Tomorrow nights show will open with Natasha Petrinksy singing the title role, backing from the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, and feature more of the 30 year-old Venezuelan's signature musical genius and gift for surprising audiences. The tragedy of Carmen and her lovers has become one of the most popular operas of all time. For his first opera in Los Angeles, LA's own dynamic maestro conducts this concert production, with an international cast of rising stars.
This concert benefits the Los Angeles Philharmonic Musicians Pension Fund. Special thanks to the Philharmonic musicians for contributing their services on Sunday evening.
If you're like The Cinefamily, you’ve often fantasized about a world in which a gold-chain-and-calculator-watch clad Dennis Hopper emits a frenzied tirade of obscenities, boozy nostalgic rock reminiscences about hanging with the Stones, Winston Churchill quotes, and futuristic prophesies before running over hardcore punks with his fur-upholstered car. Yearn no more!
Made in 1981, whilst the synth-pop takeover in Germany was in full effect, White Star has Hopper playing a jive-talking has-been tour manager who vies to take his latest Tangerine Dream-like discovery straight to the top of the pops. For hardcore Hopperheads, this is the major discovery of our retrospective: Roland Klick's White Star is balls-out, mood-swingin', pure, unadulterated Hoppermania, and his performance is ultimately so awesomely unfiltered it seems it almost shouldn't exist. And since White Star has only previously been exhibited in the U.S. in a heavily reedited version calledLet It Rock, it almost didn't for American viewers. One part bizarro European post-punk industry crackdown and three parts Hopper delirium avalanche, White Star is endlessly gratifying.
REDCAT's annual Festival continues with three projects that explore the theater as a space of light and shadow, a container for both presence and absence, and a three-dimensional canvas where lived experience unfurls:
CHRISTINE MARIE & ENSEMBLE: GROUND TO CLOUD
Seamlessly integrating projected shadows, live actors and an innovative sound score, Christine Marie and her collaborators draw on the history of electric light to manifest a flickering world of natural phenomena and human intervention. Large-scale imagery from simple handheld lights and props takes on mythological proportions as scientific discovery, religious folklore and magical trickery blend into an incandescent work of expressionist theater.
RAE SHAO-LAN BLUM & TASHI WADA: SYSTEMS OF US
Through interdependent movement and musical scores, three dancers and five musicians build a work of spontaneous elegance as they delve into the complexities of intimacy interrupted. Choreographer Rae Shao-Lan Blum and composer Tashi Wada lay out intersecting compositions that weave repetition, disruption and transformation into a vigorous exploration of the nuanced negotiations that keep relationships alive.
RAPHAEL XAVIER: BLACK CANVAS
Raphael Xavier is a finely tuned master of Breaking whose continued innovation has led the vanguard of hip-hop dance theater, first as a member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, then as choreographer and co-founder of olive Dance Theatre. In Black Canvas, Xavier shifts the rhythms of Rap and propels narratives through Breaking to draw parallels between the performer’s body, which is inscribed by life’s experiences, and the stage itself.
Music ... Readings ... Art ... Pie...Track 16 is hosting the LAUNCH PARTY for the new Los Angeles-based literary magazine Slake, featuring writers and premiere-issue contributors Mark Z. Danielewski, Jonathan Gold, Michelle Huneven, David Schneider, Iris Berry, Luke Davies, Joe Donnelly, Polly Geller, Jacob Heilbrunn, Daniel Hernandez, Richard Lange, Judith Lewis Mernit, Geoff Nicholson, John Powers, David Schneider, Jerry Stahl, Deborah Stoll, John Tottenham, Dave Whit and Tillage’s very own ink slinger John Albert.
Slake is founded by former LA Weekly editors Joe Donnelly and Laurie Ochoa, who put together a 232-page first issue that's filled with substantive content from an impressive list of local writers, artists, and photographers.Please come and celebrate the inaugural issue of Slake: Los Angeles.
There will also be art on display and available for purchase from Slake contributors Sandow Birk, C. R. Stecyk, Anne Fishbein, Shannon Donnelly, Robert Sobul, Alex Bacon & Dan Peterka, Kelly Fajack.
A live performance by The Davises Guest dj's Justin Warfield, Cali Dewitt and Luis Farfan
RSVP: e-mail rsvp@slakepublishing.com Doors open at 7 P.M.
Todd Solondz originally wanted to be a rabbi, but soon sublimated his energy into screenwriting and directing. On Sunday, July 18, he will be at the Egyptian Theater for a Sneak Preview of his new film that Time Magazine calls "One of the years best" LIFE DURING WARTIME, Part sequel to and part variation on HAPPINESS:
LIFE DURING WARTIME picks up when separated from her incarcerated husband Bill (Ciarán Hinds), Trish (Allison Janney) is about to be married again. Bill is a pedophile, so Trish couldn't be more excited to have Harvey (Michael Lerner), a "normal" father figure for her two sons. But when Bill is released from prison and the boys finally meet their future step - dad, the family is forced to decide whether to forgive or to forget. Trish's sister, the virginal, angelic Joy (Shirley Henderson), is also haunted by ghosts of lovers past. On leave from her degenerate husband, Allen (Michael K. Williams), and her job at a New Jersey correctional facility, Joy unwittingly leaves behind a trail of shame and exposed secrets wherever she goes. In one of the film's most stylized sequences, the image of Joy walking the dark streets of Miami in her nightgown maintains her innocence against a backdrop of self-affliction and desire. 2010, IFC, 97 min. Dir. Todd Solondz
Please note: No one will be admitted to this screening without a ticket to HAPPINESS at 5:00 PM. Tickets will not be sold to this event. Discussion following with filmmaker Todd Solondz.
HAPPINESS, 1998, Strand Releasing, 134 min. Solondz's controversial comedy explores loneliness, self-obsession and aberrant sexuality through the microcosm of the blissfully dysfunctional Jordan family. When you purchase a ticket to HAPPINESS, you will be admitted for free to LIFE DURING WARTIME.
SATURDAY, JULY 10, 2010, 8–11pm THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA 152 NORTH CENTRAL AVENUE, 90012
Join MOCA and the Southern California community for a special tribute to acclaimed actor, film director, and artist Dennis Hopper at the premiere of Dennis Hopper Double Standard. Curated by Julian Schnabel, Dennis Hopper Double Standard is the first American museum survey exhibition to showcase the remarkable body of work Hopper produced in a formidable career spanning over a half a century.
Special DJ set by Eddie Ruscha FREE FOR MOCA MEMBERS* $10 general admission at the door, no student/senior discounts Cash bar. Self-parking in surrounding lots. Due to popularity, there may be wait times to enter the event and view the exhibition.
BICYCLE THIEVES (LADRI DI BICICLETTE) This landmark Italian neorealist drama became one of the best-known and most widely acclaimed European movies, including a special Academy Award as "most outstanding foreign film" seven years before that Oscar category existed. Written primarily by neorealist pioneer Cesare Zavattini and directed by Vittorio DeSica, also one of the movement's main forces, the movie featured all the hallmarks of the neorealist style: a simple story about the lives of ordinary people, outdoor shooting and lighting, non-actors mixed together with actors, and a focus on social problems in the aftermath of World War II. Lamberto Maggiorani plays Antonio, an unemployed man who finds a coveted job that requires a bicycle. When it is stolen on his first day of work, Antonio and his young son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) begin a frantic search, learning valuable lessons along the way. The movie focuses on both the relationship between the father and the son and the larger framework of poverty and unemployment in postwar Italy.
B/W - UMBERTO D, 1952, Rialto Films, 91 min. The last of director Vittorio de Sica’s Neorealist films, UMBERTO D is the poetic and touching story of an old man dealing with retirement and loneliness in postwar Rome.
1948, Corinth Films, 93 min. Dir. Vittorio de Sica.
Tomorrow nights show will open with Natasha Petrinksy singing the title role, backing from the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, and feature more of the 30 year-old Venezuelan's signature musical genius and gift for surprising audiences. The tragedy of Carmen and her lovers has become one of the most popular operas of all time. For his first opera in Los Angeles, LA's own dynamic maestro conducts this concert production, with an international cast of rising stars.
