DMA adds “art as cinema” to summer 2009 series

by PegNews wire

DALLAS — The DMA’s Arts & Letters Live literary and performing arts series announces three additions to the 2009 line-up –- a special summer series with cinematic connections. They include Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia; Deborah Nadoolman Landis, author of Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design; and best-selling writer Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor, authors of Traveling with Pomegranates. The three events will take place in July, August and September and tickets are on sale now.

Julie & Julia: Exclusive preview movie screening and author event

Nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell resolved to reclaim her life by cooking, in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She discovered the book on her mother’s bookshelf during a visit to her childhood home in Texas. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves’ livers and aspic, but a new life – lived with gusto.

Meryl Streep is Julia Child and Amy Adams is Julie Powell in writer-director Nora Ephron’s adaptation of two best-selling memoirs: Powell’s Julie and Julia and My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme. Based on two true stories, Julie & Julia intertwines the lives of two women who, though separated by time and space, are both at loose ends … until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness, and butter, anything is possible.

A special Julia Child-inspired buffet dinner will be served from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 29, in the DMA’s Seventeen Seventeen Restaurant. To make a reservation and purchase dinner ($28.95 per person, priced separately from the event), call 214-922-1818.

Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design with Deborah Nadoolman Landis

From the lavish productions of Hollywood’s Golden Age through the high-tech blockbusters of today, the most memorable movies all have one thing in common: they rely on the magical transformations rendered by the costume designer to communicate mood, personality, and setting. Using examples from her book Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, Academy Award-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis shares the inside scoop about Hollywood’s most tantalizing costumes and the characters they helped bring to life. Drawing on years of research, Landis has uncovered both a treasure trove of costume sketches and photographs -- many of them previously unpublished -- and a dazzling array of first-person anecdotes that inform the images. Dressed is one book no film and fashion lover should be without. Landis counts the following among her film credits for costume design: Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and Coming to America, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

Traveling with Pomegranates with Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Taylor Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd, New York Times best-selling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid’s Chair, joins her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor as they discuss Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story. The novel is an intimate dual memoir that explores the distinct perspectives of a fifty-something and a twenty-something, each at a crossroads, each on a quest to redefine herself, and to rediscover one another. This book is part travel story, part spiritual quest -– it’s about myth, place, inspiration, confidence, and discovering who you are.

Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel throughout Greece and France.  Sue finds herself coming to grips with aging, longing to reconnect with her grown daughter, caught in a creative vacuum, and struggling to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel. Ann has just graduated from college; she is heartbroken, battling painful depression, and must confront the question of what to do with her life.  This modern-day Demeter and Persephone give voice to the bond between mother and daughter in a story that will resonate with women everywhere, and just about anyone who has faced change.  Experience their travel photos and listen to them share the symbolic and personal meanings they gleaned from this journey.

Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees is quickly becoming a modern classic. The novel has sold over 6 million copies, spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, and was made into a major motion picture by Fox Searchlight starring Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, and Jennifer Hudson. Sue is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs and the recipient of numerous literary awards. Ann Kidd Taylor is a graduate of Columbia College and has contributed essays to Skirt magazine.  Traveling with Pomegranates is Ann's first book; she lives in Charleston, S.C. with her husband and son.

For details, ticket prices, and tickets call 214-922-1818 or visit www.tickets.DallasMusemofArt.org.

Arts & Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art

The DMA’s Arts & Letters Live is a literary and performing arts series in its 18th season.  To date, A&LL has showcased more than 300 regional, national and international writers, often in combination with performing or visual arts.  Typically running from January to June, A&LL hosts distinguished writers, Pulitzer Prize winners, celebrated Poets Laureate, MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipients, and New York Times best-selling authors.

Source: Dallas Museum of Art