Bullock’s Wilshire former retail glory @ Art Deco Society talk & screening 1

Architecture & Design · Film
A beacon of Art Deco wonderment, the iconic Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store still stands on Wilshire Boulevard. Designed by Parkinson and Parkinson in 1928, the legendary building is considered a preservation success story; it is now repurposed as the Southwestern School of Law’s law library. Eh. Okay. They dare not tear it down because among ...

Review: No chopped liver, but still great: GATZ @ REDCAT 2

Reviews · Theater
When I was a kid, my yiddishe grandmother would pack us sandwiches for Saturday movie matinee (she called it “the show”). My cousins and I would line up at the box office of Pittsburgh’s Manor Theater, clutching in our little hands a few bucks and our greasy brown-paper bag lunches. The theater concession’s stellar offerings ...

Fitz featured in “Gatz”

Ideas & Opinion · Theater
Here stands the great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in what strikes me as his penultimate Los Angeles portrait. Bleary-eyed but putting a good face on things — what we do so well in L.A. Noshing one night at Greenblatt’s Deli on Sunset Boulevard, I chatted with proprietor, the son of the original owner. He ...

Rarely viewed “The Great Gatsby” starring Alan Ladd opens film noir festival 4

Film
An unusual choice for the opening act of the Noir City film festival: The Great Gatsby (1949, Paramount) in a new 35 mm print. The festival, now on at the Egyptian Theatre, is co-produced by the Film Noir Foundation and the American Cinematheque. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great masterwork from 1925 is far from pulp fiction. ...

Noir City: 14th annual film noir festival opens soon @ Egyptian Theatre

Film
Fourteen years ago, the American Cinematheque launched its inaugural festival of film noir. Back in 1999 it was called “Side Streets and Back Alleys: A Festival of Film Noir,” and it featured dozens of forgotten films, retrieved from critical exile, that have since been recognized as unjustly neglected genre gems, with many returned to circulation ...