Koehler on Cinema: Los Angeles Film Festival, day 4
There wasn’t much on day 3 of LAFF that we hadn’t already reported in previous postings — and, no, writer-director Sam Esmail’s frantically busy and wafer-thin two-hander “Comet” doesn’t count— but day 4 was a different matter. Sometimes at festivals, one’s daily viewing can accidentally form a running theme. Saturday’s theme was What It Is To ...
Koehler on Cinema: Los Angeles Film Festival day two
The gold standard in that odd sub-genre, the Funny Country Bumpkins Movie, remains Gyorgy Palfi’s beautiful and amusing “Hukkle,” set in a remote Hungarian village. Palfi’s fellow Hungarian, Agnes Sos, tries to one-up Palfi’s bumpkins in her little doc, “Stream of Love,” by showing—shock of shocks—that old folks really love sex. I don’t doubt that ...
Los Angeles Film Festival @ 20: the good, the bad, and the meh 3
A useful purpose of a film festival overview is to steer audiences away from the bad stuff and toward the good. Of the 69 new or recent features in the 20th edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival, I’ve seen 34. So what’s reported here isn’t a complete program preview. But it’s a pretty fair ...
“You’re no spring chicken,” Bette Davis told Gena Rowlands in 1979 5
May
31
2014
So incredible, Wednesday evening, to see the great Gena Rowlands in person, interviewed by film critic Steven Farber after a screening of her historic tour de force performance in “A Woman Under the Influence.” As part of a long conversation, Rowlands spoke with great warmth about her memories of Bette Davis, with whom she co-starred ...
Rumble at “Last Remaining Seats” with “West Side Story”
We’re very thrilled to announce that arts·meme‘s Debra Levine will conduct a very special interview with the Academy Award-winning actor/dancer George Chakiris, a good friend of the blog, prior to the screening of West Side Story (1961) on Saturday June 14. The classic movie-musical is the jewel in the crown of this summer’s “Last Remaining ...
Revisiting movie “classics” that aren’t 4
It’s almost a dare. A film festival, in this case TCM Classic Film Festival 2014, which virtually took over Hollywood Boulevard for five days this past May, declares, in its title, its focus on movie “classics.” Nothing but “classics.” Really? Consider that perhaps a few of those “classics” are overrated. Then consider that some are ...
An influential woman still and always: Gena Rowlands
May
24
2014
Looking forward to attending a special screening, next Wednesday evening, of A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974), a landmark film directed by John Cassavetes and featuring a groundbreaking and courageous performance by actress Gena Rowlands. The film was one of the first preserved by the National Film Registry because of its cultural significance. Rowlands will ...
Romain Gary, the Hollywood years, celebrated May 15
The French Consulate General in Los Angeles is hosting an homage to the multifaceted French intellectual, statesman, novelist and filmmaker, Romain Gary, on the centennial of his birth. War hero, diplomat and film director, Gary moved from the Russian Empire, where he was born, to Nice, where he spent his childhood, and from his Air ...
Philip Glass on Cocteau’s “La Belle et La Bete”
Our friends at the Center for the Art of Performance (CAP-UCLA) have shared with us an essay by Philip Glass concerning his musical reconfiguring of Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et La Bete” (“Beauty and the Beast”) to be screened this Friday night, May 2, one night only, at Royce Hall. The film will have live ...
Claude Lelouch on the friendship in “We Love You, You Bastard” 1
French film director Claude Lelouch, whose seventh film, A Man and a Woman (1966), catapulted an international career, persists in his cinematic exploration of the perils of the human heart — not just in love but in friendship. LeLouch’s 44th feature, “We Love You, You Bastard,” which opened the 18th annual COLCOA French film festival ...