Thursday, March 27, 2008

Visiting the Barnes

Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes is visiting the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania (not yet in Philadelphia, where the collection is slated to be relocated). I have my reservations about the move, and I have my reservations for a visit of my own in April.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Jim White at the Silent Movie Theater

Fairfax District, Los Angeles, Calif.

Dream Journal

A dream: In a fight with one’s mother, the woman is pushed to the ground in a fit of rage. There she dissolves into the mewling form of an infant child. Gradually one resigns oneself to a future of changing one’s mother’s diapers.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris (2006)

Laemmle's Grande 4-plex, downtown Los Angeles, Calif.

I had seen Peter Bogdanovich’s name attached to the film as what I assumed would be an interviewee, but in fact he was just there to read some old jazz reviews. Still it was interesting, devestating and depressing. especially when we suddenly meet the late singer’s drugged-out, desert-dwelling and long lost son. A portrait of failure (which is an interesting subject for a portrait).


Charlie Parker and Jackie Paris.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Be Kind Rewind (2008)

United Artists Long Beach Marketplace 6, Long Beach, Calif.
Perpetrated by Michel Gondry and featuring the wit and whimsy of Jack Black, this is the film that left a bed-ridden Roger Ebert feeling "positive and genial" but which did not cause any painful laughing spells.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Safety Last (1922)

UCLA Live at Royce Hall, UCLA
In which Harold Lloyd, the Jackie Chan of the 1920s, does amazing stunts, climbs up the side of a building, and hangs from a clock over Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. Played with live organ accompaniment in historic Royce Hall.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The Band's Visit [Bikur Ha-Tizmoret] (2008)

Regency South Coast Theater, Santa Ana, Calif. In Hebrew, Arabic and English with subtitles
A quiet, still, beautifully-composed little film in which an eight-piece Egyptian police orchestra, invited to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center in Israel, arrives by bus at the wrong town, a tiny Israeli desert outpost where there is no Arab Cultural Center ("no Israeli culture, no Arab culture, no culture at all"), is given refuge for the evening and leaves the next morning by bus. An unimportant incident, we are told, but somehow significant on a human level.