Musuraca put the noir into film noir 4
May
5
2010
LACMA film curator Ian Birnie has some great stuff coming up this month – a retrospective of the films of Italy-born, New York-raised cameraman Nicholas Musuraca, known for his atmospheric noir cinematography at RKO studios in the 1940s. Says Ian: “Musuraca is the third in my unofficial survey of noir cinematographers; the first was Stanley ...
The Reischtag burns in our collective memory 1
May
4
2010
“It wasn’t really about finding something.” So claim German artists Ulrike Mohr and Susanne Weck recounting their cross-continental trek in search of a lost panorama, “Die Schlacht um den Reichstag,” (“The Battle of Berlin”). The two artist-partners voyaged from Berlin to Moscow at great effort to maybe find the gone-missing circular art work — but ...
Renoir show still on view
May
2
2010
It’s the last week to catch LACMA’s “Renoir in the 20th Century” focused on the last three decades of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s career prior to his death in 1919. Of the 80 paintings, sculptures and drawings, in the portrait-laden show, this beautiful Riviera landscape was my favorite (click for better view). Also heartbreaking and inspiring were ...
Own a masterpiece. Buy a stamp.
Apr
29
2010
Please don’t say the U.S. government does not support the arts. We have art stamps. Or is it stamp art? The postal service launched the Abstract Expressionist postage stamp series in March. See them here. I just got mine. They’re very groovy. Just the thing to smack on my late tax return. The vibrant stamps feature ...
1927 was a very good year 1
Apr
29
2010
Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS with 25 minutes of lost footage restored and live accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra: a huge event for cinephiles. It was the penultimate closing-night event of TCM Classic Film Festival. Everyone loved it. Everyone except arts•meme … I found it overwhelming and incomprehensible. What tickled me, however, was watching the acknowledged German masterpiece dating ...
Ernest Borgnine chats about JUBAL
Apr
27
2010
Cowboy actor Glenn Ford’s steady presence and a rapturous Grand Teton setting made the Technicolor ‘psychological western,’ JUBAL (1956), my favorite film of TCM Fest. Yes when arts•meme isn’t kvelling over Mozart or Balanchine, she likes a good western! Actor Ernest Borgnine, the prodigious character actor who co-stars with Ford and Rod Steiger in the ...
Icy Gene Tierney in blazing Technicolor 1
Apr
26
2010
We enjoyed the restored LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) the Technicolor/noir-esque soap opera starring Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde, a top-grossing 20th Century-Fox film of the 1940s that had kind of gone missing. The love story-turned-sour reminds us of the negative trajectory of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or, frankly, of the many noir potboilers in which a ...
Luise Rainer @ 100 1
Apr
25
2010
Yesterday at TCM Fest, I met a handsome, well dressed actor named Vincent DePaul who was still glowing after his luncheon with Luise Rainer. The 100-year old German-born actress is being honored at today’s TCM Classic Film Fest screening of The Good Earth (1937). Vincent shared this photo with me.
Bountiful schedule of classic films at TCM Fest
Apr
22
2010
The schedule for the Turner Classic Movies film festival is absolutely amazing. See it here. Your press representative (me) plans to spend the weekend immersed in great movies and film activity! The festival takes place in the heart of old Hollywood at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theater and its environs. Grauman’s is an extraordinary place ...
Heidi Duckler’s sudsy classic
The Echo Park lavanderia (“SpinCycle”) where choreographer Heidi Duckler is reprising her 1988 site-specific work “Laundromatinee” stands next door to a Los Angeles bagel factory. Yeasty baking odors waft into the laundromat where her whimsical dance unrolls. We’re in the inner city. That makes sense because Duckler, a long-time contributor to the local dance scene, ...