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Delightful Offensiveness Key to 'Producers' Genius
•src="http://www.s121907096.onlinehome.us/tommywood/articleImages/producers.06.06.03.jpg" width="200" height="222" align="right" vspace="5" hspace="10"/>To understand something of the success of "The Producers," it helps to understand something of its history. There is probably no person on the planet who doesn’t know the story of how this sensation of a musical came to pass, but let me quickly recap:… -
Affirmative Actions (A Place Called Home; The Accelerated School; PS ARTS)
•Affirmative Actions by Tom Teicholz If you want to talk about education, if you want to discuss affirmative action, you need to take a trip with me down the 10 Freeway. Let’s head east past the 405 and the 110 and exit on Central Avenue, heading south. That’s right —… -
Dylan Is the Key to 'Masked' L.A.
•"Masked and Anonymous" is a new movie starring Bob Dylan that premiered at Sundance. Director Larry Charles has described his film as an "apocalyptic spaghetti noir western." No surprise: The reviews were not kind. Nonetheless, "Masked and Anonymous" is a great title. It seems the perfect phrase to describe Dylan,… -
Trafficking in People (Gary Mann and The Traffic School of America)
•Road rules provide captive audience. It’s 7:45 a.m. on a Friday morning, and the Koo Koo Roo on South Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills is almost full. I am here for traffic school. I ran a red light at the intersection of Robertson and Beverly boulevards, and the city of… -
Hungarians in Hollywood
•On the distaff side, need we say more than Zsa Zsa? When my friend Lawrence Karman, cameraman par excellence, invited me a few weeks ago to a screening of "Bánk Bán," the filmed version of the classic Hungarian nationalist opera, I accepted enthusiastically. Not because I’m a big fan of… -
Campus Campaign
•Hollywood launches ads to spark student support for Israel. While leafing through their college newspapers Monday morning, students at several major Southern California universities came across a full-page advertisement featuring Barad Zemer, a 23-year-old Israeli film student. Beneath Zemer’s photograph it read: “I love filmmaking, jazz and photography. I hate… -
No Laughing Matter (Calvin Trillin, Peter Lefcourt and the comic novel)
•New Trillian novel bucks literary trend and provides comic relief. Over the last year, I have read many wonderful novels: “The Lovely Bones†by Alice Sebold, “Atonement†by Ian McEwan, “The Hours†by Michael Cunningham. Well-written, emotionally resonant, all best-sellers, these highly praised literary works are required reading in book… -
Polanski Hits a Sour Note in 'Pianist'
•Truth to tell, I didn’t start to despise “The Pianist†— Roman’s Polanski’s Oscar-nominated film of concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoirs of Warsaw during World War II — until the very end of the film: The war has ended and a friend has taken Szpilman to a farm in the… -
Is Hollywood Against the War?
•Across the country, Americans are wondering, “Why is Hollywood against the war?†On TV programs and TV and radio talk shows, in magazines and newspapers, they see actors and actresses opining, talking the talk and walking the anti-war walk. This has led to a separate thread of programs and opinion… -
Is Lucian Freud Hot?
•His paintings ask: Is this all there is? British painter Lucian Freud is considered Britain’s greatest living painter, one of the towering figures of realist portraiture. The largest retrospective of Freud’s work has now come to Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the only U.S. venue for this exhibit.… -
Overnight Sensation (Jill Sobule on The West Wing)
•The Beatles on “Ed Sullivan.†Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk on the “Motown 25th Anniversary Special.†Ricky Martin at the Grammys. Each of these TV appearances launched a musical career into the stratosphere. On Wednesday Feb. 12, 2003, Jill Sobule appeared on “The West Wing.†Will lightning strike again? If you watched…