It’s easy to get jealous in Los Angeles. Most everyone came here from somewhere, even if it was here, to try and create art of some sort, to go behind the curtain of media-making in an attempt to toss in a pinch of their own individual ingredients. The result is an endless stream of Facebook invitations, familiar postcards on coffee shop pin-boards, and a daunting sense that others’ ingredients—some friends, some enemies, some people who just got to town—are taking over the stew.
But if there’s anything I learned in college—a smaller, but similar stew—it’s that the work of my peers, in analysis or collaboration, is often the best teacher out there. And it’s precisely because you are jealous, because you can view their creative process as a mirror of your own. You can say, “Huh, this person is no genius, they’re practically an idiot, but they made this choice. I never thought about doing that. Maybe I too can make that choice, only better.” It’s creative capitalism, but the only way it works is when you’re actively supporting one another.
This seems to be motto of the Los Angeles-based art collective, This Is What We Imagine (TIWWI, or Teewee), a group of young video, film, photography, and design makers—many of whom I went to school with—that are exhibiting their latest projects tonight, Saturday night, at the Echo Park Rec Center. Beginning at 9:00 PM, the program, called “Show and Tell.” boasts the premiere of two recent collaborative efforts: “Weekend of Wonderment 6” and “Remember When.” If you haven’t heard of the first five installments of the “Weekend of Wonderment” campaign, it’s comprised of about four or five projects, all made within the time-span of two days and with the help of anybody and everybody available. “Remember When,” also the product of many (as opposed to few), is a new comic web-series about a group of friends who try to recreate the lost memories of their amnesia-begotten buddy.
TIWWI’s “Show and Tell” begins tonight, Saturday, 9:00 PM, at the Echo Park Rec Center, located at 1161 Logan Street in Echo Park. Tickets are $12. Full, open bar. For more information, please visit www.tiwwi.com.
There are some pairings in film that conjure eye rolls and looks of confusion. There are still others that are so perfectly crafted, they practically create a new era of film in and of themselves. Cue Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. That their first film together, Flying Down to Rio (1933), was a Hollywood-style happy accident was more fortuitous than producers and audiences could imagine. From that film onwards, they delighted audiences with their charm, chemistry, and dancing style.
Astaire, 12 years her senior, offered Rogers a cigarette in The Gay Divorcee (1935) with his sly smile and a song in mind, “Night and Day.” Dance numbers between the two range from vivacious, Vegas-style spectaculars to intimate, two-on-two turns on an impromptu dance floor. Their costumes ranged from gowns and coattails to slacks and blazers just as their styles ran the gamut from sweet and silly dancing to dramatic sweeps across the floor.
In celebration of the romantic duo’s 75th Anniversary, the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood will host a double feature of two of their most memorable turns on the silver screen – Top Hat (1935) and Roberta (1935). The first is a comic look at what happens when, simply put, Astaire tries to impress Rogers with his good looks and dance moves during a show they’re both working on in London. The latter sees them tapping their toes in Paris where Astaire, leader of a band in need of a gig, gets help from his old girlfriend, Rogers.
The rumor that mulls around American musical lovers is that Ginger Rogers really wasn’t a great dancer in her own right. It’s that Astaire was such a professional, he made her look like queen of the dance floor. (I mean, he has danced with a coat rack.) No one really knows if that’s true, but if you think about it, it’s a sweet rumor – they were more together than they were alone. Swoon.
The double feature of Top Hat and Roberta at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood is on view this Sunday, March 14 from 7:30pm. For more information, please call (323) 466-3456 or click here.
The Academy Awards are upon us. Like St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Oscar weekend takes over the city of Los Angeles in a joyous display of self-congratulations. Don’t get me wrong, being from Los Angeles makes it actually required (I believe it’s legally binding) that I watch and enjoy all that the Oscars have to offer each year. Going into the final stretch before the big show, I feel an annual commitment to seeing all, or most, of the nominated films so that when yelling at the TV, I will be doing so with educated qualms. The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood seems to have similar obligations, which must be why they are setting all of us up this week with a number of programs to get us good and ready for Sunday evening’s broadcast.
Before taking a look at this week’s programs, let’s just be clear – there are ten films up for Best Picture this year. See whichever ones you feel drawn to; ten is a lot. If, for example, you feel like you’ve seen District 9 once you finish the trailer, save your $10 or go see The Hurt Locker again. Don’t be hard on yourself if you haven’t seen them all, I’d bet that there really are only 5 contenders anyway.
Over at the Egyptian Theatre, though, your pre-Oscar education can get underway with Fridat evenings show of Oscar-Nominated Short Films – Animated and Live Action. You’ll get a chance to see shorts like “The Lady and the Reaper,” “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” “French Roast,” “Instead of Abracadabra,” and my personal favorite “The New Tenants.”
Head back into Hollywood on Saturday morning at 10am (no whining, this is Oscar weekend – we’ve got to get you in shape!) for their Invisible Art, Visible Artists panel with the Oscar-Nominated editors of Avatar, District 9, The Hurt Locker, Inglorious Basterds, and Precious. Stop off for lunch somewhere nearby, but don’t stray too far. The panel with Oscar-Nominated Art Directors begins at 2:30pm and will give you the chance to discuss your ideas for set design with those creative minds behind The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Avatar, Nine, Sherlock Holmes, and The Young Victoria.
You’re all set and squared away. You should feel very capable of making some educated bets – not that we encourage gambling… much. Here’s to the Oscars – LA’s version of a national holiday. (Good luck making a reservation just about anywhere in town this week, too.)
Click hereto check out the Egyptian Theatre’s full calendar of events.
What do you get when you showcase the brightest and boldest of Angeleno performance artists? GUTTED. Gutted is the only word to describe Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions’ encompassing performance art-based program, which includes live performance, texts, and objects speaking of, from, and to the body.
GUTTED is Saturday, February 20 at 7:00pm, LACE. Click here for more info.
The exhibition Actions, Conversations, and Intersections at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park continues to add new participatory projects to its roster. This weekend, roll up your sleeves and join artists Edward Pine Stevens and Joseph Stuckleman with their installation Make Objects Make Marks or BikeHaus as they bike through Los Angeles as part of Cloud Lines and Chemospheres.
Check out the rest of this weekend’s programming here.
Newly purchased by Quentin Tarantino, the New Beverly Cinema is continuing its program of repertory cinema. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Election will play back-to-back not only once, but twice this Saturday because it is oh so nice. Save Ferris! Pick Flick!
The Matthew Broderick double feature starts at 3:20 and 7:30 at the New Beverly Cinema. Click here for more info.
If you’re like me and already dreading the mere idea of Valentine’s Day (and this dread may or may not have anything to do with your relationship status on Facebook), then it’s best to stop ignoring the inevitable, hunker down, and fight back! Bill O’Reilly once coined the phrase “war on Christmas.” Well I’m declaring a war on Valentine’s Day, and in the spirit of modern, American warfare, it’s going to be a preemptive attack.
One of Valentine’s Day’s strongest and most enduring weapons is music. It could be Bryan Adams, it could be Ryan Adams; either way, there’s nothing more debilitating than hearing that one song on the radio at 2:00 AM, and having to pull over the car to wipe away the tears. Fortunately, Richard Thompson never plays those kinds of songs. His eerie and oft-imitated guitar noodling, along with the deep, British hymn-like vocals can definitely be depressing, but depressing in the kind of way that a dark, full glass of Guinness is depressing. So head down to the Largo this Thursday at 8:00 PM for a special performance from Thompson and his band, order a glass of something thick, and drink in the wounds English-pub-style with one of the true greats of folk-rock music.
Earlier this year, actress/comedienne/song-and-dance-woman Charlyne Yi made a romantic quasi-documentary with her ex-boyfriend Michael Cera called Paper Heart. I hate this film, and for no other reason than it’s the one I took my ex to see on our first date (the Valentine’s Day WMD: Women’s Movie Date). But 8:00 PM this Friday at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre, Charlyne smashes those bitter memories to the stage with her live show, World of Pain (a Very Masculine Play), co-written by Yi and the hilarious, unknown Allan McLeod. Choc-full of videos, comedians, and silly music, this Valentine’s weekend installment of her monthly UCB gigs might just be the scissors to Charlyne’s paper…heart.
Did you know Quentin Tarantino owns The New Beverly Cinema? Explains a lot about their choice of films, and why it may just be the destination for a perfect Valentine’s Day Eve destruction. They’re showing The Last American Virgin, the 1982 teen sex-comedy that puts American Pie, Knocked Up, and Juno to shame, if only for being more shocking than all three put together, and at least two decades ahead. After the ending of this movie rolls to credits…well, let’s just say ‘mission accomplished.’
Come Sunday, if Valentine’s Day isn’t buried as far into the ground as Saint Valentine himself was on this day back in the year 270 AD, then we may have been defeated once again. There’s always next year. That is, unless you meet someone special on one these preemptive outings, and per chance switch sides on the whole matter. In which case… well, good luck.
No matter how many times I drag myself to the movie theater to see shows like Avatar in 3D or the latest Batman in I-Max, I always feel like I’m doing just that: dragging. Throughout the last century, the entertainment industry has undeniably evolved, but whether it’s for better or for worse is strictly a matter of opinion. Personally, there has never been a morsel of doubt that I extract the greatest amusement from plays, books, movies and performances that are inextricably linked to the past. Call me old fashioned, old-soul, call me grandma, but there is something about the classics (they’re called classics for a reason) that resonates from the works of Tinseltown’s youth. Something that I can’t quite put my finger on—something like star quality.
“I don’t know what is, but I’ve got it,” reads the inscription at the entrance toStar Quality: The World of Noel Coward, the current exhibition at the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts & Sciences. Noel Coward embodied the term “Renaissance man” with the grace, style, and elegance of a true dandy, and the Academy pays homage to him with a compelling installation of photographs, antique personal items, letters, films, sheet music, posters, playbills, set and costume designs, and personal clothing.
Primarily known as a playwright (Hay Fever, Private Lives, Cavalcade, Design for Living and Blithe Sprit to name a few, all later adapted for the cinema), and a celebrated composer (Mad About the Boy, I’ll See You Again), Coward’s immense talent and contribution to the arts encompassed nearly every form. Star Quality is the first exhibition to shine light on the full breadth of his copious talents as a stage and screen director, actor, cabaret performer, painter, and wartime patriot, all while evoking the world of sawdust, tinsel, and naïve opulence that characterized early 20th Century Hollywood.
The tone of the exhibition is set immediately when you enter the 4th floor gallery of the Academy. Large black and white photographs radiate Coward’s star quality, presence, and personality where he, in his signature dressing gown with a cigarette, preens as a dapper Hollywood darling. Mannequins display his trademark loungewear, some flanked by caricatures that capture the flamboyant and distinctive personality that earned him a reputation his peers regarded as frivolous.
One cannot help but be impressed by the array of artifacts on display from Coward’s career. A fascinating collection of cigarette holders (many gifts from Hollywood starlets), embroidered slippers, and letters provide a glimpse into Coward’s personal and private life. Photos taken on the set of The Untamed Lady show the close and affectionate relationship between Coward and Mary Pickford, one of his first and dearest friends in Los Angeles. A sapphire blue dressing gown, worn by Moira Lister in the production of Present Laughter, comes to life against an array of photographs from the film. It is a thrill to wander through this collection and see the evolution of the creative process, from a nascent thought into a polished end product.
Great genius in any form can be met with skepticism and rejection. Coward’s star shined the brightest late in his life, and full recognition of his brilliance was awarded posthumously. One photograph in particular had a lasting effect—an image of Julie Andrews (playing Gertrude Lawrence) and Daniel Massey (playing Noel Coward) from the 1968 movie Star!. It served as a reminder of Coward’s increasing public popularity towards the end of his life (the film was released just 5 years before his death).
Drawing on public and private collections, and with unparalleled access to the Coward Archives, Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward showcases a remarkably robust, multifaceted and marvelous career, and recalls an era of Los Angeles history known for its lavishness, luxury, and innovation. Coward’s is a legacy that even through the glamour of Hollywood remains deeply human. Having what it takes in this town is not enough to achieve your dreams, but if you have star quality, you just might be able to do it all.
-By Brittany Krasner
Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward is on view through April 18th at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Wilshire Blvd. Please visittheir websitefor public viewing hours and more information. Admission is free!
The job of a film archivist is a relatively new one. It sounds silly. (If my friend Pete has a massive DVD collection, is he suddenly considered an archivist?) But what a lot of people don’t know is that film is a kind of living organism. It decays quite rapidly over time. And as depicted so graphically in the latest Tarantino venture, Inglorious Basterds, most of the movies made in the silent-era were shot on an ultra-flammable cellulose nitrate film base. Due to this highly unstable stock, as well as the recklessness of early studio storage, a great many of the films made in America before 1920 are either lost, or have turned to dust. In fact, no type of truly durable film base was even introduced into the movie-making landscape until the early 1990’s with the popularization of polyester.
Enter the heroic film archivist, whose job it is to preserve the ever-growing, ever-decaying amount of film stock from the grips of its natural demise. Mark Toscano of the Academy Film Archive is one of these heroes, who most recently co-curated the REDCAT screening of Now You Can Do Anything: The Films of Chris Langdon. This series of fourteen short, experimental films were all made within the period of two years, from 1973 to 1975, and would have easily been lost were it not for the efforts of people like Mark Toscano and fellow filmmaker/Angeleno, Thom Andersen.
Yet Langdon’s shorts, interestingly enough, seemed to work in spite of preservation. The magic was in her apparent disregard for such preciousness. Her film “Bondage Boy,” for instance, featured 16mm shots of a guy in a basement dressed in a woman’s slip and bound with ropes in various positions, all to the soundtrack of an uppity 1950’s swing tune. “Picasso,” another one of Langdon’s works, was, in her words, “the first post-mortem documentary” of the famous painter, fully completed in four hours for a little under $5.
Langdon, who was present at the screening, addressed the audience afterwards. And it was clear that her main motivation behind the 83 minutes of film we had all just sat through was simply to film something. One piece was a joke, another was a bet, and one was just to get over the plain fear of wasting money through a camera. In a sense, she was fueling the need for future experimental film archivists like Mark Toscano. Because without artists with the courage to waste film, why would you need someone to preserve what’s special about it?
The Redcat is located Downtown at the Roy and Edna Disney/Calarts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall. For information about upcoming screenings and performances, please visitwww.redcat.org, or call (213) 237-2800.
On Sunday, during the Golden Globes broadcast when Martin Scorsese was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award and lauded the efforts of film conservationists, it was hard not to scroll through the prolific director’s filmography and wish you could see them on the silver screen. Of his many films that have made their way to the canon of iconic American cinema – Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas – there’s only one that saw De Niro turn into an emotionally explosive boxer named Jake La Motta. That same film has been fully restored recently by American Cinematheque and will be screened in all its black and white, prizefighting glory at the Egyptian Theatre on Friday night, January 22, at 7:30pm. That film is the one, the only: Raging Bull – you know, the one that won De Niro an Oscar as well as Thelma Schoonmaker, the film’s editor.
As you continue into the weekend, you’ll find it’s full of digitally restored masterpieces – The Godfather will be screened on Saturday, January 23 at 7:30pm followed by the original Superman (1978) on Sunday, January 24 at 5:00pm and its sequel, Superman II, made in 1980 just following it.
As if that weren’t enough restoration and conservation for you, next Friday (January 29) at 7:30pm, Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly will be screened to remind you of just how badass Clint Eastwood can be.
The Digitally Restored series will be screened starting from Friday, January 22 at 7:30pm with Raging Bull. For a full calendar, pleaseclick here.
How much do you know about Scandinavia beyond “smorgasbord”, the midnight sun, fjords, and your fantasy Swedish swim team? All you need to know about our Nordic contemporaries, cinematically speaking, can be seen at the Scandinavian Film Festival. Featuring the cream of the crop in Scandinavian film, including all of the region’s submissions for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award, the Festival began last Saturday and finishes Sunday, January 17. All the screenings are held at the Writer’s Guild Theatre in Beverly Hills and, if you take a look around, they’re filled with LA’s surprisingly large Scandinavian population.
Sitting behind us on Sunday, January 10 for the screening of Denmark’s Oscar submission, Terribly Happy, was a representative from the Royal Danish Embassy, for example. Directed by Henrik Ruben Genz, the darkly comic Terribly Happy has a distinctly Coen brothers’ tone, albeit set in small town Denmark.
Saturday afternoon, we watched the Swedish submission for Hollywood’s favorite golden statue, called Involuntary. From director Ruben Ostlund, the film follows five parallel stories of relatable, yet generally hysterical and also melancholy, human behavior. One vignette that stands out follows two young girls with an overdeveloped appetite for sex and alcohol, especially considering they can’t be many years out of puberty.
Before each film, you’re presented with a short from the same country. The short film screened prior to Terribly Happy, was the equally dark and comic The New Tenants about the apartment building from hell. Prior to Involuntary, we were met with The Man With All The Marbles – a captivating, witty, and beautifully made film about two brothers who have never quite understood how to get what they want from each other.
This Saturday, you can see The Accident, from Norwegian director Marcelino Martin Valiente at 12:45pm followed by Starring Maja at 2:30pm, which hails from director Teresa Fabik of Sweden. Sunday, January 17 at 12:30pm, you’ll have a chance to see the much-anticipated submission from Iceland, Reykjavik Rotterdam, directed by Oskar Jonasson.
For more information on the Scandinavian International Film Festival, including a full schedule, pleaseclick here.
Terribly Happy is set for a small theatrical release, including screenings at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills. For more information, pleaseclick here.
You consider yourself a traveler, not a tourist. You’ve often come home from being abroad having adopted local colloquialisms from wherever you’d been. You’re absolutely ahead of the culture curve and can be often heard discussing the film that’s sure to put Belarus’ industry on the map. All right, then, expert… We challenge you to a week of cultural “research,” if you will.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week at the Aero Theatre on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, you’ll have three distinct (and culturally extravagant) opportunities to see three Golden Globe nominees you may have missed. Wednesday night, you’ll start with Italy’s Baaria (click here to view the trailer) – directed by Academy Award winner Giuseppe Tornatore (of Cinema Paradiso fame). The website semi-promises that Tornatore will be there to introduce himself, at which point, you should probably stand up and congratulate him in his native tongue.
Thursday evening presents another opportunity to stare at Penelope Cruz for two more hours – never a waste of time. Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, the nominee from Spain, will be on view. Called a “melodrama-noir delicacy,” Broken Embraces is being lauded as one of Cruz’ most unforgettable performances. Then, if you’re not crumbling from a kind of culture or travel bug, The Maid will be shown on Friday evening. From Chilean director Sebastian Silva, The Maid (click here to view the trailer) won the World Cinema Jury Prize at 2009’s Sundance Film Festival and if it doesn’t make you wish you spoke Spanish, we’re not sure what will.
Any expert who goes to see all three: let us know what you thought!
Baaria, Broken Embraces, and The Maid will all be screened this week at the Aero Theatre. Please call orclick herefor more information.
One of Valentine’s Day’s strongest and most enduring weapons is music. It could be Bryan Adams, it could be Ryan Adams; either way, there’s nothing more debilitating than hearing that one song on the radio at 2:00 AM, and having to pull over the car to wipe away the tears. Fortunately, 
Earlier this year, actress/comedienne/song-and-dance-woman Charlyne Yi made a romantic quasi-documentary with her ex-boyfriend Michael Cera called 
Did you know Quentin Tarantino owns The New Beverly Cinema? Explains a lot about their choice of films, and why it may just be the destination for a perfect Valentine’s Day Eve destruction. They’re showing 
No matter how many times I drag myself to the movie theater to see shows like Avatar in 3D or the latest Batman in I-Max, I always feel like I’m doing just that: dragging. Throughout the last century, the entertainment industry has undeniably evolved, but whether it’s for better or for worse is strictly a matter of opinion. Personally, there has never been a morsel of doubt that I extract the greatest amusement from plays, books, movies and performances that are inextricably linked to the past. Call me old fashioned, old-soul, call me grandma, but there is something about the classics (they’re called classics for a reason) that resonates from the works of Tinseltown’s youth. Something that I can’t quite put my finger on—something like star quality.
The job of a film archivist is a relatively new one. It sounds silly. (If my friend Pete has a massive DVD collection, is he suddenly considered an archivist?) But what a lot of people don’t know is that film is a kind of living organism. It decays quite rapidly over time. And as depicted so graphically in the latest Tarantino venture, Inglorious Basterds, most of the movies made in the silent-era were shot on an ultra-flammable cellulose nitrate film base. Due to this highly unstable stock, as well as the recklessness of early studio storage, a great many of the films made in America before 1920 are either lost, or have turned to dust. In fact, no type of truly durable film base was even introduced into the movie-making landscape until the early 1990’s with the popularization of polyester.
Click the icon to add FineArtsLa.com to your RSS reader