Life of Cameron Tanja M. Laden's account of the fascinating life of L.A. artist/occultist Cameron had readers turning pages last week ("Cameron's Connections to Scientology and Powerful Men Once Drew Headlines, But Now Her Art Is Getting Its Due," Oct. 10). Pan69 writes simply, "Wonderful." Rafael Calderon agrees, writing, "An enthralling account of a woman living her life, neither asking nor giving quarter." But...
Back when a group of Internet-savvy bloggers created the first HallowMEME party in New York in 2009, it was mostly an excuse to throw a costume party where fellow attendees would actually appreciate their clever get-ups based on obscure memes, GIFs and YouTube videos. “Back in the days of Three Wolf Moon,” event producer Andrea Rosen says, referencing a popular meme based on ironic T-shirt reviews on Amazon.com, “popular culture was mostly unaware of Internet culture.” Five years later, “There’s almost no differentiation between the two, so the event has grown as memes have made their way into mainstream.” Costumes at last year’s soiree brought to life memes involving sharknados, emojis, cronuts, Beliebers and Kim Kardashian at the Met Ball. This year, Forced Meme Productions’ first party on the West Coast ought to be just as fun, and it culminates in a highly competitive costume contest judged by Internet professionals IRL. Silverlake Lounge, 2906 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake.; Thu., Oct. 23. 8 p.m.; winners announced at 10 p.m.; free, RSVP required: 2014-la-hallowmeme.eventbrite.com. (323) 663-9636, hallowme.me. —Jennifer SwannMore
While the Nightmare on Elm Street series went from “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you” to “Nine, 10, Robert Englund’s at a convention again,” it started out as a frightening look at small-town America, a place that was, in its way, just as ruined as the face of its serial-killer villain, Freddy Krueger. Wes Craven’s visionary work of horror struck directly at one of the most potent aspects of the human experience — dreaming — and transmogrified it into deeply personal violence, which, when paired with sick humor, took up a special place in the hearts of fans. By the time Don’t Sleep: An All-Nighter on Elm Street (Pts. 1-7), a 35mm marathon of the films, wraps up, you’ll stumble blinking into the daylight. Just don’t sleep through these movies — you might wake up in a multiplex chased by a spool of film that wants to have its way with you. Also scheduled: special Elm Street guests TBA, and if you’re lucky, maybe the resident Cinefamily DJs will play DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s “A Nightmare on Elm Nightmare on My Street” so you can really start dreaming of death.More
Tenacious D’s devil-worshipping chubby rockers Jack Black and Kyle Gass have been making fans laugh since they wrote “Fuck Her Gently” more than a decade ago, so who better to stage comedy in a music festival setting? Last year’s inaugural Festival Supreme included Adam Sandler, Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, Eric Idle, Tim & Eric, The Mister Show Experience, Garfunkel & Oates and The Mighty Boosh, as well as surprise appearances by Conan O’Brien, The Lonely Island and Billy Idol. This year’s lineup of comedy and bands (and a few performers who are doing both) features Cheech & Chong, Dethklok Metalocalypse, Workaholics, Margaret Cho, Norm Macdonald, Fred Armisen, Janeane Garofalo, Nick Kroll, Dr. Demento, Peaches, Eagles of Death Metal, The Aquabats and a reunion of The State. Also new this year? “The Circus of Death,” where you’ll encounter a spooky train ride, merry-go-round, puppets and freak-show characters to put you in the mood for Halloween. Costumes are encouraged. Dressing like Cheech or Chong — beanie, mustache, spliff — is highly encouraged. Shrine Expo Hall and Grounds, 665 W. Jefferson Blvd., University Park; Sat., Oct. 25, 2 p.m.; $99. festivalsupreme.com. More
Although Día de los Muertos, the Mexican tradition of honoring and celebrating the dearly departed, won’t start until Oct. 31, there’s a new Día coming to Long Beach today — Día de los Verdes. The festival takes place at the Growing Experience, a seven-acre farm that once was an empty lot within the Carmelitos Housing Projects. The farm now provides plots where Carmelitos’ residents can grow their own food, as well as a paid job-training program for youth and an affordable CSA open to anyone who wants to eat healthy and locally. Hosted with Green Long Beach, Squeeze Art Collective and Mixt Media Arts, the event will feature live music, crafting, face painting and a squash cook-off. At this twist on the classic ritual, the ofrendas honor not dead relatives but our tenuous relationship with nature — including one remembering extinct animals. The altars will be lit at 6 p.m. as part of the closing ceremony. Inspired by the diversity of Long Beach and the “celebration of life, family and culture” that is Día de los Muertos, Día de los Verdes is “a nod to our community and the ways in which we work together on a daily basis to strive for a sustainable, thriving future,” says Green Long Beach organizer Tiffany Chen. The Growing Experience Urban Farm, 750 Via Carmelitos, Long Beach; Sat., Oct. 25, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; free. facebook.com/events/517615185050404.More
When it comes to the life of Bruce Haack, separating truth from fiction is not easy. The groundbreaking electronic music composer and inventor is said to have taught himself to play piano by age 3. By 8, he apparently was escaping his abusive mother's wrath by sneaking off to Indian...
Visual allure often isn't a virtue we value when chasing obscure flavors in L.A.'s international neighborhoods. In fact, adventurous diners tend to appreciate the opposite: The grungier the location, the more accomplished we feel for having sought it out. Looks be damned — let the fireworks happen on the flavor...
The Los Angeles art world has been saying a collective "hallelujah" since the arrival in January of Philippe Vergne as MOCA's new director. Although some East Coast commentators condemned the appointment — citing in particular a budget crisis scandal in which Vergne resorted to selling off a number of works...
Lily Simonson does serious research for her paintings. She studies specimens or goes on expeditions (she's on her way back to Antarctica this fall). But her paintings, like the ones in her "On Ice" exhibition at CB1, don't necessarily read as scientific. They read as intuitive, painterly explorations of what rock forms, icicles and iciness feel and look like. They're the kind of things you just like. And the way the main gallery is black-lit and her paintings glow seems to shrug off the gravitas of both art and science. 207 W. Fifth St., dwntwn.; through Oct. 26. (213) 806-7889, cb1gallery.com.More
It's just math. With ever more overflowing arts districts and only so many Saturday nights a month, a bumper crop of shows opens tonight in Culver City — and several galleries are ringing in the new season by showing off their marquee rosters. Exact hours and show durations vary, so you'll want to check gallery sites for complete details. Promising and must-see highlights include Brooklyn-based artist KAWS at Honor Fraser, offering new work extrapolating from the Peanuts comics. The artist styles these images to the point of abstraction with his trademark bold color schemes, along with more gestural, black-and-white works (through Oct. 31). Also Kehinde Wiley's World Stage series at Roberts & Tilton (through Oct. 25) continues with an iteration based on Haiti's pageant culture, using the artist's iconic portraits of everyday folks rendered in his lavishly regal style. Zackary Drucker & Rhys Ernst's Post / Relationship / X at Luis de Jesus (through Nov. 1) surveys their years-long transgender love affair and artistic collaboration with recent photos that debuted at Paris Photo L.A., as well as a brand-new video piece. Sandow Birk at Koplin Del Rio (through Oct. 17) presents the third in his aesthetically and emotionally intense series transcribing the entire Koran and illuminating it with images of contemporary secular life in America. Rebecca Farr offers haunting mixed media paintings on canvas and the release of her new book at Klowden Mann through Oct. 18). The Miaz Brothers take on "The Masters" in a new series of ghostly, witty paintings at Fabien Castanier (through Oct. 11), in the Italian sibling-collaborators' first U.S. show. Tim Gratkowski at Walter Maciel (through Nov. 1) shows new two- and three-dimensional, retro-slick and expressively abstract mixed-media collages. Patricia Chidlaw at George Billis Gallery (through Nov. 1) installs a diverse suite of urban landscape paintings, which go beyond photorealism to show us our common world in an uncommon light. Honor Fraser Gallery, 2622 S. La Cienega Blvd., Culver City; thru Nov. 1; free. (310) 837-0191, honorfraser.com.More
Jake Paltrow's Young Ones is a dustbowl Western with a sci-fi twist. It looks and sounds like the past: The plains are barren, the people wear cheap cotton and the score, by Nathan Johnson — all vibrating, beautiful melancholy — could be layered over any John Ford flick. But when...
Among its many attributes, Justin Simien's exuberant debut feature, Dear White People, proves that we're not yet living in a "post-racial America": Forget for a moment that there are so many vexing problems entwining race, class and economics that we haven't been able to put a Band-Aid on, let alone...
Well-known both for its political activities and for its long-running film festival, Human Rights Watch becomes the subject of a documentary itself in E-Team.
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A Fuller Life is a family affair, produced and directed by Samantha Fuller, in honor of her late father, Samuel Fuller, the great journalist-turned-filmmaker (Forty Guns, Pickup on South Street, The Naked Kiss).
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Reminiscent of Koyaanisqatsi in both form and content, Anlo Sepulveda and Paul Collins's experimental documentary Yakona tells the story of the San Marcos River — or rather, lets the river share its own origin tale and life story.
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Bio: Amy Nicholson is the head film critic for the LA Weekly, and is syndicated across the 11 papers in the Voice Media Group chain and co-hosts its weekly Voice Film Club podcast. She has screened submissions for Sundance, AFI, and the Los Angeles Film Festival, and holds a double B.A. in Film Studies and Anthropology...Amy Nicholson is the head film critic for the LA Weekly, and is syndicated across the 11 papers in the Voice Media Group chain and co-hosts its weekly Voice Film Club podcast. She has screened submissions for Sundance, AFI, and the Los Angeles Film Festival, and holds a double B.A. in Film Studies and Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma as well as a Masters in Professional Writing from USC. Her interests include hot dogs, standard poodles, Bruce Willis and comedies about the utter futility of existence, and her first book, Anatomy of an Actor: Tom Cruise will be published by Cahiers du Cinema in Spring 2014.more
Jake Gyllenhaal is used to exhaustion. During his research for the LAPD drama End of Watch, he spent five months patrolling the streets with real-life police officers, on shifts that ended at 7 a.m. It was good preparation for his new movie, Nightcrawler, a blistering portrait of a morally corrupt...…
Johnny Rotten once was asked what the Sex Pistols biopic Sid and Nancy got right about the doomed couple's real life bad romance. "Maybe the name Sid," he sneered. The film is no less beloved for being questionably true — and let's be honest, Rotten spent much of 1978 drunk...…
First, a pact. No making fun of Renée Zellweger. Instead of recoiling at her new look—the rounded eyes and chin, the uncanny valley of a new face molded from the kewpie features the camera knew so well—our first reaction should be to give Zellweger a hug. And if you're a...…
@Public Spectacle
by Amy Nicholson
October 22, 2014 @ 6:29 amTags: Film and TV
A gloom that only the audience can see hangs over writer-director David Ayer's brutal war drama, Fury. It's April 1945, and we know that in weeks the Nazis will surrender. The war is already over — Hitler just hasn't admitted it. American sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt) suspects as...…
Jake Paltrow's Young Ones is a dustbowl Western with a sci-fi twist. It looks and sounds like the past: The plains are barren, the people wear cheap cotton and the score, by Nathan Johnson — all vibrating, beautiful melancholy — could be layered over any John Ford flick. But when...…
It was a mystery that reporter Gary Webb would have jumped on: a man who'd made powerful enemies allegedly committing suicide with two gunshots to the head. The tragedy is that Webb himself was the deceased. Michael Cuesta's earnest, ire-inducing Kill the Messenger is a David-and-Goliath story where truth is...…
Quentin Tarantino stores his stockpile of 35mm movies in a vault he's never seen. “I've never gone through the Citizen Kane-like labyrinth,” he says. “It's kind of daunting. I'd rather just look at titles on a page and go, 'I've got all of this shit?!'” He does. All kinds of...…
The tragedy of Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children is that it was released the year it was made. A snapshot of today's cultural disconnection, in which Facebook, texting, World of Warcraft and streaming smut lure people away from dinner with their families, the film's so current that its observations...…
Every child who's thrown a tantrum, packed a bag and plotted to run away has shivered with the same vengeful thought: I wish I could see how sad they'll be when I'm gone. The Left Behind franchise implies that evangelicals haven't grown up. This new film version, the latest in...…
The Boxtrolls is a kiddie charmer that makes you laugh, cower and think of Hitler. That's an unusual trifecta, but then again, this is an unusual film. If the German Expressionists were skilled at stop-motion animation, they'd have already made it. This is cartoon Caligari, a fable set on a...…
Simon Pegg has always been more like a cartoon than a real boy. He's one part Charlie Brown to two parts Tintin, a round-faced runt who can channel both childlike depression and old-fashioned, cowlicked pluck. In Pegg's new film, Hector and the Search for Happiness, director Peter Chelsom simply allows...…
Adam Wingard's The Guest opens with a wet-eyed woman (Sheila Kelley) sitting so still in a chair in her desert ranch house that all we hear is the clock loudly counting seconds. We sense that she's been sitting like this for months, and the film is charged with anticipation. Horror,...…
In September, the seasons change. After a summer sweating over the blockbuster box office, Hollywood is ready to roll out their serious awards contenders. The Toronto International Film Festival straddles both worlds, mixing low-budget genre flicks and daffy Midnight Madness chillers with Oscar hopefuls about girls on hikes, guys with...…
Sixty-six-year-old British documentarian Nick Broomfield didn't blend in when he went cruising around South Central Los Angeles to retrace a 22-year serial killing spree for his upcoming doc Tales of the Grim Sleeper. Even with local prostitutes, crack addicts, and know-it-alls riding shotgun, the fearless filmmaker and his cameraman stuck...…
Director David Cronenberg sees monsters in everything: a pack of children (Brood), a television (Videodrome), entomology (The Fly), car wrecks (Crash), and even a woman with a vagina in her armpit (Rabid). It's not surprising that with his 22nd film, Maps to the Stars, Cronenberg is finally savaging Hollywood. It's...…
@Public Spectacle
by Amy Nicholson
September 5, 2014 @ 4:33 pmTags: Film and TV
The Identical is Elvis slash fiction that could have been written by a spinster church organist. Its premise is intriguing: What if Jesse Presley, Elvis' twin brother who was stillborn at birth, was in fact secretly given to a traveling minister (Ray Liotta) and his infertile wife (Ashley Judd)? What...…
"I'll always be anti-authoritarian, as long as I live," says Terry Gilliam, the comic provocateur who's been taking aim at the establishment for more than four decades. The only thing that changes: his targets. In Life of Brian, it was religion. In Brazil, the government. And in his latest film,...…
Four years ago, comedian Bill Hader told his agent he wanted to do a drama. It took a while. "I used to think typecasting wasn't a thing, and it totally is," Hader admits. "That's an industry feeling: ‘How can I take that person seriously when I know they're capable of...…
In two minutes, The Beatles captured the empty life of sad singleton Eleanor Rigby. Director Ned Benson is devoting three films to her namesake — a New York divorcée (Jessica Chastain) — and this first entry, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, barely explains her at all. Wan and adrift,...…