The Party (1968)

Bay Theater, Seal Beach, Calif.
Peter Sellers in brown-face as a Bollywood actor at a swinging Hollywood party. There really is no plot, but the house is pretty great. And it ends in a foam party.

Robert Graham R.I.P.

Figurative sculptor, Venice, Calif.

My Man Godfrey (1936) + His Girl Friday (1940)

Aero Theater, Santa Monica, Calif.
Throughout the 1930s and '40s, William Powell was famous as detective Nick Charles in the light-hearted "Thin Man" series of films; here he plays a "forgotten man," a victim of the Depression, in a classic screwball comedy that was nominated for six Academy Awards (and won none). Part of the Aero Theatre's Screwball Comedy Holidays.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Maverick Theater, Fullerton, Calif.
An entertaining play based on the dreadful 1964 movie of the same name (which featured Pia Zadora, age 10, as one of the Earth children). One of the worst movies ever made by some of the most foolish mortals in cinema, but a fun night at the theater.

A Man's A Man by Bertold Brecht

Odyssey Theater, West Los Angeles, Calif.

The Tale of Despereaux (2008)

Cinemark at the Pike, Long Beach, Calif.
The story meanders and drags, only eventually coming together; there's bit of "Ratatouille," a dollop of "Shrek," and a pinch of "The Secret of NIMH," but at least it's amazing to look at.

A Christmas Story (1983)

Aero Theater, Santa Monica, Calif.
Narrated and based on short stories by the great radio man Jean Shepherd.

Newspapers R.I.P.

Sam Zell has bankrupted the Tribune Co., the Christian Science Monitor is literally stopping the presses, going online only, and the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News are likely to do the same.

Miriam Makeba R.I.P.

Yma Sumac, Studs Terkel R.I.P.

political art this week

I have political art in a couple of galleries this week, with receptions Sunday afternoon and the night of the election.

The shows are:

"Left, Right and Center" at Old Town Gallery; curated by Patrick Merrill.
Reception Sunday, November 2, from 2:00 - 5:00 pm
150 E. Main Street
Tustin, CA 92780
http://otgallery.com

and

"My Father's Party is Busted" at BC Space; curated by Mark Chamberlain.
Reception Tuesday, November 4, at 6:00 pm
235 Forest Avenue
Laguna Beach, CA 92651
http://bcspace.com

Beck + Spoon at the Hollywood Bowl

Hollywood, Calif.

Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch R.I.P.

Rick Wright, David Foster Wallace R.I.P.

"Through the Looking Glass of Indirection"

SCA Project Gallery, Pomona, Calif.


"Buy More Triangles!"

Video Art Show in Pomona

"Through the Looking Glass of Indirection:
A New Exhibition of Moving Images"
September 13 through October 4, 2008

Reception September 13, 6-10 pm

SCA Project Gallery, 281 South Thomas Street
(Founder's Building, basement level)
Pomona, California 91766

"Through the Looking Glass of Indirection" website

Third Anniversary of Katrina

On the third anniversary of the hurricane, as Gustav approaches, a body of gum bichromate prints of post-Katrina New Orleans by Christina Z. Anderson:

Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl

Hollywood, Calif.

Man on Wire (2008)

Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine, Calif.

Dorival Caymmi R.I.P.

"All the horses appear to be stallions"

George Orwell blogs at: http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/.

A Night At the Opera (1935)

Bay Theater, Seal Beach, Calif.

Footlight Parade (1933) + Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

UCLA Film & Television Archive at the Billy Wilder Theater, Westwood Village, Calif.

Tonight we saw two Busby Berkeley musicals, "Footlight Parade" and "Gold Diggers of 1933," at UCLA/Hammer's Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood. "Gold Diggers" starts and ends with some interesting numbers ("We're in the Money" and "Remember My Forgotten Man"), but "Footlight Parade," starring Jimmy Cagney, was overall more enjoyable. In both films, the song and dance numbers tend to go on for longer than my attention cares to span, but "Footlight" at least has the benefit of containing "By a Waterfall," a clip of which we had seen a couple of months ago at the grandiosely-named Museum of Theatrical Design in Santa Ana, as well as "Honeymoon Hotel," a Merrie Melodies version of which was also on the bill that night in Santa Ana. We'd enjoyed the cartoon version very much and the live action take was funny and sexy as well.

We were shushed by the morbidly obese lady next to us and I almost lost my cell phone during the intermission, but it was fun that everyone in the house applauded when the face of FDR appeared during the course of one of the numbers. The mostly elderly audience was also treated to the period musical stylings of Janet Klein and the Parlor Boys before the double-feature.

Dream Journal

A dream: A car crash during a side trip to Hollywood to buy 16mm film makes us late for work.

Trumbo (2003)

Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine, Calif.

"Trumbo," which I saw tonight at the University 6, is a tired, stylistically wan documentary based on a play by the son of the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. The narrative is repeatedly interrupted by Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland, David Strathairn and other actors reciting the screenwriter's letters. They mostly have great voices, except for the doughy Paul Giamatti, but it's beside the point: Instead of playing the voices as narration, the story collapses, the actors drone, the mind begins to wander. Commendable as it was to give a writer his voice through the use of extended quotations, the documentary is better served by existing filmed interviews of the writer than by filling the screen with the big heads of Hollywood actors. Interviews with the children, Mitzi and Christopher, and the likes of Kirk Douglas and Dustin Hoffman, are much more interesting.

Dream Journal

A dream: We are sitting in a classroom with Tiana and the young Russian model we seem to be dating. One of the two is a painter; perhaps it is art class. We sit in the back of the room, stage left. Tiana and the Russian model are beckoned by the teacher. They rise, go before the class, and pantomime sex in the empty space at the front of the room. In the corner I notice an empty bottle of vodka.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)

Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine, Calif.

Laguna Festival of Arts

For the Fourth of July, we watched fireworks in Mission Viejo, in the vicinity of Rocinante, Dulcinea and La Mancha streets.

I tried a Minox shot of some flowers in the window of a coffeeshop currently closed for remodeling. Earlier, a shot of a tiki in Huntington Beach while searching for fish and chips, a typically British meal for the day we celebrate our independence. H. Salt Fish & Chips was closed.

Tonight at the opening for the Laguna Festival of Art I talked to Enrica Marshall, Noriho Uriu, Mariko, Dirk Hagner, Vinita, Donna (who is reportedly in love), as well as George. It was crowded and the music was loud, but it was a good night.

Dream Journal

A dream: The great sculptor comes to our counter to order lunch. Unfamiliar with the utensils, we struggle to place a pastrami sandwich and slice of cheesecake on his plate. He says we can put the milk into some sort of plastic container with a resealable lid, but we’ve already poured it into a glass. He drops everything, including the glass of milk, into a paper bag, folds it under his arm and walks away.

George Carlin R.I.P.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Bay Theater, Seal Beach, Calif.

Santa Ana Zoo & Black Star Canyon Road

Santa Ana, Calif. & unincorporated Orange County

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Regency South Coast Village, Santa Ana, Calif.

Bo Diddley R.I.P.

Irvine Studio Arts Festival — June 7, 2008

NEXT SATURDAY:

Dream Journal

A dream: In order to reach Glendale, a $70 daily fee has been decreed in the vicinity of Pomona. The freeway comes to a halt. A long line of cars. Idled drivers sitting at a series of tables pushed together in the carpool lane. Inspections and x-rays, as at an airport. Suddenly going to Glendale no longer seems worthwhile, although perhaps by taking side streets the fees can be avoided.

Sydney Pollack R.I.P.

Clue (1985)

Bay Theater, Seal Beach, Calif.

Son of Rambow (2007)

Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine, Calif.

Dream Journal

A dream: After a late night—yet another late night, an even later night than usual—I awake to realize that it’s the morning of the summer art festival, which is in fact two weeks away. I drive to Irvine to see if people are setting up booths in preparation for the day’s event. They are.

Robert Rauschenberg R.I.P.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

Silent Movie Theater, Fairfax District, Los Angeles, Calif.

Dream Journal

A dream: Our female cousins, their breasts exposed, sit languidly in the back seat of a brown station wagon parked next to ours in a lot in New York City. In the front seat, a third woman, name unknown.

Orange Coast Review reception

May 3 from 5-7 p.m. at Orange Coast College
Featuring artwork by Jerry Burchfield, Susan D'Zmura, Carole Gelker, Dirk Hagner, Marilou Hogeboom, Branin Johnson, Jim Koch, Noriho Uriu, and more.

Santa Ana Art Walk

Santa Ana, Calif.

Dream Journal

A dream: Leaving through the kitchen, light turned off to go out the garage, a butterfly is in the kitchen; one can hear it. It lands on the back of my shirt: “Get it off. Get it off.” It is not a butterfly; it is the spaceship from a tiny planet.

Hors de prix [Priceless] (2006)

United Artists Long Beach Marketplace 6, Long Beach, Calif.
Not a lot of nudity, considering it's a French film, but Audrey Tautou sure looks cute in her dresses.

Brewery Art Walk; Santa Ana Art Walk

Los Angeles, Calif. + Santa Ana, Calif.

At the Brewery in Los Angeles, a former brewery turned artist community that opens its doors two times a year for an art walk, we were more interested in the living and work spaces than the actual art in most cases. That's not to say that there wasn't some interesting work. In Santa Ana, 91-year-old painter and printmaker Suki Berg had a retrospective at OCCCA.

Visiting the Barnes

Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes is visiting the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania (not yet in Philadelphia, where the collection is slated to be relocated). I have my reservations about the move, and I have my reservations for a visit of my own in April.

Jim White at the Silent Movie Theater

Fairfax District, Los Angeles, Calif.

Dream Journal

A dream: In a fight with one’s mother, the woman is pushed to the ground in a fit of rage. There she dissolves into the mewling form of an infant child. Gradually one resigns oneself to a future of changing one’s mother’s diapers.

'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris (2006)

Laemmle's Grande 4-plex, downtown Los Angeles, Calif.

I had seen Peter Bogdanovich’s name attached to the film as what I assumed would be an interviewee, but in fact he was just there to read some old jazz reviews. Still it was interesting, devestating and depressing. especially when we suddenly meet the late singer’s drugged-out, desert-dwelling and long lost son. A portrait of failure (which is an interesting subject for a portrait).


Charlie Parker and Jackie Paris.

Be Kind Rewind (2008)

United Artists Long Beach Marketplace 6, Long Beach, Calif.
Perpetrated by Michel Gondry and featuring the wit and whimsy of Jack Black, this is the film that left a bed-ridden Roger Ebert feeling "positive and genial" but which did not cause any painful laughing spells.

Safety Last (1922)

UCLA Live at Royce Hall, UCLA
In which Harold Lloyd, the Jackie Chan of the 1920s, does amazing stunts, climbs up the side of a building, and hangs from a clock over Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. Played with live organ accompaniment in historic Royce Hall.

The Band's Visit [Bikur Ha-Tizmoret] (2008)

Regency South Coast Theater, Santa Ana, Calif. In Hebrew, Arabic and English with subtitles
A quiet, still, beautifully-composed little film in which an eight-piece Egyptian police orchestra, invited to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center in Israel, arrives by bus at the wrong town, a tiny Israeli desert outpost where there is no Arab Cultural Center ("no Israeli culture, no Arab culture, no culture at all"), is given refuge for the evening and leaves the next morning by bus. An unimportant incident, we are told, but somehow significant on a human level.

Polaroid R.I.P.

There was a story on NPR about the death of Polaroid as anything more than a licensing play. Portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman was featured, as was the artist Chuck Close, who likened Polaroid film to an endangered species: "Once it's gone, the whole ecology changes."

the economy R.I.P.

Has the recession already begun?

William F. Buckley, Jr. R.I.P.

Tiana Hunter shoot

Arcadia, Calif.

Pinback with MC Chris at the Avalon

Hollywood, Calif.

Rep. Tom Lantos R.I.P.

Persepolis (2007)

Art Theater, Long Beach, Calif.

Carly Erin shoot

Los Angeles, Calif.

Juno (2007)

Regency Lido, Newport Beach, Calif.

Life Stinks (1991) + Mel Brooks in person

Aero Theater, Santa Monica, Calif.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Aero Theater, Santa Monica, Calif.
A Mel Brooks double-feature, the classic "Young Frankenstein" followed by the amusing but less-than-stellar "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" (1995).

Centered on the Center 2008

Huntington Beach, Calif., through February 17
I have conflicting ideas for paintings: I would like to do figurative work that is not exactly surrealist but that incorporates elements of the irrational; yet I am also still fascinated by maps. So the new (old) idea is to paint cities from above, based on how they are mapped, in an abstract manner devoid of spontaneity. Mixed media and encaustic may be involved. The title will be the name of the city.

Tonight was "Centered on the Center" at the Huntington Beach Art Center. It was crowded as usual and I left quickly, but there was one piece somewhat in the mode of my planned future abstractions, a primitive country scene by Alexa Alexander that engaged me with its naivete, and an oil painting by Joel Woodard that I might like to buy. I will have to return when things have quieted down.

Local Anesthesia at The Artery

Costa Mesa, Calif., through February 3

Citizen Kane (1941)

Bay Theater, Seal Beach, Calif.

"It's terrific!"

2nd Saturday Art Walk Sacramento

Sacramento, Calif.

Talk Show Hosts

Tonight the talk shows are back on-air, despite a WGA strike. Letterman has his writers and a beard; the others don’t. I was interested at first, but the results are predictable: David Letterman is funny, Jay Leno is not. Ahead of tomorrow’s Iowa caucus, Leno had an interview with sinister Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.