This illustrious publication once had a fruitful relationship with California Repertory Co., the professional theater troupe that was the graduate-level arm of Cal State Long Beach’s (CSULB) theater department. In our mere infancy, we profiled the praised and reviled critic, director and playwright Charles Marowitz, who had recently been hired as dramaturg. A few years […]
Newsletter - Arts - Lead
Cambodia Town Film Festival Returns for a Sixth Year of Amazing Programming
Over the past six years, the Cambodia Town Film Festival has established itself as a celebration of Khmer culture by sharing a wide scope of films either made in Cambodia, focused on Cambodian issues or made by Cambodian filmmakers. Set in Long Beach, the hub for the Cambodian community, this year’s cinematic span offers indie, […]
At the 25-Year Mark, QFilm Fest Is as Relevant as Ever
UPDATE: Mapplethorpe and Wild Nights with Emily are Big QFilm Award Winners As my colleague Aimee Murillo mentioned in her Horrible Imaginings Film Festival preview last week, September is when the fall film festival season kicks off, so it is fitting that the 25th anniversary of Long Beach’s longest-running film fest happens in the beginning […]
Horrible Imaginings Film Festival Celebrates Classic and Indie Horror Films
The fall film festival season starts in September, so expect to see more coverage of local events that champion indie films across various genres and cultures in these pages. This weekend, the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival takes over the Frida Cinema to present bizarre, fantastic and exceptional horror, thriller and sci-fi films, shorts and special […]
A New OC-Centric Play Proves That Shakespeare Isn’t Dead Yet
Some 450 years after his death, William Shakespeare still won’t shut up. Case in point: Two new plays currently receiving their debut productions in Orange County wouldn’t exist but for Shakespearean inspiration. Darren Andrew Nash’s Allegory of the Cave, part of the eighth-annual OC-Centric new-play festival, leans on the literary spirit of Shakespeare’s ill-fated Ophelia […]
A Sanctuary of Old California Art Closes After 20 Years
Lost amid the industrial buildings and automotive businesses that line Artesia Boulevard in Bellflower is a preserved California and Western America art sanctuary. Inside, the aroma of old books, natural musk (not the stuff modern-day hippies wear) creates a familiar feeling of home. Wood panels hug the walls while tan shag carpet cushions your feet. […]
Long Beach Playhouse’s The Twentieth-Century Way Brings the City’s Rainbow History Back Home
Long Beach—OC’s poor redheaded stepchild to the east (if east means west, that is), a city with no identity or economic or cultural import—does have some merits. Yes, Iowa-by-the-Sea remains as electrifying as that long-scuttled nickname would suggest, but the so-called International City sure has a lot of ships that visit. And you can ride […]
Hungary’s 1945 Is a Horror Masterpiece
The new Hungarian film 1945 has everything going for it that a great monster movie does. It begins with simple villagers going about their lives, preparing for a joyous wedding celebration on a warm summer evening. The train stationmaster recognizes a potential existential threat from the outside that ever-so-slowly inches toward town. When he warns […]
New Swan and the Wayward Artist Break Free of the Bad Shakespeare Rap
Theatrically speaking, summer means Shakespeare. A lot of Shakespeare. Too much Shakespeare. And all too often over the past 20-plus years, these eyes and ears have been bored to the edge of the existential abyss by directors and actors who tackle material they can’t handle—and who look and sound awful while doing it. Which is […]
Andrea Patrie and ‘It’s Time’ Exhibits in Santa Ana Take on the Most Uncomfortable of Topics
Painter/sculptor Andrea Patrie doesn’t give a fuck if you’re uncomfortable. Her sculptures at the new Fourth Element Gallery are creepy, corpsey, totemic things, naked, their faces animalistic, more suggested than represented. The figures rest in a Buddhist stance amid garish pink carpet (Clay Series #1) or are presented as a sitting male figure with a […]
The China Hustle Exposes a Local Tie to a Still-Unfolding Financial Threat
The China Hustle—an engrossing documentary that exposes, as Vanity Fair put it, “the biggest financial scandal you’ve never heard of”—begins with images of high rises and bustling downtowns against the conciliatory words of President Richard Nixon toward America’s then-enemy, the People’s Republic of China. Great, I thought to myself while taking this in, right from […]
Magical Visions Inhabit a New Exhibit at Hilbert Museum of California Art
Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was something of a boondoggle when it opened in 1959. Critics were unimpressed, many convinced that this particular goldmine had been dug one too many times before. Back at a time when reviews mattered, audiences stayed away in droves, and the film tanked at the box office. It was an expensive, […]
Burlesque Superstar Dita Von Teese Performs Sold-Out Homecoming Show at the House of Blues Anaheim
Miss Dita Von Teese may not have been the type to be named homecoming queen when she was a student at University High in Irvine in 1990 (she was too busy staying home perfecting her craft and building the empire she now sits proudly on the throne of, after all) but she had a homecoming […]
Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town is an Inventive Indie
Watching Mackenzie Davis in the low-budget indie Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town had me thinking about Cary Grant in that most Hollywood of classics, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. That’s not because of the acting by the leads, which is masterful in both, but because Davis spends most of Izzy’s 86-minute runtime sweating up […]
‘Summer of Color’ Brings Walls of Street Art to the Laguna Arts District
The animals charge northward across the west-facing wall of the Fuse Building: horse, goose, snake, wolf and tiger. The creatures have a transparency, as if they were projected, and the guide marks used in the mural’s execution are clearly visible. The words Creatio Continua are emblazoned behind the beasts, assuring us creation/creativity is indestructible, while […]
OC Weekly’s Midyear Guide to the Best Local Theater
It’s summertime, and even though the living ain’t always the easiest, OC summertime sure beats the hell out of Stockton summertime. And for those of you who want to immerse yourself in a little bit of artsy-fartsy culture, there’s plenty of stuff both inside and outside, theatrically speaking, to satisfy that most perverse of urges. […]
Keep the AC Running for Our Summer 2018 Film Preview!
It’s been a good year so far for movies. And while audiences are plugged into online streaming services such as Netflix or Hulu (and with good reason—have you seen Wild Wild Country yet?!), it can be hard to pay attention to what’s coming to the big screen, too. That’s why I’ve come up with this […]
![The Cog•nate Collective, Amy Sanchez Arteaga and Misael Diaz, Create Art Through Research [OC People 2018]](https://www.ocweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/culture-cognate-collective-credit-John-Gilhooley-1-348x180.jpg)
The Cog•nate Collective, Amy Sanchez Arteaga and Misael Diaz, Create Art Through Research [OC People 2018]
As artists in residence at Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) for four years, Amy Sanchez Arteaga and Misael Diaz (a.k.a. the Cog•nate Collective) have established a presence beyond the gallery through a series of public interventions in Santa Ana, Tijuana, Los Angeles and Mexicali. The two have focused their practice on sparking dialogue on issues […]
![Glenn Brumage Spreads the Stoke as the Ambassador of Surf [OC People 2018]](https://www.ocweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/culture-glen-brumage-credit-John-Gilhooley-2-348x180.jpg)
Glenn Brumage Spreads the Stoke as the Ambassador of Surf [OC People 2018]
Long before Glenn Brumage began serving on Surfing Heritage and Culture Center’s (SHACC) board in 2014, he had been fulfilling its vision to “spread the stoke” of surfing with the world. As of January, he became the San Clemente nonprofit’s executive director and gets to focus full-time on its mission of sharing the sport’s history […]
Hurricane-Force Musical Hamilton Touches Land at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts
What do you write about a play that has been so written about, talked about, dissected, analyzed and been christened as the Big Theatrical Thing? We’re talking, of course, about Hamilton, the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical that is an international sensation. It entered the American political conversation after Vice President Mike Pence attended a show in […]
A Collegial Appreciation of Laguna Project Mastermind and BC Space Curator Mark Chamberlain
BC Space curator Mark Chamberlain died April 23. He was 75. In lieu of retelling his accomplishments, so numerous they wouldn’t fit on this page, I asked his local friends and colleagues to briefly write what he meant to them. Lev Anderson, documentary filmmaker: “A self-proclaimed river rat, Mark relished any opportunity to talk about […]