Starring the great Jack Benny and the precious Carole Lombard, who died horribly in an airplane crash two months after the film’s completion, “To Be …” is the funniest movie I’ve ever seen in my life, full stop.

Anyone who passed Friday evening at the funky-friendly Bing Theater will explode in laughter at the sight of the guy at right. Sig Ruman, who cut his comic teeth working with the Marx Brothers, plays a hard-striving Nazi functionary who grows increasingly flummoxed as a group of wily Polish actors outfox him and his Fuhrer (“Heil, me!”)

Linking these two movies are indelible threads, delicious connections for the audience. Both films:

• were made by master directors within a few years of each other, 1941-42.
• careen wildly, but credibly, between slapstick, biting satire and social commentary.
• feature art within art: “Sullivan” acerbically reflects on the film industry, as “To Be…” lovingly portrays the theater world.
• use brilliant writing to take on humongous, almost unapproachable, issues — in “Sullivan,” the festering cycles of the American underclass, and in “To Be …” the threat of Nazi totalitarianism, and its absurdities.

In the coup de grace, in “Sullivan,” Veronica Lake plays a striving Hollywood actress who yearns to be introduced to Lubitsch.

Ian — what a masterful duo. Thank you, thank you.

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• LACMA film series majestic in July. Go!

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All four movies are all de rigeur, but until you’ve seen “The Earrings of Madame de…” on the Bing Theater’s big screen, well, you’re missing a huge pleasure! And “L’Avventura.” And “Sunrise.”

LACMA’s classic film series expires on July 30, when it gets replaced by something, let’s face reality, that is sure to be worse. I therefore encourage you to spend an evening this July at the Bing.

_{This post dedicated to the memory of Robert Sklar.}

In a brief message sent to arts·meme at the end of his day in London, LACMA Director Michael Govan writes, “I think we have a real foundation for continued and sustainable growth of the program now.”

The just-announced new film program notably lacks the kind of stable financial underpinning that an endowment provides, nor there is an indication how long the agreed-upon collaboration between LACMA, Film Independent and the New York Times is to last.

Nonetheless it looks pretty darned good to me! Having trod the long journey from a canceled program back to this revamped version, which should bring new intellectual if not financial resources to the Bing, we look forward to supporting a vibrant film program to come! We hope to have a win/win deal, both for museum and audience.

Anne Thompson, the savvy industry analyst, does a good job of dissecting the collaboration between the museum and Film Independent.

This just in from the museum: “Los Angeles (April 6, 2011)—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival.

LACMA and Film Independent will inaugurate the new weekly Film Series in September 2011 with previews of feature-length narrative and documentary films; archival films and repertory series; conversations with emerging and established filmmakers and artists; international showcases; family films; and special guest-curated programs. In addition, monthly post-screening receptions will bring together the Los Angeles creative community by offering a gathering place for film lovers, artists and the general public. The current LACMA film program, as well as Film Independent’s year-round Film Series will continue through mid-September.”

An interesting media sponsorship: “The New York Times will be the sole Presenting Sponsor of the new Film Series. As a national newspaper that has long offered extensive coverage of films and filmmakers, this collaboration will serve to establish a larger cultural presence in Los Angeles for The New York Times.”

And some sad news: “Ian Birnie, LACMA’s Consulting Curator in the Film Department, will be leaving this fall.”

The full LACMA announcement posted here.

It’s the latest pet rock … er, pet project of LACMA director Michael Govan. The art installation will allow visitors to walk under a 340-ton granite boulder.

But let’s let Mr. Govan himself describe the project, rumored to have a price tag of between $5 – 10 million. Here he speaks to ARTINFO.com.

“The Heizer rock probably will be installed in the fall. That goes just north of the Resnick Pavilion. Imagine a 450-foot-long slot in the ground where you walk down a ramp and at the deepest part, 15 feet, a pyramidal monolith of granite is precariously held on the edges of the two walls above. It’s called Levitated Mass because the idea is as you walk under it sort of levitates. We’re working on engineering. It’s at least 700,000 pounds. Right now it’s in Riverside, CA in the quarry. It will take a truck that’s 200 feet long with 200 wheels six to eight days traveling at night until the last day, so it can be a big public spectacle.”

This fine moment for Los Angeles has the makings of true spectacle, a kind of art-world corollary to the grandiose – not to say bloated – cinematic extravaganzas of  Griffith and DeMille.

The allusion to film provides a segue to an equally monumental problem: the continued lack of funding for LACMA’s long-running classic film program. Despite going great guns at the museum for the past two years following the huge public outcry that persuaded Mr. Govan to reverse his July 28, 2009 decision to cancel it, the program’s status still remains unresolved.

The embarrassment Mr. Govan endured when the public rose against him came to an dramatic head when the Los Angeles Times published a “J’accuse!”-style letter in which film director/preservationist Martin Scorsese, a wise grown-up, called upon LACMA to commit itself to the full-fledged presence of classic film at the Bing Theater.

In response, Mr. Govan flung back strident, defensive comments. He turned on his own patrons, accusing film-program attendees of insufficiently supporting the program, an ugly and unfair ploy. Neither Mr. Govan, nor any of his predecessors, have ever called upon any of the museum’s other departments to account for their audience to justify their continued existence. It’s a museum, not a commercial movie theater.

Film goers took this in stride, and gamely ponied up, despite a deepening economic recession, tacking a premium onto their membership fees to join a LACMA-sponsored Film Club — the nebulous benefits of which include a newsletter and so-called “premiere” seating in the Bing Theater, an auditorium in which almost every one of the 600 seats already offers fine viewing of LACMA’s generously sized screen.

Mr. Govan told a group of leading L.A. film professionals in the “popcorn summit” on September 1, 2009 (I was in the room) that he was committed to film but that such a series would require the financial backing of an endowment like all the other viable programs at the museum. He pledged to use his proven skill as a fund raiser to identify a donor to fund the program (the annual operating budget  ~ $200,000). The targeted amount was initially bandied at $5 – $10 million (about what it’s estimated they’ll spend on that rock), but that pie-in-the-sky got quickly reverted to reality — a mere $1 – $2 million.

We have little choice but to take Mr. Govan at his word that he has striven in good faith to promote the film-program donorship opportunity to our city’s well-heeled  — whether or not their financial good fortune stems directly from the movie business, as, of course, so many do.

But wouldn’t you know, while till now he has failed to raise even that paltry sum, he apparently did manage with ease to find money to underwrite The Big Rock, a conceptual-art folly that dwarfs even the huff-and-puff locomotive that Jeff Koons was invited to dangle above Wilshire Boulevard. Meanwhile the commitment to L.A.’s indigenous creative art form gets overlooked.

Mr. Govan, are we, your audience, immaterial, irrelevant, or …  somehow getting in the way of what you think is important for us to see and do at the County Museum? We asked you to avow in a statement that you recognize film as an art form that has a critical place at LACMA, a request that you so far have spurned. Apparently, what we have here is a failure to communicate our clear desire for a financially secured, ongoing classic film program at LACMA.

Kindly enlighten us: What’s up with the film program at LACMA? Will John Ford and Antonioni assume their rightful place next to Matisse and Rembrandt at Fairfax and Wilshire — or will they be displaced by a rock?

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• Jane Fonda had a ball at LACMA on Valentine’s Day. So did her brother Peter, in 2008. Why can’t they sponsor the film program with naming rights in honor of their father? Who on earth would not love a Henry Fonda memorial film program in Los Angeles?
• Clint Eastwood said he was cutting a check for film at LACMA. Did he do this? MG, have you ever followed up with Clint?
• Why doesn’t LACMA Trustee Barbara Streisand apply some of her contribution to the film program? What about Terry Semel, Carol Bayer Sager, Casey Wasserman and other film industry trustees? Do these people know something we don’t know? Because … this doesn’t any make sense.

Fittingly, today is International Women’s Day. Et quelle femme!

We’d just watched Francois Ozon’s latest, “Potiche,” a wacky French farce about the growing feminist consciousness of a wealthy industrial wife in the 1970s. How quaint; the family factory manufactures umbrellas (de Cherbourg?). La Deneuve figures imperiously and comically in nearly every scene, a huge role for her in a fun recommended movie.

Engaging with LACMA’s ever-fluid film curator, Ian Birnie, Deneuve was a tough interview, failing, in conversation, to comprehend Americanisms, such as our eternal quibble over funding public radio, the fact that actors have to wait tables between gigs, and that our neurotic movie actresses double as kleptomaniacs.

She looked totally confused when it was suggested she should make a film in Los Angeles, or even want to. Why would she do that, she somewhat stumbled, when she works steadily in France?

She didn’t give much beyond her regal and ravishing presence, garbed as she was in black knit, her blonde hair tucked back, then falling naturally to her shoulders in absolute perfection. Two large hoop earrings, presumably made of tiny diamonds, framed her stunning face, and diamonds, as well, circled her ankle in a bracelet decorating one of her pretty legs.

Like, who do you know that wears bare legs, perilously high heels, and an ankle bracelet … and still looks like royalty?

La Reine Catherine Deneuve!

Here’s the trailer for “Repulsion,” Polanski’s amazing film that we saw last Friday night as part of LACMA’s Deneuve retrospective:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO0niGPR5S4

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• Ian Birnie riffs on “Repulsion“

_{photos: thank you, carol brenner}

With all the turmoil and foreign affairs debate surrounding Afghanistan, it’s easy to forget about the millions of Afghan civilians still dealing with the consequences that have resulted from over thirty years of war. Families from all over the country who struggle to make a living are finding themselves caught between the crossfire of NATO forces and the Taliban. Anytime they interact or help one side, they risk facing major repercussions from the other. This dynamic has lead to increased civilian casualties and waning support for the war at both home and abroad. More importantly, it raises serious questions about what modern life must be like for an average Afghan family and what hope they have, with or without foreign intervention.

“Black Tulip“, seeks to answer some of those questions by going behind the mud walls and busy streets of Kabul to take an in depth look at one such family. As Afghanistan’s official submission for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards, “Black Tulip” has been turning heads in both Washington and Hollywood alike. Shot on location in Kabul, the film was directed by Afghan expatriate Sonia Nassery Cole, who is also the Chairman of the Afghanistan World Foundation. The film follows the story of a middle-class family in Kabul who seize a window of opportunity to open a restaurant with an open microphone after the Taliban were temporarily ousted from Afghanistan in 2001. They struggle when lingering factions of the Taliban interfere, and pay a mighty price for daring to embrace freedom again.

The film paints a striking portrait of the many moderate Muslims who are often forgotten by the media and gives the audience an enhanced perspective on the plight of the Afghan people. Considering the state of cultural affairs in Afghanistan, capturing this rare footage at such a pivotal time was no small feat for Cole. While the fate of families like the one portrayed in the film are uncertain, one can only hope that this film impacts policymakers and is a catalyst for reform of our policy there.

Todd McCarthy, film critic at The Hollywood Reporter, will moderate the post-screening Q&A at LACMA.

“Black Tulip” screening | LACMA | Thursday, March 10, 7:30pm

Ian Birnie, film curator responsible for the museum’s Deneuve retrospective, shares his view on “Repulsion”:

“It’s brilliant. And dramatically so well constructed. Everything introduced in the beginning – the cracks, the potatoes, the rabbits, the sound through the walls – re-appears later in demented form. And I love Polanski’s ‘outsider”s view of London — all two-story brick buildings next to poured concrete towers, filled with surreal sights like the long shot of the buskers. The b&w cinematography beautifully evokes those kitchen-sink Brit films of the late ’50s, early ’60s but with a shot of Kafka and Beckett. And has Deneuve ever been better directed? You can practically feel Polanski right outside the frame.”

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• arts·meme catalogues the French actresses