What is this man thinking? Go see ‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’ 2
Radu Jude, director of BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN Photo credit: Silviu Ghetie. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures He resembles an Every Man, doesn’t he? Someone Bertolt Brecht might portray in a play — set in the good old days, the 1930s. He is the contemporary Romanian film director, Radu Jude, who, borrowing from ...
On International Animation Day, French short subjects at Theatre Raymond Kabbaz
Oct
8
2021
Pierre Leloup, artistic director of Theatre Raymond Kabbaz appreciates film animation and doesn’t believe it should just be for kids: “Animated film is an art form in its own on right,” says Pierre, adding that these marvelous, hand-crafted movies “efficiently introducing challenging topics in a visually compelling way, leaving plenty of room for symbolism, fantasy, ...
Hollywood Heritage’s Halloween hangout with ‘glamour ghoul’ Vampira 2
She was born Maila Nurmi, which seems ghoulish enough. But she went by the mononym, Vampira. For those of us who did not grow up in Los Angeles watching this strange, mysterious lady host horror movies on late-night television (I grew up in Pittsburgh, where our Vampira was not nearly as sexy: “Chilly Billie” Cardille, ...
More than a ‘mogul’: 20th C-Fox’s Darryl Zanuck in new Eyman book and on TCM 3
Oct
4
2021
New Eyman book for Running Press The respected and feared Darryl F. Zanuck ran his studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, like a Swiss watch and devised entertainment for the masses, including bright musicals starring Fox blondes Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, even Shirley Temple. He commandeered technologically innovative epics (The Robe, the movies’ first CinemaScope production), ...
Film review: ‘In Balanchine’s Classroom,’ a dance documentary
George Balanchine (1960s). Photo: Ernst Hass. As seen in In Balanchine’s Classroom. A film by Connie Hochman. A Zeitgeist Films release in association with Kino Lorber. Watching In Balanchine’s Classroom, the new dance documentary directed by Connie Hochman, you wait and hope for a movie about a significant, if rarefied, subject to add up to ...
Don’t bug out! Go to ‘Bug Therapy’
You think you have problems? What about our psychotherapists? They have to listen to other people’s problems (OPP) all day long. These wretched folk must be ready to jump out the window. But, luckily, according to Bug Therapy, a new animated light-comedy that’s premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, they may have ...
Ticket to happiness: ‘Le Bonheur’ turns 55 at Laemmle Theatres
Aug
16
2021
cute nuclear family – what could go wrong? It’s a personal favorite and a beautiful film, if only for its score. But it is also a visual feast. Shot in the suburbs of Paris, Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur opens with an idyllic scene of a perfect little French “famille” tripping the light fantastic of a ...
Velaslavasay Panorama, at 20, makes electric Chinese connection
The Chinese connection involved here is not really diplomacy; it’s not an economic exchange; nor is it ‘high art.’ But in a way, it encompasses all of that. It’s about culture. And it’s a cultural stretch to step into the wonder-land Sara Velas has created over the past two decades on the grounds of a ...
Dance Detective: Who chor’ed ‘An Occasional Man’ in ‘The Girl Rush’ (1955)?
courtesy of doc macro From Bob Boross:From the film “The Girl Rush” starring Rosalind Russell, Fernando Lamas, Gloria DeHaven, and Eddie Albert. Matt Mattox is a leading dancer in the film’s four dances. The choreographer is Robert Alton, although Matt told me that he choreographed the film. After examining the dances, it looks as if ...
Afternoon of a Tramp
The nymph dance in the dream sequence of the 30-minute short film Sunnyside (Charles Chaplin, 1919) has been recognized as a tribute to the ballet. Charlie met Nijinsky in December 1916.Charlie met Anna Pavlova in 1922.