Box of sixty bon-bons: The American French Film Festival (TAFFF) starts Oct 29
In the run-up to The American French Film Festival (TAFFF) at the end of October, we picked through a box of “chocolat” to select a few of the yummier-looking titles of the sixty films that will be on offer at the Director’s Guild of America, October 29 thru November 3, 2024. This Festival is among ...
‘Sans toi,’ Michel Legrand
Jan
26
2019
With choking sadness after a brutal week of perhaps too much Americana we learn of the death of singer/composer Michael Legrand (1932 – 2019) whose sweet-yet-dolorous songs we have found so enchanting. We floated on his ethereal music in the operatic movie-musicals Les parapluies de Cherbourg and Les demoiselles de Rochefort. And then his great, ...
Conductor Carlo Ponti, son of Sophia, conjures “Movie Magic”
He’s got his father’s name and his mother’s looks. But the richly credentialed classical-music resume is all Carlo Ponti, Jr.‘s. The conductor will lead the Los Angeles Virtuosi Orchestra in an evening of compositions drawn from the industry from whence he came. The aptly titled “Movie Magic” program slated for the charming Theatre Raymond Kabbaz ...
Cherbourg umbrellas pop with panache, fifty years later
The delicious, the divine, the delectable and digitally restored, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, opens Friday at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles for a one-week big-screen viewing engagement. If you’ve not yet seen Jacques Demy’s candy-colored all-song French classic — yes, it’s an operetta à la française — on the big screen doing so at ...
Review: The Hamburg Ballet in “Liliom” at Segerstrom Hall
All elements converged for John Neumeier’s “Liliom,” a two-act narrative ballet presented Saturday night by the choreographer’s stellar company of 38 years, The Hamburg Ballet. The revisiting of Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar’s play, adopted by Rodgers & Hammerstein as “Carousel” in 1945, packed much visceral pleasure and emotional punch into one evening at Segerstrom Hall. ...
La Barbra at BevHills Bergman tribute 2
Barbra Streisand is still a very big star. This was extremely evident at last night’s Alan & Marilyn Bergman tribute at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Wilshire Boulevard outpost. The tribute opened with a film clip of Barbra ogling Robert Redford in Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were (1973). It closed with Babs, ten years later, ...