More than a ‘mogul’: 20th C-Fox’s Darryl Zanuck in new Eyman book and on TCM 3
Oct
4
2021
New Eyman book for Running Press The respected and feared Darryl F. Zanuck ran his studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, like a Swiss watch and devised entertainment for the masses, including bright musicals starring Fox blondes Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, even Shirley Temple. He commandeered technologically innovative epics (The Robe, the movies’ first CinemaScope production), ...
Film review: ‘In Balanchine’s Classroom,’ a dance documentary
George Balanchine (1960s). Photo: Ernst Hass. As seen in In Balanchine’s Classroom. A film by Connie Hochman. A Zeitgeist Films release in association with Kino Lorber. Watching In Balanchine’s Classroom, the new dance documentary directed by Connie Hochman, you wait and hope for a movie about a significant, if rarefied, subject to add up to ...
Don’t bug out! Go to ‘Bug Therapy’
You think you have problems? What about our psychotherapists? They have to listen to other people’s problems (OPP) all day long. These wretched folk must be ready to jump out the window. But, luckily, according to Bug Therapy, a new animated light-comedy that’s premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, they may have ...
Ticket to happiness: ‘Le Bonheur’ turns 55 at Laemmle Theatres
Aug
16
2021
cute nuclear family – what could go wrong? It’s a personal favorite and a beautiful film, if only for its score. But it is also a visual feast. Shot in the suburbs of Paris, Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur opens with an idyllic scene of a perfect little French “famille” tripping the light fantastic of a ...
Velaslavasay Panorama, at 20, makes electric Chinese connection
The Chinese connection involved here is not really diplomacy; it’s not an economic exchange; nor is it ‘high art.’ But in a way, it encompasses all of that. It’s about culture. And it’s a cultural stretch to step into the wonder-land Sara Velas has created over the past two decades on the grounds of a ...
Dance Detective: Who chor’ed ‘An Occasional Man’ in ‘The Girl Rush’ (1955)?
courtesy of doc macro From Bob Boross:From the film “The Girl Rush” starring Rosalind Russell, Fernando Lamas, Gloria DeHaven, and Eddie Albert. Matt Mattox is a leading dancer in the film’s four dances. The choreographer is Robert Alton, although Matt told me that he choreographed the film. After examining the dances, it looks as if ...
Afternoon of a Tramp
The nymph dance in the dream sequence of the 30-minute short film Sunnyside (Charles Chaplin, 1919) has been recognized as a tribute to the ballet. Charlie met Nijinsky in December 1916.Charlie met Anna Pavlova in 1922.
Antiseptic dance antics for our era: Steve Koplowitz at The Wooden Floor
The cool kids who attend dance class at The Wooden Floor, the renowned and respected Orange County-based program that enhances youth development through dance, are not among the bummed-out performers sidelined by COVID-19. Heck no! They traded in the dance studio’s wooden floor for an asphalt parking lot! Under the command of a veritable P.T. ...
Meet director Roselynde LeBlanc of ‘Can You Bring It,’ Bill T. Jones doc
‘Can You Bring It’, courtesy Kino-Lorber films This most compelling image is from a dance work dating from 1989, Bill T. Jones’s “D-Man in the Water,” which was a tour de force group work Jones fashioned in response to the AIDs epidemic. So why does that matter now? We have a new pandemic to worry ...
Inspiring & relevant: ‘José Limón: A Life Beyond Words’ at 49th Dance Film Festival 1
photo by Barbara Morgan It was time very well spent, in my living room, viewing one of the many attractive offerings of the Dance Film Festival, ihat kicks off July 16 (in person, bring a mask) at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center. But, wait, world citizens, the Festival features streaming fodder as well. ...