Last weekend was a very full Los Angeles weekend. On Friday night, we headed to the Hollywood Bowl for a terrific, mesmerizing performance by Diana Krall. She was really great, starting out a little uncomfortable-looking just standing behind the microphone, but getting a lot more into it when she sat down at the piano. Her piano playing and her voice, when combined with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, were just dynamite. It was a nice warm night at the Bowl, too, and we enjoyed our usual picnic beforehand. On Saturday, we lazed around in the morning and spent the afternoon at the Getty, where we learned about Clara-mania and enjoyed the Weston and Delahaye photo exhibitions. Saturday night, I paid homage to Billy Wilder by watching the first film he was involved with, Menschen am Sonntag, in the theater named for him, as part of UCLA’s ongoing Wilder at the Wilder series.

Sunday morning, I dropped Aimee and her colleague Melissa off at the airport for their trip to the conference in NYC, and spent the rest of the morning working on Photobooth.net stuff at home. Being featured on the BBC has made me feel the need to make improvements, sort of, even though they called us “weird” and “pointless.”



Saturday afternoon, I headed to the Vista – what a gorgeous theater, can’t believe I’d never been there yet – to meet up with the guys from work for Superbad, which was pretty funny, but not amazing. We hit the Red Lion for sausages, sauerkraut, and hefeweizen, perfect for a hot, sunny afternoon. The night was young, though, and I decided to take the plunge and see the Hitchcock double-feature at the Aero, which was well worth it: two films I’d never seen before, Suspicion and Saboteur, and a Q & A with the Saboteur himself, Norman Lloyd. What a treat – he was hilarious, lively, full of great stories of working with Hitchcock, Chaplin, Renoir, Dassin… Pretty amazing, and yet another example of the great work the Cinematheque does to bring the people who worked on these films to the audiences who enjoy their work. It was a long night, 7:30pm to 12:15 in the morning, but a memorable one.