Awake in a dream
I am very sorry this lovely video clip starts with a terrible commercial. I hope it is worth the wait for you.
Jacaranda’s garden party on fire 1
Jun
15
2012
Remember the old-fashioned garden party? Where proper ladies and gentlemen sipped, nibbled, noshed, chewed, grazed, and gabbed? Well, forget about that. Welcome to Jacaranda‘s annual garden-party fundraiser event. That’s where the smart Los Angeles contemporary music society will introduce its new season in plein-air. And don’t forget your sun hat. Because you may need to ...
Oh la la! Jack Cole’s “Les Girls” from “Les Girls” (1957) 1
The (by then) hugely experienced dance-on-film man Jack Cole choreographed the brilliant dance sequences in “Les Girls,” a movie musical directed by George Cukor in 1957. “Les Girls” is included in the upcoming TCM broadcast “Choreography by Jack Cole” on Turner Classic Movies September 10, 2012. I will co-host the evening with Robert Osborne. “Les ...
Tatum O’Neal’s face in “Paper Moon” 2
Jun
1
2012
Peter Bogdanovich’s rhapsody to the American Middle West, “Paper Moon,” is graced by the Oscar-winning performance of an eight-year-old actress who pulls one bratty expression after another at her real-life father Ryan. We saw the film the other night on the big screen of the Los Angeles Theater. Bogdanovich, in solid form with fun stories ...
TCM Fest: Good god! Peggy Cummins heats up “Gun Crazy”
Apr
15
2012
It was a wild ride watching “Gun Crazy” (1950) projected on the humongous screen of the Egyptian Theatre yesterday afternoon at TCM Fest. Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s pulpy film-noir concerns a pair of newly weds; played by John Dall and Peggy Cummins, they’re just doin’ what newly weds do. They’re livin’, lovin’, workin’ … and they’re ...
“Travis Banton inspired my dressing Cher,” says Bob Mackie at TCM Fest
In a curtain talk with costume historian Deborah Nadoolman-Landis prior to a TCM Fest opening-night screening of Cleopatra, Bob Mackie described an early influence. It was designer Travis Banton’s amazing costumes for Claudette Colbert in Cecil B. DeMille’s at-turns-camp, at-turns-sumptuous Roman romp. “I was thirteen, I lived in Inglewood, there were three movie theaters there. An ...
Midori, humble page turner 2
Apr
11
2012
[click photo to find Midori] The bohemian-style classical music series, Classical Underground, offered a rich roster of Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Piazzolla and Mozart Monday evening at the funky-junky art atelier of Alexey Steele and Olga Vlasova. The two music mavens, soon to be the parents of twins, host the five-year-running series at their marvelous artist digs, ...
Doris Day shares career memories on TCM 1
Mar
30
2012
TCM does such a wonderful job … no one does it better. The best bits come when Day recounts memories of working with James Cagney, Ginger Rogers, and Jack Lemmon. [Apologies for commercial first.]
Jean-Paul Gaultier “Snow White’ costumes recycle Cher’s 1989 thong 3
And now for something completely not different. We were distracted, at ‘Dance at the Music Center,’ by an unflattering costume created for the lead dancer in Ballet Preljocaj’s “Snow White.” Baby-diaper by front, bird-tail by back, and bared flesh in between, it was fabricated by haute couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier. It sent the viewer’s eye ...