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Brigitte Berman’s Oscar-winning documentary Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got has compelling and intimate on-camera interviews with Artie Shaw, Mel Tormé, Helen Forrest, Polly Haynes, Buddy Rich, Lee Castle, Mack Pierce, Frederic Morton, John Wexley, John Best, and the very forthcoming Evelyn Keyes on her marriage to Artie Shaw. Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

In the first instalment with Brigitte Berman on her Oscar-winning documentary Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (4K restoration and remastered sound), now screening at Film Forum in New York, we discuss how a Bix Beiderbecke interview with Artie Shaw in 1979 for her film Bix: 'Ain't None Of Them Play Like Him Yet' turned into an opportunity of a lifetime; Artie Shaw’s theme song Nightmare; the provocative titles of his books; his recordings of Frenesi and Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine; George Gershwin’s Summertime with Roy Eldridge; obsessively buying Patek Philippe...

Showtime’s Personality Crisis: One Night Only may showcase a multi-hyphenated personality – David Johansen is a band member, solo artist, and a songwriter who composed the show’s tunes for his own alter ego, Buster Poindexter – but there is no crisis. Co-directors Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi are documenting a party, Johansen’s 70th birthday in January 2020, which he spent at the Café Carlyle.

Martin Scorsese knows how to set a table, serving up Thanksgiving dinner along with The Band for their farewell performance in The Last Waltz at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. But the fancy venue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is an intimate space with just enough room for Johansen’s special friends, and he only has to take an elevator to put in an appearance. But what an appearance! Performing as Buster Poindexter, Johansen’s got the best pompadour in the business, an attentive band...

Italy’s Minerva Pictures has taken international sales on veteran director Pupi Avati’s Dante Alighieri biopic “Dante” starring Sergio Castellitto as the Florentine bard.

Minerva will be introducing “Dante” to buyers at the Venice Film Festival’s informal market and then at Rome’s Mia Market in October. Pic is set for release in Italy on Sept. 29 via Rai Cinema’s 01 Distribution.

Over the course of his long career, Avati has shot more than 40 films in a wide range of genres, including the cult horror pic “The House with Laughing Windows”; romancer “The Heart Is Elsewhere,” which went to Cannes; the biopic “Bix” about American trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke; psychological drama “Giovanna’s Father” with Alba Rohrwacher; and the 2019 thriller “Il Signor Diavolo,” to name a few.

Castellitto, an Italian A-lister who starred with Penelope Cruz in “Don’t Move,” which he also directed, plays the Renaissance poet during the...

This year’s Academy Awards could be decided by a few votes among the Academy’s 9,000 or so members. No category is as down-to-the-wire as Best Actress, with experts making the case for any of the nominees to prevail, as four of the women have evenly split the precursor awards. TheWrap’s Steve Pond is forecasting Carey Mulligan of “Promising Young Woman” to win, but writes, “Does anybody have a four-sided coin I can flip?”

In 1969, the Best Actress category was host to the most spectacular tie in Oscar history, with two of the most famous performers of the twentieth century each winning the statuette. Here are the six times that ties have occurred since Oscar’s beginning. A seventh could be right on track for this year.

1932: Best Actor

Fredric March in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and Wallace Beery in “The Champ”

The 5th Annual Academy Awards...

The Critics Choice Assn. has selected Billy Crystal to receive this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s ceremony on March 13.

A Billy Crystal life achievement reel might look a lot like a history of American showbiz. Crystal’s family roots are embedded in the greatness of American music via his father and his uncle Milt Gabler’s Commodore Records, home to recordings by blues and jazz greats such as Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke and, most stunningly, Billie Holiday. How many showbiz family trees include Holiday’s landmark 1939 record, “Strange Fruit,” named by Time magazine as best song of the century?

In his 20s, Crystal worked his share of 1970s comedy club stages, first as part of a comedy trio known as “3’s Company,” then as a solo act. Variety caught the trio in 1973 and it’s clear from the review that Crystal’s trademark skills as the...

Bix Beiderbecke with his cornet and the Wolverine Orchestra featured in Brigitte Berman’s superb Bix: 'Ain't None Of Them Play Like Him Yet' Photo: courtesy of Brigitte Berman

Bix Beiderbecke, called a “born genius” by his friend Louis Armstrong, who also provided the quote in the film’s title, died far too young at the age of 28 in 1931. Almost half a century later, between 1978 and 1980, Brigitte Berman interviewed family, friends, and many of the musicians and admirers, including Hoagy Carmichael, Bill Challis, Charlie Davis, Artie Shaw, Spiegle Willcox, Fred Bergin, Doc Cheatham, Matty Malneck, Esten Spurrier, and many more who played with Bix to get a sense of the man who left behind this remarkable music that borders on the otherworldly. A very impressive array of paintings by Edward Hopper visually doubles the effect of the experience.

Brigitte Berman with Anne-Katrin Titze on Wim Wenders: “His films have...

“Can we go deep into the obscure, or do we need to stay mainstream?”

When Matt Groening asks that question, the invitation is tantalizing to consider. In this case, Groening is talking about jazz, and specifically about his new partnership with Quincy Jones’ music-video hub, Qwest TV. His mission for Qwest was a curated video playlist revealing the jazz influences crucial to Groening — personally, professionally and to “The Simpsons,” most famously in sax-playing characters such as Bleeding Gums Murphy and Homer’s precocious daughter, Lisa Simpson.

Jones’ streaming channel offers a wealth of rarely seen concerts, documentaries, interviews and music-related archival films. Groening’s playlist ranges from “mainstream” names such as Ray Charles, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus to the “avant-garde” likes of saxophonists Moondog and Archie Shepp and pianist Carla Bley.

“When I was invited to do this, the first thing I did was make half of my list...

Every American generation has its own crop of white boys who, having fallen in love with jazz, look around them and ask, "Do I have any right to the sense of belonging I feel with this music?" Some turn this anxiety into self-righteous preservationism (see Ryan Gosling's character scolding black musicians about authenticity in La La Land); some discover the white musicians who earned black peers' praise (Bix Beiderbecke, Lennie Tristano, Bill Evans, et al) and feel less threatened; some conclude, correctly, that any person who is moved by music is entitled to that enjoyment, and entitled to make it...

For the past 17 years, painter and graphic artist Jorgo Schaefer from Wuppertal, Germany has been an artist-in-residence at the New York Vision Festival, one of the world’s premier festival’s of avant-garde jazz, dance, poetry, film and visual art.

Steve Dalachinsky Can you explain a bit about your process and becoming an artist?

Jorgo Schaefer: My career as a professional artist started in 1970 at the Werkkunstschule (Wks, School of Applied Arts) in Wuppertal. At this time, the Wks was a highly regarded institution with a long tradition. It was not an art academy but arts were a key element. Artistic skills were taught as well as philosophy. Our freshman class consisted of 15 students and we were hanging out together day and night, influenced and inspired by the political and artistic movements of about 4 good years. Plus: Amsterdam was just around the corner...

Sd: When did you get interested in jazz and improvisation?...

Kasper Collin’s spellbinding documentary reveals the tender and tragic tale of hard bop trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife Helen

With the best jazz recordings you recognise the beginning and know where it’s going to wind up, but it’s the road there that’s unpredictable. To that end, Kasper Collin’s I Called Him Morgan isn’t just the greatest jazz documentary since Let’s Get Lost, it’s a documentary-as-jazz. Spellbinding, mercurial, hallucinatory, exuberant, tragic … aw hell, man, those are a lot of heavy words, but have you heard Lee Morgan’s music? More importantly, do you know the story of his life?

Lee Morgan may have been one of the most important trumpet players in jazz, but he doesn’t have the household name status of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie or Miles Davis. Unfortunately, like Bix Beiderbecke and Clifford Brown, he died way too young.

Because explaining the glories of a project like this requires a length unsuited for a listicle, my favorite jazz album of 2014 gets an article all to itself. The rest of my list will follow later this week.

Allen Lowe: Mulatto Radio: Field Recordings 1-4 or: A Jew at Large in the Minstrel Diaspora (Constant Sorrow)

Allen Lowe has (at least) a double identity: jazz composer/saxophonist, and scholar of early American jazz and pop. This four-cd set combines those identities even more than usual as it contains a whopping 62 original compositions, many -- perhaps even most; I didn't do the math, but it feels that way -- inspired by the sounds and personalities of early jazz and pre-jazz (both kinds of ragtime, etc.), as detailed vividly in his accompanying notes: Bunk Johnson (we get many movements from a Bunk Johnson Suite), Bix Beiderbecke, Paul Whiteman, Ernest Hogan, James Reese Europe,...

Bob Dylan called him his first New York muse, yet Dave Van Ronk never gained the recognition he deserved. Inside Llewyn Davis draws on his story

Poor Dave Van Ronk. He was in the right place – the Greenwich Village coffee-house scene – at the right time, doing all the right things, singing the right songs to the right people. But he just didn't have the magic. And he didn't have the luck, either.

Sometime in the 1950s, when he was a young man trying to become a folk singer, he had learned a traditional song called "House of the Rising Sun" from a pre-war field recording on which it was sung without accompaniment by a Kentucky miner's teenage daughter. Van Ronk changed it around a bit, keeping the tune and most of the words, but adding a distinctive chord sequence that made an already plaintive lament even more arresting. As his reputation grew,...

The West End welcomes Zach Braff and awaits Mark Rylance and Omid Djalili, but Pop Idol star won't be joining them as Hair tour is pulled; meanwhile, the passport office insults actors

Scrubs up?

Some big names floating around the ether this week, with news that Mark Rylance's productions of Richard III and Twelfth Night (with a cast that also includes Stephen Fry) will transfer into the West End following a run at Shakespeare's Globe this summer. Iranian comedian Omid Djalili will also be making his return to theatre (having previously appeared as Fagin in Oliver!) with a starring role in the Joe Orton farce What the Butler Saw.

Meanwhile, Scrubs and Garden State actor Zach Braff made his West End debut in All New People – a play he also wrote – which transferred to London's Duke of York's theatre from New York. And moving in the opposite direction will...

I didn’t think I would have to insult the intelligence of our readers by pointing out a very simple fact, but based on the first comment we received, I guess I should make something clear. This is a list of our favourite soundtracks of 2011. We are currently working on a list of the best original scores, which should be posted sometime within the week. Let us know if you think we left out any soundtracks you would recommend. Enjoy!

10 – Young Adult

One of the themes of Jason Reitman’s upcoming film Young Adult, is the idea of being stuck in the past, and trying to relive your glory days, and so it’s no surprise that the soundtrack to the film is loathed with 1990s alt-rock cuts. Due December 6th via Rhino Records, the fifteen-track disc features the Replacements, the Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr., Teenage Fanclub, Cracker, 4 Non Blondes, Veruca Salt and many more.

Before I could ask Brigitte Berman about the mixed reception that her new documentary about Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has received, she wanted to make one thing clear: "You cannot do a valentine piece. You must not. If you do, you discredit everything."

For some, Hefner will never receive much credit, but that is exactly what Berman attempts to rectify in "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel," a leisurely biography that's very much like his glossy magazine: an easy sell because of the busty bombshells found within its pages, but just as seductive for its willingness to inject itself into the politics and culture of the era.

Alongside the centerfolds, Berman offers up a different definition of T & A in regards to Hefner, chronicling his tenacity and ambition as an innovator of cross-platform media, a savvy tastemaker, and a champion of the First Amendment who used his many outlets...

Toronto -- Cannes regular Hugh Hefner is bringing his Playboy party to the Toronto International Film Festival.

Hefner said he'll be in Toronto with his "girlfriends" as part of the PR and party parade for the world premiere of "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel," by Oscar-winning doc maker Brigitte Berman.

Turns out Hefner broke more than sexual taboos after launching the Playboy magazine in 1953, as he campaigned for civil rights and free speech, and put blacklisted and black American performers on his "Playboy After Dark" and "Playboy's Penthouse" TV shows when they couldn't appear elsewhere on national TV.

"Here's an opportunity to have this other side of me, a more serious one, explored by someone as talented as Brigitte Berman and having it done by a woman and a Canadian with the support of the Canadian government, it's all very complementary," Hefner said.

The Playboy founder said he...

The Germs The Germs are the L.A.-based punk unit founded in 1977 by legendary frontman Darby Crash, guitarist Pat Smear (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), and bassist Lorna Doom. Drummer Don Bolles (named for a murdered newspaperman) joined shortly thereafter. The day before John Lennon's assassination, Crash tragically committed suicide at the age of 22. As a result, the Germs disbanded until 2005, when the film What We Do Is Secret went into production. Movie's lead Shane West joined Smear, Doom, and Bolles to revive the Germs. Collaborations include Belinda Carlisle, Joan Jett, and Jack Nitzsche. "Lexicon Devil," from the 1979 release GI, is melodic mayhem. Currently touring. Buy: iTunes Genre: Punk Rock Artist: The Germs Song: Lexicon Devil Album: GI Tour: Visit Bix Beiderbecke 20th-century jazz great Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke, was born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1903, the youngest of three and a wonder child. Young Bix was a...

ROME -- Pupi Avati, the Italian director whose A Heart Elsewhere recently unspooled at the Festival de Cannes, is set to shoot a new picture revolving around Italy's present-day jazz scene. Cameras will start rolling in mid-July on the film, Quando Arrivano Le Ragazze? (When Are the Girls Coming?), Avati said Wednesday. Italian pubcaster RAI's film unit, RAI Cinema, is co-producing with Avati's Rome-based DueA shingle. Avati -- a jazz buff whose many feature films include Bix, a biopic of the 1920s U.S. cornet giant Bix Beiderbecke -- said his upcoming work will be about a fictional Italian jazz sextet.