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 ...
Film museum … or oil refinery?
Everyone thinks that the Academy Museum at Wilshire and Fairfax, was a repurposed May Company department store, but as a story in Curbed L.A. demonstrates, it was inspired by an oil refinery. We’ve been living around them forever! And to prove it, the Museum is staging a new exhibition featuring the kinds of clothes people ...
He’s just Ken. But, Ryan Gosling and Mandy Moore, Jack Cole has a name too. 11
Jack Cole (1911-1974) creator of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”was so bad-assed you’d think people would show respect. Instead, one of American-dance’s most original creators was stolen from, even in his lifetime–and he knew it. Nineteen million people watched, on Sunday night, when, at the 96th Oscar Award ceremony, actor Ryan Gosling, looking hot ...
Calling all Americans! See Oscar-shortlisted docs on the big screen
Dec
17
2019
American Factory “Oscars® Spotlight: Documentaries,” a screening initiative leading up to the 92nd Oscars gives audiences nationwide the opportunity to see Documentary Feature films shortlisted for an award in the 92nd Academy Awards.® The program, begun last year, is a really wonderful initiative by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in tandem with AMC ...
Reviewing ‘The Report’: Adam Driver to next play Martha Graham? 2
The two faces of Martha We just endured the earnest-but-meh new movie, The Report (2019), written and directed by Scott Z. Burns with the backing of producer Steven Soderbergh. The film’s noble mission is to recount yet another norm broken in our once-shining nation: the Geneva Convention. A ‘backstage drama’ (an underground “scif” in CIA’s ...
Albert Finney, a renegade who influenced a generation of actors 1
Feb
20
2019
Albert Finney, Night Must Fall (1964) Our very good friend of arts·meme, Mike Kaplan, sends a heartfelt tribute to the great English actor who passed away on February 7, 2019. Writes Mike, Albert Finney (1936-2019) was a giant talent. His vibrant, unpredictable, mischievous, challenging presence was as seismic a change for a generation of actors ...
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 ...
Female artists of film animation honored @ AMPAS
Aug
2
2017
From the earliest pioneers of hand-rendered animated films, to the advent of digital technology, women have been at the forefront of the animation medium. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will celebrate the women who have been at the forefront of film animation Mindy Johnson, author of Ink & Paint: The Women of ...
On arts·meme’s front page: ‘The Front Page’
So very excited to see the restored (by the Academy Film Archive ·and the Film Foundation) first film version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1928 Broadway comedy, “The Front Page,” which kicks off To Save and Project at the Museum of Modern Art. According to MoMA adjunct curator Dave Kehr (he and curator Josh ...
Gypsy dancer shop-talk at the Academy
It was a night of dance chatter at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. A highly vaunted circle, including veteran gypsy dancers, a choreographer for the camera, and an Oscar-winning actor, gathered at AMPAS prior to a screening of “West Side Story” Monday July 18, 2016. In the photo, Maria Jimenez, who danced ...