Show Review: Melvins, Boris, We Are The Asteroid at Echoplex 08/16/2018

It’s gonna get loud…

Melvins-12

It’s been a good bit of time since I’ve made it out to a show at one of my favorite venues in Los Angeles: Echoplex. While the lightning has never been the greatest for photography, the atmosphere and sound mixes have always made up for it and I’ve consistently had the most fun at pretty much every show I’ve seen behind their doors. Though, I’ll definitely admit that it’s sometimes hard to decipher their door times from show starting times and in this case I misread and ended up arriving FAR earlier than I ever have, but that’s just me griping. Even being in line about an hour and a half before opening couldn’t wreck my spirits. I was about to thrust myself into the noisiest room in Los Angeles. I was about to see Boris and the Melvins.

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Film Review: Juliet, Naked

It’s only rock and roll, but I like it

Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke in JULIET, NAKED. Photo credit: Alex Bailey. Courtesy of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions
Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke star in Juliet, Naked.

What fun it is to have heroes who live perfect romantic lives in our imaginations. How satisfying is it to cherry-pick snippets of their lives, served to us on podcasts or through fawning interview pieces, which invite us to a front row seat to learn of their creative process, or the inspirations that led them to their best works, works which come to us like a pristine seashell discovered on a summertime beach.

We willfully crowd-out hazy moments of doubt, when we wonder about what it must have been like to live with, or love, or even just share extended lengths of time with our heroes. It’s too easy to drift lazily back to the film, or the novel, or the album, and back to our mental fanboy scrapbook.

Juliet, Naked, the implausible but devastatingly charming new film from Jesse Peretz, efficiently manages to show us the artist as both outwardly alluring and inwardly shattered, and sketches a portrait that convinces us to have sympathy for how the creative life can leave so much wreckage, and so many casualties, and yet produce compelling beauty and truth. Continue reading “Film Review: Juliet, Naked“

Film Review: The Wife

Close’s powerhouse performance elevates marital melodrama 

Joan (Glenn Close) reacts as her husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce) receives some good news.

What sacrifices are acceptable for the sake of art? For marriage? Swedish director Björn Runge explores these questions in his new film The Wife, which, if nothing else, may become the film most remembered for netting six-time Academy Award nominee Glenn Close her first Oscar. Close’s performance is the best reason to see the picture, which manages to thoughtfully present serious themes while teetering on the edge of melodrama.

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Film Review: We the Animals

Where the wild things draw

Evan Rosado as Jonah in We the Animals.

Racing, clawing, screaming, drumming, dreaming their way through an impoverished childhood are three young boys at the center of Jeremiah Zagar’s heartfelt but lacking film We the Animals.

Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Justin Torres, Zagar’s film locates its heart, its head, and its attitude squarely with Jonah, played by Evan Rosado.  As the youngest of three boys, Jonah prefers drawing to fighting, and dreaming to adolescent scheming. In upstate New York, where Jonah and his brothers play out their childhoods, dangerous overpasses become impromptu playgrounds, and wild runs through the woods can take up whole afternoons. TV, video games, even radios are nowhere to be found. These are semi-feral boys left to their own devices for long periods of time.

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Outside Lands 2018: 27 Instant Gig Reviews

Ate a lot of food. Got a lot of steps. But it was mostly Janet Jackson.

All photos by Dakin Hardwick unless otherwise noted

Outside Lands reached its 11th birthday this year. I’ve been to ten of those eleven installments. This year, the folks booking the festival decided it was time to take some risks… They added an extra stage for acoustic sets and magic, called “Cocktail Magic.” They added a whole pot awareness area (not that folks at a music festival need to be *more* aware of weed). Continue reading “Outside Lands 2018: 27 Instant Gig Reviews”

Theater Review: Eugene O’Neill Foundation’s Powerful One-Woman Show I Will Speak for Myself

Kimberly S. Fairbanks brings to life a collection of 15 women in a one-woman show. Photo courtesy of Alison Bodden, 2018.

“Can you name three African-American women who lived before 1865?”

Playwright and director Valerie Joyce set out on a mission to answer that question. A span of 250 years, and yet, complete silence. Not atypical, as women of color’s voices have had a long history of being diminished; none of us are shocked that, beside a few big names like Harriet Tubman, we come up blank. And if we can recall, we most definitely do not hear their stories spoken in their own words. Continue reading “Theater Review: Eugene O’Neill Foundation’s Powerful One-Woman Show I Will Speak for Myself“

Film Review: BlacKkKlansman

Lee’s tonally uneven picture diminishes impact of relevant, astonishing true story  

Colorado Springs detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrates the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Released just two days before the one year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville, VA white nationalist rally and this Sunday’s “Unite the Right” white nationalist DC march, and coming on the heels of the recent Proud Boys/Patriot Prayer “Western chauvinist” gatherings in Portland and Berkeley, director Spike Lee’s polemical new film BlacKkKlansman is both relevant and disheartening in the way it reveals how little has changed in the 40+ years since the based-on-a-true story takes place. That the film’s message remains topical and necessary is indisputable; that it’s executed so poorly, then, is a disappointment.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Rae Livingston and David Owen of Outside Lands, Pt 2

Rae Livingston and David Owen both help book the Barbary at Outside Lands, and have for several years now. This, is course, means they have a lot to talk about. So we split the interview in two, because we here at Spinning Platters understand that your time is precious. In this one, we talk about the bookings that they are most excited about this year, as well as some favorite memories of passed years.

If you missed part one, it’s right here! And if you still haven’t purchased tickets yet, what are you waiting for? You can find those right here!

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Spinning Platters Interview: Rae Livingston and David Owen of Outside Lands, Pt 1

Outside Lands generally does quite well with the music lineup. However, I have always thought that the real gold at the festival has been the bookings for the Barbary. This year, we finally found time in their busy schedule to talk to some of the people behind those amazing bookings: Rae Livingston of Another Planet and David Owen of SF Sketchfest. We got to spend a little time with them to discuss the history of the stage, the booking process and their careers, and for a bit, we just got to nerd out about comedy.

Limited 3 Day and single day tickets to Outside Lands are still available! You can also check the full Barbary schedule!

SPINNING PLATTERS: So you’ve got Another Planet and SF Sketchfest, both doing that booking. How does that collaboration work? Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Rae Livingston and David Owen of Outside Lands, Pt 1”

Interview: Actress Kelly Macdonald and Director Marc Turtletaub

Actress Kelly Macdonald and director Marc Turtletaub discuss their new indie film Puzzle

Puzzle director Marc Turtletaub with lead actress Kelly Macdonald. (photo by Alex Geranios)

A neglected housewife turns the tables on her dull life by enrolling in a jigsaw puzzle competition in the new film Puzzle, one of the breakout hits at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Director Marc Turtletaub and lead actress Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting) are the first to admit that a movie about competitive puzzle building may not be at the top of everyone’s must-see list, and yet the duo have managed to make a compelling movie despite those odds.
 
The pair recently traveled to San Francisco to promote Puzzle and found that the Bay Area reception to their movie was just as rapturous as the one on the festival circuit. We recently sat down with them to talk about the movie, and the following is a transcription of that conversation.

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