Farber on Film: TCM Fest 2018 brings home the power of the press

Film · Ideas & Opinion
by 
This year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, which opens in Hollywood tomorrow night, is divided into several theme-related programs. One of the most intriguing—and certainly the timeliest—is called “Power of the Press” and celebrates movies about journalists. All the President’s Men was the Festival’s opening night film in 2016, so this year’s selections are not such ...

Brush up your franglais! It’s time for COLCOA.

Film
Not Coca-Cola©, but COLCOA, the annual French film festival in Hollywood that joins the City of Lights and the City of Angels at the cinematic-hip. 2018 COLCOA French Film Festival launches next Monday evening at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood, and features 86 films, television series, digital series and VR programs. An exclusive ...

Robert Dornhelm, who directed two prominent dance docs, to get award

Film
​ ​Director Robert Dornhelm, a contemporary filmmaker of great range and versatility who has worked across genres and formats, is slated to receive the 2018 SEEfest Legacy Award. The award will be granted at the 12th annual South East European Film Festival‘s opening night, April 26, at the Writer’s Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. A ...

I love you, Leigh Taylor-Young! 1

Film
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of the hit Peter Sellers comedy from 1968, ‘I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!‘ The Establishment meets the counterculture in this topical and often uproarious satire that poked fun at many of the conflicts dividing the country during the tumultuous 1960s. Sellers plays ...

Spirited actress/director Ida Lupino showcased @ UCLA Film Archive

Film
This one is for Kelly Anne Graml, the longtime publicist at UCLA Film & Television Archive who has been a joy to work with and who will retire from the Archive soon. *          *         * Calling all me-too’ers and enough-is-enough’ers! Now’s the time to march across Wilshire Boulevard and get-thee to a round-up of films ...

Spend Friday the 13th with ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ now 50 years old

Film
To provide shivers and thrills on Friday the 13th, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of one of the most terrifying movies of all time, Rosemary’s Baby. Ira Levin’s ingenious best-selling novel imagined a witches’ coven hiding in plain sight in contemporary Manhattan and hatching a plot to bring ...

A smoking dance number! ‘Two Cigarettes in the Dark’

Dance · Film · Music
It was so much fun to receive this dance number (above) from our friend the pianist/performer Peter Mintun, a very niche expert in old-tyme American popular music — the stuff of cafe society. The lead tap dancer (unidentified) and chorines deliver performances that can best be described as ‘smoking.’ “Two Cigarettes in the Dark,” by ...

Filmforum to screen radical-60s-cinema take on black power

Film
Over the course of the year, L.A. Filmforum will present screenings that reflect the the turbulent global events of 1968 from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy to the Democratic Convention and 1968 presidential election in the US, to the strikes in France in May and the Prague Spring and Soviet ...

Marilyn to have succeeded Bette in ‘Of Human Bondage’?

Film
“She said she’d settled the suit with Fox. They had fired her from Something’s Got to Give. She’d be restarting production in about a month. And she had signed with MGM to remake “Of Human Bondage” to be directed by Henry Hathaway.” The words above were spoken by Jane Russell, apropos a conversation with her ...

Surviving maulings and marriages: Mabel Stark, tiger trainer

Film
Looking forward to a screening of Mabel, Mabel Tiger Trainer written, produced and directed by Leslie Zemeckis, whom we last met in connection to her prior film Behind the Burley Q. “Mabel” is receiving a special screening in Los Angeles in connection with International Women’s Day, March 8. That is truly well timed, particularly in ...