‘Komorebi’ connects us to natural world in two recent Japanese movies
Apr
3
2024
We noticed it right away. Evil Does Not Exist, the new film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, director of Academy Award-winning DRIVE MY CAR opens with a long montage of treetops in a forest. Hey! We just saw something very similar in Wim Wenders’ Academy Award-nominated movie, Perfect Days (2023). This marvelous film, an artsmeme favorite, also had ...
What’s in ABT’s ‘Woolf Works,’ soon at Segerstrom?
Apr
3
2024
We’ve been seeing intriguing images, not to mention advertisements, including ones running here on artsmeme, for American Ballet Theatre‘s new production of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, playing at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in five performances, April 11 – 14. Inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf — an author this woman writer so greatly ...
Film museum … or oil refinery?
Everyone thinks that the Academy Museum at Wilshire and Fairfax, was a repurposed May Company department store, but as a story in Curbed L.A. demonstrates, it was inspired by an oil refinery. We’ve been living around them forever! And to prove it, the Museum is staging a new exhibition featuring the kinds of clothes people ...
A happy ceremony for La Cérémonie (1995) at Laemmle Anniversary Classics
ed. note: To mark the 30th anniversary of French auteur Claude Chabrol’s dark masterpiece, La Cérémonie (1994), Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present a special screening of the film followed by a with a conversation between host Stephen Farber and actress Jacqueline Bisset, in person, at the Laemmle Royal Theatre in Santa Monica. ...
Standing ovation for Salonen from San Francisco Symphony players
Mar
28
2024
esa-pekka salonen acknowledges orchestra’s standing ovation at Disney Hallphoto courtesy brian lauritzen An unusual scene on view by a quick-witted photographer taken at curtain call after a concert by San Francisco Symphony conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen — this moment coming only days after his startling announcement that at the completion of his five-year contract, in ...
Japanese cinema-viewing art, ‘benshi,’ in global tour, soon in Los Angeles
Mar
27
2024
There are all kinds of ways that presenters of silent movies augment their films, or not, ranging from a rinky-dink upright piano with a guy pounding it out at the side of the screen, to the kinds of full orchestral accompaniment we have enjoyed in recent years. But the Japanese tradition, Benshi, is something new ...
Four-year residency for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater completes first lap at Music Center
AAADT in Kyle Abraham’s ‘Are You in Your Feelings?’ photo by Paul Kolnik The hyper-popular Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater closed a seven-performance run, March 20-24, 2024, at the Los Angeles Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion yesterday — kind of a new post-COVID booking-high in southern California — bringing immense joy to myriad audience members ...
Poised for paw prints at TCM Classic Film Fest 2024: Jodie Foster
Mar
21
2024
Hollywood has special affection for kid actors. The best of them are survivors, and craftspeople for whom the presence of a a movie camera is nearly an extension of their own selves. And that well describes the natural way that Jodie Foster, grabbed attention at age ten in her first movie, Alice Doesn’t Live Here ...
He’s just Ken. But, Ryan Gosling and Mandy Moore, Jack Cole has a name too. 10
Jack Cole (1911-1974) creator of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”was so bad-assed you’d think people would show respect. Instead, one of American-dance’s most original creators was stolen from, even in his lifetime–and he knew it. Nineteen million people watched, on Sunday night, when, at the 96th Oscar Award ceremony, actor Ryan Gosling, looking hot ...
Three ‘wows’ and ten years of arts leadership from Thor Steingraber 1
“Three wows” sold Thor Steingraber on The Soraya. Steingraber’s long interview process in the fall of 2013 and winter of 2014 to become top executive of Cal State Northridge’s newish theater culminated in a site visit. As he marks ten years as The Soraya’s executive and artistic director, he remembers this moment as his first ...