Melvin Kaminsky lives. [slideshow]
Apr
29
2024
Melvin Kaminsky (born June 28, 1926) aka Mel Brooks was in fine fettle interviewed at age 97 by Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz during the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival in its 15th annual staging in Hollywood, California. He explained to an audience gathered at TCL Chinese Theatre for a screening of “Spaceballs” (1987) ...
Rosie, her cat Buttermilk, and her creator Maurice Sendak, at Skirball Center 2
Apr
28
2024
Maurice Sendak, Rosie and Buttermilk, her Cat , character studies for Really Rosie animation,1973, watercolor and ink on paper, 13 ¾ x 15 5/8”©The Maurice Sendak Foundation Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) is much known as the artist/creator of acclaimed children’s books Where the Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night Kitchen (1970), and Outside Over There ...
Hilarious! Quentin Tarantino directs ‘Pulp Fiction’ dance number
An on-set devil captured footage as Quentin Tarantino directed Uma Thurman and John Travolta in their iconic twist to a Chuck Berry song. It does beg the question: Is that how John Ford directed? Tarantino demonstrated on a British talk show host his inspiration for the choreography. artsmeme interviews a dancer/choreographer who did not do ...
Neutra’s quiet revolution in residential design: Silverlake’s Ohara House (1959)
Apr
25
2024
Los Angeles is a living museum of mid-Century modern architectural design, those notably pared- down geometrically driven homes that interact copacetically in nature. So the house on view here is one of many. But it’s special. It’s historic. It’s one of the nine homes built on the edge of Silver Lake as a “Neutra Colony,” ...
Pre-Code movies rediscovered in Los Angeles (TCM Fest) & New York (MoMA)
Apr
25
2024
loretta young, spencer tracy, man’s castle At the fifteen annual Turner Classic Movies TCM Fest, just completed in Hollywood, we most enjoyed two marvelous movies, Only Yesterday (1933) in which Margaret Sullavan bucks the stigma of her single motherhood and The Good Fairy (1935) with Sullavan, again, playing a young innocent entangling with marital norms, ...
Attend New York City Ballet — in a sensitive way 1
Apr
24
2024
On a day when five highly sensitive creatures — a cluster of the British monarchy’s beautifully bred military horses — got “spooked” (an actual term for when horses react and skitter and scamper) and proceeded to throw their riders and gallop around London causing havoc, it’s time for human beings face the limits of our ...
Pas-de-deux in perpetuity: Travolta & Thurman in ‘Pulp Fiction,’ at TCM Fest 2024
At the conclusion of the witty dance duet between Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), on the dance floor of a kooky retro coffee-shop-style restaurant, the full auditorium of TCM Fest 2024‘s opening night gala at the TCL Chinese Theatre broke into spontaneous applause. The occasion was the screening of Pulp Fiction ...
Hooray for the ‘Discoveries’: lesser-known gems of TCM Fest 2024
When the TCM Classic Film Festival opens its 15th year in Hollywood this week, you may well choose to see some of the high-profile events at the festival—the star-studded opening night screening of Pulp Fiction, Lady Sings the Blues with co-star Billy Dee Williams in person, North by Northwest introduced by filmmaker Nancy Meyers, or ...
R&B today, in Los Angeles festival
Apr
16
2024
Smooth sounds and infectious beats of rhythm and blues music, shortcode R&B, will fill the Los Angeles skyline in a one-day extravaganza for music enthusiasts. The line up of R&B royalty will include artists Ashanti, Ja Rule, Omarion, and Bow Wow, joined by a plethora of R&B sensations including Pretty Ricky, Fabolous, Ginuwine, Mya, Keri Hilson, Lloyd, Ray J, ...
Mesmerizing balletic ode to Virginia Woolf new signature work for American Ballet Theatre 2
American Ballet Theatre, now in its eighth decade, reclaims its mantle as a font of top international repertoire with “Woolf Works,” a theatrical evocation of three novellas written by the most poetic of 20th century authors, Virginia Woolf. The ambitious full-evening ballet has contemporary-classical choreography by Briton Wayne McGregor to a moody and rambunctious original ...