High-profile Los Angeles showcases for choreographer Andonis Foniadakis
Apr
6
2015
We’ve not yet experienced the ballets of Andonis Foniadakis, born in Crete and dance-educated in Athens. But on an upcoming April weekend we’ll get a very good opportunity. Two recent works by Foniadakis will be delivered by world-class dance companies, each performing at Los Angeles’s distinctively beautiful new theaters from April 16 – 18, 2015. ...
Billie Holiday in Los Angeles: the blues were brewing 2
Billie Holiday and her dog Mister, New York, c. June 1946, William P. Gottleib One of the greatest jazz singers who ever lived had a small voice, never more than 15 notes at her disposal, and recorded many throwaway tunes. But Billie Holiday (1915-1959) was great by virtue of her sure-footed musical gifts: behind-the-beat phrasing, ...
Catch fresh, new musicals as they emerge … at “Musi-Cal”
Did you ever have the feeling you got dropped into a world that’s really rich and interesting — and as an extreme outsider, your brain is racing to keep up? You’re in a mild state of shock, i.e., where have I been while all of this has been going on? That was much how I ...
Ann Miller, in KISS ME KATE 3-D, too darn hot! 1
It was awfully fun, during TCM Fest 2015, to run into Jon Olivan who heads up the TCM Classic Movie Fan Club in Los Angeles. We mixed and mingled in Club TCM, sipping (complementary) Humphrey Bogart gin surrounded by Mike Kaplan’s great dance-movie posters exhibited in that lounge. Olivan shared a special memory of “Kiss ...
Stephen Farber’s TCM Fest 2015 movie round-up
I interviewed Ann-Margret at an Academy screening of Bye Bye Birdie three years ago, so it was great to see her again at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, where she introduced a screening of The Cincinnati Kid. The film’s original director, Sam Peckinpah, cast her in the movie, though Peckinpah was replaced by Norman ...
Lost and found: Houdini has ‘Game’
Among the many mysteries surrounding Harry Houdini is the question of whether he might have parlayed his charismatic stage persona into sound-era movie stardom. The peerless illusionist and escape artist died almost precisely a year before the release of the first feature-length talkie, The Jazz Singer. His filmography consists of five silent films, the second ...
Out came the stars @ TCM Fest 2015
Mar
29
2015
The stars are only part of the allure of Turner Classic Movies classic film festival. The Festival also features the artisans and craftspeople of classic Hollywood. Capturing it all is a roster of top event photographers. Photo credit: Edward M. Pio Roda, Adam Rose, Tyler Golden for TCM
Lizabeth Scott a ‘Tigresse’ to die for
A take-no-prisoners film noir, “Too Late for Tears” is saddled with a title that has all the clout of an unused tissue. Its alternate title, “Killer Bait,” is marginally less flimsy. But it was under the far more fitting French handle, “La Tigresse,” that a duplicate negative of the 1949 low-budget picture, which had badly ...
TCM & Starline partner for movie lover’s ramble through Los Angeles
There are two in every crowd, and they usually end up sitting near me: the people who keep talking throughout the movie — or, in this case, the Movie Locations Tour. But on a bright spring morning, when I had the rare chance to play tourist in the city where I live, the gabfest behind ...
Oh yeah! Bobby Banas rocks “The Nitty Gritty” 12
Mar
25
2015
The great, great stage and screen dancer Bobby Banas swings, very hard and very well, in “The Nitty Gritty” — this television clip from The Judy Garland Show in 1964. Banas choreographed the number on the spur of the moment. “I choreographed the “Nitty Gritty,” he shared in an email, explaining that choreographer Peter Gennaro’s ...