Entertainment

Poetry in motion “Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity” at LACMA by Bondo Wyszpolski The lavish dresses and ensembles in this elegant but austere exhibition are largely from the collection of Chere Lai Mah. For over 45 years she safeguarded the 19th and 20th century wardrobes that had belonged to her mother and mother-in-law, supplementing […]

Books to lead young minds astray! “Reading Lolita in Tehran” – July 1 at the Gardena Cinema by Bondo Wyszpolski It’s an evocative title, isn’t it? A couple of days ago Randy Berler’s South Bay Film Society enjoyed watching this film, directed by Eran Riklis, and based on the memoir (published in 2003) by Azar […]

If Dave Williamson dies and goes to heaven, it will look something like this. It’s a Sunday afternoon at El Segundo’s Library Park, and one of the best pitmasters in the world is behind a Santa Maria grill, tomahawk steaks hanging over the fire above an assortment of peppers and onions slow-cooking in the live […]

 The ¡Kooks! #1 exhibit at Gallery of Hermosa in November featured work by a dozen legendary Southern California surf inspired artists, among them former surfing magazine photographer Mike Balzer, Dogtown and Z-Boys film maker Stacy Peralta,and surfboard shaper Dennis Jarvis. Many of those same artists, and some notable additions, including Dogtown skater turned artist, writer, […]

Where “dazzling” pretty much sums it up “The Magic Flute” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion by Bondo Wyszpolski I’m a latecomer, but from today a convert, to the Suzanne Andrade, Paul Barritt, and Barrie Kosky-inspired production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” which has now circled back for the fourth or fifth time to LA Opera. […]

The prolific Danish writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen has directed six films and all six have starred Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas. Their latest collaboration, “The Last Viking,” is certainly one of their best.  Anker, a career criminal, has just hidden the loot from his latest heist in a locker. Knowing the police are on […]

Man overboard “Primary Trust” at the Mark Taper Forum by Bondo Wyszpolski The intimacy that takes place between characters onstage is one thing, but the intimacy between the characters and the audience is another, and no less important. I want to start with that, because the superb and well-polished “Primary Trust” play by Eboni Booth, […]

Beach life with a soundtrack Photos by Chris Miller (ChrisMillerImages.com) A measure of how ingrained a local tradition BeachLife has become since its founding in 2019 is the number of people who arrive by bicycle. Bike traffic along the Hermosa Hermosa and Manhattan  Strand enroute to BeachLife in Redondo Beach looks like morning rush hour. […]

Through a lens, darkly “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985” by Bondo Wyszpolski The ‘50s, the ‘60s! Turbulent times in America, especially for the African American community still repressed and largely segregated. But people had cameras, and they were taking pictures. In this wide-ranging show at the Getty Center, through June 14, there are […]

by Gavin Heaney BeachLife has been a first for many things, but this year they hosted something historical without even knowing it. Has anyone ever before combined the frontman feats of James Brown with the guitar god game of Jimi Hendrix?  It happened Friday night on a side stage, where a small, tight crowd witnessed […]

Arriving on the scene unannounced in 1942, Albert Camus’ first novel, “L’etranger” (“The Stranger”) was the embodiment of existentialism, a philosophy first expressed by Kierkegaard then Nietzsche and fully embraced by French philosophers Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus. For most people, life has a preordained purpose, a thought process that is […]

“Fantasy Life,” written, directed and starring Matthew Shear, has moments where it shines. Shear’s own personal story, mirrored in the character of Sam, is muddled in the telling but helped by a very gifted cast.  “Fantasy Life” originally centers on the early life crisis of Sam, a lost soul who dropped out of law school […]