How’s this for a super-cool field trip? As part of the festivities at the Anatolian Cultures and Food Festival 2013, taking place today through Sunday in Costa Mesa, area students grades K through 12 will be getting to meet the world’s tallest man.

Sultan Kosen is a staggering eight feet, three inches tall. He hails from the Turkish town of Mardin and, as part of the weekend festival, will be installed at an exhibit celebrating his city and its famous hillside stone houses. Event organizers have created a replica of one such a home for attendees to check out and pose at.

Kosen swung through San Diego on his way up to the OC, accompanied by interpreter Atilla Kahveci of LA’s Pacifica Institute. From a Channel 10 report:

Kosen told San Diego mayor Bob Filner he realized at the age of 10 that he would be very tall, since he was already six feet. He said a tumor in his pituitary gland fueled his growth and limited his vision, which he said is 90 percent in one eye and 60 percent in the other. It took multiple surgeries to remove the tumor, he said.

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This weekend, the annual fall Grand Palais event Paris Photo has expanded for the first time to Los Angeles. A total of 60 art galleries and a dozen specialized book publishers are camped out on the Paramount Studios lot through Sunday, offering all sorts of sights for sore SoCal eyes.

LA gallery Ambach & Rice for example is showcasing new works by German artist Martina Sauter, who likes to work with old film stills, and a separate series of photographs of swimming pools at large LA homes. The event is also hosting what it bills as the first local screening of Johan Grimonprez’s 2005 short Looking for Alfred:

The film explores the idea of doubles and false identities by way of Ron Burrage, the renowned professional Hitchcock lookalike. It is a surrealist combination of Hitchcock’s trademark cameos as well as Grimonprez’s first reference to Hitchock’s The Birds and the actress Tippi Hedren, all critical narrative devices in the artist’s subsequent full-length feature Double Take.

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The number of cool events taking place this weekend in Hollywood at the 2013 Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Film Festival is head-spinning.

Saturday alone, there’s Jane Fonda getting her hand and footprints done at the Chinese Theatre; Ms. Fonda making an appearance at the screening of On Golden Pond; and more. For example, two hours before SNL usually cold-opens on the east coast, there is also this 6:30 p.m. PT event: a screening of the classic Western Shane introduced by Bill Hader.

Hader is getting ready to host his third season of Essentials Jr. in June and also jumped in last fall as a TCM guest programmer. The four movies he picked for viewers in September included efforts by Billy Wilder and Akiro Kurosawa.

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It should be a most interesting Saturday afternoon in Eagle Rock thanks to the 6th Annual LA Media Reform Summit. There are always pockets of LA media that could use a little reform, but for this edition, organizers are focusing on an outlet that could will be looking at major changes: the LA Times.

Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps will kick things off at 1 p.m. with a keynote address. Then, at 2 p.m., KPFK-FM Background Briefing host Ian Masters will moderate a discussion of the imminent Tribune Co/LAT hand-off. Joining him will be Huffington Post LA reporter Kathleen Miles, Media Matters for America vp Angelo Carusone and former LAT columnist Tim Rutten. The other panel will look at how LA media news coverage can be improved.

Admission to the event, including a 5 p.m. reception, is $20.00 general and $10.00 for students and seniors. If you’re interested in RSVP-ing in advance, you can do so here.

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This weekend, the LA Times Festival of Books is being succeeded on the USC campus by a not-altogether-different group of panelists. And once again, the best part is that it’s free.

Taking place all day today in the Annenberg East Lobby and Annenberg Auditorium is USC journalism school-sponsored event Hollywood 3.0. The proceedings will culminate at 7 p.m. with a very cool familial chat. From the Daily Trojan write-up:

Two of the prominent headliners are the father-son duo of Henry and Max Winkler.  [Graduate student and event team lead Tim] McHugh promises that their panel will not only be inspiring, but also one everyone can gain something from.

“Anyone can have fun with the Winklers,” states McHugh. “Henry Winkler played the popular character Fonzie back on Happy Days and his son Max is a writer, director, producer in his own right in filmmaking. It’s kind of a generational panel… the Winkler event will be in the Annenberg lobby, to create more of a sit-down vibe to it. It’s also about what it’s like working in front and behind the camera and needing to diversify skill sets especially in today’s modern Hollywood.”

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Actually, Madonna herself won’t be at Macy’s Westfield Century City, Main Floor, Level 1 tomorrow night from 6 to 8 p.m. But fans can still count on seeing eight of the singer’s most iconic outfits and saying hi to the superstar’s longtime costume collaborator Arianne Phillips. It’s all part of a special one-night-only pop-up event titled “Madonna’s Fashion Evolution.”

The Macy’s connection comes from the fact that the singer has for several years been selling through the department store chain a “Material Girl” clothing line designed with daughter Lola. The corresponding Twitter account @MaterialGirl currently has more than 80,000 followers. From the announcement:

Madonna personally handpicked eight of her favorite costumes from a vast archive of tour costumes and her personal collection for the exhibition. The cone bustiers were flown in from a Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit in Amsterdam, her “Like A Virgin” wedding dress is on loan from the Hard Rock Cafe, while the remaining items are from Madonna’s personal archives.

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A group of distinguished Cuban filmmakers is in town for a brief but groundbreaking American tour. The March 7-11 swing includes an International Women’s Day-themed screening and afterparty tonight at the Cinematheque and a free event on Monday at USC.

In attendance Friday at the Egyptian: Cuban Women Filmmakers Mediatheque head Marina Ochoa; actress Claudia Rojas; documentary maker Gloria Ralondo; filmmaker Milena Almira; and various local celebs. After the screening of short films, there will be a panel discussion featuring some of the Cuban visitors and Laura Bickford, a producer whose credits include Traffic and Che. Then it will be time to party with a musical performance by Candi Sosa y Sexteto and food from fave LA restaurant Versailles.

One of the more intriguing films on the program tonight is Marisol Trujillo’s Oracion. Made in 1984, the nine-minute short pays tribute to both Marilyn Monroe and Latin American youth.

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Our friend Phillip Zonkel has let us know about a Saturday March 2 event that he will be taking part in. Zonkel, along with CNN’s Miguel Marquez, LA Times reporter Bettina Boxall, NBC LA’s Mekahlo Medina and LAT assistant travel editor Jane Engle will talk about what it’s like to be an openly gay reporter.

“Out in the Newsroom: A Look at LGBT Coverage and Careers in Journalism” is being sponsored by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) and Los Angeles Press Club. It will take place at the latter organization’s 4773 Hollywood Blvd. HQ from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is to be moderated by Variety political editor Ted Johnson. The suggested donation is $5.

By the way, Zonkel is nominated this year at the GLAAD Media Awards for his Long Beach Press-Telegram two-part investigation of bullying of LGBT high school youth and the willful disregard by certain school districts of state measures designed to mitigate this very ugly phenomenon.

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We have to hand it to LA Talk Radio personality Sheena Metal, moonlighting this weekend as the director and organizer of a series of celebrity performances of The Vagina Monologues at the Atwater Village Theatre. For this Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles production, she’s stacked the deck with all sorts of recognizable TV, film and stage names.

The boldface participants are donating their time, with proceeds to be divided between charities PROTECT.org and play author Eve Ensler’s V-Day. “It’s exciting to work with so many great actresses,” Metal confirms. The three-night event kicked off on Valentine’s Day with tickets priced at $25 and the following casts confirmed for tonight and tomorrow night’s 8 p.m. performances:

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The State Theatre on El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego no longer packs in movie patrons. But late this afternoon, there will be a brief revival in front of the building thanks to an intriguing new cinema-on-wheels initiative.

Drive-By Cinema, a “very irregular project” from the Pacific Arts Movement with help from the James Irvine Foundation, officially gets going at 5 p.m. Later stagings will also typically involve locations where huge movie palaces once operated:

Drive-By Cinema (DBC) was inspired by the late George Lin, former San Diego Asian Film Festival associate director, who once proposed buying old mail trucks to drive around the city to project films. In the same spirit, Pac-Arts has refurbished an old truck to cruise around high foot-traffic areas and blast films wherever they can.

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