A la française: food & fashion films
If you are me, you’re going to the movies this weekend. You’re going to skip “Rush,” but there are two oh-so-French movies opening, one which I have seen and recommend highly. I loved “Haute Cuisine.” Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot), a renowned chef from Perigord, is astonished when the President of the Republic (Jean d’Ormesson) appoints ...
Koehler on Cinema: “Rush” It Ain’t
In lieu of original material, Hollywood continues to borrow (Spike Lee’s “Old Boy”), copy (the sequel tsunami that never ends), or adapt better non-Hollywood writers (“Life of Crime”). Or, in a favored mode of where we are right now, which is the start of the official Oscar season, turn actually interesting true stories into hopefully ...
Visit Spain, Czech Republic, both on Wilshire Boulevard
Sep
10
2013
Two European films, both from a similar era, will enjoy screenings soon, along the Wilshire corridor: “Goya” at the Goethe Institut and “Closely Watched Trains” at the Academy. Having attained boundless wealth and iconic status as a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya falls head over heels for a beautiful princess while ...
Koehler on Cinema: The Salinger Spectacle
Ever since “The Catcher in the Rye” was published in 1951, America has had a J.D. Salinger problem. It’s partly the author’s own making, but mostly due nation’s relentless quest for the next “Great American Novel,” that always-elusive White Whale of fame, the ultimate American measure of artistic worth. “Catcher” made Salinger famous alright: As ...
Rod Alexander’s “The Birth of the Blues” dance number rediscovered 3
Please, please God, don’t let the world blow up before Sunday night. Because Sunday night at 9 pm, I get to see choreographer Rod Alexander‘s brilliant dance number, “The Birth of the Blues” from THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE (20th Century-Fox 1956), at CINECON Classic Film Festival — in a new 35mm print, ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
Filmmaking team Allison Anders and Kurt Voss have been programming and producing the Don’t Knock the Rock film festival in Los Angeles for over a decade, with Cinefamily providing a steady home base after years of vagabonding around town. Focused (pure rock n’ roll, usually at the margins, with a taste for the overlooked and ...
Nicholas Brothers ballistic on silver screen 1
Joy to the world, the place to be at 4:30 this afternoon was the balcony of the Egyptian Theater, a spot that offered prime viewing, on opening day of CINECON Classic Film Festival, of DOWN ARGENTINE WAY (1940). The über-fun Betty Grable/Don Ameche technicolor south-of-the-border extravaganza from 20th Century-Fox was Grable’s first headlining role at ...
Koehler on Cinema: When Losey Went Pinteresque 1
At the center of Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” (opening Friday at Laemmle’s Royal) is how wonderful—no, how scrumptious—it is to watch James Fox’s sniveling, weakling upper-class gent brought down and subverted by Dirk Bogarde’s all-seeing, smirking house servant. Pinter’s name precedes Losey’s in the first sentence for a few reasons. One has ...
Chakiris, a cut above the rest 1
The camera catches a gang of gypsies rehearsing, in 1958, at New York’s Winter Garden theater before shipping overseas to perform in West Side Story’s second cast in London. Front and center is “West Side”s choreographer Jerome Robbins, running the “Cool” number with its inimitable finger snaps. Foremost in this group, a cut above the ...
Marian the Librarian to tell all at CINECON 1
Aug
26
2013
We just learned that the lovely Academy-Award winning actress Shirley Jones will be honored at the 49th annual Labor Day-weekend event, Cinecon Classic Film Festival. The five-day foray into classic film-mania — with an accent on rarely seen movies and silent film — that hook or by crook rolls out annually at summer’s end for ...