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Issue 252 |
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Your cultural event guide
Here's a snapshot of our favorite things to do in Los Angeles this week. |
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Los Angeles
Dec 26-Jan 1, 2008
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Whether you think it's too soon or too long in coming, the new year is upon us. As usual, there's no shortage of fantastic parties to attend — too many to fit in here, so check the site. But you don't need to wait until Monday to get started, as a bevy of big stars arrive in LA to celebrate all week long. Reverend Horton Heat swagger with their usual bravado, the Germs spread contagious punk-rock cheer, the Mother Hips keep the season funky, and artists from Gram Rabbit to Tiësto are ready to pop your cork at midnight. Figure out what "Auld Lang Syne" really means, and spread it.
- Shana Nys Dambrot, Managing Editor
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SPECIAL FEATURE
Gudrun Gut
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Few people have personally witnessed the changes in Berlin's cultural and physical landscape like Gudrun Gut. When she began performing in West Berlin in the late '70s, the Wall was standing, East Germany was a good place to get cheap cigarettes and vodka, and one stood a fair chance of running into David Bowie.
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Magna Carta Millions
A privately owned copy of England's historic document has sold for $21.3 million.
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Adam Pendleton
Manipulating language to provocatively juxtapose signification and abstraction.
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FILM
Underworld (1927)
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Wednesday Dec 26, 2007 (8pm)
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The Silent Movie Theatre (611 N Fairfax Ave, 323.655.2510)
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| price: |
$10
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In 1927, dark Viennese director Josef von Sternberg — later famous for his Marlene Dietrich-inspired masterworks — set a new standard for silent film, exploring the dark world of the American gangster. Underworld's narrative revolves around capricious Capone-like character Bull Weed, documenting his dubious activities at a suspenseful pace. The detail-heavy plot thickens to a vengeful boil that threatens to consume Rolls Royce (Weed's erudite right hand), Feathers (his heavily made-up moll), and Buck Mulligan (his bitter rival). While it's seeping with possibly dated sentimentality, the effect of the film's general tough-guy tone, shoot-first-ask-later action, and enthused names lasts to this day.
- Jason Jude Chan
[Info Source]
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FILM
There Will Be Blood
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Wednesday Dec 26, 2007 (noon–11:59pm)
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| where: |
Various locations
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| price: |
Various prices
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This has been the strongest year cinema has seen in at least a decade, so the following claim is not mild: There Will Be Blood is 2007's best film. In his previous work (Boogie Nights, 1997; Magnolia, 1999), director P.T. Anderson already exhibited his capacity for bold, sprawling ensembles boasting a political, aesthetic, and psycho-spiritual breadth rarely attained — or even aspired to — in the current US landscape. But this epic about the rise and fall of a '20s oil tycoon (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the unflinching American West distills Anderson's previous bloat to a spare, searing, and wholly unpredictable study of this country's currently most defining impulse: Manifest Destiny.
- Lisa Rosman
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Rock/Pop
Reverend Horton Heat w/ Hank III and Nashville Pussy
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Thursday Dec 27, 2007 (8pm)
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The Wiltern (3790 Wilshire Blvd, 213.388.1400)
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| price: |
$29.50
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Tonight, the Wiltern opens up double-fisted cans of country-fried whupass. On one hand, you've got the good reverend, who's been stomping out Texas-sized psychobilly since his band blazed out of Dallas in 1985. On the other, you have the skeletally skinny Hank III, who not only sounds like his granddaddy, but looks like him to boot. Junior typically opens with a set of classic country covers and originals — filled with the acoustic heartbreak of real country music, not the crap you hear on the radio — before launching into an electrified storm of breakneck hellbilly. You're going to want to hold onto your hat.
- Brett O'Bourke
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Rock/Pop
The Germs w/ the Adolescents
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Friday Dec 28, 2007 (8pm)
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| where: |
Key Club (9039 W Sunset Blvd, 310.274.5800)
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| price: |
$20 / $18 advance
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The Germs were a powerful force of random anarchy — unstoppable at times, but practically unstartable at others. Their peculiar brand of punk-rock situationism still holds up, though, with each Germs show essentially a black mass orchestrated by original drummer Don Bolles. The Adolescents conduct a brawnier ritual, playing like a post-home-invasion party. Straight out of the angry OC, their suburban slam pit is an interesting counterpoint to the older, reunited Germs' dark chaos.
- Anthony Ausang
[Info Source]
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FILM
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
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Friday Dec 28, 2007 (4am)
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| where: |
Fairfax Regency Theatre (7907 Beverly Blvd, 323.655.4010)
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| price: |
$7
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Whether proof of the actor's unreal range or his intense change, Amy Heckerling's pop-culture classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High finds Sean Penn as the incredibly influential Jeff Spicoli, a wake 'n bake surfer dude who chronically clashes with paranoid teacher Mr. Hand. Plot-wise, the movie drifts along with a few high-school students in search of l-o-v-e, but Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age script also hilariously and honestly checklists the high-school lingo and lifestyle: listless local mall meetings, pot-smoking, self-sex, breast-baring, and hormone-tinted considerations of virginity. Afterwards, you won't be able to believe Nicolas Cage ever won an Oscar (or Forest Whitaker). And better yet, you'll pick up some sweet Spicoli slang.
- Jason Jude Chan
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Rock/Pop
The Mother Hips
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Saturday Dec 29, 2007 (7:30pm)
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| where: |
The Mint (6010 W Pico Blvd, 323.954.9400)
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| price: |
$16
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The Mother Hips offer anthemic, classic-minded rock punctuated by falsetto howls and soaring, multi-layered orchestration, all tempered by a fundamentally NorCal-style experimental rawness. The band clearly includes a bunch of record-store rats, with references to the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield aplenty, but its reflective, forward-leaning melodies and harmonies transcend genre with ease. Catchy hooks and slide guitar, stories of Boho life that border on the silly, and hazy observations on human angst overlap in songs that sit comfortably next to their canonical influences.
- Shana Nys Dambrot
[Info Source]
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FILM
Ball of Fire (1941) and Twentieth Century (1934)
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Saturday Dec 29, 2007 (7:30pm)
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| where: |
Aero Theatre (1328 Montana Ave, 323.466.3456)
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| price: |
$10
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Amorphous auteur Howard Hawks has a jellybean assortment of genre gems. Tonight, two screwball sweets — the brisk Ball of Fire and timeless classic Twentieth Century — offer a rollicking ride through Hawks' fastidious universes. While Disney stripped Snow White of sex appeal, Ball of Fire imagines her as a feisty fugitive showgirl (Barbara Stanwyck) who shacks up with seven slang-studying professors. With Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder's rabbit-fast dialogue providing laughs aplenty, another (Gary Cooper) falls for the dame in distress. With equal madcap energy, Twentieth Century charts Carole Lombard's shopgirl-to-superstar conversion, as her former Broadway manager (John Barrymore) uproariously and unrelentingly adventures to wrest her back.
- Jason Jude Chan
[Info Source]
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FILM
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
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Sunday Dec 30, 2007 (7pm)
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| where: |
The Silent Movie Theatre (611 N Fairfax Ave, 323.655.2510)
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| price: |
$10
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Kim Ji-woon's supernatural melodrama A Tale of Two Sisters goes beyond the usual Asian horror film's ace-in-the-hole affinity for creepy children. Instead, Su-mi and Su-yeon are grief-stricken sisters arriving at their isolated lakeside residence to an altered home life. Their detached dad has replaced their recently deceased mother with an apparently evil stepmother, but stranger still are the unsettling sounds haunting the new home. Soon, with vivid visions, Su-mi begins to suspect her stepmother of a dark, disturbing secret. Deftly drawn from an ancient Korean folktale about familial self-destruction, the psychological nightmare is stuffed with surreal compositions and saturated colors for an exquisitely tense experience, from bucolic beginning to chilling clincher.
- Jason Jude Chan
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Rock/Pop
The Melvins w/ 400 Blows and Tweak Bird
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Sunday Dec 30, 2007 (9pm)
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| where: |
Echoplex (1154 Glendale Blvd, 213.413.8200)
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| price: |
$18 / $16 advance
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Certainly the heaviest offering this evening, longtime sludge champions the Melvins face off with hometown punk trio 400 Blows. As with so many other underground bands from the Pacific Northwest, Kurt Cobain's adulation of the Melvins was both blessing and curse, leading to a major-label deal with Atlantic, but also unfairly typecasting the band as a prototypical grunge act. Atlantic ran scared long ago, but the band's pulverized version of prog has won them legions of devoted admirers. To ease into the onslaught, the Blows bring slick and melodic fan faves and ultra-heavy harmonies, hopefully previewing some tracks from their album-in-progress.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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NEW YEAR'S EVE
Hard New Year's Eve Music Festival feat. Justice, Peaches, and Steve Aoki
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Monday Dec 31, 2007 (8pm–4am)
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Downtown LA Arts District (613 Imperial St)
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| price: |
$75
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Spend the last evening of 2007 dirty dancing in the streets of downtown LA at the first-ever Hard NYE Music Festival. Thrown by the sultans of indie music at Dim Mak Records, the rip-roaring NYE bash will have festival-goers grabbing inappropriate body parts in time to 2 Live Crew's incendiary, old-school verses, and romping and vamping to Peaches' over-sexed kink anthems. On a (slightly) more innocent tip, Justice's crunchy electro-house beats exhort crowds to dance, dance, and dance, while turntable impresarios Steve Aoki and Jason Bentley spin in between, ensuring that the only time you'll have to stop moving is to kiss your date(s) at midnight.
- Yolanda Evans
[Info Source]
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NEW YEAR'S EVE
Gram Rabbit
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Monday Dec 31, 2007 (10pm)
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| where: |
The Echo (1822 Sunset Blvd, 213.413.8200)
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| price: |
$20
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"Take off your pants, it's time for romance, let's all do the fancy dance." That's what passes for sweet nothings when Gram Rabbit are onstage. The post-pop trio's antics and love of retro costumes are doubtless influenced by surreal desert life (they hail from Joshua Tree), and their record crates are likely crammed with '80s-era gems from Men Without Hats, Peter Gabriel, Berlin, and even a little early Social D. Gram Rabbit's cheeky, eerie lyrics nestle in rolling clouds of techno and glitch, mellowed by warm percussion and birdsong runs of high notes. Their showmanship is the perfect complement to the dusty, digitally attenuated, spun-sugar vocals of frontwoman Jesika von Rabbit, a thorny, trash-and-vaudeville pixie who drops the F-bomb like she's scattering rose petals.
- Shana Nys Dambrot
[Info Source]
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FILM
Duck Soup (1933) and Horse Feathers (1932)
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Tuesday Jan 1 (5pm)
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| where: |
Aero Theatre (1328 Montana Ave, 323.466.3456)
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| price: |
$10
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Add your comment»
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When Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo unleashed their silliness upon an unsuspecting world, they raised the bar for wordplay, physical comedy, and absurd plots alike. Tonight, mark the new year with the still-fresh Duck Soup and Horse Feathers, two 1930s testaments to the Marx Brothers' enduring genius. In Duck Soup, marker-mustached Groucho plays the new "fearless" leader of Freedonia who declares a no-reason war on a neighboring country; Horse Feathers, meanwhile, finds the fraternal anarchists at Huxley College, where football becomes a not-so-simple, screwball solution to their troubles.
- Jason Jude Chan
[Info Source]
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FILM
Charlie Wilson's War
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Friday Dec 21, 2007
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| where: |
Various locations
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| price: |
Various prices
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It's been decades since Tom Hanks revealed his inner snark — you pretty much have to hearken back to his Bosom Buddies days to glimpse the acerbic wit lurking beneath all that earnest treacle he usually projects — but it's in full effect in Charlie Wilson's War. Based on George Crile's 2003 bestseller, the mostly true tale of how Texas congressman Charlie Wilson (Hanks) and his sometimes-lover Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) undermined the Cold War proves ideal fodder for director Mike Nichols (Closer, Primary Colors) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (West Wing). If Hanks and Roberts lack key chemistry, Philip Seymour Hoffman more than compensates as a CIA wheeler-and-dealer.
- Lisa Rosman
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Exhibition
Treasures from the Vault
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Wednesday Dec 26, 2007 (9:30am–5pm)
More times»
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| where: |
Natural History Museum (900 Exposition Blvd, 213.763.3466)
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| price: |
$9
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Whether you cherish the memory of dueling dino skeletons from long-ago field trips, or a more recent late-night music show amongst stuffed-buffalo-and-antelope dioramas, you probably already know that LA's Natural History Museum is a treasure trove of fascinating artifacts rescued from millennia long passed. In its Treasures from the Vault exhibition, the museum pulls out the gems of its collection — the pieces too rare and fragile to come out of storage but once in a decade. Check out a flight log handwritten by Amelia Earhart, an extraordinarily well-preserved dinosaur fossil (scales and all), and oh-so-much more.
- Lucinda Knapp
[Info Source]
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About Us |
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Cultural Partner
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Editors
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Flavorpill Los Angeles
All events featured on Flavorpill LA are pure editorial — we never accept paid promotions or advertisements. If you know about an upcoming event that you think should be covered in Flavorpill LA, email us a press release at la_events at least two weeks prior to the event and we'll consider it.
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