Juan Bastos: California Portraits: people, places & pets 1

Visual arts
Shall I look at your Juan Bastos portrait? Or, should I look directly at you? That was the question at yesterday’s sneak peak of “Juan Bastos: California Portraits,” a rich exhibition of 40 portraits of prominent Californians painted by the Bolivian-American artist, a longtime resident of Los Angeles. The exhibit is part of Pacific Standard Time: ...

‘Delicate and sensitive’ film, ‘The Whales of August,’ in 30th anniversary screening

Dance · Film
Film producer and marketing executive Mike Kaplan is a friend of arts·meme. This super nice guy is the leading collector of a massive trove of superlative movie musical posters; more to the point, Kaplan’s collection zeroes in on the art of dance as captured in artful movie posters. We like that.  Kaplan published a companion ...

Golden-voiced Jack Jones, a golden performer

Music
Irvine Barclay Theatre, where we have enjoyed so many wonderful dance performances, hosted a super-special treat Saturday evening, a show by the master pop and jazz song stylist, Jack Jones. Jones was in his living room. A boffo performer, the guy settled into the theater’s intimate quarters with an ease and control that reflected his ...

Hank & Jim & Scott bring new book to Los Angeles

Film
In his new book,“Hank and Jim: The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart,” New York Times bestselling author Scott Eyman tells the story of the remarkable friendship of two Hollywood legends who, though different in many ways, maintained a close friendship that endured. Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of Hollywood’s biggest ...

‘Variety’ got it dead wrong: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) 1

Film · Visual arts
On the occasion of the hugely talented, innovative and original filmmaker George Romero receiving his star on Hollywood Boulevard (the auteur director died in July) and the wonderful tribute event we attended (screening Romero’s marvelous and underrated CREEPSHOW) this past week, we sense that Romero’s pioneering in the horror genre can’t have been easy. A tough ...

Strange times for women echoed in Sullivan-Beeman paintings

Visual arts
These are disorienting times, as a parade of women spills forth the secrets and lies they have been porting in private, some for decades. Stories rife with shame, collusion, dominance, desperation all tap distressing emotions. Upside-down post-feminist realities careen, as well, through the fantasy portraits of Los Angeles artist Deirdre Sullivan-Beeman. Sullivan-Beeman is soon to ...

Danielle Darrieux fondly recalled 6

Dance · Film
Two young American actor/dancers, George Chakiris and Grover Dale, had a life changing experience when cast in director Jacques Demy’s quirky French take on the movie musical, “Les Demoiselles de Rochefort” (1967, The Young Girls of Rochefort). Amidst a stellar ensemble cast (Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin, Gene Kelly) was a great treasure of French cinema, ...

Not afraid of Virginia Woolf: Portland’s NW Dance Project

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
The Portland-based NW Dance Project makes a rare appearance in Los Angeles in a program at the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center that includes Woolf Papers, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s modernist novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, concerns the inner life of a post-World War I woman of British high society. ...

LACMA ‘Found in Translation’ documents Mexi-Cali design dialogue 1

Architecture & Design · Reviews · Visual arts
by 
From Sacramento to San Diego, California’s Mexican and Spanish underpinnings are as historic as they are pervasive. We often take those connections for granted, but LACMA’s exhibition “Found in Translation: Design in California and Mexico, 1915-1985” offers a fascinating view of the influence and confluence between the two cultures in the 20th Century. It’s part ...

Remembering George Romero as Halloween draws nigh

Film
Join the close friends and family of director George A. Romero in a celebration of the life and career of the legendary horror filmmaker, who passed away on July 16, 2017, at the age of 77. Too young! Romero, who pioneered the zombie film genre with the 1968 feature, Night of the Living Dead, made ...