Norman Lloyd remembers
“Music to my ears,” cooed veteran stage and film actor Norman Lloyd in response to the fervent applause that greeted his appearance at Hollywood Heritage’s wonderful “Night at the Barn” lecture series held at the DeMille-Lasky barn. The 95-year-old Lloyd credits his lifelong love of tennis with helping him outlive his former collaborators Orson Welles, ...
Even in 1924 Peter Pan wouldn’t grow up 2
May
16
2010
So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land! — J.M. Barrie I’m very excited to see PETER PAN (1924), the delicious silent film offering of the Los Angeles Conservancy’s annual summer film fest, ...
And the mini Oscar goes to LACMA film
May
14
2010
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today a $12,500 grant in support of LACMA’s film program for 2010-11 season. While this check will hardly float the program, it bears significance and good will on a symbolic level. The Academy is Hollywood, Inc. And so I would like to humbly thank the Academy ...
Go ahead, Clint, make our day
May
11
2010
The subject is the long-term funding of LACMA’s film program, which is still not secured. In a February 17 curtain talk with Richard Schickel held in tandem with the museum’s respectful retrospective of his oeuvre, Clint Eastwood said: “I want to thank everyone for coming out here and supporting LACMA. I must confess I wasn’t as familiar ...
L.A. Music Center co-commissions revival of Merce Cunningham work
May
10
2010
It gave me pause to learn that the Los Angeles Music Center had co-commissioned the revival of Roaratorio, a major work dating from 1986 that Merce Cunningham Dance Company will soon present in L.A. That’s really cool. I had to read it twice. Choreographer Neil Greenberg, who performed in the piece while a Cunningham dancer, ...
The eyes have it …
Indian dancers dance with their eyes. They train them too. That’s evident in this image of the great Indian classical dancer Uday Shankar (Ravi Shanker was his little brother and Jack Cole was his student). Modern-dance choreographer Yvonne Rainer wisely reminds us that the mind is a muscle. So, too, are the eyes. The pedagogy ...
Musuraca put the noir into film noir 4
May
5
2010
LACMA film curator Ian Birnie has some great stuff coming up this month – a retrospective of the films of Italy-born, New York-raised cameraman Nicholas Musuraca, known for his atmospheric noir cinematography at RKO studios in the 1940s. Says Ian: “Musuraca is the third in my unofficial survey of noir cinematographers; the first was Stanley ...
The Reischtag burns in our collective memory 1
May
4
2010
“It wasn’t really about finding something.” So claim German artists Ulrike Mohr and Susanne Weck recounting their cross-continental trek in search of a lost panorama, “Die Schlacht um den Reichstag,” (“The Battle of Berlin”). The two artist-partners voyaged from Berlin to Moscow at great effort to maybe find the gone-missing circular art work — but ...
Renoir show still on view
May
2
2010
It’s the last week to catch LACMA’s “Renoir in the 20th Century” focused on the last three decades of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s career prior to his death in 1919. Of the 80 paintings, sculptures and drawings, in the portrait-laden show, this beautiful Riviera landscape was my favorite (click for better view). Also heartbreaking and inspiring were ...
Own a masterpiece. Buy a stamp.
Apr
29
2010
Please don’t say the U.S. government does not support the arts. We have art stamps. Or is it stamp art? The postal service launched the Abstract Expressionist postage stamp series in March. See them here. I just got mine. They’re very groovy. Just the thing to smack on my late tax return. The vibrant stamps feature ...