Fests and events, 1/19. US edition.

Through the Looking Glass (and Down the Rabbit Hole...), 15 programs of 20 features and three shorts, opens today at LACMA and runs through February 24. Andy Klein has a fine and fun overview in the LA CityBeat.

"By definition a souffle shouldn't have much of a shelf life. Yet so many Lubitsch films remain lighter than air, delicious in (rather than dated by) their silvery Art Deco trappings and risque innuendo," writes Dennis Harvey at SF360. "The Lubitsch Touch is the inevitable title for a major Pacific Film Archive retrospective." Through February 16."

Susan King visits the Peregrinations & Pettifoggery of WC Fields exhibition in the Academy's Fourth Floor Gallery, open through April 15.

Also in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Abele previews Wu Wenguang: China Village Self-Governance Film Project, January 29 at Redcat.

In the LA Weekly, Holly Willis recommends "An Evening with Gary Kibbins," this Sunday.

The Austin Chronicle has the program for the Austin Jewish Film Festival, Saturday through January 26, and "Four for the Weekend," that is, noteworthy events.

Also, Marc Savlov: "I hate to say it, but Spike & Mike and their annual compilation of hyper-filthy animations may have finally met their match. Virtually all of the 20 or so films listed as part of S&M's 2007 lineup are already sitting on your lap or desktop at this very second as part of online video depository-cum-soulsucker Youtube's infinite overload of clips."

In the Independent Weekly, Zack Smith covers a few goings on in North Carolina's Triangle: The World According to Sid Davis and local screenings of Welcome to Durham, USA, with the DVD released on Tuesday.

"[T]he first exhibition devoted to [Salvador Dalí's] lifelong obsession with the movies" opens at the Tate Modern in June, reports Maev Kennedy in the Guardian.

Arifa Akbar has much more in the Independent; the exhibition "will look at his work with filmmakers, including Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney, for whom he created some of the most memorable, dream-like scenes in the history of cinema, and also trace the influences from the silent films of Chaplin and Keaton which are distinguishable in some of his major works."

Related: Boris Kit in the Hollywood Reporter: "Al Pacino is reuniting with writer-director Andrew Niccol for Dali & I: The Surreal Story, Room 9 Entertainment's follow-up to its successful political satire Thank You for Smoking."

And finally for now, FX Feeney remembers Gary Graver: "A world has died with this man, but film history was blessed to have him." A memorial service will be held on Sunday at the Egyptian Theatre in LA.

Posted by dwhudson at January 19, 2007 2:46 PM