TCM Fest: writer Robert Benton on “Bonnie & Clyde” 1
Apr
27
2013
“You couldn’t grow up in Texas without knowing about Bonnie and Clyde. They were folk heroes. Kids would dress up as Bonnie and Clyde for Halloween,” said filmmaker and writer Robert Benton, a Waxahachie, Texas native, speaking before a screening of his highly influential 1967 movie at TCM Fest. Benton, who went on to direct ...
Streisand’s “Funny Girl” on Grauman’s big screen 2
Director William Wyler’s “Funny Girl,” TCM Fest 2013‘s opening-night film, vividly restored and splashed across Grauman’s huge screen, proved a tour de force beyond our memory of it. In her motion picture debut, Barbra Streisand performs in every possible context: she’s sings in comic numbers and torch songs; she sings while dancing and amidst love ...
MOCA’s Jeffrey Deitch reflects on Boston violence
Apr
25
2013
We enjoyed briefly chatting with MOCA‘s Jeffrey Deitch at a press preview of the colorful Urs Fischer installation in the museum’s main building on Bunker Hill. The exhibit extends at a second MOCA facility, the Temporary Contemporary in Little Tokyo. The colorful scene is from the whimsical yet melancholic installation at MOCA by Swiss born ...
Dancers, meet the museum world. Museums: consider dance.
This weekend, the Hammer Museum presents Dancing with the Art World, a two-day symposium that convenes artists, choreographers, curators, and historians to reflect on the interface between dance and art, consider its historical precedents, and debate its effects on artistic and institutional practice. Dance has long intersected meaningfully with the visual arts. But in recent ...
Preeminent dance movie posters @ Barnsdall
We’re super looking forward to touring through a wonderful installation of dance movies posters now on display at Barnsdall Gallery Theater. We already saw it once, but it’s so fabulous that repeat viewings are called for. Twenty distinct pieces in varying sizes and rarity comprise GOTTA DANCE!, the majority dating from the golden age of ...
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 ...
Paris arrives at L.A.’s doorstep for COL*COA @ the DGA
Apr
17
2013
We love the annual French film festival, COL*COA [City of Lights * City of Angels]. It’s a deep plunge, every April, into the latest of French cinema and, increasingly, the schedule is studded with digitally restored classics. The two viewing rooms at the Director’s Guild are among the loveliest in town; both are sparkling clean, ...
Review: Kenny Barron hits the hoops for Da Camera Society concert
It was a jazz concert in an unlikely locale. Pianist Kenny Barron, whose teammates have included Roy Haynes, Lee Morgan, James Moody, Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Jackson, and Yusef Lateef, unleashed a magical solo piano recital in a boy’s gym. It was the refurbished indoor basketball court of the 28th Street YMCA Building — a glorious ...
The new Academy Museum gets a launch party at LACMA
We had a ball cruising the room at the inaugural celebration for the future home of The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Thursday, April 11, 2013 at the historic Wilshire May Company Building in Los Angeles. Many film and arts-world leaders and celebs were in attendance. Slideshow here: photos: Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S., Richard ...
Maria Tallchief, who trained in Los Angeles, dies
Apr
12
2013
Excerpted from “Maria Tallchief, America’s Ballerina, Larry Kaplan [University of Florida: 2005]: When I was twelve years old and Marjorie was ten and a half, we went to a new ballet teacher. A ballet mother at Mr. Belcher’s told Mother that the great Bronislava Nijinska had opened a studio near Beverly Hills, and even though ...