Film noir delights in the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema

"Another Dawn" will play Saturday night at the LA County Museum of Art.

“Another Dawn” will play Saturday night at the LA County Museum of Art.

I am greatly looking forward to seeing the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA) exhibition and film program Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film.

Mexico was home to a vibrant, commercially stable film industry in the early 1930s through the 1950s. The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema series will explore Figueroa’s contributions as a groundbreaking cinematographer, a master of light and contrast.

Figueroa spent time on the set of Soviet master Sergei Eisenstein’s “¡Que Viva México!,” had an apprenticeship with Hollywood cinematographer Gregg Toland, and was friends with painters such as Diego Rivera. (The series is co-presented by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.)

"Autumn Days" will screen first on Saturday.

“Autumn Days” will screen first on Saturday night.

This weekend, two film noir delights are screening: “Dias de Otoño” (Autumn Days, 1963, Roberto Gavaldón) and “Distinto Amanecer” (Another Dawn, 1941, Julio Bracho). You can read the museum’s synopses here.

Upcoming film series will highlight Figueroa’s work with Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel, the Hollywood films that the cinematographer shot over his 50-year career for directors such as John Huston and John Ford, the films of the early 1930s that spurred Figueroa, and contemporary Mexican filmmakers whose work invokes Figueroa’s legacy.

Meanwhile, the New York Film Festival opened today with “Captain Phillips.” Manohla Dargis of the New York Times gives her assessment here.

 

What Zee sees

Joe Zee

“I love movies,” Joe Zee, creative director of Elle, recently told Alex Williams of The New York Times. About a Jennifer Lopez photo in 2008 by Carter Smith, Zee said: “I wanted a Polanski feel about it, so that’s why it was a black-and-white, with that sort of pained, but very glamorous, look on her face.”

Looking forward to Zee’s new reality show, “All on the Line,” which starts March 29 on the Sundance Channel. Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/fashion/17upclose.html.

Joe Zee image from www.zimbio.com.

Prada plays with old-school influences at Paris Fashion Week

Loved Miuccia Prada’s update of vintage Hollywood style – fur stoles, flashy pumps, ankle straps and sassy sunglasses – at Paris Fashion Week.

The New York TimesCathy Horyn described it this way:

Miuccia Prada provided a strong if surprising close to the Paris shows on Wednesday, with a Miu Miu collection based on glamour from the 1930s and early ’40s. That meant delicate crepe dresses embroidered with lilies of the valley and pinched with tiny pleats at the front, wide-shouldered jackets and fur-trimmed coats. Other dresses and skirts, in crepe, had cummerbund effects in contrasting tones.

At times I felt that I was in a Bette Davis movie – Charlotte Vale alighting a gangplank but now in sparkly yellow pumps. Other collections, notably Balenciaga, had a ’30s undercurrent, but the influence at Miu Miu was pronounced.

Read her full report at http://nyti.ms/i6Vwt7.