REDCAT’s Dutch treat, Miyazaki’s farewell
An urgent message: Yes, AFI Fest continues hot and heavy through Thursday at the TCL Chinese multiplex, with such must-sees as Denis Cote’s dark and ironic “Vic + Flo Saw a Bear,” Hany Abu-Assad’s acclaimed “Omar,” and the year’s major discovery from the young Argentine cinema, “The Owners.” But make room tonight for Film at ...
‘The Magic Flute’ at English National Opera
Opera lovers in London have any numbers of possibilities. We can go mammoth: Aida in the Royal Albert Hall for an audience of 3500 with singers and orchestra miked to the max; or miniscule: the prizing-winning Opera Up Close at the Kings Head Theatre Pub in Islington for 110, its Prohibition-set Traviata currently running until ...
Susan Marshall’s fetishized femmes
“Stop,” created by choreographer Susan Marshall, is a music video featuring an original score by Pulitzer prize-winning composer David Lang, played by members of the electric guitar quartet Dither and Mantra Percussion. “Stop” is a virtual companion piece to Susan Marshall & Company‘s new dance performance Play/Pause, which the Center for the Art of Performance ...
AFI: Los Angeles’ best film festival 1
Los Angeles is blessed—or burdened—with over four dozen film festivals of various shapes, sizes and makes, but there are three that dominate. Outfest, the country’s most successful LGBT festival, is consistently the biggest grossing event. Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) has the best title since the city is in its name. AFI Festival Los Angeles ...
Martha, my dear
Nov
5
2013
How thrilled and impressed are we that the spanking new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, dead in in the center of Beverly Hills, will present as its inaugural performance modern dance? Very thrilled and impressed indeed. Why should this be so unusual? There are several reasons. Classical ballet has tended to trump modern ...
Opera occupies Union Station 1
The overture ended, a set of heavy double doors opened, and into Union Station spilled the opera audience. As the group dispersed, some displayed trepidation in their quest for the singers heard in their headsets. Others eschewed the life-sized version of Where’s Waldo: One couple made a beeline for the bar; ordering a bottle of ...
Koehler Clips: An Impossible Choice
Like a few of the world’s other major movie-going cities, Los Angeles often presents impossible choices for the exploring cinephile. And tonight, Sunday, provides a doozy. Where to go? To Westwood, to the Billy Wilder Theater, where UCLA Film & Television Archive continues its remarkable “A Century of Chinese Cinema” survey with two exceptionally rare ...
Claire Denis’ City of “Bastards”
Her first feature, “Chocolat”—autobiographical, set in Africa, brazen in the extreme—announced Claire Denis as Europe’s most daring writer-director. She still is, with only a few filmmakers from Iberia (Pedro Costa, Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Albert Serra, Miguel Gomes, all much younger than Denis) as serious competition. Her latest, “Bastards,” (at Laemmle’s Town Center 5 in Encino) ...
David beats Goliath in “Dallas Buyers Club”
Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “David and Goliath,” arrives at the same moment as “Dallas Buyers Club.” Sometimes there’s harmonic convergence in the culture. Gladwell describes several cases of underdogs discovering their untapped strengths or advantages. “Dallas Buyers Club” takes Gladwell’s thesis into the stratosphere of high entertainment, tracing the incredible but true story of Texas ...
Nana Gollner memories
Nov
1
2013
Concerning Metropolitan Opera Ballet prima Nana Gollner (1919-1980), who was trained by Theodore Kosloff, Malcolm McCormick, co-author, with Nancy Reynolds, of “No Fixed Point: Dance in the 20th Century,” said, “Nana Gollner was important in her day. She was the first American ballerina to be accepted abroad, she was strong left-handed dancer, she converted ...