Haunting new Vivaldi opera a cautionary tale at Guggenheim ‘Works & Process’
In these cataclysmic times it sometimes seems that, if we’re looking for leadership out of an existential crisis, we need artists more than we do politicians. That thought occurred to me two weeks ago, while wildfires ravaged Los Angeles and New York shivered through an Arctic vortex, and I sat in the auditorium of the ...
Digging & dining: ‘Groundhog Day’ at Alamo Drafthouse
Jan
26
2025
We need fun! We need fun! There. I’ve said it twice — because I mean it doubly. Also because it’s in keeping with the time warp of repetition proffered by a very funny movie along that theme. Groundhog Day (1993) tells the tale of an egotistical Pittsburgh teevee weather guy, Phil Connors (Bill Murray), who ...
Only the screen was small: Ida Lupino television work at UCLA Film & Television Archive
Jan
25
2025
It bodes one of those great-but-long evenings at UCLA Film and Television Archive, where we have produced several film events, in the Billy Wilder Theater at UCLA’s Hammer Museum. I want to go. born to play with bogie, here, High Sierra (1941) Why? Because Ida Lupino was so cool. She was a really good actress ...
Fascinating: Dances by Charles Weidman
Jan
20
2025
It was a triumvirate. The brilliant second-generation offspring of Denishawn, the pioneering American modern-dance company comprised a trio of names: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. A fourth post-Denishawn great was Jack Cole, but Cole came to the party after that first fabulous threesome had departed. I have listed the names of Graham, Humphrey, ...
Devastated by the Pacific Palisades Fire: publisher of works of Arnold Schoenberg
Jan
14
2025
ed. note: We learned of the brutal fate of Belmont Publishing from the grandson of Arnold Schoenberg, a friend of artsmeme, Randol Schoenberg. This sad story we publish here while offering the Schoenberg family our deepest condolences The fire that ravaged the Pacific Palisades community in early January left a trail of devastation, and unfortunately, ...
Merce Cunningham goddess Carolyn Brown enters modern-dance eternity
Jan
13
2025
Carolyn Brown and Merce Cunningham in Suite for Five. Photograph by Marvin Silver, 1968, courtesy Cunningham Trust It’s all in the photo. An unusual pose, but Merce Cunningham rolled that way … unusual. With the early female Cunningham dancers — Viola Farber and Sandra Neels come to mind, each an iconoclastic dancer — Carolyn Brown ...
Colman Domingo’s star power galvanizes new film, ‘Sing Sing’
Director Greg Kwedar, Colman Domingo, Jane Fonda, Clarence Maclin attend A24’s Sing Sing Screening hosted by Jane Fonda, London Hotel in Los Angeles, Sat Jan 4, 2025 Following his Oscar-nominated turn as the civil rights leader in Rustin (2023), Colman Domingo is back in the awards spotlight this year with Sing Sing. The critically acclaimed ...
Clothes make the man, in ‘Monte Cristo’ & ‘West Side Story’
If clothes make the man in real life, then it’s only more so in the movies. That’s when an audience is maximally focused and alert, and processing quick information about characters. I found myself repeatedly distracted, in an awesome way, by the stunning men’s wear in THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (2024), which I recently ...
Doubling down: MOMO, major Naharin work for Batsheva Dance Company, soon at Music Center
Jan
7
2025
“Sorrow and beauty” forms a bittersweet promise augured in Batsheva Dance Company‘s upcoming performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, February 14-16, in which a challenging-looking full-evening work dating to 2022 by choreographer Ohad Naharin, MOMO, will have its North American premiere. It is the first time the groundbreaking and influential national dance company of Israel ...
‘The Brutalist’ leads crop of Oscar hopefuls exploring Jewish-American experience
As awards season heats up in Los Angeles, The Brutalist seems to be a likely (arguably, the likely) frontrunner for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars on March 2, certainly for those who’ve seen it. But that last bit is an important caveat. For, with a running time of three hours, twenty minutes (and a ...