Creative women SoKo & Loie Fuller align in new film ‘La Danseuse’
We are looking forward to meeting SoKo, the French singer/songwriter/video artist, in her film performance playing modern-dance pioneer Loie Fuller, in La Danseuse (The Dancer). The movie opens tomorrow, Friday, at Laemmle Theatres. Fuller (1862 – 1928), the great modern-dance pioneer, is now considered, in retrospect, to have been a prescient multi-media artist for her ...
Chuey House: artful home built for artists by an artist, Richard Neutra
Dec
6
2017
Chuey House, at 2460 Sunset Drive in the Hollywood Hills, is on the market. At the same time the Los Angeles Conservancy has nominated the iconic house for designation as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM). Neutra designed the glass-and-steel home in 1956 for Josephine Ain Chuey, a poet who’d been married to poet Gregory ...
Hollywood’s cross-genre master Michael Curtiz gets biography
Academy Award–winning director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962)—whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954)—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his 27-year tenure at Warner Bros., Curtiz directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The ...
Buy Neil Young toy trains, guitars, ‘grunge’ shirt
An upcoming auction includes singer/songwriter Neil Young’s exceptional collection of model trains, gobs of sound equipment, cool rock clothing and, hey, how about a Neil Young guitar? That would make some lucky twanger pretty happy at Christmas Julien’s Auctions will honor the rock legend in an auction presenting the multi-Grammy and Juno award winning singer/songwriter’s ...
Olivia de Havilland: still fighting “Feuds” at 101 2
Revelations of predatory behavior against women first exposed in the film industry have spread to other corridors of power. The headlines have overshadowed a parallel story involving the shameless disrespect of an iconic figure of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She fought for, and changed, the way the entertainment business is conducted. That woman, now 101 years ...
‘Rebels on Pointe,’ a film about the pursuit of human happiness
“I can be myself. I can wear tutus. Why not?” asks the Cuban-born ballet dancer. Carlos Hopuy, in a matter-of-fact tone. He adds, “Those little things change the world.” Hopuy voices these comments with the candor of a liberated person — he’s one of the members of the male-travestie troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte ...
Adieu to The Suzanne Farrell Ballet~!
Nov
29
2017
With sadness and regret we learn that a valiant and artistically important ballet company will soon be no longer. In a farewell program of George Balanchine favorites, each with a special meaning for Ms. Farrell, the Kennedy Center’s The Suzanne Farrell Ballet celebrates its 16th and final season with performances in the Opera House, December ...
Go postal gorgeously – Oscar de la Renta stamps
Yay! The Federal government finally did something! And they did something good. Last February the U.S. Postal Service issued Forever stamps honoring Oscar de la Renta, a native of the Dominican Republic and one of the world’s leading fashion designers. The Oscar de la Renta stamp pane includes 11 images — an evocative black-and-white portrait ...
Influential Brazilian-beat album recreated in CAP UCLA concert, That Bad Donato
In 1970, two landmark recordings changed the world. On Bitches Brew, Miles Davis infused jazz with the rhythms and textures of cutting-edge pop, exemplified by James Brown and Jimi Hendrix. The fusion genre sprang from that album. Concurrently, keyboardist and composer João Donato thrust electronics and the cross-rhythms of funk into Brazilian jazz with A ...
Agnes Varda’s Oscar picnic
Nov
17
2017
Flowers and an Oscar? What more could a woman want? These mementos so richly deserved by the French woman of cinema, Agnes Varda. On Nov. 11, 2017, at the 9th annual Governors Awards ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Varda received an honorary Oscar. Varda’s artful, thought-provoking, highly personal auteur ...