Hitler had concentration camps: we had American-Japanese internment camps. Roosevelt OK’d it. Nixon, albeit 35 years later, apologized for it. Come and gone? I think not. Family Gathering is Lise Yasui’s opus which depicts her family’s experience in an American-Japanese internment camp. Yasui’s family left their internment shrouded in mystery for years as she was growing up. And so, Yasui’s curiosity to penetrate the taboo precipitated the production of this film. “I intended to make a straight-forward historical film that explored the political and social pressures that led to the internment,” Yasui said. Historical accounts in general, however, can be […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
MEXICALI: Calexico, TLA, Last Night [photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]
All This Happened While You Were Sleeping
MAD DECENT: Diplo & Friends, Starlight Ballroom, Last Night [photos by TIFFANY YOON]
MAYOR NUTTER: Buddy, Can You Spare A Billion?
RAY CHARLES: Busted [Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] WALL STREET JOURNAL: Requests for federal emergency funding are piling up, with the latest requests coming from cash-strapped cities seeking help to shore up budgets strained by sinking revenue, pension-plan losses and difficulty getting financing amid the credit crisis. On Friday, the mayors of Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta asked the Treasury Department to set aside $50 billion of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to spur infrastructure investment to create jobs and lift local economies. The mayors also asked for loans to cover short-term borrowing needs and to meet payroll. In a […]
Q&A: Conversation With An Okie Noodler
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Brad Beesley has been the Flaming Lips in-house documentarian and videographer since the mid-’90s. Just about any Flaming Lips video you have seen was made by Brad Beesley. He is also the director of Fearless Freaks, the excellent Lips documentary released a few years back, culled from literally hundreds of hours of interviews and performance footage that Beesley shot over the course of the last 10-plus years. Concurrent with his work on Fearless Freaks, Beesley also served as cinematographer for Christmas On Mars, the just-released low-rent sci-fi thriller the Lips made in Wayne Coyne’s garage. Back in […]
GAYDAR EXTRA: Taking It To The Streets
On November 4th, 2008, we made history with the election of the first black president in the history of the United States. But the motion to ban gay marriage in California cast a dark cloud over Californian gays for what was for most a joyous day. Proposition 8 is a California state ballot proposition that denies homosexual couples the right to marry. Gay activists and gay couples naturally saw this as a threat, and rigorously campaigned against the proposition prior to the presidential election, which included raucous demonstrations out front of churches of many denominations and the boycotting of business that supported the “Yes to 8” cause. But despite “No to […]
ARTSY: The Still Life
CITY PAPER: Felix is painting again. He peels off his blankets, switches on the lamp and warms his hands by the electric heater he keeps close to the spot on the floor where his bedding lies. Then, he sits with his black faded sketchbook in his lap and draws until sunlight fills the small cramped bedroom he rents in a crumbling building at the end of a narrow alley off Washington Avenue. If Felix is happy with what he’s put on the page, he’ll pull on his red-checkered lumberman’s jacket and make his way down the creaky wooden spiral staircase […]
TONITE: Swallow Your Pride
Josh Camerote’s Swallow Your Pride, a documentary about Philadelphia’s Wing Bowl competition, chronicles a year of the life of a past Wing Bowl champion. Bill Simmons, aka El Wingador and the principle subject for the film, spent his days prior to Wing Bowl stardom in the limelight of professional sports. But upon retirement, he soon realized that the incessant stirring in his belly could be symptomatic pangs of his next vocation. But what glory is there in competitive eating, you ask? Well, Camerote thinks it about time all you dainty elitists swallowed your pride and recognize the intense […]
THE ACORN: The Flood Pt. 1
The Acorn opens for Calexico tonight at the TLA.
Q&A: Meet The Man Who Punked The NY Times
On Monday, New Yorkers awoke to astonishing news on the front page of the New York Times: The ware in Iraq was over, the troops were coming home, and Condoleeza Rice offered a public apology for hoodwinking the American people about WMDs . Furthermore, the paper said, plans were afoot to re-structure the economy away from predatory and monopolistic practices that enrich a few while exploiting the many, universal health care was a go and anybody who wanted a college education could get one on the government’s dime. Too good to be true? Well, for the time being, yes. But […]
CINEMA: The Spy Who Shoved Me
Quantum of Solace (2008, directed by Marc Forster, 108 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC Directing action on film is sort of like being a good dancer, either you’re blessed with an understanding of movement, space and rhythm or you’re not. The recently trimmed down, buffed up and rebooted Bond, ushered in with Daniel Craig two years ago with Casino Royale, has anchored the long-running series more than ever to its action sequences; gone are the jokes, the gadgets and the preposterous villains. The mystery in Casino‘s sequel pertains to a shadowy scheme labeled “Quantum” yet the biggest conundrum […]
EARLY WORD: Get Mad Or Get Even
Tomorrow night at Starlight Ballroom.
DR. DOG: The Ark
Dr Dog “The Ark” by Gary Breslin and Adam Kurland from gary breslin on Vimeo. Dr. Dog “The Ark” from Adam kurland on Vimeo. Currently touring the capitals of ‘old Europe’, the Dog comes home to the Starlight Ballroom on November 28th.