Canapes and CLOCLO made COL*COA cool
Apr
23
2012
No one does it like the French. No one, no way, no how. COL*COA (City of Lights*City of Angels), the annual French film festival in Los Angeles, just wrapped up at the Director’s Guild of America building on Sunset Boulevard. The festival, now in its 16th year and masterminded by the incredibly hard-working Francois Truffart, ...
Tribeca Film Festival off to the races with “Ballets With A Twist” 1
On a recent visit to New York, it was my great pleasure to sit in on a rehearsal of a new work by choreographer Marilyn Klaus. She was preparing the latest addition to her roster of thirst-quenching ballets based on a cocktail menu. Thus the name of Klaus’s boutique troupe, “Ballets With A Twist.” By ...
Rarely viewed “The Great Gatsby” starring Alan Ladd opens film noir festival 4
Apr
21
2012
An unusual choice for the opening act of the Noir City film festival: The Great Gatsby (1949, Paramount) in a new 35 mm print. The festival, now on at the Egyptian Theatre, is co-produced by the Film Noir Foundation and the American Cinematheque. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great masterwork from 1925 is far from pulp fiction. ...
Stars light up Hollywood Boulevard, once more, at TCM Fest
TM & (C) Turner Entertainment Networks, Inc. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Photographers: Edward M. Pio Roda, Mark Hill, Adam Rose, Jason Merritt
TCM Fest: Good god! Peggy Cummins heats up “Gun Crazy”
Apr
15
2012
It was a wild ride watching “Gun Crazy” (1950) projected on the humongous screen of the Egyptian Theatre yesterday afternoon at TCM Fest. Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s pulpy film-noir concerns a pair of newly weds; played by John Dall and Peggy Cummins, they’re just doin’ what newly weds do. They’re livin’, lovin’, workin’ … and they’re ...
TCM Fest: “Frankenstein’s gonna bite me and kill me,” said 5-year-old Mel Brooks 1
Apr
14
2012
In conversation with Turner Classic Movies creative exec, Tom Brown, prior to the TCM Fest screening of his great comedy classic, Young Frankenstein (1974), director Mel Brooks dug deep into his memory bank. Asked by Brown what spurred his ribald take-off of the James Whale horror flick, Brooks recalled: “In 1931, I was five years ...
“Travis Banton inspired my dressing Cher,” says Bob Mackie at TCM Fest
In a curtain talk with costume historian Deborah Nadoolman-Landis prior to a TCM Fest opening-night screening of Cleopatra, Bob Mackie described an early influence. It was designer Travis Banton’s amazing costumes for Claudette Colbert in Cecil B. DeMille’s at-turns-camp, at-turns-sumptuous Roman romp. “I was thirteen, I lived in Inglewood, there were three movie theaters there. An ...
George Balanchine dances in British film from 1929 1
What we have here is not “Apollo.” That’s putting it mildly. But it’s still a very amusing, even amazing, piece of historic dance footage that’s making the rounds on Facebook. George Balanchine himself dances in a rather crude bit of his own choreography “Dark Red Roses,” in a British-made early talkie. Appearing in the pas ...
spring holiday weekend at arts·meme
Apr
6
2012
Cecil B. DeMille lived right down the road from arts·meme global headquarters. His crossing-of-the-Red-Sea special effect in “The Ten Commandments” (1956) may have been inspired by crossing Los Feliz Boulevard. Just as tough. We wish you and yours a Happy Passover and Happy Easter! thank you jonathan rosenbaum for the photo Like this? Read ...
Noir City: 14th annual film noir festival opens soon @ Egyptian Theatre
Apr
2
2012
Fourteen years ago, the American Cinematheque launched its inaugural festival of film noir. Back in 1999 it was called “Side Streets and Back Alleys: A Festival of Film Noir,” and it featured dozens of forgotten films, retrieved from critical exile, that have since been recognized as unjustly neglected genre gems, with many returned to circulation ...