Looks beautiful: Christian Petzold’s ‘Undine’ at German Currents Film Festival
One of Germany’s most celebrated film auteurs, Christian Petzold, brings a Los Angeles premiere to the German Currents Film Festival which kicks off today. Petzold’s UNDINE is a retelling, updated, of the myth of a water-nymph who marries a mortal. The story is set in modern-day Berlin. Told through Petzold’s precise visual style, the film ...
Singalong Saturday: He’s gone where the goblins go
Nov
7
2020
As mayor of the Munchkin CityIn the County of the Land of OzI welcome you mostly regally(But we’ve got to verify if legally)To see … If she …Is morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably DEADAs Coroner, I must aver, I’ve thoroughly examined herAnd she is not merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.So this ...
Vera-Ellen’s teensy steak dinner recalled by dance coach
chubby cheeks Turning the conversation to Vera-Ellen, I asked Joan Bayley who worked with the Hollywood dancer on White Christmas, if she was a nice girl. “Yes, she was,” replied Joan. “She was not an exciting personality, but she was friendly and sweet.” I expressed my opinion that Vera-Ellen’s dancing is not my favorite, as ...
German ballet & film worlds connect in age of COVID
Grand Pas de Deux from LE CORSAIRE: Iana Salenko, Daniil Simkin As we have said umpteen times — to the point of “We get it!” — doing the arts on line is not our first choice. We love going out, we miss it so much. Everyone does. But, wow, some creative things have been pouring ...
Errol Flynn could dance, insists Julie Newmar 3
Julie on set in gold head-to-toe makeup applied by makeup man Antole Robbins, Flynn observing at rear c. 1952 Beyond his many physical gifts that made him the most derring-do of screen actors to famously do his own stuntwork, the long-legged Aussie-born movie star, Erroll Flynn (1909-1959) could also dance. Who knew? It was a ...
Breathe in, breathe out: Westside Ballet’s ‘Grace & Grit’ drive-in movie event
joy womack, for westside ballet Attention, all dance-deprived! A fun event, with a poignant underpinning, will be a pop-up drive-in movie evening of filmed dance offerings hosted by Westside Ballet in tandem with the Public Policy Institute of Santa Monica College. I like how it puts dance — and the determination to present dance — ...
Make ’em laff, virtually! Palm Springs International Comedy Festival 2020
mad, mad, mad, etc. made in palm springs For those of you having trouble eking out a grin behind a face mask, we have just the solution. Laff, guffaw, giggle, chuckle, and bray like a hyena in your mask-free living room from October 11 – 18. That’s when the Palm Springs International Comedy Festival offers ...
Sister cities to the rescue! French Riviera Film Fest held stateside, at Beverly Hills Hotel
Sep
25
2020
French Riviera Film Festival co-founders Nicole Muj and Gotham Chandna were in a quandary. Every link in the chain of staging their second annual film festival in the south of France concurrent to the Cannes Film Festival was disrupted. “Due to the pandemic, we couldn’t hold our festival and awards this year live in Cannes,” ...
Hollywood 1952: Jack Cole’s ethnic dance includes voodoo & waltz
In the summer and fall of 1951, the dance maker Jack Cole undertook two major new choreographies, one each at the two leading film studios of the era. He staged and danced the lead role in a voodoo ceremonial-rite for Lydia Bailey, at Twentieth Century Fox, and choreographed a sumptuous ‘grand valse’ for The Merry Widow ...
L.A.’s greatest filmmakers revealed, on ‘Home Movie Day’
Sep
22
2020
You’re already at home. So why not be very meta and watch home movies? From the tidal wave of on-line screenings and events, this one popped out. It’s such a COVID-clever idea: a compilation of submitted movies starring your cigar-smoking Uncle Sam, pet parakeet, sister’s Bat Mitzvah, new lawn mower, first dive into a swimming ...