Ivan Kirov, the dancing star of “Specter of the Rose” 1
“I’m no good. I’m just some muscles that can dance. The rest of me is rubbish — broken glass and rubbish.” So self-describes the lead character, Andre Sanine, of “Specter of the Rose” (1946, Republic Pictures). He’s mouthing writer-producer-director Ben Hecht’s lurid and kitsch-adjacent movie dialogue. Hecht created “Specter” in a couple of weeks, for ...
Specter of Nijinsky haunts Republic Pictures’ “Specter of the Rose”
The photo captures the marvelous opening scene of “Specter of the Rose,” a ballet movie from 1946 and a precious artifact of high-Hollywood dance-schmaltz. Dame Judith Anderson, seated at left, knitting, plays “Madam La Sylph,” the ballet mistress whom Ben Hecht, in his at-once overheated and acerbic screenplay, refers to as “the remains of a ...
Frank Morgan tribute concert @ Los Angeles Film Festival
Film festivals (let’s put “film” in quotes, since virtually nothing on film is actually screened anymore) should be about more than moviegoing. I know regulars at the Berlin film festival who swear that their personal highlight is the annual sidebar, Kulinarisches Kino (Culinary Cinema), which thematically links a movie with a meal. Filmmakers who attend ...
Glorya Kaufman joins Bernardo for the dance at the gym
It was mambo-mania Saturday night at the elegant Dorothy Chandler Pavilion when Los Angeles dance “angel,” Glorya Kaufman, posed with pleasure with George Chakiris, the Academy Award-winning star of “West Side Story.” Chakiris engaged in newsy dance conversation prior to a screening of the movie-musical masterpiece before a very full house of big-screen movie fans. ...
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 ...