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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

City of Images Gets Its Own Photography Scene

By Tom Teicholz

Los Angeles has long held a fascination with the visual; beholden to looks, surfaces and images, it is a city where even the buildings seem to strike a pose. So it might seem surprising that until now, there’s never been an institution here devoted to photography. But that all changes this week with the opening of the stunning new Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Laud the Life of Grauman, Hollywood’s Gold Standard

By Tom Teicholz

Ever wonder how the movie industry went from five-cent nickelodeons in New York to the glamour of Hollywood with red carpet premieres and the highest of artistic aspirations? Or why a certain pagoda-like Hollywood movie theater in whose courtyard rest footprints of actors is one of the most beloved and frequented tourist sites on the planet?

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Holocaust Movies: Winners and Losers

By Tom Teicholz

Are Holocaust movies good for the Jews? Or even, for that matter, for society at large?

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

‘Zap! Pow! Bam!’

By Tom Teicholz

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s two Jewish kids from Cleveland!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Tom Is ...

By Tom Teicholz

Tommywood is ... Tom is ... on Facebook. Aren’t you? If you read this column online and are not on Facebook, you will soon be.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

The ‘Maus’ that roared

By Tom Teicholz

Art Spiegelman attended Harpur College in Binghamton, N.Y. It was the '60s! Sex, LSD and combinations of both blew his mind, while trips to San Francisco, the East Village and a Vermont commune put flowers in his hair, or at least in some of his drawings.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

L.A.‘s new Grammy Museum: A museum as muse

By Tom Teicholz

New downtown Grammy Museum reflects on music's importance, even during a time of industry uncertainty

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Wild about Diamond

By Tom Teicholz

David Wild wants you to know that he is an unabashed Neil Diamond fan. So much so that he has written a book titled, "He Is ... I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond"

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Kaniuk’s writerly riffs probe Israeli psyche

By Tom Teicholz

" . . . I'm talking to Shlomo Shva about my daughters, trying to dredge up a little sympathy. He knows about that. The harshest criticism of Israel and the Jews has always come from us. The biggest anti-Semites of all are educated Israelis, and my daughters are as fanatical as they are, but sweeter than most . . . "

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Showtime is just this cantor’s day job

By Tom Teicholz

Levine was in the middle of a Showtime meeting when his assistant interrupted saying "Dustin Hoffman's on the line." Hoffman was not calling to pitch Showtime; instead, he was standing on a soundstage and needed Levine to intone the Kaddish for a movie he was mixing

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Steven Spielberg dreams anew

By Tom Teicholz

What does it mean that Spielberg's other founding partners, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, are no longer with the company?

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Defender of Faith:
Rabbi David Wolpe explains why faith matters

By Tom Teicholz

As we get older, we no longer ask so many questions aloud. Our questions become more private: Why? Why are we on this earth? Events occur, and we ask: Why me? Or, why not me?

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Premier theater complex blossoms on West Side

By Tom Teicholz

"Without people like the Broads,we wouldn't have commissioned work of Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and so many of the great painters. How they use their capital is commendable." -- Dustin Hoffman

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on

By Tom Teicholz

It was at college that he first met Allen Ginsberg. "He was 17. He was a bit crazy, and he was more eccentric than I was," Gold said.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Waxing (Philip) Roth

By Tom Teicholz

I decided to watch every film adapted from Philip Roth's work. My mission started simply enough: a search on imdb.com turned up eight works on film and TV, stretching back to the 1950s. Some had never been released on video, some are only in VHS, some were available at the local video store, some had to be tracked down in specialty shops or in university or museum archives. My quest led me across Los Angeles and afforded me the pleasure of visiting some of the city's most beautiful libraries and research facilities, as well as some of its best-stocked video stores.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

The heart and the drive

By Tom Teicholz

He was famous for being the first man in Hungary to own a car, and my grandmother kept a clipping from the Royal Hungarian Automobile Society with a picture of him seated at the controls of his Benz with a little girl on the rear rumble seat. Beneath the photo was the caption in Hungarian, German and French, proclaiming "Hatsek Bela le premier automobiliste Hongrois sur son voiture Benz en 1895."

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Sandler and the Zohan

By Tom Teicholz

As to whether "Zohan" will advance the cause of peace in the Middle East and increase regard for Israel and Israelis in the world at large, even as Israel itself celebrates its 60th anniversary, that's hard to say

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Trolling between the lines: Collecting titles at Publishers’ BookExpo

By Tom Teicholz

The last time BookExpo was in Los Angeles, the convention floor was constantly, overwhelmingly crowded, with so many booths that the author autographing section had to be relegated to a basement hall

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Jazz: Made in New Orleans

By Tom Teicholz

Preservation Hall's formula was simple and is followed to this day: No reservations, no food, just music in a small room. Shows began at 8 p.m. Each set lasted around 35 minutes, and tickets were priced low (they're now $10 a show, Wednesday through Sunday)

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Post-Zionism in a diaspora world

By Tom Teicholz

What does it mean to be a Jew in a Post-Zionist world?

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Set a place for Shatner at the seder

By Tom Teicholz

William Shatner is God. And Pharaoh. And Moses, too.

Just in time for Passover, the Jewish Music Group (a division of Shout Factory) has released "Exodus: An Oratorio in Three Parts," performed by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. It is conducted by David Itkin, who created and composed the Oratorio, sung by baritone Paul Rowe and includes dramatic readings from the Bible and from the haggadah, spoken by none other than Shatner.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Tommywood: Where is a book-loving soul to go now?

By Tom Teicholz

Dutton's Brentwood Books, among the best-known and best-loved of Los Angeles' independent bookstores, will close on April 30.

It is hard not to take this as a sign of the times.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

At the crossroads with Elvis

By Tom Teicholz

So who is Steve Binder, and why was the "Singer Presents Elvis" special from 1968 so special that 40 years later, people still regard it as one of the greatest TV musical performances ever?

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Bernstein’s Great Wall

By Tom Teicholz

Every so often, I read a book that is extraordinary, a book that is so good, so well written, so moving, so memorable that you just want to holler out: Read this! Such a book is "The Invisible Wall" by Harry Bernstein.