MOCA’s Arshile Gorky show to close 20 September
Sep
12
2010
I was entranced by a Sunday afternoon visit to MOCA, where the historic Arshile Gorky retrospective is still on. Beautiful, strange, powerful paintings. It’s slated to come down in one week — on 20 September. Recommend that you make the effort and see this show. Thursday night is free night. Gorky was the Armenian-born precursor ...
Michelle Obama expands White House dance card 2
Sep
9
2010
arts·meme guest writer Lisa Traiger contributes this report from D.C. The White House billed it as the first dance event. Yet, the gilded East Room has hosted its share of dance over the years, including performances by American Ballet Theatre and Jerome Robbins’ Ballets: USA during the Kennedy Administration; Patricia McBride and a chandelier-grazing Mikhail ...
Jane Withers charms CINECON in “This is the Life” 2
Sep
8
2010
She wasn’t as pretty as her compatriot at 20th Century Fox, Shirley Temple. Both girls had high energy and talent to burn. But child star Jane Withers had something extra: disarming credibility. Appearing in person at a screening of her surprisingly moving film, “This is the Life” (Fox, 1935, dir: Marshall Neilan), Withers approached the microphone ...
Don Murray held Marilyn Monroe close in “Bus Stop”
Sep
6
2010
Read this story on The Huffington Post. We passed the Labor Day weekend inhaling the Egyptian Theater’s popcorn-soaked oxygen during the 46th annual CINECON — a festival of the weird, the wonderful, and the rarely viewed. Cinecon is a connoisseur’s festival; and the key word is rare — movies that for whatever reason haven’t been ...
First lady of nation recognizes first lady of dance
The freewheeling creativity that flourished in 20th century America spawned three indigenous art forms: film, jazz, and modern dance. The first two on this list (in descending order of magnitude), have functioned relatively adeptly in the market economy. Why? Because entrepreneurs recorded them on celluloid and disc, then packaged, promoted and distributed movies and records. Poor ...
Pauline Wagner, 100, remembers James Cagney
Sep
2
2010
“The man you saw on the screen was certainly not Jimmy Cagney,” said former studio-system contract actress Pauline Wagner, 100, following a screening of “White Heat” at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Monday. Cagney was “one of the nicest persons in Hollywood,” so unlike Cody Jarrett, the homicidal psychopath with a mother ...
Cleopatra reclaims the Egyptian Theater 1
Aug
31
2010
What better place to celebrate the art (and commerce!) of Cecil B. DeMille than the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard? An under appreciated director who mined the nexus of the lofty and the lusty, DeMille fits well with the Egyptian Theater’s ornate aesthetic. His influence was ingrained in mainstream American culture by the time Sid Grauman ...
Our shared racist past surfaced in “Neighbors”
People can be color-blind when it comes to race. In fact, skin color doesn’t even matter. Based on that idealistic credo — the legacy of the civil rights movement and ’60s egalitarianism — Richard and Jean Patterson, an interracial couple who are the subject of a brilliant new play, “Neighbors,” marry. He’s black, she’s white. ...
Charlie Chaplin to reappear at Cinecon
Aug
29
2010
I’m looking forward to attending the 46th annual Cinecon Classic Film Festival at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood California over Labor Day weekend, September 2-6, 2010. The big event at this year’s festival is the screening of a previously lost Charlie Chaplin film, “A Thief Catcher” from Keystone Studios, 1914. Film collector Paul Gierucki found ...
Natalia Osipova’s ethereal “Giselle” 1
Aug
28
2010
I met and briefly interviewed the phenomenal 24-year-old Bolshoi and ABT ballerina Natalia Osipova yesterday, in rehearsal for an upcoming performance in Orange County next January. She struck me as a magnificently moody Russian. Read my L.A. Times article here. This Russian television broadcast shows Osipova’s unearthly technique, particularly her jumps, and there is something so ...