Kenneth Turan to Speak in Pacific Palisades About His New Book

Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s Morning Edition, will speak Thursday, November 6, about his latest book, Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites From a Lifetime of Film.

Hosted by the Pacific Palisades Library Association, Turan will talk at 6:30 p.m. in the library’s community room, 861 Alma Real. The public is invited and admission is free.

Turan, a longtime resident of the Palisades, fell in love with cinema as a child watching “Million Dollar Movie” on WOR-TV in Brooklyn. He has been writing about movies since the mid-1970s, when he was a staff writer for the Washington Post.

In an essay he wrote about “Fifty-Four Favorites” in May, Turan noted that “. . . I took it as a good sign that my list ended up striking something of a balance between films like Casablanca and The Godfather that everyone will have seen and those like First Contact and Leolo that have a more limited following. I re-saw each one before writing an accompanying essay, and made sure each one fit a specification Roger Ebert once laid down: ‘Every great film should seem new every time you see it.’”

Turan, who also serves as director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, has written numerous books, including, Now in Theatres Everywhere: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Blockbuster, Never Coming To A Theater Near You and Free For All: Joe Papp, The Public and The Greatest Theater Story Ever Told.