All posts by Frances Marion Platt

La La Land is a lovely, lightweight retro-Hollywood diversion
Stage & Screen

La La Land is a lovely, lightweight retro-Hollywood diversion

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Surprisingly, director Damien Chazelle’s original concept for La La Land – a student film from his Harvard days, titled Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench and developed with then-classmate Hurwitz – was set in Boston. It wasn’t until they adapted it into one of those paeans-to-itself that Hollywood loves so much that they were able to find backers. (The critical and commercial success of Chazelle’s 2014 project, Whiplash, didn’t hurt either.)

The Jazz Loft according to W. Eugene Smith at Rosendale Theatre
Stage & Screen

The Jazz Loft according to W. Eugene Smith at Rosendale Theatre

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A documentary film revealing the exhaustive records, both visual and audio, that the photographer compiled while living next door to a NYC loft that was a Mecca for jazz artists from 1957 and 1965. Smith installed microphones throughout the building, even in the stairwells, capturing off-the-cuff conversations between legendary artists along with their musical collaborations.

Weather Underground’s Cathy Wilkerson to speak at TSL in Hudson about activism
People & Places

Weather Underground’s Cathy Wilkerson to speak at TSL in Hudson about activism

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For many involved in the peace movement of the 1960s, the moment when things began unraveling – when antiwar activists’ hold on the moral high ground became hopelessly slippery – occurred on March 6, 1970, when three members of the Weather Underground were killed in an explosion that destroyed a townhouse at 18 West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, where they were working on constructing a nail bomb in the sub-basement. Two of their colleagues, Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson, whose father owned the building, were upstairs at the time and managed to escape relatively unhurt. Both became fugitives, named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, and Wilkerson successfully evaded the authorities for another ten years.

Black Dome Press publishes Nora Scarlett’s photo collection Trunks of the Gunks
Books

Black Dome Press publishes Nora Scarlett’s photo collection Trunks of the Gunks

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Nora Scarlett, a serious studio photographer whose portfolio includes work as an assistant to the great Irving Penn and several major advertising agency assignments, is now based in New Paltz. While on a hike in the Shawangunks more than a decade ago, she writes, “I was captivated by a tree that appeared to be kissing a boulder.” That was the inspiration for Scarlett’s first serious departure from studio work: a series of large-format photos that she called “Trunks of the Gunks.”