Lurch on, Universal monsters!

Film
There have been frightening happenings at the film world’s Halloween Headquarters, also known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — and they’re still going on. “A Monstrous Centennial,” the Academy’s month-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Universal Pictures, screening 13 classic horror classics, has reach mid-point. The series is augmented by ...

Sleaze as art: ‘Camera Night at the Ivar’ @ Drkrm Gallery 5

Dance · Theater · Visual arts
Hollywood’s Ivar Theatre — notorious, low-life, sleazy — presented crude peep shows, images of which I have interspersed in the slide show with ballet photography by renowned dance photog, Gene Schiavione. The images all feature the female body on explicit display. The Ivar strippers, and the men who clustered at the Hollywood theater to photograph ...

Wayne Shorter, sax man, jazz giant, honored by L.A. Jazz Society

Music
Wayne Shorter, multiple Grammy Award winner, saxophonist and composer, is the 2012 Jazz Tribute honoree of the Los Angeles Jazz Society’s 29th annual Jazz Tribute Awards Dinner & Concert set for Sunday, October 21, 2012. Leonard Maltin will host the festivities and Herbie Hancock serves as honorary chair. LAJS 2012 Jazz Tribute awardees include Lifetime ...

Jacaranda’s serious island-hopping season opener

Music
Renowned contemporary American composer Tobias Picker will narrate the West Coast premiere of his “The Encantadas,” a narrative with music inspired by Herman Melville’s novella of the same name, to open Jacaranda’s 2012-13 season. The Oct. 20 concert, dubbed “Different Islands,” will juxtapose Picker’s evocation of the unspoiled Galapagos Islands with Steve Reich’s “City Life,” ...

The Tramp meets the Dying Swan

Dance · Film
Two great ‘movement artists, Charles and Anna, pose for a photo looking like something more than just “cordial colleagues.” The photo is dated 1922. Like this? Read more: Pavlov(a)’s dog of a movie. Anna Pavlova visits Hollywood Happy Birthday, Charlie Chaplin Charles Chaplin in China

Jam with Jimi Hendrix on Hollywood Boulevard

Music
From our friends at Larry Edmunds Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard: Jimi Hendrix would have turned 70 this year. Author/editor Steven Roby who has written “Black Gold-the Lost Archives of Jimi Hendrix”, “Becoming Jimi Hendrix” & the fanzines “Straight Ahead-The International Jimi Hendrix Fanzine” & the family authorized “Experience Hendrix” fanzine now brings us “Hendrix on ...

Miracle on the 405: Mariinsky’s “Swan Lake” @ Segerstrom Center

Dance
Yes, a miracle, not on 42nd Street but on the mighty 405 freeway in Costa Mesa, California. There, for a Sunday matinee, all was right with the (dance) world, as the Mariinsky Ballet (formerly the Kirov) offered a sensational journey through beauty and passion, sanity and civilization. Everything that dance can be was on offer ...

Fosse! Pub’ed by Dance Heritage Coalition 1

Dance · Fashion · Film
A new go-to essay on choreographer Bob Fosse, scribed by arts·meme pal Larry Billman, has just been published as part of the America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures series. Billman, the founder of the Academy of Dance on Film, is one of several esteemed writers invited by the Washington D.C.-based Dance Heritage Coalition to contribute thinking and ...

Ninety-year-old men in tights: “Robin Hood” at the Egyptian Theatre

Film
Ninety years ago, Douglas Fairbanks and wife Mary Pickford, joined by Charlie Chaplin, turned out for the premiere of Fairbanks’ swashbuckling adventure at their pal Sid Grauman’s new Hollywood movie palace. This evening went down in history as the very first Hollywood movie premiere. Fairbanks historian Tracy Goessel will introduce the film with live piano ...

What the performing arts look like in Los Angeles

Dance · Music
A post-performance picture captures the youth and vigor of the performing arts in Los Angeles today. Review of the concert one post below, or click here. With Miguel Perez, Lillian Rose Barbeito, Ja-Young Jessie Kim, Merett Miller Shah, Melissa Bourkas, Hai Kai, Andrew Cowan, Andrew Wojtal and Tina Finkelman Berkett at The Walt Disney Concert ...