11.30.2010

@ REDCAT - The Wooster Group's version of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carré- 12.1. through 12.12.10


U.S. premiere

Like Williams’ first big success The Glass Menagerie, Vieux Carré is a “memory play,” set in the boarding house in New Orleans where Williams himself stayed as a young man during the Depression. The young writer, as narrator, remembers his artistic and sexual awakening there. Inhabitants of the house swirl up out of the writer’s mind as archetypal Williams characters, longing for release and haunted by thwarted dreams. In The Wooster Group's version of Vieux Carré, the Group experiments with new modes of expression for Williams' lyric voice.

Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte
Performed by Ari Fliakos, Daniel Pettrow, Kaneza Schaal, Andrew Schneider, Scott Shepherd, Kate Valk

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11.29.2010

Tonight @ The Henry Fonda - Nick Cave's GRINDERMAN

Grinderman are Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos. On September 14th they released their new studio album Grinderman 2 via Anti-Records and are following with a tour of North America which began on November 11th. Together Grinderman have forged a distinctly different way of working, having cast off musical baggage, shrugged off accepted wisdom and tested pre-conceptions about who they are as musicians. The new album was co-produced by Grinderman and Nick Launay (Public Image Ltd, Birthday Party) and mixed by Launay.

Tomorrow night Grinderman will bring their potent dose of elemental music rooted in blues, punk, and no wave to the Henry Fonda Theater which should be a sure shot cure for the ailing No Pussy Blues that's going around lately.

SOLD OUT!

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11.22.2010

SPOKEN WORD @ The HAMMER - Tuesday 11.23 - Antonio Damasio: Self Comes to Mind

Antonio Damasio: Self Comes to Mind

Antonio Damasio is the David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. He is an internationally recognized leader in neuroscience and has made seminal contributions to the understanding of how the brain processes memory, language, emotions, and decisions. His books include Descartes’ Error, The Feeling of What Happens, and Looking for Spinoza. His new book, Self Comes to Mind, is out now and published by Random House.

His work has helped us understand decision making, social behavior, and even consciousness… —Charlie Rose

ALL HAMMER PUBLIC PROGRAMS ARE FREE. Tickets are required, and are available at the Billy Wilder Theater Box Office one hour prior to start time. Limit one ticket per person on a first come, first served basis.

Parking is available under the museum for $3 after 6:00pm.

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11.20.2010

Tonight @ REDCAT: WUNDERBAUM: Looking For Paul

There is no way to know exactly what will happen when the daring Dutch theater ensemble Wunderbaum premieres a new work developed during a three-week REDCAT residency. Joining forces with Los Angeles performer, writer and activist John Malpede, the inventive artists are weaving many stories and themes together: The tale of their friend Inez, who lives next to Rotterdam's controversial "Santa" sculpture by L.A. Artist Paul McCarthy, which includes a 5 ft. butt plug; the adventures encountered during their LA trip (staged in a replica of a room at The Standard Hotel); and the breaking news from the Hate Crimes trial of a leading Dutch Politician who also seeks to slash funding for public art in The Netherlands. Expect an evening that is provocative, wildly funny, and perhaps a bit unsettling...

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11.17.2010

Friday @ the Egyptian Theater - Cinema Italian Style 2010 presents - UGO TOGNAZZI in PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER

Los Angeles Premiere!
PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER - UGO TOGNAZZI

One of the greatest Italian actors to come out of the 20th century. A bold and modern figure in his stylistic versatility, Ugo Tognazzi rather unusually stands as a common thread linking masters of Italian comedy such as Mario Monicelli, Luciano Salce, and Dino Risi, and sophisticated, provocative filmmakers like Marco Ferreri and Bernardo Bertolucci (whose film Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man earned the actor the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1981). This vibrant portrait traces over 4 decades of the brilliant career of Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi, who became internationally known in 1978 for his performance in BIRDS OF A FEATHER.

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11.12.2010

BECK, Cateano Veloso and Devendra Banhart to perform @ MOCA's 2010 Gala event tomorrow night.


On Nov. 13, the talent pulled in by this year’s MOCA gala creator, L.A.-based artist Doug Aitken, is a bit more time-tested. Aitken has enlisted chameleonic rocker Beck , a leader of the L.A. scene since 1993, when “Loser” became a folk-rap hit; Brazilian singer-songwriter-political activist Caetano Veloso, who helped launch Brazil’s hybrid Tropicalismo musical movement in the late 1960s; and Venezuelan-American performer Devendra Banhart, a sometime collaborator of Beck’s whom The Times has described asamong a recent wave of cosmic young folk players…stretching the definition of folk rock for a new century.”

Aitken and his musical allies will generate a work called “WE,” whose aim is a “cultural ambush” (Aitken’s term) of music and choreography “that will attempt to break the barriers of the stage and empower the evening through the arts.” There’s no word on whether Beck, Veloso and Banhart will play artist-decorated guitars that can be auctioned to benefit MOCA, as Lady Gaga’s Hirstified piano was last year, fetching $450,000. The 2010 gala is titled “The Artist’s Museum Happening,” in keeping with “The Artist’s Museum,” a large survey of L.A.-generated art since 1980 that opens at MOCA on Halloween.

Beck literally has happenings in his blood: his grandfather, Al Hansen, who died in 1995, was a player on the New York art scene in the late 1950s and 1960s; he was an early creator and chronicler of the unpredicatable art events called “happenings” that led to today’s genre of performance art. Speaking of happenings, getting in on what’s happening at the gala will cost you $5,000 or $10,000 per person, or $25,000, $50,000 or $100,000 for a table for 10. - Culture Monster


**Also, eighteen artists created one-of-a kind posters for the event, which will plaster the interior the gala’s unique venue—a structure designed by Los Angeles' ''Bohemian Modern'' architect Barbara Bestor. Click here to see an exclusive look @ four of these posters—from artists Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Raymond Pettibon, Steve Roden and Tyler Warren.

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11.09.2010

Michel Gondry will be @ FAMILY BOOKS on 11.11 signing My New York Diary

On Thursday, Nov 11, @ 7pm Michel Gondry will be signing copies of the brand new book/DVD, My New New York Diary at Family Bookstore In 2008, filmmaker Michel Gondry wrote to legendary cartoonist Julie Doucet to propose a film collaboration. Little did Gondry and Doucet know that the process itself would be the film, and they'd soon be starring in a "reality" comic and film of their own devising. They settled on a process that involved inserting the "real" Julie into a landscape of her own drawings.After meeting and filming with Gondry in Brooklyn, Doucet returned to her native Montreal and created dozens of drawings for the scenery, while Gondry, in New York, worked on editing the footage itself.

Over time, these two elements were combined, and the result is a magical, funny and touching 20-minute film. My New New York Diary contains all of Doucet's drawings for the film, as well as the DVD containing the film itself. Both the film and Doucet's graphic novella are being released only in this deluxe, hardcover volume from PictureBox, which does full justice to the richness and warmth of Doucet and Gondry's collaboration.

If you can't make it and would like a signed copy put aside for you, or would like Family to ship you a copy: contact@familylosangeles.com

Family
- 436 N. Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles 90036

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11.05.2010

Sunday 11.7 @ the Echoplex - Frontier Records celebrates their three decades of Los Angeles angst.

Lisa Fancher loves rock and roll, especially punk rock. She started out as a journalist, but then realized that by starting a record label she could do far more to support local bands than spilling ink about them. In 1980 she founded Frontier Records and signed The Flyboys, followed by seminal Los Angeles and Orange County bands like the Adolescents, the Circle Jerks, the Weirdos, Suicidal Tendencies,Thin White Rope, China White and Christian Death. Frontier was by all accounts the first punk label founded by a woman.

As more and more indie labels got absorbed by corporations, Frontier remained fiercely independent. Fancher stayed true to the punk rock DIY ethos, eschewing major label deals and continually releasing new material, compilations and special editions. She didn't get rich, but her ethics stayed true, earning her the respect of A&R guys she told to fuck off and bands she championed.

This Sunday November 7, Frontier Records celebrates their three decades of Los Angeles angst and anarchy at the EchoPlex with a roster-packed bill including the Adolescents,T.S.O.L., Rikk Agnew, the Pontiac Bros, the Avengers, the Deadbeats and secret special guests. Doors open at 4pm. The show is all ages, so it promises to be a great night of family entertainment... if your family is the kind that can put the fun in dysfunctional. Huff Post

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11.04.2010

@ REDCAT - SCREAM Festival: Noisefold - November, 5th.

Melding real-time animation and generative electronic sound within the legacy of cybernetics, NoiseFold unleashes a suite of selected movements in its live cinema works nFold 1.0, ALCHIMIA, and Neu_Blooms. Using sensor-activated computer systems and complex audiovisual feedback models, co-founders Cory Metcalf and David Stout synthesize a mesmerizing array of bio-mimetic visual forms that generate sound, celebrating the evolution of visual music as a form of instrumental play with semiautonomous systems. From subtle lifelike emanations to roiling upheavals of sound and light, their audiovisual events are at once familiar, mysterious, and strange. The result is a powerful synaesthetic experience where noise, music and image interact on a symphonic scale.

Co-presented with the Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music (SCREAM)

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11.02.2010

ORNETTE COLEMAN performs Wednesday, November , 3rd - @ UCLA Live's Royce Hall


Free jazz pioneer, Pulitzer Prize winner and peerless saxophonist Ornette Coleman has played a major role in the evolution of American music for more than five decades. At the 2009 Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, Coleman became the 16th person to receive the prestigious Miles Davis Award, instituted to honor an international jazz musician for his or her complete body of work and influence. Coleman was instrumental in breaking down jazz conventions in the 1960s, becoming the father of free jazz and returning the medium to its daring, revolutionary roots. Joining him on stage are his son Denardo Coleman on drums, Tony Falanga and Al MacDowell on basses.

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11.01.2010

Locals Only @ M+B Gallery now on view through December, 5, 2010.


Locals Only in an exhibition of color photographs by Hugh Holland that capture the Los Angeles skateboard revolution during the mid-Seventies from an insider’s perspective. At the nascence of a cultural movement—before extreme sports and corporate sponsorship—Holland documented rebellious teens gliding through the drainage bowls and emptied pools around Venice, Orange County and Brentwood’s Kenter Canyon Elementary School. The exhibition runs through December 5, 2010.


In the mid-Seventies, two events coincided in Southern California that gave rise to skateboarding as we now know it. The invention of the urethane wheel and the drought that emptied the pools across the city allowed the kids to ride their new boards in an entirely new way. Skateboarders, stoners, thrashers and bad-ass kids from different neighborhoods and backgrounds in Los Angeles began hitting the pavement after school and during the summer, creating a counter-culture that has inspired numerous books, songs, documentaries and films. From the flatland kids skating “freestyle” to the canyon kids going vertical and carving up drained out pools—including soon-to-be legends Stacy Peralta and Jay Adams—Hugh Holland perfectly captured their youthful innocence and the energy of the movement.


Unlike most photographers capturing the craze, Holland’s photographs were never about the sport. Holland shot with old color negative movie film, rendering his images in warm, soft tones that were in complete contrast to the sharp, crisp chromes that the majority of skate photographers were using at the time. Beyond the bodies in motion, Holland captures beautifully intimate portraits of the young boys sitting under the trees waiting their turn, resting by the chain link fence at Kenter or in peaceful contemplation after a long day of riding. Holland primarily shot his subjects in the late afternoon, bathing his models and settings with an effervescent, glistening quality. They are, in essence, photographs of a generation of boys discovering their identity amidst the backdrop of cultural phenomena that shaped a generation.

Hugh Holland (b. 1942, United States) had no formal training in photography prior to picking up a camera in 1968 after returning from a trip to Spain. He made a dark room and began shooting everything around him, particularly people.

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