Rokia Traoré brings Malian magic to the Luckman
Though Rokia Traoré began her genre-, culture- and gender-bending incursion into the international music scene in the late 1990s, I didn’t encounter her until Peter Sellars’ 2006 New Crowned Hope Vienna festival, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Reconceiving the composer as a griot traveller between Paris and Mali’s capital of Bamako, Traoré’s glorious ...
Claire Denis’ City of “Bastards”
Her first feature, “Chocolat”—autobiographical, set in Africa, brazen in the extreme—announced Claire Denis as Europe’s most daring writer-director. She still is, with only a few filmmakers from Iberia (Pedro Costa, Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Albert Serra, Miguel Gomes, all much younger than Denis) as serious competition. Her latest, “Bastards,” (at Laemmle’s Town Center 5 in Encino) ...
Koehler on Cinema: Clips
A new James Benning movie is enough news in itself and enough for a simple request: Just stop everything and see it. Now, Benning’s “Nightfall” (Los Angeles Filmforum, Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, Sun. 7:30 p.m.) isn’t exactly new. It was digitally shot in 2011 in the Sierras, near his property where he built exact ...
A la française: food & fashion films
If you are me, you’re going to the movies this weekend. You’re going to skip “Rush,” but there are two oh-so-French movies opening, one which I have seen and recommend highly. I loved “Haute Cuisine.” Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot), a renowned chef from Perigord, is astonished when the President of the Republic (Jean d’Ormesson) appoints ...
“Un Flic,” c’est fantastique
Jun
25
2013
A cool flick … concerns un flic. Alain Delon plays a French cop (“un flic”) who spends his days and nights chasing criminals, but doesn’t see the crook right under his nose. Simon (Richard Crenna) a smooth nightclub owner, works with a small crew to execute daring heists with big payoffs, while the la belle ...
Exceptional French film to spool at Laemmle Theatres 1
Jan
24
2013
Laemmle Theatres and Rialto Pictures present Marcel Carné’s Port of Shadows (1938) in a new DCP restoration featuring an all-new translation and subtitles by Lenny Borger. When Jean (Jean Gabin), a deserter from the Colonial Army, arrives in Le Havre searching for a place to lie low, he doesn’t expect to wind up in the ...
Southwest Chamber Music’s French Chef-inspired performances @ The Huntington
Jul
25
2012
I’m attending a beautiful chamber music concert in San Marino, just south of Pasadena, this weekend. It’s the Southwest Chamber Music Summer Festival at The Huntington. It’s part of a beautiful themed food & music summer festival celebrating the centenary of the French Chef, Julia Child. Child was born in Pasadena. Her years in post-WWII ...
Canapes and CLOCLO made COL*COA cool
Apr
23
2012
No one does it like the French. No one, no way, no how. COL*COA (City of Lights*City of Angels), the annual French film festival in Los Angeles, just wrapped up at the Director’s Guild of America building on Sunset Boulevard. The festival, now in its 16th year and masterminded by the incredibly hard-working Francois Truffart, ...
Pierre Étaix’s “Heureux Anniversaire” (1962) screened @ the Academy 1
Nov
18
2011
An exquisite evening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Wednesday night, when two beautifully refurbished films by the comic French filmmaker, Pierre Étaix, 82, got rare American screenings. Étaix, who started as young man in circus and remained faithful to clowns, casting them in cameo roles in his films, was present ...
“Je ne suis pas contente de tout,” says Claude Bessy. 1
The film I loved most of the four I saw at the Dance Camera West festival in June was Fabrice Herrault’s beautifully constructed documentary about his former ballet instructor, Claude Bessy, Les lignes d’une Vie (Traces of a Life). Herrault, a dance professor at the Juilliard School and a respected private coach, has made one ...