BILLY JACK in Person @ CINEFAMILY Friday July, 2nd

Forget Buford Pusser and Paul Kersey -- Billy Jack is by far the baddest, coolest, take-no-prisoners vigilante justice merchant of the '70s cinema universe. This half-Cherokee, ex-Green Beret, gun-slinging, karate-chopping mystic is one of the greatest walking contradictions in an era that perfected the form -- and Billy Jack, the most well-known of four epic, visionary works starring this superhuman everyman, still slays forty years on! When the seemingly mild-mannered, wandering Vietnam vet Billy Jack happens upon a vicious conflict pitting the students of a peace-loving, desert "freedom school" for runaways against oppressive locals, Billy is drawn towards his Native American side, and in a fight for the underdog kicks the violent townies’ asses with a dose of manic martial arts (which, at the time, was completely unseen in American film). Conceived and played by actor/director/writer/political activist (and later, Jungian pysychotherapist and three-time US presidential candidate) Tom Laughlin, the film features many non-actors who improvised most of their dialogue, as well as a sudden awesome appearance by the San Francisco improv group The Committee (featuring Howard Hesseman). With Coven’s “One Tin Soldier” as its theme song, this influential, action-packed, cult film remains a landmark focusing on the most emotional themes of its time: anti-establishment sentiment, two-sided justice, prejudice and racial segregation. Tom Laughlin will be joined by Process Media impresario Jodi Wille for a discussion between films! Dir. Tom Laughlin, 1971, HDCAM, 114 min.

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John Baldessari: Pure Beauty @ LACMA opens Sunday, June 27

John Baldessari : Pure Beauty

June 27, 2010–September 12, 2010

John Baldessari is one of the most influential American artists working today. This long overdue retrospective will feature more than 150 works spanning the artist's career from 1962 to the present day, and include works on canvas, photography, videos and artist's books. Baldessari's text and image paintings from the mid-1960s are widely recognized as among the earliest examples of Conceptual Art, while his 1980s photo compositions derived from film stills rank as pivotal to the development of appropriation art and other practices that address the social and cultural impact of mass culture. Throughout and continuing today, Baldessari's interest in language, both written and visual, raises questions about the nature of communication. The exhibition is curated by LACMA's Leslie Jones, Prints and Drawings, with Jessica Morgan, Contemporary Art, at Tate Modern. It will also feature a special installation conceived just for this retrospective.

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National Lampoon's 40th Anniversary w/ Matty Simmons @ CINEFAMILY 6.25.

One of the ultimate brand names in comedy, National Lampoon has helped to define the sensibilities of the Boomer Generation, Generation(s) X, Y, and now Z, as its legacy is still felt today across the cultural landscape. National Lampoon's magazines, stage shows, and films launched the careers of the most esteemed groups of entertainment alumni ever come to from one place -- writers, actors and directors of virtually every '80s comedy smash (Caddyshack, Vacation, Ghostbusters, Ferris Bueller's Day Off) seemed to get their start there. A vast swath of your favorite things to laugh along with ("Saturday Night Live", "South Park", The Hangover and the like) might never happened without National Lampoon's groundbreaking mixture of savage satire, wicked spoofs and all manner of shocking, brash, game-changing humor -- and tonight, we we pay our respects to this venerable institution with a 40th anniversary tribute featuring rare and underseen Nat Lamp nuggets, including: Lemmings, a document of the seminal early '70s Woodstock parody featuring soon-to-be megastars Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Christopher Guest; Disco Beaver From Outer Space, the rude, crude and crazy '78 HBO special that blows apart the piccadillos of the Carter era; and, Class of '86, the yuppie-skewering off-Broadway stage show. Capping off the evening is a 35mm show of Animal House, still the defining "slob comedy", and still funnier than ever. FOOD FIGHT!!!! National Lampoon guru Matty Simmons will be at the Cinefamily in person for a Q&A after the show, along with other special National Lampoon guests.

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Jews on Vinyl @ The Skirball - On view now through 9.5.

To create this multisensory exhibition, guest curators Roger Bennett and Josh Kun embarked on a far-reaching journey, scouring the country to collect thousands of vinyl LPs from attics, garage sales, and dusty archives. Pieced together, these scratched, once loved, and now forgotten audio gems tell a vibrant tale: the story of Jews in America.

Based on Bennett and Kun's findings, Jews on Vinyl spans the history of Jewish recorded music from the 1940s to the 1980s, weaving an account that begins with sacred songs and ends with the triumvirate of Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, and Barry Manilow. Set in a retro 1950s-style living room equipped with listening stations, the exhibition features a soundtrack of LP highlights—much of it no longer available in any format—providing an unprecedented opportunity to experience lost moments in American Jewish pop history and new perspectives on Jewish identity. Complementing the music will be an abundance of often kitschy and surprising album art to discover and enjoy.

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@ the HAMMER - Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection

In 2005 the Hammer launched an initiative to build a collection of contemporary art through both purchases and gifts. Recognizing the variety of media that contemporary artists employ, this growing collection of nearly 1500 works includes drawings, photography, sculpture, painting, film and video. In an effort to reflect the museum’s history of exhibitions, many artists represented in the collection—and whose work is on view in this exhibition—have participated in their Hammer Projects series, one of their biannual Hammer Invitational exhibitions, or in a monographic or thematic exhibition presented at the Hammer. With the goal of collecting in depth while continually broadening the collection, their focus has been on the acquisition of key works by influential artists from World War II to the present moment, paying particular attention to work made in Southern California. This is the third exhibition of works from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, highlighting recent acquisitions and works that have never been exhibited in Los Angeles.

This new installation of the Hammer Contemporary Collection features approximately 42 significant additions to the collection by Mel Bochner, Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Llyn Foulkes, Evan Holloway, Monica Majoli, Charles Ray, Frances Stark, Alina Szapocznikow, and Gillian Wearing, among others. Several of the works have never been seen in Los Angeles, such as Paul Chan’s multi-channel video Sade for Sade’s Sake, (2009), which debuted at the 2009 Venice Biennale and Kara Walker’s 20-part painting installation, Every Painting Is a Dead Nigger Waiting to Be Born (2009).

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Father's Day @ CINEFAMILY - Charlie Chaplin in "The Kid"

In celebration of Father’s Day, Cinefamily presents one of Charlie Chaplin’s most moving and beloved films. The Tramp adopts an abandoned toddler (Jackie Coogan) whom he discovers in an alley, and raises him to become his sidekick in a variety of schemes and cons. Chaplin's first feature-length directorial effort, The Kid is a moving and hilarious portrait of paternal love, or as the film's first intertitle says, "A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear..." As well, it's the landmark work of genius in which Charlie the jester metamorphosed into Charlie the full-blooded actor, whose iconic dignity in the face of comic adversity has continued to make him one of our greatest cinematic treasures. Children under 18 get in half-price to this special "kiddie" matinee.
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Go See - ARSHILE GORKY: A RETROSPECTIVE Now on View @ MOCA Grand Ave.

Arshile Gorky (b. c.1902, Khorkom, Armenia; d. 1948 Sherman, Conn.) was a seminal figure in the movement toward abstraction that transformed American art in the middle of the 20th century. Born in an Armenian village on the eastern border of Ottoman Turkey, Gorky was a first-hand witness to the Turkish government's Armenian Genocide of 1915, which led the artist’s family and thousands of others to flee. In 1920, Gorky emigrated to the United States and eventually settled in New York, where he became a largely self-taught artist.

At a time when the American avant-garde privileged originality over traditional working methods, Gorky was a nonconformist who developed his personal vocabulary through a series of intensive apprenticeships to the styles of other artists, including Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, and Joan Miro, before developing his own unique and deeply influential visual language in the early 1940s. Gorky’s prominence in the New York art scene led him to befriend Andre Breton and Roberto Matta—fellow emigres and key figures in the surrealist group—who came to have an enormous impact on Gorky’s mature style.

Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective positions Gorky as a crucial founder of abstract expressionism, but also as a passionate and dedicated artist whose tragic life often informed his groundbreaking and deeply personal paintings. The first full-scale survey of Gorky’s work since 1981, this timely exhibition features Gorky’s most significant paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, including two masterworks from MOCA’s permanent collection—Study for The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1943) and Betrothal I (1947).

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Steve McQueen Tribute @ The Egyptian Theater June 18

From his escape-artist anti-heroes in PAPILLON and THE GREAT ESCAPE to his hardboiled loners in THE CINCINNATI KID and JUNIOR BONNER, to his speed demon cop in BULLITT, actor Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980) blazed across the screen with the same intensity and competitive spirit he brought to his off-screen passion for racing. One of the most popular and acclaimed actors of his generation, McQueen is arguably even more popular now, emerging as a kind of archetype for the ideal Hollywood male star: defiantly independent (but nursing a wounded soul), always close to the boiling point, a man of few words and much action. In other words, the King of Cool.

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Fri 6.11. @ the NuArt - MATTHEW BARNEY: THE CREMASTER CYCLE Parts 1&2

To thematically, if not chronologically, kick off his five-film Cremaster cycle, sculptor/filmmaker Matthew Barney made Cremaster 1, a forty-odd minute long look in, above, under, and around a complex visual metaphor. It’s the start of the series that, among other things, metaphorically chronicles the biological process from the sexually undifferentiated state that exists at conception to the full realization of the sexual identity, which occurs with the maturation of the gonads.

Because this is the first entry in that cycle, representing the time that exists between conception and the determination of sexual identity, it begins in an idyllic state. It is the only segment of the series that does not feature Barney in any of the roles, instead attempting to convey the state of gender neutrality by featuring a cast composed entirely of similar looking, platinum blonde women. They seem to represent the chromosomal pool of X chromosomes before the entry of a Y, and the definition of maleness, became a possibility.

Set on and above a football field where a gaggle of women perform elaborate, Busby Berkeley-style dancing routines, seemingly at the whim of a controlling figure who floats in a pair of blimps above, Cremaster 1 acts as an introduction to the heavily coded symbolism that Barney employs. The environment is a macrocosmic system that represents the first stirrings of an organism’s development.

The blimps, each emblazoned with the Goodyear logo, represent the gonads (not yet either male or female at this time, they could become either testicles or ovaries). The girls on the field below seem to stand in for the chromosomes, their dance an organizing cellular process. Within each blimp, there are similar contents: a table laid out with grapes (red grapes in one blimp, green in the other), a sculpture that resembles the gonadal structure (either of female ovaries and fallopian tubes or the male testes and vas deferens), several nearly identical flight attendants, and, most significantly, a woman under each table who seems increasingly in control of the
process.

Cremaster 2 (1999), a hallucinatory work featuring writer/director Matthew Barney as Western outlaw Gary Gilmore and Norman Mailer as Harry Houdini, is an eclectic mix of gender-bending sexuality and athleticism, obscure historical references, high fashion, remote locations, lush music and a range of category-defying mythopoeic imagery.

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Go See - "WATER: OUR THIRSTY WORLD" Exhibit @ THE ANNENBERG SPACE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

The Annenberg Space for Photography presents an exhibit examining the precarious state of the world's fresh water. Coinciding with National Geographic's special issue "Water: Our Thirsty World," this exhibit features the work of award-winning photographers looking at our most precious resource from environmental, social, political and cultural perspectives. Explore the causes and consider the ramifications of the world's impending fresh water crisis through stunning images and larger-than-life video HD in a gallery like you've never seen.


"WATER: OUR THIRSTY WORLD" will run through June 13, 2010

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5th Annual CULVER CITY ART WALK this Saturday 6.5.

featuring

Aiko, Banksy, Beejoir, Blek le Rat, Dan Baldwin, Boxi, Bumblebee, C215, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, D*Face, Brad Downey, Eine, Ericailcane, Escif, Faile, Shepard Fairey, Stelios Faitakis, Gaia, Hush, Mark Jenkins, Dave Kinsey, Know Hope, Labrona, Anthony Lister, Lucy McLauchlan, Aakash Nihalani, Walter Nomura (a.k.a. Tinho), Other, Steve Powers (a.k.a. ESPO), Lucas Price (a.k.a. Cyclops), Retna, Saber, Sam3, Sixeart, Slinkachu, SpY, Judith Supine, Titi Freak, Nick Walker, Dan Witz and WK Interact

With a large selection of books and magazines from
Drago, Gingko Press, Murphy Design, Prestel, SCB Distributors, Studiocromie, Very Nearly Almost, Zupi and more.

Saturday, June 5 2010

Opening Reception 6 - 8 PM

The gallery will be open from noon - 6 PM for Culver City Art Walk 2010 with live Jazz from 3 -6 PM

Please RSVP to rsvp at carmichaelgallery dot com

5795 Washington Blvd
Culver City, 90232

The exhibition is open to the public through July 3 2010

MERCE CUNNINGHAM Dance Co. @ Walt Disney Concert Hall June 4-6

Internationally recognized as one of ,the greatest choreographers to have ever lived, Merce Cunningham was a visionary force for over seven decades. He continued to create groundbreaking work in collaboration with noted visual artists and acclaimed contemporary musicians until his recent passing in 2009, at the age of 90. Experience the world premiere of the reconstructed piece ROARATORIO*, featuring music by John Cage. An unforgettable pairing of the iconic venue and Merce's indelible creativity. As the company embarks on its final two-year Legacy Tour, this is a once in a lifetime experience not to be missed.

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Louise Bourgeois December 25, 1911 – May 31, 2010

Louise Bourgeois, the French-born American artist who gained fame only late in a long career, when her psychologically charged abstract sculptures, drawings and prints had a galvanizing effect on the work of younger artists, particularly women, died on Monday in Manhattan, where she lived. She was 98.

One of the world’s most respected artists by the time of her death, Bourgeois had an exceptionally broad career that was notable for its slow beginnings. Born in Paris to French tapestry restorers in 1911, she worked as an assistant for the artist Fernand Leger before moving to New York in 1938. She did not have her first solo exhibition until June 1945, when she was shown at New York's Bertha Schaeder Gallery, three months before the end of World War II. After experimenting with painting early on, Bourgeois devoted herself to sculpture in 1949, though she occasionally also produced prints and drawings. Of her decision to abandon painting for sculpture, she told the critic Amei Wallach, “When you go from painting to this, it means you have an aggressive thought. You want to twist the neck of a person. I became a sculptor because it allowed me to express … what I was embarrassed to express before.”

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