Tatum O’Neal’s face in “Paper Moon” 2

Film
Peter Bogdanovich’s rhapsody to the American Middle West, “Paper Moon,” is graced by the Oscar-winning performance of an eight-year-old actress who pulls one bratty expression after another at her real-life father Ryan. We saw the film the other night on the big screen of the Los Angeles Theater. Bogdanovich, in solid form with fun stories ...

Dirty laundry courtesy Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre

Dance
Dance maker Heidi Duckler, who shakes us out of our passive theater-going habits and drags us around our own city, brings her landmark site-specific work, Laundromatinee, to the La Brea Coin-Op. These shows come on the [dirty] heels of Duckler’s ambitious Cleopatra CEO, a baroque corporate-opera set in the ghostly but seventies-resplendid executive offices of ...

Architectural duo to reconfigure May Company building into film museum 2

Architecture & Design · Film
Award-winning architects Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali will design the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced today. The new museum will occupy the former May Company building, a beloved Los Angeles icon that sits at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, the dead center of ...

Hey, L.A. bohemians! Learn about L.A.’s original bohemians.

Ideas & Opinion · Visual arts
Beth Gates Warren, prominent historian and curator of photography, will discuss her book “Artful Lives: Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, and the Bohemians of Los Angeles” in that maelstrom of bohemianism — Glendale California! This biography reveals the previously untold love story of Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather. Both were photographic artists at the center of the ...

Traffic getting heavy near Mulholland Drive. BodyTraffic on board!

Dance
In flagrant disregard of its own name, BODYTRAFFIC, the Los Angeles contemporary dance company, is racing ahead. So we wrote in the Los Angeles Times about Southern California’s sleek repertory dance ensemble. Indeed our local dance troupe BODYTRAFFIC will transfer a slate of cool contemporary choreography across the country to the Joyce Theater — the ...

arts·meme a cunning urchin of four 4

Ideas & Opinion
We’re movin’ on up … in the age bracket. The arts blog has reached the ripe old age of four. And life is good. Happy birthday, arts·meme, four years old. As ever, we are so grateful to our Word Press guru, Mark Levine of istarnet. Thanks as well to connection wizard Kent Bulza and logo ...

Gene from Pittsburgh 1

Dance
I’ve  been spending a lot of time with Gene Kelly for the past week. It’s a good feeling. We’re from the same home town. Kelly was a huge movie star. The only other dancer to reach that level was Fred — not from Pittsburgh. Read my story on The Huffington Post.

Happy 100th Gene Kelly! Love, Oscar 2

Dance · Film
A parade of Technicolor-tinged dance sequences enchanted a full house at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater Thursday night. “A Centennial Tribute to Gene Kelly,” the first of a two-part event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored the beloved dancer-choreographer-director in this most effective manner — by screening his sensational dance clips. ...

“Patty The Revival” at Highways. Smart and wonderful. Go! 1

Reviews · Theater
Unlike the 28-year-old theater wunderkind Patrick Kennelly, whose electro-opera “Patty the Revival” I very much enjoyed at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica last night, I was a vulnerable ten-year-old sponge when “The Patty Duke Show” hit the airwaves circa 1964. Ka-thunk. That’s the sound of television pablum landing on my undefended prepubescent brain. And ...

Dances for a Variable Population occupies Times Square

Dance
“We were in the middle of the most chaotic place in the world. A place that when you are there you want to leave. We’re there and people are taking the moment in and participating like crazy. Our workshops are so crowded. People get inspired by seeing seniors dance, it’s really moving. They want to ...