post sponsored by Ford Theatres
Ford Theatre’s magical August dance-weekend adds intimacy
Unicorns and moonbeams! That magical stuff will spool at the Ford Amphitheatre when the beloved outdoor stage winds toward summer’s-end 2018. Lending unusual piquancy in a special dance-weekend are full-evening works by up-and-coming choreographers: Marjani Forté-Saunders (Aug 24, 25) and Stephanie Zaletel (Aug 26 only). To accommodate the intimate, experimental nature of these dance performances, ...
Tarantino’s dream: the Pussycat meets the Bookshop 2
Women around the world are beside themselves with joy to see movie director Quentin Tarantino bring back the sleaze old days of the late sixties, when XXX-rated porn movies spooled at the bygone Pussycat Theatre. Admittedly, even I miss rolling by this colorful (ahem, it was the color purple) ediface of screaming architecture on the ...
Pavilion ‘Levitt-ates’ our city, says Mayor Eric Garcetti
I love the Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles. But don’t listen to me. Listen to Mayor Garcetti, who calls it a “spark” and a “community asset” whose “vitality is a model of urban revitalization.” According to Garcetti, “We can have all the best clean-up in the world, but if there’s nothing in between that keeps people ...
Excuse me, Mr. Lipschitz’s sculpture, could you kindly move over?
You walk your dog, right? And you lug your groceries from the market to the car. So why shouldn’t the Los Angeles Music Center, as part of its $40 million Plaza renovation project, take its Jacques Lipschitz “Peace on Earth” sculpture for a little stroll as well? It’s been sitting in the same spot since ...
Summer flower splendor in a vase by Cara Jean
Cara Jean’s mantra is “Never Enough Flowers!….Ever!” That’s why along with her Baroque, filigreed cups, saucers, dishware, eggcups, she has created this romantic vase and crammed it with peonies. A former dancer, Cara Jean puts the movement into her dynamic, delicious porcelain ware. Cara Jean Clay | on sale on line
The look of jazz: Warhol-designed album covers
Before he became the king of pop art, Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol moved to New York to make it. Warhol wanted to be part of the elite strata inhabited by Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and other sanctioned artists. He didn’t have what it took to be admitted to those circles but he did ...
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre buried in chazzerai at TCM Fest
It’s still going, more or less. The quaint tradition begun by showman Sid Grauman at his Chinese Theatre (which by some miracle, still stands): hands, feet, and autographs plonked into a square of still-wet cement. The photo above was taken from across Hollywood Boulevard looking toward the footprint ceremony for Cicely Tyson at TCM Fest ...
Dance-dwellers at the Villa Carlotta
When the call came from Hollywood in January 1941, the choreographer Jack Cole, leading his three-member troupe, repaired to Los Angeles tout de suite. So quickly did Cole dispatch his dancers Anna Austin and Florence Lessing to Calilfornia, that Austin wrote in her memoir, “We did not have time to take makeup off.” We had ...
Floating craps game at Vegas’s Sands Hotel reimagined
According to author Lynn Zook, who has written two cultural histories of the Las Vegas Strip, the Sands Hotel came to symbolize the Las Vegas of our collective memory. It was here that the color line was broken; here that Sinatra, Martin, Davis and the rest of the Rat Pack held court in the Copa ...
Bullock’s Wilshire former retail glory @ Art Deco Society talk & screening 1
A beacon of Art Deco wonderment, the iconic Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store still stands on Wilshire Boulevard. Designed by Parkinson and Parkinson in 1928, the legendary building is considered a preservation success story; it is now repurposed as the Southwestern School of Law’s law library. Eh. Okay. They dare not tear it down because among ...