Rod Alexander’s “The Birth of the Blues” dance number rediscovered 3
Please, please God, don’t let the world blow up before Sunday night. Because Sunday night at 9 pm, I get to see choreographer Rod Alexander‘s brilliant dance number, “The Birth of the Blues” from THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE (20th Century-Fox 1956), at CINECON Classic Film Festival — in a new 35mm print, ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
Filmmaking team Allison Anders and Kurt Voss have been programming and producing the Don’t Knock the Rock film festival in Los Angeles for over a decade, with Cinefamily providing a steady home base after years of vagabonding around town. Focused (pure rock n’ roll, usually at the margins, with a taste for the overlooked and ...
Nicholas Brothers ballistic on silver screen 1
Joy to the world, the place to be at 4:30 this afternoon was the balcony of the Egyptian Theater, a spot that offered prime viewing, on opening day of CINECON Classic Film Festival, of DOWN ARGENTINE WAY (1940). The über-fun Betty Grable/Don Ameche technicolor south-of-the-border extravaganza from 20th Century-Fox was Grable’s first headlining role at ...
Koehler on Cinema: When Losey Went Pinteresque 1
At the center of Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” (opening Friday at Laemmle’s Royal) is how wonderful—no, how scrumptious—it is to watch James Fox’s sniveling, weakling upper-class gent brought down and subverted by Dirk Bogarde’s all-seeing, smirking house servant. Pinter’s name precedes Losey’s in the first sentence for a few reasons. One has ...
Anti-Defamation League auction to combat hate with art
More than forty Los Angeles artists have volunteered time and their best thinking to produce works of art inspired by the Anti-Defamation League’s centennial theme, Imagine a World Without Hate. The powerful art will be exhibited and auctioned at ArtWorks ADL: Justice, Advocacy & Art on September 17. The ticketed event is open to those ...
Jacaranda, celebrating a decade of music at the edge
Aug
28
2013
Amazingly priced subscription packages to Jacaranda, Music at the Edge are on offer for the contemporary classical music series’ tenth anniversary season. The line up of concerts, listed below, offers wonderful musical evenings and access to a great community of adventurous arts lovers, probably much like yourself. $235 dollars buys a subscription and supports the ...
Chakiris, a cut above the rest 1
The camera catches a gang of gypsies rehearsing, in 1958, at New York’s Winter Garden theater before shipping overseas to perform in West Side Story’s second cast in London. Front and center is “West Side”s choreographer Jerome Robbins, running the “Cool” number with its inimitable finger snaps. Foremost in this group, a cut above the ...
Marian the Librarian to tell all at CINECON 1
Aug
26
2013
We just learned that the lovely Academy-Award winning actress Shirley Jones will be honored at the 49th annual Labor Day-weekend event, Cinecon Classic Film Festival. The five-day foray into classic film-mania — with an accent on rarely seen movies and silent film — that hook or by crook rolls out annually at summer’s end for ...
BYOB: Diavolo brings bowl to the Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl’s historic band shell, the object of community affection as well as architectural dispute over the years, gets an ultimate homage when Diavolo Dance Theater installs its own version, a huge fiberglass replication, on the huge stage. It’s part of the September 5 world premiere of “Fluid Infinities,” performed by the architectural movement ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
UCLA Film Archive’s edition of the traveling retrospective of Pier Paolo Pasolini (minus my favorite Pasolini, his oh-so-naughty n’ nasty “Teorema”) is rounding the corner and heading for home. If you haven’t caught up with the late 20th century’s most ribald filmmaker-poet recently, there are these three wildly divergent works to explore: From the final ...