk's HeatMeter, which tallies points at events throughout the season to gauge the overall traction of people and films. With Ben Affleck's "Argo" piling up the wins, it's taken the lead in the overall film race (which incorporates all wins for a movie, and for everyone from directors to actors to cinematographers). A best picture win could well cement "Argo's" place at the top of the heap.

It was 1982, just after the publication of the award-winning "Schindler's List" and exactly 35 years after Holocaust survivor Leopold (Poldek) Page had vowed to bring the story of Oskar Schindler, a freewheeling Nazi who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews, to light. Page, owner of a Beverly Hills leather goods store, and author Thomas Keneally, whom he'd roped into writing the tale, had just finished a "Today" show interview when they were informed that MCA President Sidney J. Sheinberg was interested in buying the rights for a film to be directed by Steven Spielberg.

Among the 1,100 Jews saved from the Nazis by German industrialist Oskar Schindler was an emaciated 13-year-old boy named Leon Leyson, who had to stand on a box to reach the machinery in the Krakow factory where Schindler sheltered him and his family. The boy Schindler called "Little Leyson" survived the Holocaust to start life over in Los Angeles. He taught high school in Huntington Park for 39 years, rarely mentioning to anyone the pain and perils he experienced during the war that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews.

The memories, Leon Leyson says, have not diminished with time. Memories--of German troops invading Poland in 1939 and his family being herded into the Jewish ghetto in Krakow when he was 9. . . . Of hiding in a cramped attic crawl space to avoid being killed or sent to a death camp by SS commandos who periodically swept through the Jewish quarter. . . . Of living in a concentration camp run by a sadistic SS commandant who would shoot Jews for sport. . . .

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who won his first Oscar for the Holocaust drama "Schindler's List," has taken on another tragic moment in modern Jewish history as his next project: the 1972 Munich Olympics. Spielberg plans to start production in June and is eyeing actor Ben Kingsley for a role in the drama, which will chronicle the Summer Games devastated by the kidnapping and slaying of Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants, a DreamWorks studio spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Believing Kenneth Turan ("Restraint From the Master of Razzmatazz," Calendar, Dec. 15) and all the other critics who have waxed poetic about Steven Spielberg's latest blockbuster, I attended "Schindler's List" with an open mind hoping that Spielberg had somehow managed to make a film divorced from the fairy-tale perceptions that had been emblematic of his earlier work.

The office pools have closed, let the drama begin: Silent film or 3-D talkie, Streep's Thatcher or Williams' Marilyn or maybe Viola Davis? Scorsese again? For me, the most fascinating question is which of the five foreign-film nominees will win. If you picked Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation" — a visceral chamber drama exposing all manner of class, religious and gender fissures in contemporary Iran — you went for the favorite, winner of numerous critics' awards, "a movie you'll love from a country you hate," as the late Bingham Ray jokingly promoted "The White Balloon.

Regarding "It's the Story of a Hero in Hell," by Thomas Keneally (Dec. 12): To read novelist Keneally's comments on Oskar Schindler's widow, Emilie, whom Oskar left behind in Argentina when he went back to Germany in 1957, brought to mind my meeting her in 1988 at a luncheon the local B'nai B'rith tendered those of us on a tour to meet our members in South America. (We have members in 54 countries, including Israel.) Argentina B'nai B'rith adopted Emilie Schindler 30 years ago when it found her destitute and alone.

There is nothing more galling than hearing people laugh at an image or idea that you take very seriously. With each chuckle your head aches with anger and your eyes fill with tears. That is how some patrons at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland felt when a group of high school students laughed through parts of Steven Spielberg's World War II Holocaust epic, "Schindler's List." Since then, everyone from CNN to Steven Spielberg has been speculating on what was behind that disturbing laughter.

Re “ Moviegoing as endurance test ,” Dec. 22 I don't think longer movies have anything to do with digital. It's because longer movies traditionally win awards. About 40% of the movies that won the best picture Oscar over the last 40 years have been movies more than 21/2 hours in length. (“The Godfather,” The Godfather Part II,” “Dances With Wolves,” “Schindler's List,” “Braveheart,” “Titanic” and “Gladiator,” to name a few). Several films that were nominated but didn't win were longer movies.

The office pools have closed, let the drama begin: Silent film or 3-D talkie, Streep's Thatcher or Williams' Marilyn or maybe Viola Davis? Scorsese again? For me, the most fascinating question is which of the five foreign-film nominees will win. If you picked Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation" — a visceral chamber drama exposing all manner of class, religious and gender fissures in contemporary Iran — you went for the favorite, winner of numerous critics' awards, "a movie you'll love from a country you hate," as the late Bingham Ray jokingly promoted "The White Balloon.

As I stood on a cracked concrete sidewalk in the Podgorze district of Krakow, I began to understand just what "wrong side of the tracks" meant. Ahead of me was a stark railroad bridge that carried commuters across the Vistula River to the city's historic heart. Beneath it was a pedestrian walkway, claustrophobically low and forbidding. Punctuating the end of the street, it seemed like a grim gateway of sorts, and so it was. Beyond the bridge, past a collection of featureless industrial buildings in various states of repair, was Krakow's newest attraction ?

Poland's supreme court upheld the conviction on bribery charges of Lew Rywin, the Polish co-producer of the Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List." Rywin, 59, was convicted last year of being an accessory to influence peddling. He was found guilty by a Warsaw court of trying to solicit a $17.5-million bribe from a leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, in 2002. He has been sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $30,000 in fines.

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who won his first Oscar for the Holocaust drama "Schindler's List," has taken on another tragic moment in modern Jewish history as his next project: the 1972 Munich Olympics. Spielberg plans to start production in June and is eyeing actor Ben Kingsley for a role in the drama, which will chronicle the Summer Games devastated by the kidnapping and slaying of Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants, a DreamWorks studio spokeswoman said Wednesday.

After Kenneth Turan's moving comments on Ken Kesey's undeserved neglect at the March 1976 Oscars, he segues so smoothly into chiding Oscar winner Charlize Theron's failure this year to thank Aileen Wuornos for her crucial contribution that it just about takes your breath away. There may have been similar lapses in the past. I saw "Schindler's List," and if the Oscar recipients said one word of appreciation for the Nazis I sure didn't hear it. The lesson to be learned is obvious: I'd like to thank my late parents, my wife and kids, the pizza delivery man, and the stalwart crew that does my yard.

NBC will televise Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama "Schindler's List" as a four-hour event next season, virtually uncut and with limited commercial interruptions. The program will air on a Sunday night in February--during the ratings sweeps--with only two or three blocks of commercials within the broadcast. Only a single four-letter word will be excised from the original theatrical version that was rated R for nudity and violence.

"Schindler's List": The Times so far has received 150 letters on Rabbi Eli Hecht's Jan. 2 column criticizing the movie "Schindler's List"; 137 letters disagreed with Rabbi Hecht, while 13 supported his viewpoint.

French schools should show films such as "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist" to combat a dramatic rise in racism and anti-Semitism among students, said France's education minister, Luc Ferry. Novels, documentary films and visits to former Nazi concentration camps also would help invigorate civics classes meant to teach tolerance and understanding, he said this week while presenting a new guide to materials against racial hatred.

Some of the people involved in making the movie "Beloved" are crying foul that NBC is editing the film for content for its network premiere ("A Toned-Down 'Beloved,'" Dec. 22). Actress Lisa Gay Hamilton suggests racism is afoot, pointing out that neither "Schindler's List" nor "Saving Private Ryan" was edited for network TV. To compare "Beloved" to those two great films is outrageous. "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" are American classics. The public, even the many fans of the book on which it's based, stayed away from "Beloved" in droves.