Ricky Jay’s magical existence examined in “Deceptive Practice”
“Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries & Mentors of Ricky Jay,” a new documentary directed by Alan Edelstein and Molly Bernstein, is a love story. Oh …you thought it was about magic? Well, isn’t love the ultimate magic trick? The film’s early sequences show Ricky Jay, magician, scholar, collector, author, historian and actor, obsessively practicing his card ...
Strong female film characters on parade @ COL*COA
French actress Jeanne Moreau, platinum blonde and wrapped in a feather boa, poses in vast ennui in BAY OF ANGELS (1963) written and directed by Jacques Demy. Moreau plays a bored upper class housewife on an existential bender in the south of France. She gloms onto a young drifter, Jean, first by his pocketbook and ...
Review: Quirky master-photog Bert Stern captured in doc 1
It doesn’t matter that “Bert Stern: Original Madman” falls short in depicting the hectic life and work of the go-go photographer of the sixties. The documentary, a first major effort by Shannah Laumeister, is unevenly told, biased toward the actress-turned-director’s own personal relationship with Stern, and values cheap story elements over artful ones. Yet the ...
Book review: ‘Hermes Pan, The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire’ 3
A book review first published by Dance Magazine [December 2012] Growing up in Memphis as the son of Greek immigrants, Hermes Pan (1909–1990) copped dance steps from the family’s African-American household help. Fast-forward to the Depression, when the self-taught Hollywood choreographer’s black-and-white dance fantasies for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers offered Americans escape. The versatile ...
Review: The Joffrey Ballet’s “The Rite of Spring” at the Music Center 5
We did not hoot, we did not holler, but we let rip with a bracing “bravo!” for Vaslav Nijinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” (Le Sacre du Printemps) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Friday night. First, because the Joffrey Ballet’s 100th anniversary reconstruction of the historic Ballets Russes production was great. But mainly because … to ...
Doug Varone & Dancers flash fun, finesse in O.C.
All hail modern dance. Not “contemporary” dance, not “contemporary modern,” but old-school barefoot modern dance, a movement language spoken, traditionally, without the aid of shoes, that is, toes gripping the ground. A conversation, via a trained and fluid body, between music (sometimes text, sometimes silence), fellow dancers, and an audience. Doug Varone, veteran choreographer and artistic ...
Eötvös’s noir quartet, “Korrespondenz” (1993), by Calder Quartet @ Jacaranda
What a strange and intricate moment when composer Peter Eötvös’s Korrespondenz, Scenes for String Quartet opened Jacaranda’s “Fierce Beauty” program Saturday night in Santa Monica. The Calder Quartet played the 1993 work with Eötvös in the room, making the occasion extra special. The global music luminary is visiting Los Angeles from Hungary for a week of ...
Esa-Pekka, Especially-Pleasurable, at HEAR NOW benefit 3
Posing with The Lyris Quartet (Alyssa Park, Shalini Yijayan, violins, Timothy Loo, cello, Luke Maurer, viola) is our marvelous and much-missed Los Angeles Philharmonic Conductor-Laureate, Esa-Pekka Salonen, on a return visit to our town. Salonen’s now London-based where he’s principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. His presence at a house party in Culver City proved ...