Hooray For Hollywood (And Berlin)

Take a look to the right of this post and you'll see an advertisement.  I'm not happy about that.  I'd prefer to live in a world where we weren't all trying to sell something.  I have no interest in commerce.  I don't want to be an entrepreneur.  My heart doesn't go pitter-pat when the people whisper the name Steve Jobs in hushed, reverential tones.  But, the fact is, I'm about to turn 60, and my income is half what it was when I was forty, and an extra $100 in my pocket from ad sells,  every twelve to fourteen months, helps a lot.

Anyway, I went down to LACMA, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this afternoon, visited the galleries (Free to L.A. County residents after 3 o'clock) and hung around and saw a couple of movies.  These were the hand outs, they're photographs, and if I am going to have ads, they might as well be for something I like.

The top one is a postcard advertising an exhibit of movie costumes, sponsored by the The Motion Picture Academy.  Yes, that Academy, the one with the awards.  A couple of decades ago, the museum bought an old department store, next to their property, for what was supposed to be an expansion.  Somehow that never happened, and the building is now going to be used for a movie museum managed by the Academy.  Since that deal was announced, they've been curating shows at LACMA.  In addition to the costumes show, they've also got one dedicated to silent and early sound era German cinema.  That's were the second image comes in.  It's the program for the movies I actually saw, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Doll, both directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

For the record, my favorite Lubitsch film, Ninotchka, with Greta Garbo.  And my favorite Hitchcock, Notorious with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.

And if anyone out there in blog world is going to be in L.A. this Tuesday, the museum is showing Gone With The Wind, on film, for free.  It's actually kind of racist, but hey, it's beloved.