Gina! The great Lollobrigida appears @ TCM Fest 2

Film
So much fun, at Friday’s TCM Fest 2016, to view director Carol Reed’s marvelous Cinemascope circus movie, “Trapeze,” a color-drenched treatment of a world gone-by; the setting, a circus smack in the middle of Paris. Cast as a foxy and ambitious she-acrobat, Gina Lollobrigida brings her earthy presence to the film, as she jockeys her ...

A visit with Anna Karina @ TCM Fest 2016

Film
Looking forward to hearing French New Wave film goddess, Anna Karina, introduce Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders at TCM Fest 2016 this weekend. Karina, a Danish-French actress, director and writer is known for roles in influential French New Wave films, including A Woman is a Woman (1961), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville (1965) and Pierrot ...

Dark doings under SoCal sun in “Private Property” at TCM Fest

Film
by 
The Big Sleep and Horse Feathers are among the treasured favorites unspooling in spiffed-up restorations at the TCM Classic Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night in Hollywood. But it’s not all starry A-listers on this year’s lineup. The vintage-film faithful will have a chance to discover an obscure and deeply weird independent film from ...

“Dreamgirls”‘s Moya Angela to sing national anthem at Dodger Stadium 2

Theater
It’s Oh say can you see & And I am telling you — all in one fell swoop. We’re all looking forward to four performances of the Tony Award-laden “Dreamgirls” at the Valley Performing Arts Center in early May. And now all the more so — having learned that the production’s star, Moya Angela, will ...

Remembering Mia Slavenska

Dance · Film
This simply spectacular photo memorializes a tremendous dancer of the twentieth century, the great Croatia-born prima ballerina Mia Slavenska. The rock solid legs, the startling physical intensity, the blazing eyes, all Slavenska. Following her career with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Slavenska’s long and winding road led, in the 1970s, to teaching classical ballet ...

LACMA’s purchase of movie poster collection a boon to Los Angeles, says Michael Govan 2

Film · Visual arts
Joyful news as the artistic merits of the marketing of movies during the High Hollywood era gets strong validation with the addition of an important movie-poster collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director,  announced on Saturday April 16 the acquisition of the Mike Kaplan ...

A man, his piano and his art. Prince’s final concert in Atlanta. 3

Music
Ironic and touching that in final performances before his sadly premature death this week, Prince played a stripped-down concert: an all-art, no-frills affair. Photo taken on the sly by Atlanta photographer Amiee Stubbs, who tweeted as follows: I snuck a photo of #Prince during his concert in ATL last week. Don’t normally break the rules, ...

Film maestro Claude Lelouch’s visual symphony, “Un + Une”

Film · Reviews
Director Claude Lelouch (far right) with his A-list cast of “Un + Une” — Jean Dujardin, Christophe Lambert, Elsa Zylberstein. The director of some fifty films brought his latest to COLCOA French film festival’s big screen last night. The film explores Lelouch’s central theme and his career concern: to plummet the love that exists between ...

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago brings rare Forsythe creation to the Barclay

Dance
There’s history here. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago was first presented by the Irvine Barclay Theater at UC Irvine nearly 25 years ago under the auspices of its founding director, Lou Conte. The company, since 2009 under the leadership of artistic director Glenn Edgerton, has moved from its jazz-dance roots to being one of the nation’s ...

Phantasmagoria on tap in ‘Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema’

Film · Visual arts
A treasure trove of hand-colored cinematic footage restored in rare films illustrate the first-ever uses of applied color in movies. Accompanied by live music, superb digital transfers of restored work from the archives of EYE Film Institute Netherlands transport viewers to a moment in time when colored moving images truly opened a portal into otherworldly ...