ENTERTAINMENT
April 8, 2014 | By David Pagel
At a time when museums seem to be torn between blockbusters and specialized scholarship, it's refreshing to come across "In the Land of Snow: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas" at the Norton Simon Museum, a no-nonsense exhibition that spares the bells and whistles to make a strong case for the virtues of amateurism. Not that long ago, before America was a nation of over-professionalized experts, pretension was something to be made fun of and it was OK to be an amateur. The word's Latin root is "lover.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 27, 2014 | By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critic
Pity the middle-aged. Youth and longevity conspire to steal our attention, especially when both are present. This weekend a Simone and a Simon, separated by 75 years, will perform at concerts, separated by a few miles and less than 24 hours apart. On Saturday, Simone Porter, a 17-year-old violin prodigy studying at the Colburn School, will make her debut with the Pasadena Symphony as soloist in Bruch's Violin Concerto. Also making his Pasadena debut is conductor Andrew Grams, music director of the Elgin Symphony in Illinois. Porter, who hails from Seattle and whose professional debut with the Seattle Symphony was seven years ago when she was 10, will then, with remarkable speed, go on to make more SoCal debuts as soloist with the Pacific Symphony next month and, this summer, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 25, 2014 | By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Time Television Critic
Simon Schama, the British historian and television personality and name-in-the-title host of "Simon Schama's History of Britain," "Simon Schama's Power of Art," "Simon Schama's Shakespeare" and "Simon Schama's Obama's America," is back with "Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews. " Premiering Tuesday on PBS, it attempts to distill 3,000 years of Jewish history into five hours of TV and does a fine, if necessarily incomplete, job of it. Like many British documentaries - the series originally aired in September on the BBC - "The Story of the Jews" comes with a personal touch.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 21, 2014 | By Scott Timberg
When telling a tale that includes centuries of endurance, moments of triumph, bursts of humor and sudden, unspeakable atrocities, what's the right tone with which to articulate it all? That's the trick historian Simon Schama had to figure out in his new documentary, "The Story of the Jews," which begins in the Middle Eastern desert about 3,000 years ago and tracks up to the more-or-less present. The program, in five hourlong parts, broadcasts on PBS on Tuesday and April 1. "I wanted to say, without putting on a ridiculous smiley face or making light of the tragic aspects, that there is a story to be told beyond one clearly framed by the assumption of catastrophe," the British historian said in Pasadena.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 20, 2014 | By Martin Tsai
"McCanick" features the late "Glee" star Cory Monteith in his final role. He plays Simon Weeks, a hustler who has just completed his prison sentence after a cop named McCanick (David Morse) framed him for killing a congressman. Against his captain's order, McCanick seeks Simon out. Here we have a police procedural that pretty much rejects standard operating procedure, leaving the audience to wonder whether writer Daniel Noah meant to create such an unbelievably sloppy and reckless officer or simply didn't do any homework on law-enforcement protocol.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 14, 2014 | By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Art Critic
MARCH 28-AUG. 25 'In the Land of Snow: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas' Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum is well-known for having the most impressive collection of European Old Master and early Modern paintings in Los Angeles. Less familiar is the museum's exceptional Indian, Nepalese and Tibetan art. This show will chronicle the movement of Buddhism from India to the Himalayas more than a thousand years ago, bringing numerous important loans together with superlative examples of painting, sculpture, ritual and decorative arts from the Simon's own collection.