Really, colossal.

Obviously, as Seattle’s only annual Jewish film festival, the AJC-sponsored Seattle Jewish Film Festival is the city’s best Jewish film festival. This year’s SJFF kicks off on March 11 and has some pretty good looking offerings, including a movie about an Israeli guy training to be a sumo wrestler (!!!) (see full schedule here).

But coincidentally (I assume), over at the Northwest Film Forum, from March 10-17, it’s pretty much all Jewish movies all the time. Like a tiny, second Jewish Film Fest…in case you just can’t get enough Jewish films. NFF is showing American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein, then Leonard Cohen Live At The Isle of Wight, 1970, then a collection of early Resnais shorts including the most unsettling Holocaust documentary ever made, Night and Fog.

And don’t forget Unmistaken Child (which I saw earlier this week and highly recommend) and Waiting for Armageddon at the Grand Illusion.

So…much…Jewish…film…

Olympics news, from JTA:

Israel’s ice dancing team at the Winter Olympics was in 10th place following the compulsory round.

Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky performed a tango last Friday night at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, Canada. The brother-and-sister duo earned a score of 34.38.

“We think of personal results out there, not personal bests,” Roman Zaretsky told the Jerusalem Post after the routine. “We skate for our friends, our family and of course, for our country.”

The Zaretskys will perform again on Sunday and Monday nights. They will skate to “Hava Nagila” for the original dance and to music from “Schindler’s List” for the free dance.

Americans Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto, who is Jewish, were in fourth place following the compulsories. The duo won the silver medal in 2006.

Ice dancing to the music from Schindler’s List? Seriously? I find that to be an odd decision for a couple of reasons, which I believe should be obvious.

More news on the state of the modern deli. This time, the big guy in the sustainable food world, Michael Pollan, weighs in. From The Forward:

The Berkeley, Calif.-based author of the 2006 book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” — often referred to as the bible of the sustainable food movement — was on hand February 9 for a panel discussion at the city’s Jewish community center that was billed as a referendum on the future of the Jewish deli.

At issue was whether the famously fatty, gloriously schmaltz-laden cuisine of the Ashkenazic bubbe can mind-meld with the rarefied sensibilities of the Bay Area foodie. More specifically, can a Jewish deli worthy of the name commit to seasonal menus, regional produce and locally sourced meats without sending customers screaming for the door?

Have you been to the Grand Illusion Cinema in the University District? Seattle is a town of many interesting movie theaters, but I think the tiny Grand Illusion might be my favorite. It’s old, it’s funky, it’s a little bit cheaper than regular movies, and they usually show films that you could not possibly ever see anywhere else in Seattle. And sometimes those films are campy 70s pornos. Anyway, at the end of the month, the Grand Illusion is showing two documentaries that I highly recommend. The first, running from Feb. 19-25 is The Unmistaken Child, an Israeli documentary about a Tibetan monk on a search for the reincarnation of his master. I believe this may have screen at last year’s Seattle Jewish Film Festival,or at SIFF…I forget which, but I missed it. Definitely going to see it this time around.

The second is Waiting for Armageddon(Feb. 26 - March 4), which is about Evangelical Christians who are very big Zionists because they believe that if the Jews can just rebuild The Temple (you know the one), it will usher in the Second Coming. I saw this film over the summer in Boston. It’s super interesting, a little creepy, and surprisingly objective.