The indomitable ‘Thelma’ rolls into your local theater
Jun
3
2024
She’s a little old lady not from Pasadena, but rather Encino, or thereabouts. June Squibb plays the title role not as a doddering oldster, but a defiantly independent one even as the vagaries of cellphones, Facebook, and online-banking seem to be colluding against her.Yes, THELMA (2024), out at month’s end from Magnolia Pictures, is a ...
Swirling in motion & color with Blue13 Dance Company
Over an unsually chilly weekend in Los Angeles, a large posse of creatives — Blue13 Dance Company — lived up to its colorful name, staging a site-specific work masterminded by choreographer Achinta McDaniel, a large snippet of which we enjoyed in dress rehearsal. In a small city comprised of eight Victorian homes of Heritage Square ...
Film review: In bracing black/white, photography by George Platt Lynes 1
George Platt Lynes working in his studio. The life of the singular, visionary photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-55) was a brief, intense, whirlwind. Lynes packed a lot into his 47 years—working, partying, boldly living an openly gay life, creating a remarkable archive of work—and then apparently destroying portions of it. He interacted with a fascinating ...
Dear Academy Museum, please stop trying to divide us
doesn’t get better: cab, fayard, harold Dear Academy Museum, The Nicholas Brothers were great dancers not ‘Black’ dancers For an institution tripping over itself in an effort to evince sensitivity toward every sector, segment, and demographic that ever walked Planet Earth for the past 3,000 years — a real mission impossible, guys — you keep ...
Real, fake, honest, or corrupt? UCLA Film & Television Archive’s clever ‘Quiz Show’ program
An exceptional double bill this Saturday night, June 1, at UCLA Film & Television Archive, where film programs are screened at the Billy Wilder Theater of the Hammer Museum. This one bears particular tongue in cheek, as part of the Archive’s “Small Screen/Big Screen” series. It’s a clever pairing of a feature film, QUIZ SHOW ...
Rauschenberg a pawn in Cold War politics, asserts new doc TAKING VENICE
A new documentary that addresses a seminal moment in which the art world came mano-a-mano with political intrigue is director Amei Wallach’s TAKING VENICE , from Zeitgeist Films, which opens tonight at the Laemmle Royal theatre in West Los Angeles, followed by a Q/A with the director. The doc examines the rumors that the 1964 Venice ...
Revisiting ‘Seven New Dances’ as a periscope to Paul Taylor’s future, at 92NY
It has become a celebrated and notorious moment in modern dance history: Paul Taylor’s Seven New Dances, the evening of purposely un-dancey pieces that inspired the now-famous blank newspaper review by Louis Horst. On May 13, reconstructions of works from that evening will take the stage of Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y, ...
arts•meme glimpses Francis Ford Coppola’s soon-coming ‘Megalopolis’
Apr
30
2024
Our first glimpse, in single photo, above, of Megalopolis, a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined modern America, a soon-coming motion picture directed, written, produced by Francis Ford Coppola. It goes like this, or so it is said to: The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist ...
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 ...