Killing us softly: Roberta Flack in concert @ Pepperdine
Jan
17
2015
Songstress Roberta Flack, who forged such a striking presence in seventies pop music as a songwriter/performer, will grace the cozy Smothers Theatre stage at Pepperdine University next month in an evening of concert music. She is the first artist to win Grammy Awards in two consecutive years, for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your ...
REVIEW: Daddy Dearest: Chris Lemmon’s touching tribute to Jack
A charming and winsome theatrical evening with a couple of talented Hollywood men … In “Jack Lemmon Returns,” now on through month’s end at the Broad Stage’s intimate “Edye” theater, Chris Lemmon shares his family photo album sprung to life. It’s the actor/musician’s one-man show of memories and anecdotes about his father, the hugely accomplished ...
Learn the rich story of Hollywood’s “Poverty Row” studios
Jan
13
2015
We always enjoyed hearing from our friends at Larry Edmunds Bookshop.The Lare is hosting a fun book talk next Saturday by two co-authors, friend of arts·meme Marc Wanamaker and historian E.J. Stephens. The duo’s new paperback tome, “Early Poverty Row Studios” is the latest Arcadia Publishing Images of America volume.Writes “Larry Edmunds:” The history of ...
Mae I entertain you, asks Ms. West
Jan
8
2015
Actress, singer, comedienne, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol — no, we’re not describing arts∙meme. Rather, it’s the inimitable movie star Mae West. Movieland’s most provocative purveyor of dirty double-entendres did her job while strapped into an hour-glass figure. West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the New York stage before moving to ...
Fare-thee-well, glorious Kathak dancer Chitesh Das 2
Jan
7
2015
Saddened to hear news of the departure from Planet Earth of the great San Francisco-based Kathak dancer, Pandit Chitresh Das, whose brilliant cultural ambassadorship for his native art form extended to a eye (and brain)-popping performance at Grand Performances last September. [arts·meme loved and reviewed the show here] We also saw Chitresh hit the floorboards, hard, ...
Finessing Fosse’s furious, filigreed dance style
Jan
6
2015
New Yorkers can sign on — hey, Angelenos may like to fly east — for a rare opportunity. It’s January’s installment of a monthly master-class series that seeks to preserve a classic American jazz-dance vernacular: the angular, syncopated dance jive fostered by choreographer Bob Fosse. A good sampling of Fosse’s house-style is on view in ...
Cleopatra enters Rome, courtesy of Hermes Pan 1
Excerpted from John Franceschina’s recent Hermes Pan biography, On 10 May 1961, Pan worked out an agreement with [“Cleopatra” producer Walter] Wanger in which he would provide choreography for the film at $2,000 a week, guaranteed for no less than fifteen consecutive weeks. In addition, he was guaranteed credit as “Choreography by Hermes Pan” on ...
Around the movie world in five days: Golden Globes foreign-film screenings
Jan
3
2015
It’s that time of year. Buck up, buckeroo. Sweat out your holiday cocktailing and get back to business. In Los Angeles, fortunately, “business” takes the form of “pleasure,” as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the American Cinematheque buddy up for annual screenings of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film award in advance of ...
Merry Christmas, Adolf! ~ love, TCM 3
Achtung, baby! Righteous programming, this Christmas night, from Turner Classic Movies: choreographer/director Alan Johnson’s TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1984), a remake of the Lubitsch political satire, well selected on this day of off-the-grid distribution of North Korea spoof, “The Interview.” Johnson and the great Mel Brooks collaborated on this promotional video for the ...
Sid Grauman, Kim Jong Un collude on Christmas to screen “The Interview” 1
In a cultural mash-up that could perhaps happen anywhere — but let’s face it, it succeeds best in crazy Los Angeles — a Jew and a North Korean are celebrating Jesus’s birthday by screening “The Interview” at the Egyptian Theatre, the movie palace Sid Grauman built in 1922. The screenings are the best rebuttal to ...