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 ...
Architectural duo to reconfigure May Company building into film museum 2
Award-winning architects Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali will design the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced today. The new museum will occupy the former May Company building, a beloved Los Angeles icon that sits at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, the dead center of ...
Gene from Pittsburgh 1
May
21
2012
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Gene Kelly for the past week. It’s a good feeling. We’re from the same home town. Kelly was a huge movie star. The only other dancer to reach that level was Fred — not from Pittsburgh. Read my story on The Huffington Post.
Happy 100th Gene Kelly! Love, Oscar 2
A parade of Technicolor-tinged dance sequences enchanted a full house at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater Thursday night. “A Centennial Tribute to Gene Kelly,” the first of a two-part event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored the beloved dancer-choreographer-director in this most effective manner — by screening his sensational dance clips. ...
Remnants of “The Players” found in anthropological dig of L.A. nightclub property 4
Our story concerns the film director Preston Sturges, whose great legacy is his canon of laugh-out-loud, politically tinged screwball comedies: “Sullivan’s Travels,” “The Palm Beach Story,” “The Lady Eve,” among them. The former private home where Sturges’ bar/restaurant, The Players, once operated still stands at 8225 Sunset Boulevard. In the 1940s it formed a Triangle ...
Rarely viewed “The Great Gatsby” starring Alan Ladd opens film noir festival 4
Apr
21
2012
An unusual choice for the opening act of the Noir City film festival: The Great Gatsby (1949, Paramount) in a new 35 mm print. The festival, now on at the Egyptian Theatre, is co-produced by the Film Noir Foundation and the American Cinematheque. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great masterwork from 1925 is far from pulp fiction. ...
Stars light up Hollywood Boulevard, once more, at TCM Fest
TM & (C) Turner Entertainment Networks, Inc. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Photographers: Edward M. Pio Roda, Mark Hill, Adam Rose, Jason Merritt
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 ...
TCM Fest: “Frankenstein’s gonna bite me and kill me,” said 5-year-old Mel Brooks 1
Apr
14
2012
In conversation with Turner Classic Movies creative exec, Tom Brown, prior to the TCM Fest screening of his great comedy classic, Young Frankenstein (1974), director Mel Brooks dug deep into his memory bank. Asked by Brown what spurred his ribald take-off of the James Whale horror flick, Brooks recalled: “In 1931, I was five years ...
“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 ...