Vidal Sassoon The Movie: sharp man, sharp scissors

Fashion · Film · Reviews
Caroline Cushing Graham, founding partner of C4 Global Communications and longtime Sassoon client, contributes this film review to arts·meme: The Vidal Sassoon movie: Five Stars! The movie is great, very poignant and beautifully shot. Startling black and white photography with film clips, creating a vivid portrait of Vidal Sassoon. Nothing too much about wild sixties ...

Tidbits from Robert Redford at the AARP Awards 2

Dance · Film
It was interesting to see Robert Redford honored for “Life Achievement” at the AARP “Movies for Grownups Awards” Monday night. Redford is an ambiguous player in this town. A star among stars, one of the last of the old-school movie actors, he stepped into the breach, launching the Sundance Institute and its independent film festival. ...

Alter kockers we love

Film
Life was sweet Monday night when I got to meet and interview two lovely actors at the AARP “Movies for Grownups” awards. Both gave marvelous quotes. Read it in the Los Angeles Times. Yiddish dictionary here.

The Lion Queen 2

Film
Calling all moms! You think you have it rough. Then try just one day as Ma Di Tau, lioness, a single mother raising three urchins in the open plains of Botswana. You’re moving neighborhoods, you’ve got the kids in tow, and, OMG, they’re all still nursing. There are vicious (male) lions advancing on you from ...

Music and dance contribute to early Disney animation

Dance · Film
In this clip from a talk at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival last summer, the amazing Marge Champion, 91, chats with the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, Norton Owen, about her participation in Walt Disney’s Snow White (1937). The occasion was the publishing of Mindy Aloff’s super book, “Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation.” Mindy, ...

Fun pre-Oscar events at the Academy

Film
Beginning on Tuesday, February 22, through Saturday, February 26, the eve of the Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present five public events celebrating the 83rd Academy Awards. Shorts! Hosted by Kenneth Branagh, actor, writer, director, producer and four-time Oscar nominee. Features screenings of the 2010 Oscar-nominated films in the Animated ...

Rare 1928 Ballets Russes film footage found

Dance · Film
From Corriere della Serra, via arts•meme‘s good friend Stefano Tomassini, a dance historian at University CaFoscari in Venice: the only film to date of the Ballets Russes. The footage portrays Michel Fokine’s Chopin ballet “Les Sylphides,” and features principal dancer, Serge Lifar. It seems to have been filmed in 1928 at the Fête des Narcisses in ...

Valentine’s Day movie date

Film
There’s a good Valentine’s Day selection at the movies this year. For the unabashedly romantic, Bogie and Ilsa will always have Paris at Cinefamily on Fairfax Boulevard — the Champs-Elysees of Los Angeles. Further down Fairfax, at LACMA, “Klute,” a hard-nosed film about a harder-nosed call girl follows film critic Kenneth Turan’s in-person Jane Fonda interview. This should ...

“Scarecrow” cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond @ LACMA

Film
Following a double bill at LACMA so soulful and affecting that the feeling was beatific [“Electra Glide in Blue” & “Scarecrow” both from 1973], the museum hosted the great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond for a talk. Zsigmond, in tandem with his compatriot Laszlo Kovacs, introduced a palette of mittel European muted natural light to Hollywood. According to ...

‘She asks me why, I’m just a hairy guy’ 2

Dance · Film · Theater
HAIR has roots in Hollywood, and we don’t mean hair roots. We mean theatrical roots. In 1968, the West Coast premiere production opened on Sunset Boulevard, just two blocks from the Pantages, about six months following the production’s Broadway opening. The Aquarius Theatre, re-named in honor of one of the show’s hit songs, would be ...