So Cal Arts & Entertainment
TCM Classic Film Festival returns, “Walter Paisley” continues
Where can you see vintage movies on the big screen today, the way they were meant to be seen? Alas, far too few places. The 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival, where movies are shown as they were originally intended, returns to Hollywood April 13-16. The fabled legacy of...
read more“Walter Paisley” at La Mirada, “Little Foxes” at SCR
Chances are you’ve never heard of Paisley—Walter, that is—much less have any idea what he may or may not have accomplished of late. Don’t worry, no one else has either. All that’s about to change, however, as something that’s been described as “a beatnik horror comedy...
read morePassion projects spotlight comedians, cartoon voices, Jolson and Polanski
The pandemic seems to be generating more passion projects than ever, books willed into existence by their creators in spite of all odds. One such book is “The Compleat Beau Geste” by Frank Thompson, the author of two books on film director William Wellman and a noted...
read more“Voodoo Macbeth” on Blu-ray, “Appropriate” at SCR
Harlem, October 1935. The scene opens on Rose McClendon as Lady Macbeth, rehearsing the “screw your courage to the sticking place” scene from “The Scottish Play.” She asks 20-year-old wunderkind Orson Welles to direct their Negro Theatre Unit production. He turns them...
read more“Cinema’s First Nasty Women” on Blu-ray & DVD
There’s a growing consensus women are getting shortchanged (as usual) in the revival of silent movie comedy. While Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd are justly celebrated and lesser knowns like Charley Chase are getting their due, their female counterparts have been largely...
read more“To Kill a Mockingbird” at SCFTA, “Black Vampire” on Blu-ray
It takes two people to make a great painting, so the old axiom goes—one to paint it and one to tell him when to stop. Perhaps Aaron Sorkin put it in his contract his script for Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa...
read more“So Proudly We Hail!” On Blu-ray, Jackie Gleason on DVD
Long before “Private Benjamin” and “A Few Good Men,” there were movies about women in the military. Better movies like “Cry ‘Havoc’,” “Mrs. Miniver” and “So Proudly We Hail!” The latter, about US Army nurses and the living hell they faced on Bataan and Corregidor...
read moreAugust Wilson’s “Radio Golf” in Pasadena, James Whale’s “By Candlelight” on Blu-ray
“Black people don’t vote but they hold symbolic weight,” a mayoral candidate tells us at the outset of August Wilson’s “Radio Golf,” at A Noise Within (ANoiseWithin.org) in Pasadena through Nov. 13. The candidate, real estate developer Harmond Wilks (Christian...
read moreNina Simone” at SCR, “Chad Deity” at Chance
From the moment an explosion interrupts the opening song in "Nina Simone: Four Women" at South Coast Repertory, you know this show is not going to be the usual theatrical experience. Christina Ham’s impressionistic musical drama about the ‘60s African American...
read more“Hamilton” returns to Orange County, Resnais on Blu-ray
At the suggestion of friend, I listened to the soundtrack of “Hamilton” before catching the show about America’s first secretary of the treasury opening night at Segerstrom Center for the Arts (scfta.org) in Costa Mesa—where it runs through Oct. 16. The touring...
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