Vol 07 Issue 10

FOOD

MUSIC

NEWS

ART

MOVIES

MORE FOR LOS ANGELES

MARCH 5-11, 2009 VOL 7 NO 10 • LACITYBEAT.COM • FREE EVERY THURSDAY • USE YOUR INDOOR FINGERS, PLEASE

FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN WATCHING THE WATCHABLE WATCHMEN

END OF THE LINE FISHING IN THE FECAL MATTER OF THE L.A. RIVER

CAN I CRASH HERE? ROAD-TRIP REVIVAL FILMS AT CINEFAMILY

AKRON/FAMILY • R.I.P. ROBERT QUARRY • THE RETURN OF ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

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LACITYBEAT 2 MARCH 5-11, 2009

CONTENTS March 5-11, 2009 volume 7 issue 10

charles mussi/zuma press

Corvettes Courtesy of Martin Chevrolet (310) 378-0211

2009 Corvette GIVEAWAY DATES:

08 On the Cover

“For the sake of this story I will posit that every grower is, due to certain skill sets and predilections, essentially the same kind of guy. All growers have three shitty houses but don’t live anywhere in particular; all growers are trigger hippies who learned to drink in the army and don’t like to have a boss; all growers have a truck, a dog and an ex-girlfriend with an axe to grind, etc. I don’t know if crime makes clichés come true or if it’s the other way around, but I would guess that a variation of the following drama is acted out in remote camps across Humboldt every year at harvest time.” Writer Dave Reeves reports from the pot farms of Northern California

05 News

Nathaniel Page goes fishing with L.A. River regulars – those who fish for fun and those who fish for dinner. William Lobdell lost his faith in God covering religion for the L.A. Times, and he has some advice for the Christians trying to lure him back into the fold

12 Film

James Dawson says the charmingly odd, notfor-kiddies Watchmen is stranger, sexier and darker than The Dark Knight. Ron Garmon figures that future historians won’t have to

search very hard for gorgeous examples of “the way it really was”: they’ll have the 1974 original Gone in 60 Seconds

and having your Players’ Club card scanned each hour.

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18 Music

“Chopping together the kinds of songs Akron/ Family likes to play all night would have been as fluid and natural as engineering Led Zeppelin from a Dewey Decimal index on Blues, American.” By Chris Ziegler. Tom Child on Animal Collective’s live show: “The band slid in and out of songs, tempos and melodic lines with astounding dexterity, understanding exactly what their fans had shown up to hear: their favorite songs, played much louder.”

20 Theater

As the struggling underclass quickly expands, the time is right to revisit two quasi-operatic musicals, The Threepenny Opera and Rent. By Don Shirley

22 Food

“Although the defining dishes have changed over the decades, the focus on food has been a constant in the Farmers Market.” Miles Clements celebrates the Market’s 75 years at Third and Fairfax Cover Photo by Charles Mussi/Zuma Press

MANAGING Editor Tom Child Executive Editor Chris Ziegler Senior Editor Matthew Fleischer Arts Editor Ron Garmon Copy Editor Joshua Sindell Editorial Contributors Miles Clements, Alan Rich, Richard Foss, Carl Kozlowski, Joe Piasecki, Don Shirley, Greg Stacy, Jeffrey Anderson, Cornel Bonca, David Cotner, Daiana Feuer, Oliver Hall RESEARCH Guelda Voien Editorial Interns Sarah Tressler Art Director Paul Takizawa Web & Print Production Manager Meghan Quinn Classified Production Artist Tac Phun Contributing Artists and Photographers Joe McGarry, Luke McGarry, Josh Reiss, Rosheila Robles Sales DIrector Michael DeFilippo Sales Supervisor Bill Child Co-op Advertising Director Spencer Cooper Music & Entertainment Sales Manager Jon Bookatz Account Executives Patrick Hodgins, Andy Enriquez, Alex Kaptsan, John Schoenkopf, Jean-Paul Lamunyon VP of Operations David Comden VP of Finance Michael Nagami Human Resources Manager Andrea Baker Accounting Ginger Wang, Archie Iskaq, Tracy Lowe, Christie Lee, Angela Wang (Business Manager) Circulation Supervisor Andrew Jackson Receptionist Candon Murry Publisher Will Swaim LA CITYBEAT newspaper is published every Thursday and is available free at locations throughout Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. One copy per reader, additional copies are $10 each. Copyright: No articles, illustrations, photographs, or other editorial matter or advertisements herein may be reproduced without written permission of copyright owner.

All rights reserved, 2009.

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Finding answers together - since 1986

GIVE US A CALL SOMETIME In “Sex Abuse Means Never Having to Say ‘Sorry’” (February 25), reporter Matthew Fleisher throws up a wall of words, hoping that something will stick. Nothing does. He continues to try to create the impression that there’s a lawsuit against the Archdiocese. Fact remains: there isn’t one.

Lawyer Vince Finaldi validated my point that neither the Archdiocese or Cardinal Mahony is named in the complaint when he said, “defendants can’t actually be named until the discovery period of the trial.” He also confirmed my point that the complaint is merely at the hearing stage when he added that the judge has yet to issue – and may not issue – “a certificate of corroborative fact.”

Inexplicably, Finaldi then boldly goes where he just said both he and the Court have not gone, by personally “confirming” that the cardinal and archdiocese are defendants in the suit.

Huh? There’s that little issue of court that stands between reality and Mr. Finaldi’s personal “confirmation.”

As for the plaintiff ’s Iraqi veteran status, I simply observed that the original complaint never mentioned any word about Iraq. That’s true, Mr. Fleisher. Read the complaint. And if the plaintiff ’s war status is true and important, than why isn’t it mentioned in the complaint?

Interesting that Fleisher tip-toes around addressing what is perhaps the most intriguing question: Why did the plaintiff allege in his original complaint that the priest only “tried to touch” him? Later, when he discovered that this didn’t constitute sexual abuse, the complaint was amended to say that he was groped? Again, Mr. Fleisher, if you’d read the actual complaint, you’d have discovered that right after the groping allegation, the complaint still retains the words “tried to touch.”

But let’s not let facts get in the way of a good press release, Mr. Fleisher. John Manly’s law firm has a trusting and easyto-convince friend in you.

Tod Tamberg Director of Media Relations Archdiocese of Los Angeles Matthew Fleischer responds: Well, now Tod Tamberg is just being silly.

Vince Finaldi is a lawyer for the plaintiff; he knows who his client is suing – the archdiocese. And as I pointed out in the article, we don’t have to take Finaldi’s word for it: Hennigan, Bennett & Dorman, the Archdiocesan law firm, filed a “Memorandum of Points and Authorities” that describes John TH Doe’s suit as a “complaint against the Los Angeles Archdiocese.” As walls of words go, those are pretty hard to get around. As for John TH Doe’s service in Iraq: it’s not relevant to the legal case. But Tamberg’s anxiety over it suggests that he thinks (as I do) that it surely makes for a more compelling

LACITYBEAT 4 March 5-11, 2009

news story. Again, it’s why they call me a reporter and not a “director of media relations.” Finally, Tamberg’s allegation that John TH Doe has no legitimate complaint because an L.A.-trained priest only “tried to touch” a child’s genitals seems bizarre to us, and we’d like to discuss this further. Tamberg should therefore take note of Finaldi’s strategy in this regard – and return our phone calls.

And message to Tod: call me a hack, but spell my name correctly, will you?

SHAME ON US Re: “Our Own Private Afghanistan,” February 25: Shame on Jeffrey Anderson and Matthew Fleischer’s editors and those who believe their stories without checking facts. This is particularly shoddy “reporting.” Nothing even approaches an effort to have objective reporting.

As NBC 4 reported, it seems likely that Garcia staged these stunts himself. I’m more inclined to believe the analysis at http://southeastcities.blogspot.com.

I think Anderson is either (1) being used by [Cudahy City Council candidate Luis] Garcia and [his running mate Daniel] Cota to help them in the election, or (2) he is a willing participant. Either way, it’s reporting at its worst.

Certainly anyone who is objective would question Garcia, Cota and [Cudahy Councilwoman Rosa] Diaz’s motives for pushing forward these stories of vandalism that oddly have not occurred in any arrests.

NewsWatchDog Via LACityBeat.com Anyone with half a brain who lives in Cudahy doesn’t find this article too difficult to believe. It’s the courage of writers like Anderson and Fleischer that shed light on issues and activities that are all too often overlooked. It takes courage to take a stand against a machine that has gained strength by making others feel helpless.

NewsWatchDog can make whatever unfounded allegations he wants to in regard to the reporters or the candidates running against the incumbents, but his allegations make him sound nuttier than his belief that all of these documented events are false.

I applaud the effort of anyone willing to stand up for the voiceless and champion a vision that is in stark contrast to a dark world of corruption and crime.

Sergio Via LACityBeat.com DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS In our March 25 profile of the band Pocahaunted (Daiana Feuer’s “A and O: Beyond resuscitation with Pocahaunted”), we misspelled the name of drummer Ged Gengras. We regret the error.

Send letters to editor@lacitybeat.com or do it up old school: Letters to the Editor, L.A. CITY BEAT, 5209 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036.

photos by nathaniel page

NEWS

If you’re hungry, why not?

Fishermen battle over shit-sucking carp in the L.A. River

By Nathaniel Page Mario stands on the concrete bank of the Los Angeles River in cracked boots and paint-stained denims, holding the end of a fishing line. He stares resolutely at the other end, circling in a black eddy at his feet. Mario’s face and hands reflect two decades of beer, freebase cocaine and general construction.

Lately, though, with the collapse of the housing market, the Guatemalan immigrant has had little better to do than fish. When he catches something, he’ll boil it intact: “If you’re hungry, why not?” he says through a Marlboro.

“Even the head,” he adds, with a lick of his parched lips. “You buy tacos on the street, you don’t know where that came from, either.”

Every day, people fish on the naturalbottomed Glendale Narrows section of the river. There are two main groups: those like Mario who wouldn’t think of throwing back a perfectly good fish, and those who wouldn’t think of eating one. With few exceptions, the eaters are immigrants – Latino and Asian – the sportsmen comfortable Caucasians.

All the fishermen are seeking the same species, the solidly blue-collar carp – the most common fish in the river. Most American anglers consider carp a loathsome sucker indicative of a sick watershed. In Japan, England and continental Europe, however, sport fishermen consider them a respectable adversary. Americans are catching on, and

the fly fishing community has burgeoned on the L.A. River in recent years.

“There are two reasons we’re here,” says John Yancey. “It’s five minutes from our house, and carp are a fun, fighting fish.”

The sportsmen tend to gather upstream of the Hyperion Avenue Bridge, while those with pigment stay downstream of Fletcher. The two groups cross paths between Fletcher and Hyperion, and the usual WASP-versusimmigrant bickering ensues.

“Only the Mexicans eat that shit, and I’m not a Mexican,” says Doug Poulin of Atwater Village, casting near a torrent pouring from the Glendale Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Technically, both the sportsmen and the sustenance-seekers are engaged in a misdemeanor. Los Angeles City Park Rangers spottily enforce an ordinance that prohibits “loitering or remaining” on the riverbed. The fly fishermen seem to suffer worse persecution for it, though.

The sportsmen’s preference for pools near Griffith Park may be why. Park Rangers reckon that their dominion includes the bike path running along one edge of the river from Riverside to Fletcher, because it is maintained by the Parks Department. They use that scrap of legitimacy to banish anglers.

Head Ranger Albert Torres claims that he is beholden by the spirit of equality to do so. If he kicks out a vagrant camping

on the river bed, he says, it is only fair for him to kick out everyone else, too. Furthermore, “Duck Man” – Tony Taylor, who feeds the ducks and geese near Hyperion – often forces the issue by summoning Rangers to the scene.

Taylor hates all fishermen.

A gaptoothed old country boy, his love for ducks and geese developed on an Indiana farm.

Both the Mexicans and the sport fishermen are irresponsible lawbreakers and litterbugs, he says. They fishing leave behind hooks for and line in which his trouble beloved birds become tangled.

Recently, Taylor rescued a pair of geese with line wrapped around their legs.

In a YouTube video, Taylor and fisherman Carmelo Gaeta verbally tussle.

“Why don’t you go drown in the river, you motherfucking spic!” Taylor screams.

Reflecting on the incident, Taylor is only slightly more diplomatic.

“Carmelo is just like the rest of ’em,” he says on a recent cloudy day in Atwater. “He wades out in the middle of the river. If he gets swept away, the fire department is gonna have to come rescue his sorry ass.”

Each rescue, Taylor says, can cost taxpayers thousands of dollars. LA City Fire Department Captain Tina Haro says three people were rescued from the river in 2008.

Taylor would like to see the river become an exclusive wildlife refuge.

“I don’t have much use for people,” he says. “They’re irresponsible.”

Though he has nothing against vagrants, he adds, they do sometimes shit in the river.

Despite Taylor’s pleas, the Rangers never venture south of Fletcher, where a tree-root-torn crust of asphalt replaces the bike path. Since the LAPD has more pressing concerns, immigrant fishermen like Felix Martinez are left unmolested.

Martinez fishes with his family beside the pilings of the Glendale Freeway Bridge. He limps with a strange gait on a permanently bent leg. Accompanying him on a recent afternoon, a fat middleaged Latino woman nurses Miller High Life while her children amuse themselves loudly, surrounded by broken glass. Felix’s uncle, an illiterate geriatric from rural Chihuahua named Roberto, commands two giant sea-

MARCH 5-11, 2009 5 LACITYBEAT

fishing poles nearby. Between them, they pull out a fish every 10 to 20 minutes, smashing each on the head straight away and tossing them in a sun-baked plastic bag.

“We saw a police once, maybe six months ago,” Felix says. “He didn’t do anything.”

No such luck for the sportsmen.

Bob Moore of the Pasadena Casting Club fishes with a fancy fly rod at the Glendale sewage outlet pool, wearing a vest with a fishing license clipped to its collar and sporting a white mustache. He looks like a member of Dick Cheney’s Jackson Hole entourage.

One of the Rangers’ recent victims is his colleague Harry, an old angler who stopped showing up after he had an unidentified female Ranger “read him the riot act,” Moore says.

Like Moore and most of the licensed fishermen, John Yancy is miffed that the Mexicans get away with fishing without licenses. He accuses them of doing far worse. They take scores of carp out of the river and stalk the lake in Lincoln Park, he says. The Rangers should be busting them instead, he says, as well as Tony Taylor, who is committing a “federal crime” by feeding migratory birds.

The poor quality of the water is perhaps the only thing on which both the bourgeois and the proletariat agree. During dry weather, the river is composed entirely of outflow from sewage treatment plants like Glendale’s.

The plants filter the sewage so well that it comes out as clear as a mountain spring. But a mysterious soup builds up behind the heavy steel outlet doors of storm drains – the unofficial trash can of ten million people. Rains flush the drains all at once, swelling the river with bloated dog corpses, crackhead shit, transmission fluid, marinated pigeon guts, battery acid, millions of cigarette butts – a bubbling cauldron of hepatitis.

The mixture runs swift and cloudy down the channel.

Edward Belden of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Watershed Council vacillates incorrigibly when asked about levels of pollution in the L.A. River.

“I can’t really answer that question,” he says. “There’s no simple answer.”

Would Edward eat an L.A. River carp?

“You know, I’ll have to check the latest metrics and get back to you about that,” he says.

“It’s filthy,” Mario admits as an aerosol can drifts past his toes. He pulls his hooks in, and they come up laden with thick green algae, part of an annual bloom fed by fertilizer runoff.

“My wife doesn’t like it so much,” he says, flicking his cigarette butt into the water. ✶

NEWS reading the best Christian works throughout history. Like you, I hope, I’ve read Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, G.K. Chesterton, St. Theresa of Lisieux and others. If those giants can’t convince me God is real, no other author will.

Threatening an eternity in hell This is another standard tactic, filled with Christian love. The e-mailers are usually succinct, writing something along these lines: “I hope you’re prepared for an eternity in hell.”

I’m not sure whether I’m headed for hell, but do know that someone can’t magically believe in Jesus just because they are threatened.

Giving me a Christian movie Left Behind. Facing the Giants. One Night with the King. Do you understand how awful popular Christian movies are? Any film in that genre would tend to reinforce my atheism. Stop sending them to me.

LOST his religion

Abandon all hope, Christians An open letter to Christians from a former ‘Times’ religion reporter

By William Lobdell I may be the most prayed-for atheist in America.

Since my memoir – Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America – and Found Unexpected Peace – was released last week, I’ve received scores of e-mails and phone calls assuring me that God hasn’t give up on me and that I’ve been put on various prayer lists around the world.

So far, it’s not working.

Losing My Religion details my journey from a gung-ho evangelical Christian who became a religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times (I thought God had answered my prayers) to a reluctant atheist because of what I saw in eight years on the faith beat. Because the book isn’t a rant against religion – it’s more a story of a love found and lost – I’m seen by many as re-convertible. And if I returned to the fold, my testimony would be a valuable commodity within the evangelical community.

Several Christians boldly predict that my next book will be Finding My Religion Again or something along

those lines. To that end, I’ve been sent a small mountain of Christian books, pamphlets, DVDs, CDs, and workbooks that the senders promise will hook me back up with God. To save everyone time and effort, let me tell you what absolutely won’t work: Sending me scripture verses This super-popular approach is problematic. First, I’ve studied the Bible quite a bit, so it’s not like there’s a passage I haven’t read that will instantly restore my belief in God. And more to the point, I no longer believe the Bible is the Word of God, so passages of scripture no longer hold supreme meaning for me; they’re fascinating from a sociological or literary perspective, but they’re not history. Sending me a Bible passage would be like a Latter-Day Saint sending you – an evangelical Christian – a passage from the Book of Mormon to prove Mormonism is true. It just doesn’t work.

Handing me a book by a believer As a Christian, I’ve spent two decades

Asking me to have lunch or to attend a specific church It took me four years of investigation, study and internal struggle before I could finally admit to myself that I had lost my faith. Ninety minutes over a cheeseburger with your pastor isn’t going to bring it back.

Debating the truth about Christianity with me Look, Christian apologists (defenders of the faith) can be very intelligent.

So can Christian critics. Generally, debate in this area changes no one’s mind. Having read the arguments on both sides, I put in with the critics.

For me, there’s no point in rehashing it all – unless someone comes armed with a new argument or evidence.

Perhaps you can sense a double standard here. An army of Christians is trying to pry me away from atheism by any argument necessary, with no invitation or apologies. (An e-mail just landed in my inbox with the subject line: “I have all the answers to your questions.”) But you wouldn’t expect to see a high-profile Christian bombarded by atheists trying to ruin his faith. Unless provoked (conservative Christians’ influence on politics and society sparked the recent New Atheist movement), atheists have a live and let live mentality. Christians can learn from them.

But wait, my Christian friends say.

We believe Jesus has commanded us to bring lost sheep back into the fold. It’s our duty. If that’s the case, I’d suggest you follow the words of St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

In other words, make Christianity attractive to outsiders through your actions. And retire the rest of your conversion material. ✶ William Lobdell will talk and sign copies of Losing My Religion Friday, 7 p.m., at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 4495320.

Neither mod, nor rocker You are the mockingbird that has moved into the tree beside my window. At the ass-crack of dawn, you just start noodling away: chirping, clucking, warbling, whistling, letting loose whatever comes to your walnut mind. Your incessant, aimless, haphazard montage is lifted from the songs of superior songbirds, telephones, car alarms, and whatever else you happen to hear or not hear. You’re like a talentless cover band that doesn’t focus on any particular genre. You have no sense of melody, rhythm, scale, or harmony, and you bite all your lyrics. You have no respect for the ancient art of music, and whenever I get fed up and go outside to upbraid you, you dive-bomb me, ostensibly to protect your mediocre nest, so that you can hatch more of the same cacophony.

You’ve even bitten me on the ear, flapping in my hair. Who do you think you are? This is private property. Mockingbird, you’re a failure of a songbird. Learn to whistle something pleasant before I climb your tree and cook an omelet.

–Anonymous

Sing a song of spleen: E-mail your City Bitch to tomc@lacitybeat.com.

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2/26/09 9:17:52 AM

The Kindest Cut

Trimming Weed and Fleeing Feds on the way home from humboldt

by dave reeves

I

n 1996, Californians passed a proposition called 215 that allowed a citizen to go to a doctor to get certified as demented enough that a federally banned vegetable substance known as a “joint” is the only remedy. The doctor gets a hundred dollars. The citizen gets a number, a little patch and, if things go a certain way, a free ride to a special federal camp.

The distinction between state’s rights and federal law has led to some lively debates, most notably “The War of Northern Aggression” (1861-1865), after which it was deemed that, in spite of the Constitution, feds make the laws and states shut up. Now there’s a bill in the state assembly that could legalize marijuana for everyone in the state. But even if AB 390 is signed into law, so sorry, California – weed is still illegal in the U.S. This has created a situation where growers, thinking they can cultivate legal weed behind their Prop. 215 permission slip, get robbed by federal agents. The grower can’t call the sheriff, and the number at the U.N. is always busy.

If the production of weed were legal, trimming weed in Humboldt would be a lot like the seasonal job of stomping wine in France. It

is not legal, so trimming weed in Humboldt is like cooking meth in Kentucky. What can I tell you about going to work on a weed farm that the Grower, the Trimmers and the Landowner won’t kill me for? Soft criminals are especially tense about getting put in cages by men with guns.

F

or the sake of this story I will posit that every grower is, due to certain skill sets and predilections, essentially the same kind of guy. All growers have three shitty houses but don’t live anywhere in particular; all growers are trigger hippies who learned to drink in the army and don’t like to have a boss; all growers have a truck, a dog and an ex-girlfriend with an axe to grind, etc. I don’t know if crime makes clichés come true or if it’s the other way around, but I would guess that a variation of the following drama is acted out in remote camps across Humboldt every year at harvest time.

LACITYBEAT 8 MARCH 5-11, 2009

The first nights at the camp were the loudest nights. It was rumored that a Mexican gang was pistol-whipping and robbing growers around the valley. So the neighbors would let off a shot, and we’d follow suit, letting the theoretical Mexican gang know that the whole mountain stood in a steady state of readiness or madness.

It had yet to dawn on me what was fishy about the Mexican gang rumor because after a day of cop watch reports and terrible music on radio station KMUD, my brain was washed of all sense. I was ready to believe anything.

The main camp consisted of a reclaimed meth trailer, an outdoor kitchen and a drying shack made of some found wood: exactly the same as one of those tobacco shanties you see slouching haphazardly around the South, except for the skunk reek. Outside the drying shack was the kitchen: a freestanding gas jet normally used to fry turkeys, a Coleman two-burner camping stove and a gas grill, all covered by an elegant tarp roof. The living room was comprised of several wonky chairs arranged in front of a fire pit cut into the road leading down to the greenhouse.

I considered myself lucky to be passing a bottle around out in the woods while the stars skated around the sky. The dirt road out in the middle of nowhere was Easy Street compared to the economic uncertainty of the real world down valley.

The Grower sang “All we are say-ing/ Is stay on your land” to the tune of “Give Peace a Chance” while merrily blasting a fresh-faced pumpkin away with his service .45. The jack-o-lantern’s bright eyes and toothy grin provided almost a half an hour of joy before his candle was snuffed. I let the tragedy ride. I was outgunned.

In the course of an evening, the simmer of pistols graduated into salvos of “deer rifles” gilded with small-arms glissades, until the show of force spent itself, leaving only a lonely nine pop-popping out an echo in the valley below. The percussion movement was in a magnum key and provided great comfort to all growers within earshot, but it like totally freaked out the hippy masseuse-slash-trimmers and their fat vegetarian mutts.

The Grower had set up a three-season R.E.I. tent in which I was to sleep and guard the fortune flowering in the lower greenhouse, despite all the best efforts of voles, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), the Department of Justice, the California Highway Patrol, the California National Guard, meth heads and the natural enemy of any Grower: the exgirlfriend.

Eventually, I drank enough to decamp to the tent hidden in the scrub. The natural camouflage that made it hard for helicopters to spot also made it hard to find at night in my whiskey shoes. Using my superior sense of direction and a flashlight, I was able to fall in one direction consistently until I fell onto something which proved to be my tent. Anticipating the character erosion of the untold riches I’d soon reap

for this work, I got in the tent and fell asleep quickly. I dreamt of a white owl, big as me, hooting in the halls of a great library.

Sometime later I woke to the sound of something breaking sticks and mumbling.

Mexicans? Ex-girlfriends? I had no way of telling – I was pistol-deaf and blind under the rain fly. Remembering from Spanish class that Mexican gangs never leave witnesses to warn the others that a Mexican gang is coming, I jumped out of the tent, butt-naked, hoping for the element of surprise. My flashlight beam froze a fawn and her mother, cracking their pistol-whips.

“Lo siento.”

And so I slept the rest of the night fitfully, for the camp was set up on a welltraveled deer trail.

D

awn was cold, as the sun couldn’t penetrate the Redwood canopy.

Getting out of a warm sleeping bag to shiver in the long shadows is always a matter of will and black coffee. As I trudged up the hill to the kitchen in the main camp, I passed through one of the few breaks in the thick forest and caught a glimpse of the one view allowed from the hidden hollow – out over the Humboldt fog wreathed at the base of the dry brown hills below.

The trimmers were already at work with KMUD on the camp radio as I put a pot of water to boil on the blue jet of the turkey fryer. All the trimmers were strong women with independent streaks that render them unemployable in the real world. They are the Grower’s new girlfriend (of course), a Lesbian Couple, and some badass café au lait chick from L.A. with Jimi Hendrix hair. The Lesbian Couple were pros, never missing a minute of trimming at the standard rate of $250 per pound. Years of scissorwork had wizened their eyes back in their heads, so they looked like two little possums futzing with the weed. The L.A. Trimmer and the new girlfriend were new to the trade, so they took time to eat breakfast.

The only accepted topics of conversations in Humboldt are what’s your sign, what you can’t eat or what dream you had. I told them about the white owl because I’m obviously an omnivorous Scorpio. The femme of the Lesbian Couple allowed that white owls were “harbingers of good fortune,” while her girl stole my coffee water to make oatmeal for her dog.

We had to listen to KMUD radio for the community safety and awareness report provided by the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project who watch for any big moves by law enforcement. Paranoia becomes more insidious when framed by the destitution of listening to “Legalize It” for the eleventy hundredth time.

We had been listening to terrible music for days when, finally, they came on the radio and announced: “This is KMUD with a citizens’ watch report. There are

three police trucks with ATVs on the back heading up Goose Creek Road. OK? Repeat: citizens’ watch has just got a call from a concerned citizen. They said they were heading up Goose Creek Road about three minutes ago.”

“That’s our road,” the Grower’s New Girlfriend pointed out.

The Lesbian Couple seemed unperturbed, but the L.A. Trimmer and the new girlfriend got up and started worrying, ready to run.

The Lesbian Couple shrugged. “It’s a long road.”

The sound of helicopters thundered over the valley. The Grower burst out of the reclaimed meth trailer: “Didn’t you hear the radio?” he asked, throwing water on the fire, sending up a big, puffy smoke signal. The helicopters passed over, on to bigger things.

The Grower’s actions were strange because he had all the Proposition 215 medical marijuana cards. The rule-ofthumb was that the local D.A. won’t bust for less than 99 plants, and the local sheriff won’t do anything the D.A. doesn’t like. The Grower also said that he thought a mom-and-pop operation like ours was unlikely to be busted, but then the Grower also thought that his exgirlfriend was going to be cool, and that hadn’t stopped her from showing up and acting like a maniac.

The pale face and bipolar dart of the Ex-Girlfriend’s eyes gave her that early Manson Family brio. Her pants were belled around her feet, so she walked on heels, her greasy, straight blonde hair parted in the middle. You could see the vein in her forehead jump when she yelled at the Grower, screaming at him for two hours – meaner than a soap opera. And then she left. We all breathed a sigh of relief and laughed at what had been a tense situation. Then she came back and caught us laughing.

“Ha ha, I’m real funny, huh? Don’t you ever fucking laugh at me.” She got in my face and I agreed with her, wanting no part of it.

“You got that, sister?”

She called the L.A. Trimmer “sister” because she’s kind of black, like brother Obama.

“Don’t ever laugh at me. Do you know that you’re trimming my weed right now?”

The L.A. Trimmer shot back, “Then you know that you should be here doing the work instead of standing around fucking me up.”

It is dangerous to pull a trimmer out of the focus required to sit and snip in a lopsided camp chair all day.

“Let’s just talk about what’s on my plate, sister.”

“I’m not your sister,” the L.A. Trimmer said.

“Yes, you are. And I will call you that, sister. Let’s talk about what you got on your plate.”

“This ain’t Oprah. Fuck around and call

MARCH 5-11, 2009 9 LACITYBEAT

me sister again. See what happens.”

The Ex-Girlfriend’s eyes bulged and she threatened to do what everyone told her she should have done a long time ago – leaving just what that was to our imaginations. And then she left. We laughed, quietly this time, lest she return.

T

he girlfriend’s sudden appearance cast a pall over the camp, and the Grower’s excuse of “Don’t worry about her, she’s just insane” was little comfort, considering what she could do with just a phone call to the right law enforcement agency. Soon every plane in the sky was feds.

So the Grower delivered the boilerplate pep talk for skittish pot camp employees: “Law guys won’t, as a rule, follow anyone into the woods for fear of booby traps. So, just hit the woods and they won’t follow you. I’ll show you the escape route, but you won’t need it.”

The escape route followed the extension of the deer path where my camp was and then ran downhill over a series of fences and through a gullywash where you can’t stop running or else you’ll slide and fall.

Then over a fence and though some poison oak only to come out at the Landowner’s contraband greenhouse.

“Then you go out to the road and act like you’re there to see what the helicopter is circling about.”

“Helicopter for us?”

“Or a plane. I guarantee that when CAMP comes it will be with a spotter. They come in low and circle around in what they call a ‘death spiral.’”

Since we were in the neighborhood, the Grower thought this might be a good occasion for me to meet the Landowner, who was as stereotypical as the rest of the cast of characters on the farm. The landowner is invariably a man living in the woods alone because some heartless wench has stolen his crops every year.

The problem is so prevalent that many growers who still mess with women insist on blindfolding their dates before bringing them back to their camps. Some even have a “no girlfriend” rule, having given up on wenches in general. This leads to a culture almost as devoid of women as hip-hop. Which is why guys like the Landowner happen.

Our Landowner is one of the old-school growers, and looks every bit of it: six-five, 270 pounds, about 60 with a shoulderlength bowl cut tied down with a bandanna, “Magaritaville” wife beater, flannel shirt, Daisy Duke shorts with his balls hanging out, tube socks and high top chucks. He is known to be a bad man.

The Grower is essentially a sharecropper to the Landowner and owes him 35 percent of the harvest take. So the Grower and the Landowner traded market rumors from town of “panic pounds” selling for $1,800; way below the accepted Pot Farm Bureau➤

Co-Op price of $3,000. Could these jumpy carpetbaggers make the bottom fall out?

Could it be that this whole weed-costingas-much-as-gold thing is just another California bubble?

A girl wearing rubber boots and a peacoat and a white dude with dreadlocks waved to us.

“This guy, he’s a good trimmer.”

“A dude that can trim?” said the Grower.

“Yeah, he has a wife,” the Landowner offered by way of explanation. Everyone knows men can’t trim. It’s one of those patriarchal generalizations, like white men can’t jump or girls can’t skate, which proves itself true often enough that even Proposition 8-types accept it.

Back at the camp, the Grower spent his time doing bong hits, marveling at how he must have at least 40 pounds of good weed (though he was afraid to tally it up and know for sure just yet). He was living the dream between calls from the Ex-Girlfriend.

The Grower would hang up his cell phone and update us: “There she goes threatening me again. I wish she would stop it.”

“What’s she saying?”

“Oh, she’s like she’s going to come up here and kill all of us,” he’d laugh, drinking the neck off a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now report played tape of some fool reporter getting stomped by a cop horse at the RNC. This made the Grower mad enough to subvert the dominant paradigm by getting around to harvesting some more weed. Without Democracy Now, getting Northern California hippies motivated is like herding cats, if cats went everywhere with fickle untrained dogs.

The Grower took me and his dog Mystre back up to the greenhouse. He cut plant tops and placed them

on strings. Then I plucked the emblematic seven-fingered marijuana water leaves until my latex gloves were gunked with pollen. Yes, the buds were all those marijuana words like “crip,” “juicy” and “dank.” Go get a glossy weed porno at the 7-Eleven if you want to read jargon about the architectural intricacies of a bubba OG kushtop because I’m over it. It’s a weed.

It shouldn’t cost as much as gold or put people in jail.

I

hauled the buds from the greenhouse to the drying room and hung them on strings to cure for trimming. Back and forth for many days and nights. Days burned away into weeks. I don’t know how long I was up there. Time wasn’t really my trip anymore. The monotony of country life wears the chat out of you. The group droned on, glued to the radio, stopping whenever the helicopters passed too close.

Things happened. They must have. The Grower and I would get drunk and shoot the place up to keep the camp safe from maniacs. We got good at running the escape route at night drunk as hell because … I forget why. Oh yeah, because it proved good training when the Grower went to town and the Ex-Girlfriend showed up and the shit hit the fan.

I was enjoying my role as the cook early one evening, bribing the trimmers with hot chai and fried turkey-Swiss sandwiches when the Ex showed up.

“Where the fuck is he?”

“He went to town.”

“When is he going to be back?”

“We don’t know.”

“Okay then – I guess I’ll wait.”

The Ex-Girlfriend took the strangest spot in the area, up at the top of the fire pit dug into the road. The trimmers did their best to not feel threatened as the ExGirlfriend lorded over them, seething.

“Why don’t you go wait somewhere else?” said the L.A. Trimmer.

The Ex-Girlfriend, being used to the way hippies do things, said “Bet you won’t come up here and say that in my face because bitch, I will pounce on you. I don’t care if you do have scissors in your – ” The L.A. Trimmer, being used to the way they do things in L.A., leapt from her seat and flew up the bank into a flurry of girlfight. She went upside the ExGirlfriend’s head and knocked her down.

“Who’s a bitch now?” asked the L.A. Trimmer.

The L.A. Trimmer walked away from the tussle with just a patch torn out of the shoulder of her long johns. The L.A. Trimmer took the cigarette proffered by the now-smitten lesbians and lit it up while the Ex-Girlfriend peeled herself up from the dirt.

“Try and cuss me again,” said the L.A. Trimmer.

“I want a do-over,” the Ex-Girlfriend mumbled. “I wasn’t ready.”

“Better get out of here before I teach you some more manners.”

The Femme Lesbian Trimmer told the Ex, “Can’t you feel that this energy is not working here right now?”

The Ex-Girlfriend was dazed enough that I could herd her down the road, shooing her like a stray cow every time she wanted to turn back. The road fell off steeply from either side and there was nowhere for her to run back but through me, and doubting the quality of my mercy, she trudged on. I felt like a man taking a dog for that final walk.

The Ex-Girlfriend got to the fence

LACITYBEAT 10 MARCH 5-11, 2009

where her brown car sat, blocking the gate.

The final steps to her car had the ring of resolution in their heels as she grabbed her cell phone and dialed. I walked back nonchalantly until I heard her on the phone telling someone directions to the camp “Going, yeah right on Goose Creek, the third pullout on the right with a No Trespassing sign … I have been assaulted … yes, I am still here now.”

I ran back to the camp, calculating how far we were from town. The Lesbian Couple and the L.A. Trimmer were eating chips and salsa and reliving the fight.

“She called the cops.”

“But she was trespassing.”

I grabbed the weed out of the drying shed, hoping that my drastic action of taking $40,000 of weed and stashing it in the woods might rouse them to action, but when I got back they were still eating salsa.

“She was assaulted on a pot farm. If she tells the cops, they’ll take everyone to jail and sort it out with lawyers.”

They chewed more slowly as they cogitated.

“We can’t leave by the road because she’s out there waiting. So we need to button up and get suited and booted. Get ready to run and maybe even sleep in the woods tonight.”

We gathered up whatever incriminating evidence was lying around, pulling the old half-bloomed plants up from the greenhouse and tossing them into the woods. Then the new girlfriend rolled in, with fresh dents in the hood of the truck.

“That bitch is crazy.”

We arranged with the new girlfriend to meet us on the main road by a particular sign because my cell phone’s battery was due to run out soon. I got together a day pack with a change of socks, water, emergency bivvy blanket, flashlight,

knife, heavy jacket, warm hat, sleeping mat, chocolate, laptop computer and 20 pounds of marijuana in six black plastic garbage bags, and slid down the hill on the escape route.

“Listen for a minute.”

Me and the L.A. Trimmer could hear the Ex-Girlfriend barking at the Grower, but could not make out what she was saying. An airplane buzzed the valley. Was it coming for us? I took the weed and hid it in the apex of a gully in a dry creek bed by placing ferns on top of it. Then I turned and walked away, leaving a year’s worth of the Grower’s work hidden in the woods.

We walked quiet as spiders on the redwood duff to the Landowner’s house, listening for sirens, planes or the chop of a K-9 unit dog in pursuit. The Landowner’s shanty came into view. I had my doubts about approaching the house unannounced, as landowners are known to keep vicious hounds. Plus, it was his shotgun that had provided the contrapuntal thunder to the valley. The sun began to set. An owl hooted.

It occurred to me that there is nothing so tragic as an omen misread.

The L.A. Trimmer and I went up to the road so as to approach the Landowner’s house the way a normal person would (if there were any normal people in these parts), holding our hands up, yelling the his name over and over again.

The house was a free-form, corrugated, tin burrito structure that used to be a greenhouse. It had the look of a camp hastily erected and then lived in for years.

The Landowner was inside watching television, even though his old hounds were at the door barking.

“Yeah?”

“Ah, the Ex-Girlfriend came back and one of the trimmers beat her ass.”

“Well she deserves whatever beating she gets.”

“What’s the best way to get her out of here? The Ex-Girlfriend is still up on the road.”

We paused and listened. Half a mile away and we could still hear her shrieking.

“She probably called the law,” I added.

The Landowner looked over my shoulder at the L.A. Trimmer, who had tucked her hair away under the camouflage hood of her jacket.

“Well, you could take the ridge back up.”

The Landowner swept his arms at the ever-darkening forest.

“Or if you let me catch the dogs, I’ll give you a ride.”

The Landowner peeled the tarp off a derelict Chevelle in the yard.

“This car is real life,” he said. The Chevelle was modified with a homemade gearbox of shiny sheet metal riveted in under the dashboard.

“I take the door panels out and run this fucker all the way to the East Coast every year.”

He turned the key and the car farted up a cloud of blue exhaust and then roared. His dogs jockeyed for position on his lap as the Chevelle spit gravel all the way up the steep road. The L.A. Trimmer hid in the back under a blanket as we swerved past the gate where the Ex-Girlfriend was still parked. She ran into the road frothing at the mouth, beating on the Landowner’s car and screaming, “This man grows marijuana!”

“Jeezus. It’s about time for her to leave the county,” said the Landowner.

He took us to the two-lane road and dropped us off at the sign where we agreed to meet the new girlfriend. A cop, a fire truck and an ambulance screeched around the curve with sirens lit.

We called the new girlfriend to tell her that we made it. The Grower took the phone from the

new girlfriend.

“Where is it?”

I tried to tell him where the stash was. It was hard to communicate because he was worried. Worried that the raccoons would get into the weed. Worried that the methhead neighbor might find a year’s worth of work and sell it for nothing. Then the Grower would have to kill everybody to prove a point.

“It was down that cut bank by the stump, take a right and contour across the hill until you hit a creek bed, under some ferns.”

“Yeah, OK. When you get to town, get your truck off the road. You know, cops look for dirty trucks coming off the back roads.”

The description of a trimmer “sister” with a hafro and ass-kicking legs had the cops out in droves. I got the L.A. Trimmer tucked into a hotel off the main strip. We tried to clean off the three weeks of woods and waited for the Grower to run the gauntlet into town. Finally he showed up, filthy, with fingernail scratches all around his neck.

“I couldn’t find the truck and figured you’d left town with the weed.”

“I left it in the bush, like I said. And you told me to hide the truck.”

“Well, I looked for the weed out there for a while.”

This time the innuendo was harder to miss.

“It’s there.”

“I guess it is, if you’re here.”

The Grower sat down heavily and produced a bottle of whiskey from his jacket. I noticed that he had his pistol tucked in his belt. He poured us all drinks.

“Shit, me and the Landowner thought you were long gone with the weed and the truck.”

A flash of regret must have registered on the faces of me and

MARCH 5-11, 2009 11 LACITYBEAT

the L.A. Trimmer because the Grower laughed at us.

“Tell you what, have a drink. And live it up, god dammit!” he yelled, slinging Johnny Walker Blue all around on the carpet “If you’re gonna get into the game you got to live it up, because when they come through that door it’s all gonna change.”

We spent the night drinking and watching windows, talking business with the Grower in a room full of suitcases and guns. The love of easy money has been the ruin of many a poor boy, and by morning you know I was one.

So call the cops and tell them to bust me. Tell them that I’m coming home right now with some of that dank Humboldt OG babyshit trainwreck kushywushy. Tell them they can’t miss me. I’m on the 101 with a dangerous trimmer from L.A. right now.

I’m in a white van, a dirty blue Toyota truck and a sedan with hollow doors. Doesn’t matter what I’m driving, really. Throw up roadblocks, pull everybody over and let the courts sort it out. Then bust everyone ordering pizza after ten o’clock. Bust all the turkey bag buyers. Get those skinhead pigs from Riverside up in a helicopter to look for dangerous flowers and send these growers indoors where they belong. Do every bit of that zero tolerance shit and let’s get this weed price up from the price of gold up to the price of platinum because I’m trying to live.✶ A version of this article originally appeared in Arthur #32. Dave Reeves has a short story titled “Bottle to Throttle” published in the Two Letters Collection of Art and Writing. He is also expecting to have a movie he co-wrote with Larry Clark called Shame in production by March, but understands that everyone in this town lies to him about shit like that so he will jump through hoops like a little trained dog.

FILM

Doing his part to minimize the carbon footprint

The ubiquitous Mr. Carjack Toby Halicki is outta control in ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’

By Ron Garmon In decades to come, when “the American Dream” will seem as remote and halfmythical as any other Xanadu, the fabulists teaching history won’t have to search very hard for gorgeous examples of “the way it really was.” When talk turns to those who bent energy and probability in service of their private gaudy vision, one hears of Hunter Thompson, D.B. Cooper, Bet-a-Million Gates, Buster Keaton – each a two-legged metaphor for pushed luck. But a niche must also be made for H(enry) B(light) “Toby” Halicki, producer-directorstuntman-star of the 1974 original Gone in 60 Seconds, screening midnight this Friday at the Silent Movie Theatre.

A South Bay junkman and autoobsessed autodidact unhindered by script or background in the biz, Halicki had his own cars – and cop-cooperation – for a brilliant and unorthodox variation on the traditional caper movie, along with the kind of rangy, irascible screen presence that made stars out of sullen punks like Steve McQueen. Long before the big-budget remake with Nick Cage, Halicki set up – and knocked down – his own super-adrenalized take on the old-fashioned car chase, risking his own life and obliterating his private fleet in one long glorious smear of shattered glass and steel. The film was a smash and Halicki entered American folklore, making several more films before getting himself killed in a freak accident on the

set of Gone in 60 Seconds II in 1989.

His widow Denice remembers he enjoyed his success in characteristic style: “Toby had one of the largest automobile and toy collections in the world,” she says now. “If you were meeting him in his office, whatever car he’d be driving, the Ferrari, the Aston-Martin, the Rolls – we always had Rolls-Royces – he’d drive it into the conference room or into his office. I think what stands out is the love and knowledge of cars that made Gone in 60 Seconds so passionate. He knew them, knew what each was capable of.

He talked five whole police departments into helping him with his dream.”

That dream casts Halicki as Maindrian Pace, a respected insurance investigator and boutique car dealer moonlighting as head of a busy car-theft ring that has Long Beach police chasing their little curly tails. A stick-shift Raffles with antifreeze in his veins, Pace works to feed an adrenaline jones that leads him to accept a South American drug lord’s curious offer to steal a ludicrously detailed list (a 1970 Jaguar; a 1928 Hudson) of 48 cars for shortnotice delivery. Pace and gang get busy, giving the targets female names (a 1970 Jag is dubbed “Claudia”: a 1949 Ferrari “Paula”) and knocking them off with ladykiller brio. Pace himself draws the fateful last heist, a yellow 1973 Mustang Mach 1 nicknamed “Eleanor.”

Up to this point, the movie has been

a mildly offbeat mid-1970s low-budget action thriller, with the cheery amorality of fellow caper films like Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round and The Hot Rock much in evidence. The South Bay locations are well-used – they even warrant their own sequence in that landmark documentary of place Los Angeles Plays Itself – but the acting is only about two notches above a regional horror movie of the same vintage, with dubious professionals like Suzanne Somers and Lyle Waggoner hustled past the camera to lend credibility to the non-pros.

When Pace gets popped by J.Q. Law and decides to break for it, however, we’re suddenly in a completely different movie – a breathless ballet of smashed windows, flashing lights and artistically wrought wreckage brought off in fullsized, non-CGI, potentially lethal glory.

Halicki did his own stunt driving and was nearly killed several times during shooting of the 40-minute chase sequence that finishes the movie, as some 93 of the junkman’s cars, trucks and fire engines are destroyed.

Clever intercutting lends a vérité air to the chase, as we follow Pace’s run with the bravura intensity of The Battle of Algiers, occasionally slicing backward along the path to look at carnage made by the chase, and forward to watch the cops’ latest surprise for the unstoppable Eleanor. Like Pontecorvo’s Algerian guerillas, Pace is an instinctive outlaw unsentimentalized

LACITYBEAT 12 March 5-11, 2009

or apologized for by the auteur, who was as attuned with the poetics of the ripoff as the Algiers director was with the mechanics of revolution.

Denice, who executive-produced the 2000 remake, will appear at the screening, along with the Eleanors from both movies.

The ’73 Mustang still runs and will lend its battered star-power to opening night of the Cinefamily’s “Hot Wheels & Speed Demons” series, set to screen this month Fridays at midnight. Next week is Vanishing Point, a high-art, hioctane steeplechase through the far West, starring Barry Newman as a drugged-out on-the-run American hero, and Cleavon Little as the blind DJ who whoops him on. March 20 is John Hough’s snakemean Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, with Peter Fonda and Susan George on the run from asshole cop Vic Morrow. The month-long tribute to car-chase cinema ends with the appalling Eat My Dust, a 1977 New World hickfest starring Ron Howard, with the erstwhile Opie Cunningham flipping America the greasefinger in a farce by the guy who wrote the original Little Shop of Horrors. V Gone in 60 Seconds. Directed by H.B. Halicki. Featuring H.B. Halicki, and many awesome cars. Screens at Cinefamily at Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 655-2150; silentmovietheatre.com.

Fri., midnight. $10.

“EPIC! A MASTERPIECE.” Jake Jake Hamilton, Hamilton, CBS-TV CBS-TV

“A MONUMENTAL accomplishment.”

Kurt Kurt Loder, Loder, MTV MTV

“BREATHTAKING and MIND-BLOWING. One of the greatest graphic novel adaptations of all time!”

Mark Mark S. S. Allen, Allen, CBS-TV CBS-TV

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FILM

courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Like ink-blots in the rain:

See you in the funny papers ‘Watchmen’ almost worth the wait

By James Dawson The charmingly odd, not-for-kiddies Watchmen is stranger, sexier and darker than The Dark Knight, with several brilliantly directed and unforgettably imaginative scenes – when was the last time you heard an audience applaud an opening-credits montage? It’s not perfect, especially when it reaches a klutzy climax that changes the ending of the classic comic-book-for-grownups. But the parts that work – including a tragic flashback that may actually inspire tears – are almost worth the 22-year wait it took to bring this award-winning saga to the big screen.

Writer Alan Moore’s dense, multilayered tale of costumed crime-fighters – set in an alternate 1985, where Nixon is in his fifth term and the world is on the brink of nuclear war – is regarded by many as the Citizen Kane of graphic novels. Don’t look for Moore’s name on this version, though. The notoriously Hollywood-averse scribe (who also wrote the comics behind The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell and V for Vendetta) disavows all movie adaptations of his work. That’s why Watchmen bears only a “co-creator” credit for Dave Gibbons, the artist who drew the original comics.

Fanboy purists shouldn’t feel too dismayed, however. Except for that aforementioned new ending, the movie’s screenplay – by David Hayter (X-Men) and Alex Tse – may be the most faithful since 2005’s Sin City.

Ignoring the fact that all costumed heroes have been outlawed as vigilantes, the Batman-like Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson)

and the lovely-in-latex Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) suit up again after one of their own is murdered. Their former compatriot Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) is a mask-wearing, single-minded sociopath who never gave up the fight. The group’s most prominent success story is the fabulously wealthy tycoon formerly known as Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), who just happens to be the smartest man in the world. The only character who possesses actual superpowers is lab-accident victim Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), whose God-like perspective has left him so disenchanted with humanity that he wants to abandon the planet.

All of them are intriguingly flawed – much more so than Peter Parker with his girlfriend problems. Nite Owl is literally impotent without his costume. Spectre, daughter of the 1940s-era original Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), can’t figure out why her mom doesn’t hate her would-be rapist.

Ozymandias has an unhealthy fixation with Alexander the Great, and Dr. Manhattan is disturbingly ambivalent about the prospect of mankind’s extinction.

The cast’s earthiest member is the ultraright-wing government operative known as the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the kind of guy who’s not above shooting dead the Vietnamese woman who’s carrying his baby. (Oh, and he also assassinated JFK.) Although the Comedian gets heaved from a high-rise in the movie’s opening minutes, he turns up in fascinating flashbacks throughout the rest of the running time.

While director Zack Snyder generally

gets this offbeat material’s tone just right, he occasionally juices things up from “novelistic” to “operatic” – heightening the brutality to levels that feel more inspired by visceral comics creator Frank Miller than the more thoughtful and literary Moore.

(Snyder’s last flick was an adaptation of Miller’s ridiculously over-the-top Spartanpalooza 300, which wasn’t exactly known for its restraint.)

In the Watchmen comic, two heroes break a third out of prison after knocking out two guards. In the movie, the two heroes have to run a 300-style gauntlet, fighting off nearly three dozen rioting inmates. In the comic, a kidnapping investigation leads to two dogs fighting over a human bone. In the movie, that bone has a little girl’s shoeclad foot attached to it. Most tellingly, the glowing-blue and frequently naked Dr. Manhattan has a much more impressive little Dr. Manhattan on screen than the modest nub he displays in print.

Aside from those … enhancements, most of the movie’s scenes and dialog are linefor-line faithful to Moore’s words, and most of the casting is flawless. Haley is flat-out perfect as the viciously relentless Rorschach, at one point warning a cafeteria full of prison inmates that “I’m not locked in here with you – you’re locked in here with me!” Morgan is such a preposterously nasty, kiss-my-ass bastard as the Comedian that he’s a black-humor guilty pleasure.

And Crudup, whose Dr. Manhattan is a performance-capture CGI wonder to behold, has exactly the correct passively detached demeanor.

LACITYBEAT 14 March 5-11, 2009

In Watchmen’s most moving scene, Dr. Manhattan instantly transports himself to Mars to reflect on his life and regrets.

He’s just been told that several people who were in close contact with him have contracted cancer. He remembers his father, his first meeting with a girlfriend, the horrible accident that altered his body and other meaningful moments, skipping among them as if they are happening simultaneously, while the soundtrack plays Philip Glass’ haunting score from Koyaanisqatsi. The effect is unexpectedly but undeniably devastating.

Unfortunately, one flaw the film shares with last year’s Batman blockbuster is a last-reel letdown, where things get dumber and more downbeat for the sake of what’s supposed to be a dramatic finish.

Screenwriters Hayter and Tse actually can’t be blamed too much for wanting to junk Moore’s original climax. Moore’s ending was uncomfortably similar to that of a classic Outer Limits episode, a swipe that Moore himself cheekily acknowledged by having a TV announcer in the comic actually mention the episode by name.

The problem is that Hayter and Tse’s unconvincing new finale isn’t even as good as the one it replaced. After more than two decades, it’s a shame that nobody could come up with a more watchable ending. V Watchmen. Directed by Zack Snyder.

Featuring Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Carla Gugino. Citywide.

INVITES YOU AND A BUDDY TO AN ADVANCE SCREENING OF

ON MARCH 12.

FOR A CHANCE TO RECEIVE A PASS FOR TWO, STOP BY

AT THE PROMENADE AT HOWARD HUGHES CENTER 6081 CENTER DRIVE, #212

BY THE BRIDGE THEATRES

SEND AN E-MAIL DESCRIBING YOUR IDEAL “MAN-DATE” A.K.A. GUYS NIGHT OUT TO ILOVEMANGROOMER@ ALLIEDADVPUB.COM TO WIN A THREE-PIECE KIT OF ESSENTIAL MAN-GROOMING PRODUCTS FROM MANGROOMER® "MAINTAIN YOURSELF®" MANGROOMER.COM

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Please note: Passes received through this promotion do not guarantee you a seat at the theatre. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis, except for members of the reviewing press. Theatre is overbooked to ensure a full house. No admittance once screening has begun. All federal, state and local regulations apply. A recipient of tickets assumes any and all risks related to use of ticket, and accepts any restrictions required by ticket provider.

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IN THEATERS MARCH 20 WWW.ILOVEYOUMAN.COM

SHOWTIMES MAR. 6-12, 2009 Note: Times are p.m., and daily, unless otherwise indicated. All times are subject to change without notice.

BURBANK AMC Burbank 16, 140 E Palm Av, (818) 9539800. Confessions of a Shopaholic Fri-Sun 11:20 a.m., 1:55, 4:35, 7:15, 10; Mon-Thur 1:55, 4:35, 7:15, 10.

Coraline Fri-Sun 11:45 a.m., 2:25, 5, 7:35, 10:10; Mon-Thur 2:25, 5, 7:35, 10:10.

Coraline 3D Fri-Sat 10:30 a.m., 1:05, 3:40, 6:20, 9; Sun 10:30 a.m., 1:05, 3:40, 6:20, 9:05; Mon-Wed 1:10, 3:40, 6:20, 9:05; Thur 1:10, 3:40, 6:20, 9:05, 11:40.

Crossing Over Fri-Sun 11:05 a.m., 2, 4:45, 7:45, 10:35; Mon-Thur 1:40, 4:45, 7:45, 10:35.

Friday the 13th Fri-Sat 10:35 a.m., 1, 3:25, 5:55, 8:25, 11; Sun 10:35 a.m., 1, 3:25, 5:55, 8:25, 10:45; Mon-Tue 1, 3:20, 5:40, 8, 10:20; Wed 5:40, 8, 10:20; Thur 1, 3:20, 5:40, 8, 10:20.

He’s Just Not That Into You Fri-Sat 10:45 a.m., 1:45, 4:50, 8:05, 11:10; Sun 10:45 a.m., 1:45, 4:50, 8:05, 11; Mon-Thur 1:05, 4, 7, 9:55.

The International Fri 11:10 a.m., 2:05, 4:55, 7:55, 10:50; Sat 4:55, 7:55, 10:50; Sun 11:10 a.m., 2:05, 4:55, 7:55, 10:50; Mon-Thur 2, 4:55, 7:40, 10:25.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sat 10:40 a.m., 12:50, 3:05, 5:15, 7:25, 9:35, 11:45; Sun 10:40 a.m., 12:50, 3:05, 5:15, 7:25, 9:35; Mon-Wed 1:05, 3:05, 5:15, 7:25, 9:35; Thur 1:05, 3:05, 5:15, 7:25, 9:35, 11:45.

The Last House on the Left Thur only, 12:01 a.m..

The Metropolitan Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor Encore II Wed only, 1.

The Metropolitan Opera: Madama Butterfly Sat only, 10 a.m.

Miss March Thur only, 12:01 a.m.

Race to Witch Mountain Thur only, 12:01 a.m..

Slumdog Millionaire Fri-Sun 10:30 a.m., 1:20, 4:10, 7:05, 10:05; Mon-Thur 1:20, 4:10, 7:05, 10:05.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Fri-Sun 11:55 a.m., 2:35, 5:10, 7:40, 10:15; Mon-Thur 1:50, 4:25, 7:10, 9:30.

Taken Fri-Sat 10:55 a.m., 1:25, 3:55, 6:25, 8:55, 11:20; Sun 10:55 a.m., 1:25, 3:55, 6:25, 9; Mon-Thur 1:25, 3:55, 6:25, 9.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail Fri-Sun 11:35

MOL

Gretchen

a.m., 2:15, 5:05, 7:50, 10:40; Mon-Thur 2:05, 4:40, 7:20, 9:50.

Watchmen Fri-Sat noon, 12:45, 3:45, 4:30, 7:30, 8:15, 11:15, midnight; Sun noon, 12:45, 3:45, 4:30, 7:30, 8:15, 11:05; Mon-Wed 12:55, 3:45, 4:30, 7:30, 8:15; Thur 12:55, 3:45, 4:30, 7:30, 8:15, 11:55.

Watchmen: The IMAX Experience IMAX Fri-Sun 11:15 a.m., 3, 6:45, 10:30; IMAX Mon-Thur 3, 6:45, 10:30.

AMC Burbank Town Center 8, 210 E Magnolia Bl, (818) 953-9800. Confessions of a Shopaholic 6:30, 9:15.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Fri-Sun 11:15 a.m., 2:45, 6:15, 9:55; Mon-Thur 2:45, 6:15, 9:55.

Echelon Conspiracy Fri-Sun 11:45 a.m., 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10:20; Mon-Thur 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10:20.

Fired Up Fri-Sun 10:40 a.m., 1, 3:15, 5:45, 8, 10:25; Mon-Thur 3:15, 5:45, 8, 10:25.

Friday the 13th 10:05.

Gran Torino Fri-Sun 10:50 a.m., 1:30, 4:15, 7; Mon-Thur 1:45, 4:20, 7.

Hotel for Dogs Fri-Sun 10:35 a.m., 1:15, 4; MonThur 1:50, 4:10.

Push Fri-Sun 11:30 a.m., 2, 4:45, 7:45, 10:30; Mon-Thur 2, 4:45, 7:45, 10:30.

The Reader Fri-Sun 11 a.m., 1:45, 4:30, 7:15, 10:15; Mon-Thur 1:55, 4:35, 7:15, 10:15.

Watchmen Fri-Sun 10:30 a.m., 2:15, 6, 9:45; Mon-Thur 2:15, 6, 9:45.

AMC Burbank Town Center 6, 770 N First St, (818) 953-9800. He’s Just Not That Into You FriSun noon, 3:15, 6:15, 9:15; Mon-Thur 3:15, 6:15, 9:15.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop Fri-Sun 11:55 a.m., 2:15, 4:45, 7:15, 9:45; Mon-Thur 2:15, 4:45, 7:15, 9:45.

The Pink Panther 2 Fri-Sun 11:30 a.m., 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30; Mon-Thur 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30.

Taken Fri-Sun 12:15, 2:45, 5, 7:30, 10; Mon-Thur 2:45, 5, 7:30, 10.

Watchmen Fri-Sun 11:15 a.m., 3, 6:45, 10:30; Mon-Thur 3, 6:45, 10:30.

The Wrestler Fri-Sun 11:45 a.m., 2:30, 5:15, 8, 10:45; Mon-Thur 2:30, 5:15, 7:45, 10:20.

CULVER CITY, MARINA DEL REY The Bridge: Cinema De Lux & IMAX Theater, The Promenade at Howard Hughes Center, 6081 Center Dr, Westchester, (310) 568-3375.

Confessions of a Shopaholic Fri-Sat 12:15, 2:40, 5:05, 7:30, 9:55, 12:15 a.m.; Sun-Thur 12:15, 2:40, 5:05, 7:30, 9:55.

Coraline 3D Fri-Sat noon, 2:20, 4:40, 7, 9:30, 11:50; Sun-Thur noon, 2:20, 4:40, 7, 9:30.

REBHORN James

BRIGHT Cameron

WYLE Noah

“CAPTIVATING, WITTY AND POIGNANT. GRETCHEN MOL SIZZLES.” -AVI OFFER / NYCMOVIEGURU.COM

AN AMERICAN AFFAIR What Can You Do For Your Country?

Friday the 13th Fri-Sat 12:30, 2:55, 5:20, 7:45, 10:10, 12:25 a.m.; Sun-Thur 12:30, 2:55, 5:20, 7:45, 10:10.

He’s Just Not That Into You 1:30, 4:30, 7:30, 10:30.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sat 12:05, 12:35, 2, 2:30, 3:55, 4:25, 5:50, 6:20, 7:45, 8:15, 9:40, 10:10, 11:35, 12:05 a.m.; Sun-Thur 12:05, 12:35, 2, 2:30, 3:55, 4:25, 5:50, 6:20, 7:45, 8:15, 9:40, 10:10.

Metropolitan Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor Encore Wed only, 1.

Milk 5, 7:40.

The Reader Fri-Sat 1, 3:50, 6:40, 9:30, 12:15 a.m.; Sun-Thur 1, 3:50, 6:40, 9:30.

Slumdog Millionaire Fri-Sat 1:10, 4:05, 7, 9:55, 12:25 a.m.; Sun-Thur 1:10, 4:05, 7, 9:55.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Fri-Sat 12:10, 2:30, 4:50, 7:10, 9:30, 11:50; Sun-Thur 12:10, 2:30, 4:50, 7:10, 9:30.

Taken Fri-Sat 12:30, 2:55, 5:20, 7:45, 10:10, 12:35 a.m.; Sun-Thur 12:30, 2:55, 5:20, 7:45, 10:10.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail Fri-Sat 11:45 a.m., 12:45, 2:15, 3:15, 4:45, 5:45, 7:15, 8:15, 9:45, 10:45, 12:15 a.m.; Sun-Thur 11:45 a.m., 12:45, 2:15, 3:15, 4:45, 5:45, 7:15, 8:15, 9:45, 10:45.

Watchmen Fri-Sat 12:20, 1:20, 3:40, 4:40, 7, 8, 10:30, 11:30; Sun-Thur 12:20, 1:20, 3:40, 4:40, 7, 8, 10:30.

Culver Plaza Theatre, 9919 Washington Blvd, (310) 836-5516. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Fri-Sun 2:35, 8:20; Mon-Thur 2:30, 8:10.

Defiance Fri-Sun 2:20, 7:25, 10:10; Mon-Thur 2:25, 7:45.

Delhi 6 Fri-Sun 4:15, 7, 9:45; Mon-Thur 5:05, 8.

Frost/Nixon Fri-Sun 2:30, 7:25; Mon-Thur 2:50, 7:40.

Gran Torino Fri-Sun noon, 5:05; Mon-Thur 12:05, 5:05.

Hotel for Dogs Fri-Sun noon, 2:10; Mon-Thur 12:15, 2:35.

Milk Fri-Sun 12:05, 5:45; Mon-Thur noon, 5:35.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop Fri-Sun noon, 1:55, 3:45, 5:40, 7:40, 9:35; Mon-Thur noon, 2, 4, 6, 8.

The Reader Fri-Sun noon, 2:30, 5:05, 7:40, 10:05; Mon-Thur 12:05, 2:35, 5:10, 7:50.

The Wrestler Fri-Sun 12:10, 5:10, 9:50; Mon-Thur 12:20, 5:25.

Loews Cineplex Marina Marketplace, 13455 Maxella Av, (310) 827-9588. Call theater for titles and showtimes.

Pacific Culver Stadium 12, 9500 Culver Bl, (310) 855-7519. Confessions of a Shopaholic Fri-Sun 11 a.m., 1:25, 4:05, 7:25, 9:55; Mon-Thur 1:25, 4:10, 7:25, 9:55.

Coraline Fri-Sun 10:15 a.m., 12:45, 3:05, 5:25, 7:45, 10:10; Mon-Thur 1, 4:30, 7:15, 9:45.

Fired Up Fri-Sun 10:30 a.m., 12:40; Mon-Thur 1:20, 4:20.

He’s Just Not That Into You Fri-Sun 10:05 a.m., 1:15, 4:30, 7:50, 10:50; Mon-Thur 1:15, 4:05, 7:10, 10:05.

The International Fri-Sun 2:50, 5:30, 8:15, 11; Mon-Thur 7:35, 10:20.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sun noon, 2:05, 4:15, 7, 9:15; Mon-Thur 1:45, 4:15, 7:05, 9:05.

Slumdog Millionaire Fri-Sun 10:25 a.m., 1:05, 4:25, 7:30, 10:30; Mon-Thur 12:45, 4:25, 7:30, 10:30.

Taken Fri-Sun 10:20 a.m., 12:35, 2:55, 5:10, 7:40, 10:25; Mon-Thur 1:40, 4:45, 7:50, 10:15.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail Fri-Sun 10:45 a.m., 1:10, 3:30, 5:55, 8:25, 11:15; Mon-Thur 1:10, 5:15, 7:40, 10:10.

Watchmen Fri-Sun 10 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30, 1:30, 3:15, 4, 5, 7:15, 8, 8:45, 10:45, 11:30; Mon-Thur 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, 4, 5, 7, 7:45, 8:30, 10:25.

UA Marina, 4335 Glencoe Av, (310) 823-1721.

Echelon Conspiracy 3:10, 9:40.

Gran Torino 12:20, 6:50.

Open Captioned Performance - Selected Film Daily .

The Reader 12:10, 3, 7:20, 10.

Slumdog Millionaire 12:40, 3:30, 7:40, 10:20.

Watchmen 11:45 a.m., 12:30, 3:20, 4, 7, 7:30, 10:35, 10:50.

The Wrestler noon, 2:40, 5:10, 7:50, 10:40.

DOWNTOWN & SOUTH L.A.

Q&A with Directo FRIDAY 3/6 & SATURDAY r WILLIAM OLSSON 3/7 after the 7:30pm sho ws.

www.AnAmericanAffair.com

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS FRIDAY, MARCH 6TH !

WEST HOLLYWOOD Laemmle’s Sunset 5 (323) 848-3500 Tickets available @ laemmle.com Daily: 1:50 • 4:40 • 7:30 • 10:00

Presented in

Downtown Independent, >251 South Main St, (213) 617-1033. LA Comedy Shorts Festival FriSun. Laemmle’s Grande 4-Plex, 345 S Figueroa St, (213) 617-0268. Frost/Nixon Fri 5:10, 8:10; SatSun 1:50, 5:10, 8:10; Mon-Tue 5:10, 8:10.

The Reader Fri 5:20, 8; Sat-Sun 1:40, 5:20, 8; Mon-Tue 5:20, 8.

Slumdog Millionaire Fri 5:30, 8:20; Sat-Sun 1:55, 5:30, 8:20; Mon-Tue 5:30, 8:20.

Watchmen Fri 5, 8:30; Sat-Sun 1:30, 5, 8:30; Mon-Tue 5, 8:30.

Magic Johnson Theaters, Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, 4020 Marlton Av, (323) 290-5900.

LACITYBEAT 16 MARCH 5-11, 2009

Watchmen Fri-Sat 12:15, 3:50, 7:25, 11; Sun 12:15, 3:50, 7:25, 10:45.

University Village 3, 3323 S Hoover St, (213) 748-6321. Friday the 13th 1:15, 3:30, 5:45, 8, 10:15.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30.

Watchmen noon, 3:30, 7, 10:30.

HOLLYWOOD ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood, 6360 Sunset Bl, (323) 464-4226. Coraline 3D Fri 11:15 a.m., 1, 1:55, 4:10, 5:25, 8:15, 10:45, 11:40; Sat-Sun 11:15 a.m., 1, 1:55, 4:10, 5:25, 7:20, 8:15, 10, 10:45; Mon-Thur 11:15 a.m., 1:10, 1:55, 4:10, 5:25, 7:20, 8:15, 10, 11:05.

Crossing Over Fri-Sun 11:35 a.m., 2:15, 5:05, 7:45, 10:35; Mon 11:20 a.m., 2, 4:40, 7:40, 10:30; Tue-Thur 11:35 a.m., 2:15, 5:05, 7:45, 10:35.

Fight Club Mon only,.

He’s Just Not That Into You Fri-Mon 1:15, 4:15, 7:15, 10:15; Wed-Thur 1:15, 4:15, 7:15, 10:15.

The International Fri-Sun 11:20 a.m., 2, 5, 7:40, 10:40; Tue-Thur 11:20 a.m., 2, 4:40, 7:40, 10:30.

The Last House on the Left Midnight Thur only,.

Milk Fri-Tue 10:45 a.m., 1:45, 4:55, 7:55, 10:55; Thur 10:45 a.m., 1:45, 4:55, 7:55, 10:55.

Miss March Midnight Thur only,.

Rear Window Wed only,.

Slumdog Millionaire Fri-Sun 10:30 a.m., 1:20, 4:40, 7:50, 10:50; Mon-Thur 10:30 a.m., 1:20, 4:50, 7:50, 10:50.

Sunshine Cleaning Thur only, midnight.

Taken Fri-Sun 11:10 a.m., 1:30, 4, 7:10, 9:40; Mon-Thur 11:10 a.m., 1:40, 4, 7:10, 9:50.

Watchmen Fri 10:35 a.m., 11:05 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 11:31 a.m., 12:25, 1:10, 2:05, 2:45, 3:15, 3:16, 4:05, 4:45, 6:35, 7, 7:01, 7:35, 8, 8:05, 8:20, 10:05, 10:30, 10:31, 11:05, 11:35, 11:55; Sat-Sun 9:45 a.m., 10:35 a.m., 11:05 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 11:31 a.m., 12:25, 1:10, 2:05, 2:45, 3:15, 3:16, 4:05, 4:45, 6:35, 7, 7:01, 7:35, 8:05, 8:20, 10:05, 10:30, 10:31, 11:05, 11:35, 11:55; Mon 10:35 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:35, 1:05, 1:30, 2:05, 3:15, 4:05, 4:35, 5, 7:05, 7:35, 8:05, 8:30, 10:40, 11:15; TueWed 10:35 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:35, 1:05, 1:30, 2:05, 3:15, 4:05, 4:35, 5, 6:35, 7:05, 7:35, 8:05, 8:30, 10:05, 10:40, 11:15; Thur 10:35 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:35, 1:05, 1:30, 2:05, 3:15, 4:05, 4:35, 5, 6:35, 7:05, 7:25, 8:05, 8:30, 10:05, 10:45, 11:15.

The Wrestler Fri-Sun 11 a.m., 1:40, 4:30, 7:30, 10:20; Mon-Thur 11 a.m., 1:50, 4:20, 7:30, 10:20.

Grauman’s Chinese, 6925 Hollywood Bl, (323) 464-8111. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li 12:30, 3, 5:30, 8, 10:30.

Los Feliz 3, 1822 N Vermont Av, (323) 664-2169.

Gomorrah 1:30, 4:15, 7, 9:45.

The Reader 1:30, 4:15, 7, 9:45.

Two Lovers 1:30, 4:15, 7, 9:45.

Mann Chinese 6, 6801 Hollywood Bl, (323) 4613331. Doubt 11:50 a.m., 2:20, 4:50, 7:20, 9:50.

Fired Up Fri-Mon 11:30 a.m., 4:40, 10; Tue-Wed 11:30 a.m., 4:40; Thur 11:30 a.m..

Friday the 13th 12:20, 2:50, 5:20, 7:50, 10:20.

Frost/Nixon Fri-Tue 12:50, 3:50, 6:50, 9:40; Wed 12:50, 3:50; Thur 12:50, 3:50, 6:50, 9:40.

Private Screening Tue 8; Wed 7, 8; Thur 7.

Revolutionary Road Fri-Mon 1:50, 7:10; Tue-Thur 1:50.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li 11:40 a.m., 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail 12:10, 2:40, 5:10, 7:40, 10:10.

Pacific’s El Capitan, 6838 Hollywood Bl, (323) 467-7674. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D 10 a.m., 12:15, 2:30, 4:45, 7, 9:15.

Pacific’s The Grove Stadium 14, 189 The Grove Dr, Third St & Fairfax Av, (323) 692-0829.

Confessions of a Shopaholic noon, 2:45, 5:35, 8:20, 11:05.

Coraline Fri-Sun 11 a.m., 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:45; Mon 11:05 a.m., 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:45; Tue-Thur 11 a.m., 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:45.

He’s Just Not That Into You 12:30, 3:40, 6:50, 9:55.

The International 1:05, 4:05, 7:05, 10:05.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D 10:25 a.m., 12:35, 2:50, 5:05, 7:20, 9:35.

The Last House on the Left Thur only, 12:10 a.m.

Miss March Thur only, 12:20 a.m.

Slumdog Millionaire 10:30 a.m., 1:30, 4:30, 7:30, 10:30.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li 11:55 a.m., 2:30, 5:10, 7:40, 10:15.

Taken 12:25, 3, 5:30, 8, 10:25.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail 11:50 a.m., 2:35, 5:25, 8:10, 10:55.

Watchmen Fri-Sat 10:50 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:10, 12:50, 2:40, 3:20, 4, 4:40, 6:30, 7:10, 7:50, 8:30, 10:20, 11, 11:40; Sun 10:50 a.m.,

11:30 a.m., 12:10, 12:50, 2:40, 3:20, 4, 4:40, 6:30, 7:10, 7:50, 8:30, 10:10, 10:50; Mon 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:10, 12:50, 2:40, 3:20, 4, 4:40, 6:30, 7:10, 7:50, 8:30, 10:10, 10:50; Tue 10:50 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:50, 1:40, 2:40, 3:20, 4:40, 6:30, 7:10, 8:30, 10:10, 10:50; Wed 10:50 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:10, 12:50, 2:40, 3:20, 4, 4:40, 6:30, 7:10, 7:50, 8:30, 10:10, 10:50; Thur 10:50 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:10, 12:50, 2:40, 3:20, 4, 4:40, 6:30, 7:10, 7:50, 8:30, 10:10, 10:50, 11:30.

Regent Showcase, 614 N La Brea Av, (323) 9342944. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Fri 7:30; Sat-Sun 4:30, 7:30; Mon-Thur 7:30.

Vine, 6321 Hollywood Bl, (323) 463-6819. Vista, 4473 Sunset, (323) 660-6639. Watchmen FriSun 1:15, 5, 8:45; Mon-Thur 5, 8:45.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, UNIVERSAL CITY Century 8, 12827 Victory Bl, (818) 508-6004.

Coraline 11:40 a.m., 2:10, 4:40, 7:05.

Fired Up 12:40, 5:20, 10.

Friday the 13th 10:15.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D 12:30, 2:40, 4:50, 7, 9:10.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 12:05, 2:35, 5:05, 7:35, 9:55.

Slumdog Millionaire 1:10, 4:10, 7:10, 10:10.

Taken 3, 7:40.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail 11:45 a.m., 2:20, 4:55, 7:25, 10:05.

Watchmen 11:50 a.m., 1:45, 3:40, 5:35, 7:30, 9:25.

Loews CityWalk Stadium 19 with IMAX, 100 Universal City Dr at Universal CityWalk, (818) 508-0588; IMAX Theater (818) 760-8100.

Confessions of a Shopaholic Fri-Sat 11 a.m., 1:30, 4, 6:40, 9:15, 11:55; Sun 11 a.m., 1:30, 4, 6:40, 9:15; Mon-Thur 1:30, 4, 6:40, 9:15.

Coraline Fri-Sat 11:05 a.m., 1:35, 4:10, 6:50, 9:20, 11:40; Sun 11:05 a.m., 1:35, 4:10, 6:50, 9:20; Mon-Thur 1:35, 4:10, 6:50, 9:20.

Desbocados Fri-Sat 10:45 a.m., 1, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 10:10, 12:25 a.m.; Sun 10:55 a.m., 1, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 10:10; Mon-Thur 1, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 10:10.

Fired Up Fri-Sat 12:05, 2:25, 4:50, 7:05, 9:40, midnight; Sun-Thur 12:05, 2:25, 4:50, 7:05, 9:40.

Friday the 13th 12:30, 2:55, 5:15, 7:40, 10:20.

He’s Just Not That Into You 12:40, 3:55, 6:55, 10:05.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sat 11:30 a.m., 1:40, 3:50, 6:15, 8:40, 11; Sun 11:30 a.m., 1:40, 3:50, 6:15, 9:05; Mon-Thur 1:40, 3:50, 6:15, 9:05.

The Last House on the Left Thur only, 12:01 a.m..

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 12:25, 2:45, 5:05, 7:25, 9:50.

The Pink Panther 2 Fri-Sat 2:40, 7:35, 12:20 a.m.; Sun-Thur 2:40, 7:35.

Push Fri-Sat 12:35, 3:05, 5:40, 8:15, 11:15; Sun-Thur 12:35, 3:05, 5:40, 8:10, 10:50.

Race to Witch Mountain Thur only, 12:01 a.m..

Slumdog Millionaire Fri-Sun 11:15 a.m., 2, 4:45, 7:30, 10:30; Mon-Thur 2, 4:45, 7:30, 10:30.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Fri 12:50, 3:20, 5:55, 8:30, 11:10; Sat 10:25 a.m., 12:50, 3:20, 5:55, 8:30, 11:10; Sun-Thur 12:50, 3:20, 5:55, 8:20, 10:45.

Taken Fri-Sat 10:35 a.m., 12:55, 3:10, 5:25, 7:50, 10:15, 12:30 a.m.; Sun-Thur 12:55, 3:10, 5:25, 7:50, 10:15.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail Fri-Sat 11:50 a.m., 2:20, 5:35, 8:05, 10:50; Sun 11:50 a.m., 2:20, 5:35, 8:05, 10:35; Mon-Wed 2:20, 5:35, 8:05, 10:35; Thur 2:20, 5:35, 8:05.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans 12:10, 5, 10.

The Uninvited Fri-Sun 12:15, 2:35, 4:55, 7:10; Mon-Thur 12:15, 2:35, 4:55, 7:10, 10:10.

Watchmen Fri-Sat 11 a.m., 11:45 a.m., 12:45, 2:30, 3:15, 4:15, 6, 7, 8, 9:45, 10:45, 11:45; Sun 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:45, 2:30, 3:45, 4:15, 6, 7:15, 8, 9:45, 10:45; Mon-Wed 12:30, 1, 2:30, 4, 4:30, 6, 7:30, 8:30, 9:40, 10:55; Thur 12:30, 1, 2:30, 4, 4:30, 6, 7:30, 8:30, 9:40, 11.

Watchmen: The IMAX Experience IMAX Fri-Sat 10:30 a.m., 2, 5:30, 9, 12:30 a.m.; IMAX SunThur noon, 3:20, 6:45, 10:15.

SANTA MONICA AMC Santa Monica 7, 1310 Third Street Promenade, (310) 395-3030. Confessions of a Shopaholic Fri-Sun 11:15 a.m., 2, 4:30, 7:15, 10; Mon-Thur 1:30, 4:15, 7:20, 9:55.

Coraline Fri-Sun 11:10 a.m., 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:30; Mon-Thur 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:25.

Fired Up Fri-Sun 11:45 a.m., 2:30, 5, 7:40, 10:10; Mon-Thur 2:30, 4:50, 7:15, 9:30.

Friday the 13th Fri-Sun 7:50, 10:20; Mon-Thur 7:45, 10:05.

Frost/Nixon Fri-Sun 10:50 a.m., 1:50, 4:40, 7:20, 10:15; Mon-Thur 1:20, 4:10, 7:05, 9:50.

Gran Torino Fri-Sun 11:05 a.m., 1:45, 4:25, 7:10, 10:05; Mon-Thur 1:45, 4:25, 7:10, 10.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in

Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sun 11 a.m., 1, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30, 9:45; Mon-Thur 1, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30, 9:45.

The Pink Panther 2 Fri-Sun 11:30 a.m., 2:15, 4:50; Mon-Thur 2:45, 5:15.

Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, 1332 Second St, (310) 394-9741. Che: Part One Sat-Sun 11 a.m..

Che: Part Two Sat-Sun 11 a.m.

The Class 1, 4, 7, 10.

Gomorrah 1:40, 4:50, 8.

Man on Wire Sat-Sun 11 a.m.

Slumdog Millionaire 1:30, 4:20, 7:10, 10.

TÙyÙ’s Camera 1:15, 4, 6:45, 9:30.

Loews Cineplex Broadway, 1441 Third Street Promenade, (310) 458-1506. Fuel Fri 1:35, 4:15, 7, 10; Sat-Sun 11 a.m., 1:35, 4:15, 7, 10; Mon-Thur 1:35, 4:15, 7, 9:45.

Milk Fri-Sun 1:15, 4:20, 7:20, 10:15; Mon-Thur 1, 4:05, 7:05, 10.

The Reader Fri 1:55, 4:45, 7:40, 10:30; SatSun 11:05 a.m., 1:55, 4:45, 7:40, 10:30; MonThur 1:15, 4, 6:45, 9:30.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Fri-Sun 12:30, 3, 5:25, 8, 10:20; Mon-Thur 2:15, 5, 7:30, 9:55.

Mann Criterion, 1313 Third Street Promenade, (310) 395-1599. Call theater for titles and showtimes.

SHERMAN OAKS, ENCINO ArcLight Sherman Oaks, 15301 Ventura Bl, Sherman Oaks, (818) 501-0753. Confessions of a Shopaholic 11:30 a.m., 2:10, 4:50, 7:40, 10:25.

Coraline 11:10 a.m., 1:55, 4:30, 7:20, 9:50.

Crossing Over 12:05, 3:05, 5:45, 8:45, 11:25.

He’s Just Not That Into You 11:05 a.m., 2:20, 5:10, 8:05, 11:05.

The International Fri-Sun 10:20 a.m., 1:15, 4, 7:05, 10:10; Mon-Thur 11:20 a.m., 2:15, 5:15, 8, 10:45.

Jaws Tue only, 7:30.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sun 10:10 a.m., 12:40, 2:50, 5, 7:10, 9:20; Mon-Thur 12:40, 2:50, 5, 7:10, 9:20.

The Last House on the Left Thur only, Midnight.

Miss March Thur only, Midnight.

A Perfect Getaway Thur only, Midnight.

Poltergeist Mon only, 7:30.

Race to Witch Mountain Thur only, Midnight.

Slumdog Millionaire 11:25 a.m., 2:25, 5:05, 7:50, 10:40.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Fri-Sun 10:35 a.m., 1, 3:15, 5:35, 8:20, 10:50; MonThur 1, 3:15, 5:35, 8:20, 10:50.

Taken Fri-Sun 10:30 a.m., 1:10, 3:30, 5:50, 8:10, 10:35; Mon-Thur 1:10, 3:30, 5:50, 8:10, 10:35.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail 11:35 a.m., 2:05, 4:40, 7:25, 10:15.

Watchmen Fri-Sun 10 a.m., 10:55 a.m., 10:56 a.m., 11:15 a.m., 11:50 a.m., 12:35, 1:25, 2:30, 2:31, 3, 3:25, 4:10, 4:55, 6:30, 6:31, 7, 7:30, 7:45, 8:25, 10, 10:01, 10:30, 11:15, 11:55, 10:55 a.m.; Mon-Wed 11 a.m., 11:15 a.m., 11:50 a.m., 12:35, 1:25, 2:30, 3, 3:25, 4:10, 4:55, 6:30, 7, 7:30, 7:55, 8:25, 10, 10:30, 10:55, 11:15; Thur 11 a.m., 11:15 a.m., 11:50 a.m., 12:35, 1:25, 2:30, 3, 3:25,

4:10, 4:55, 6:30, 7, 7:30, 7:45, 8:25, 10, 10:30, 10:55, 11:15, 11:55.

Laemmle’s Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Bl, Encino, (818) 981-9811. An American Affair 1:50, 4:40, 7:30, 10.

Between Love & Goodbye 1:45, 4:20, 7:15, 9:45.

Phoebe in Wonderland 1:40, 4:30, 7:20, 9:45.

The Reader 1, 4, 7, 9:45.

Shuttle 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:40.

Mann Plant 16, 7876 Van Nuys Bl, Panorama City, (818) 779-0323. Confessions of a Shopaholic 3:50, 9:15.

Coraline 11:20 a.m., 1:50, 4:20, 6:50, 9:20.

Desbocados 7:15, 9:45.

Fired Up 11:15 a.m., 1:45, 4:15, 6:45, 9:15.

Friday the 13th 12:30, 3, 5:30, 8, 10:30.

Hotel for Dogs 11:45 a.m., 2:15, 4:45.

The International 2, 7:10.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D 11 a.m., 1, 3, 5, 7, 9.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 11:10 a.m., 1:40, 4:10, 6:40, 9:10.

The Pink Panther 2 11:30 a.m., 4:50, 10.

Push 1:10, 6:30.

Slumdog Millionaire 11:10 a.m., 2, 4:45, 7:30, 10:20.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li 12:10, 2:40, 5:10, 7:40, 10:10.

Taken 11:50 a.m., 2:20, 4:50, 7:20, 9:50.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail 12:20, 2:50, 5:20, 7:50, 10:20.

The Uninvited 11:40 a.m., 2:10, 4:40, 7:10, 9:40.

Watchmen 11 a.m., noon, 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, 5, 6, 7, 8:30, 9:30, 10:30.

Pacific’s Sherman Oaks 5, 14424 Millbank St, Sherman Oaks, (818) 501-5121. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 1:15, 4:50, 8:30.

Fired Up 1:45, 4:25, 7:20, 9:55.

Gran Torino 9:40.

Milk 1, 4:05, 7, 9:50.

The Pink Panther 2 1:20, 4:15, 7:10.

The Wrestler 1:30, 4:30, 7:30, 10:05.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, BEVERLY HILLS, CENTURY CITY AMC Century City 15, 10250 Santa Monica Bl, (310) 277-2011. Confessions of a Shopaholic Fri-Sun 11:15 a.m., 2:15, 5:05, 7:45, 10:30; Mon-Wed 12:25, 2:55, 5:30, 8:05, 10:40; Thur 12:25, 2:55, 10:40.

Coraline Fri-Sat 11:20 a.m., 2, 4:35, 7:10, 9:50, 12:25 a.m.; Sun 11:20 a.m., 2, 4:35, 7:10, 9:50; Mon-Wed 12:15, 2:50, 5:25, 7:55, 10:30; Thur 2:50, 5:25, 7:55, 10:30.

Echelon Conspiracy Fri 9:35 a.m., 12:10, 2:45; Sat 9:35 a.m., 2:45; Sun 9:35 a.m., 12:10, 2:45; Mon-Thur 12:10, 2:45.

Fired Up Fri-Sun 5:20, 8:05, 10:35; Mon-Thur 5:20, 8, 10:35.

He’s Just Not That Into You Fri-Sun 9:40 a.m., 12:40, 3:50, 7:05, 10:15; Mon-Wed 12:40, 3:50, 7:05, 10:15; Thur 12:40, 3:50, 10:15.

The International Fri-Sun 10:20 a.m., 1:30, 4:30, 7:30, 10:25; Mon-Thur 1:30, 4:30, 7:25, 10:25.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sat 9:50 a.m., noon, 2:10,

4:40, 7:15, 9:30, 11:45; Sun 9:50 a.m., noon, 2:10, 4:40, 7:15, 9:30; Mon-Thur noon, 2:10, 4:40, 7:15, 9:30.

The Metropolitan Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor Encore II Wed only, 1.

The Metropolitan Opera: Madama Butterfly Sat only, 10 a.m..

The Pink Panther 2 Fri 10:10 a.m., 12:50, 3:20, 5:45, 8:15, 10:50; Sat 12:10, 3:25, 5:45, 8:15, 10:50; Sun 12:50, 3:20, 5:45, 8:15, 10:50; Mon noon, 2:20, 4:40, 7:30, 10:50; Tue noon, 2:20, 4:40, 10:50; Wed-Thur noon, 2:20, 4:40, 7:10, 9:40.

Slumdog Millionaire Fri 10:30 a.m., 1:25, 4:25, 7:20, 10:20; Sat 9:45 a.m., 12:35, 3:30, 7:20, 10:20; Sun 10:30 a.m., 1:25, 4:25, 7:20, 10:20; Mon-Thur 1:25, 4:25, 7:20, 10:20.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Fri-Sun 11 a.m., 1:45, 4:45, 7:35, 10:10; Mon-Thur 2, 4:50, 7:35, 10:10.

Taken Fri-Sun 9:45 a.m., 12:05, 2:40, 5:15, 8:10, 10:45; Mon-Tue 12:05, 2:40, 5:15, 8:10, 10:45; Wed 5:35, 8:10, 10:45; Thur 12:05, 2:40, 5:15, 8:10, 10:45.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail Fri-Sat 10:55 a.m., 1:35, 4:15, 7:25, 10, 12:30 a.m.; Sun 10:55 a.m., 1:35, 4:15, 7:25, 10; Mon-Tue 1:40, 4:35, 7:10, 9:50; Wed 1:40, 4:15, 10:05; Thur 1:40, 4:15, 7:10, 9:50.

Watchmen Fri-Sat 9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:20, 1:10, 3:15, 4:05, 4:55, 7, 7:50, 8:40, 10:40, 11:30, 12:20 a.m.; Sun 9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:20, 1:10, 3:15, 4:05, 4:55, 7, 7:50, 8:40, 10:40; Mon-Thur 12:20, 1:10, 3:15, 4:05, 4:55, 7, 7:50, 8:40, 10:40.

Watchmen: The IMAX Experience IMAX Fri-Sun 10:45 a.m., 2:30, 6:15, 9:55; IMAX Mon-Thur 2:30, 6:15, 9:55.

Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Bl, (310) 274-6869. Bolshoi Ballet Bolt Sun 11 a.m.; Thur 7:30.

Cherry Blossoms Fri 5:40, 8:30; Sat noon, 2:50, 5:40, 8:30; Sun 2:50, 5:40, 8:30; MonWed 5:40, 8:30; Thur 5.

The Class Fri 5, 8; Sat-Sun 1:50, 5, 8; Mon-Thur 5, 8.

Moscow, Belgium Fri 5, 7:30, 10; Sat-Sun noon, 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10; Mon-Thur 5, 7:30.

Laemmle’s Sunset 5 Theatre, 8000 Sunset Bl, (323) 848-3500. An American Affair 1:50, 4:40, 7:30, 10.

Between Love & Goodbye 1:45, 4:20, 7:15, 9:45.

Phoebe in Wonderland 1:40, 4:30, 7:20, 9:45.

The Reader 1, 4, 7, 9:45.

Shuttle 1:40, 4:20, 7, 9:40.

Beverly Center 13 Cinemas, 8522 Beverly Blvd., Suite 835, (310) 652-7760. Bride Wars 1:10, 3:10.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 1, 4:20, 7:50.

Desbocados 5:20, 7:10, 9:20.

Echelon Conspiracy 12:40, 3, 5:30, 7:50, 10:10.

Fired Up 1:10, 3, 5, 6:50, 9.

Friday the 13th 1:20, 3:20, 5:40, 8, 10:10.

Frost/Nixon noon, 2:40, 5:10, 7:30, 9:50.

Gran Torino 12:30, 3:10, 5:30, 7:40, 10.

Hotel for Dogs 12:30, 2:50, 5:10.

Notorious 7:20, 9:50.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 12:40, 2:40, 5, 7, 9:10.

The Pink Panther 2 1:20, 3:30, 5:40, 7:30,

MARCH 5-11, 2009 17 LACITYBEAT

9:30.

Push 2:50, 7:20.

Rachel Getting Married noon, 2:20, 4:50, 7:10, 9:40.

Twilight 11:50 a.m., 2:10, 4:30, 6:50, 9:30.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans 12:50, 5:20, 9:40.

WESTWOOD, WEST L.A. AMC Avco Center, 10840 Wilshire Bl, (310) 475-0711. Fired Up Fri 2, 4:35, 7, 9:30; SatSun 11:30 a.m., 2, 4:35, 7, 9:30; Mon-Thur 2, 4:35, 7, 9:30.

Frost/Nixon Fri 1:35, 4:20, 7:05, 9:50; Sat-Sun 10:50 a.m., 1:35, 4:20, 7:05, 9:50; Mon-Thur 1:35, 4:20, 7:05, 9:50.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Fri 2:20, 4:50, 7:30, 10; Sat-Sun 11:45 a.m., 2:20, 4:50, 7:30, 10; Mon-Thur 2:20, 4:50, 7:30, 10.

Taken Fri 2:30, 5, 7:40, 10:05; Sat-Sun 11:55 a.m., 2:30, 5, 7:40, 10:05; Mon-Thur 2:30, 5, 7:40, 10:05.

Laemmle’s Royal Theatre, 11523 Santa Monica Bl, (310) 477-5581. 12 1, 4:30, 8.

Landmark’s Nuart Theater, 11272 Santa Monica Bl, (310) 281-8223. Christmas on Mars Midnight Fri only,.

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 Fri-Sun noon, 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10; Mon-Thur 5, 7:30, 10.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Sat only, Midnight.

Landmark’s Regent, 1045 Broxton Av, (310) 281-8223. Confessions of a Shopaholic Fri 4:40, 7, 9:20; Sat-Sun 2:20, 4:40, 7, 9:20; Mon-Thur 4:40, 7, 9:20.

The Landmark West Los Angeles, 10850 W Pico Bl, (310) 281-8223. Crossing Over 11:30 a.m., 2:10, 4:50, 7:35, 10:10.

Everlasting Moments 10:45 a.m., 1:35, 4:30, 7:25, 10:15.

He’s Just Not That Into You 11 a.m., 1:50, 4:40, 7:30, 10:20.

The International Fri-Wed 11:20 a.m., 2:05, 4:50, 7:35, 10:20; Thur 11:20 a.m., 2:05, 10:20.

Milk Fri-Sun 10:50 a.m., 1:40, 4:25, 7:15, 9:55; Mon-Wed 10:50 a.m., 1:40, 10:30; Thur 10:50 a.m., 1:40, 4:25.

Moscow, Belgium Fri-Sun noon, 2:25, 4:45, 7:10, 9:35; Mon noon, 2:25, 4:45, 7:10, 10:10; Tue noon, 2:25, 4:45; Wed noon, 2:25, 4:45, 10:10; Thur noon, 2:25, 4:45, 7:10, 10:10.

The Reader 11 a.m., 1:45, 4:35, 7:30, 10:15.

Slumdog Millionaire 11:30 a.m., 2:15, 5, 7:45, 10:25.

Two Lovers 11:50 a.m., 2:30, 5:10, 7:40, 10:10.

Watchmen Fri-Sat 10 a.m., 12:15, 1:30, 2:30, 3:45, 5, 7:15, 8:30, 9:30, 10:45, midnight; Sun 10 a.m., 12:15, 1:30, 2:30, 3:45, 5, 7:15, 8:30, 9:30, 10:45; Mon-Thur 11 a.m., 12:15, 1:30, 3:45, 5, 7:15, 8:30, 9:30, 10:45.

The Wrestler Fri-Sun 12 a.m., 7; Mon-Wed 2:25, 4:45, 7; Thur 2:25.

Majestic Crest Theater, 1262 Westwood Bl, (310) 474-7866. Slumdog Millionaire 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10.

Mann Bruin, 948 Broxton Av, (310) 208-8998.

He’s Just Not That Into You Fri-Mon 12:40, 3:50, 7:15, 10:15; Tue 7:15, 10:15; Wed-Thur 12:40, 3:50, 7:15, 10:15.

Mann Festival 1, 10887 Lindbrook Av, (310) 208-4575. The Reader 1, 4:10, 7:10, 10:10.

Mann Village, 961 Broxton Av, (310) 208-5576.

Call theater for titles and showtimes.

WOODLAND HILLS, WEST HILLS, TARZANA AMC Promenade 16, 21801 Oxnard St, Woodland Hills, (818) 883-2262. Coraline FriSun 10:45 a.m., 1:25, 4:05, 7:05, 9:40; MonThur 1:25, 4:05, 7, 9:30.

Fired Up Fri-Sun 10:10 a.m., 12:30, 2:55, 5:25, 8, 10:30; Mon-Thur 2:55, 5:25, 7:50, 10:10.

Friday the 13th Fri-Sun 10:05; Mon-Thur 9:55.

He’s Just Not That Into You Fri-Sat 10:05 a.m., 1:15, 4:20, 7:30, 10:45; Sun 10:05 a.m., 1:15, 4:20, 7:30, 10:40; Mon-Thur 1:15, 4:20, 7:25, 10:30.

The International Fri-Sun 10:25 a.m., 1:30, 4:25, 7:20, 10:20; Mon-Thur 1:30, 4:25, 7:15, 10:05.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience in Disney Digital 3D Fri-Sun 10:30 a.m., 12:45, 3, 5:15, 7:35, 9:45; Mon-Thur 12:45, 3, 5:15, 7:30, 9:30.

The Metropolitan Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor Encore II Wed only, 1.

The Metropolitan Opera: Madama Butterfly Sat only, 10 a.m.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop Fri 12:05, 2:30, 4:50, 7:15, 9:50; Sat 4:50, 7:15, 9:50; Sun 12:05, 2:30, 4:50, 7:15, 9:50; Mon-Wed 2:30, 4:45, 7, 9:25; Thur 2:20, 4:30.

The Pink Panther 2 Fri-Sun 12:10, 2:40, 5:10, 7:40; Mon-Thur 2:40, 5:10, 7:35.

Push Fri-Sun 10:20 a.m., 1:10, 4; Mon-Tue 2:15, 5, 7:45, 10:25; Wed 5:20, 8, 10:30; Thur 2:15, 5, 7:45, 10:25.

Slumdog Millionaire Fri-Sun 10:35 a.m., 1:35, 4:30, 7:25, 10:25; Mon-Thur 1:35, 4:30, 7:20, 10:15.

Taken Fri-Sun 10 a.m., 12:20, 2:45, 5:20, 7:45, 10:10; Mon-Thur 2:45, 5:20, 7:40, 10.

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail Fri-Sun 10:40 a.m., 1:20, 4:10, 7:10, 9:55; Mon-Thur 1:20, 4:10, 7:05, 9:40.

Watchmen Fri-Sat 10:15 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:15, 2, 3:15, 4, 5:45, 7, 7:50, 9:30, 10:50, 11:30; Sun 10:15 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:15, 2, 3:15, 4, 5:45, 7, 7:50, 9:30, 10:45; Mon-Thur 1, 1:45, 2:25, 4:40, 5:30, 6:10, 8:20, 9:15, 9:50.

Laemmle’s Fallbrook 7 Cinemas, Fallbrook Mall, 6731 Fallbrook Av, West Hills, (818) 3408710. Che: Part One Fri-Mon 1, 7; Tue 4; Wed 1, 7; Thur 4.

Che: Part Two Fri-Sun 4, 10; Mon 4; Tue 1, 7; Wed 4; Thur 1, 7.

The Class Fri-Sun 12:45, 4:20, 7:20, 10:15; Mon-Thur 1:45, 5:20, 8:20.

Gomorrah Fri-Sun 12:30, 3:40, 7, 10:10; MonThur 1:30, 4:40, 8.

Milk Fri-Sun 12:40, 7:10; Mon-Thur 1:40, 8:10.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Fri only, 11:55.

Slumdog Millionaire Fri-Sun 12:50, 3:50, 7, 9:55; Mon-Thur 1:50, 4:50, 8.

Two Lovers Fri-Sun 12:10, 2:40, 5:15, 7:50, 10:15; Mon-Thur 1:10, 3:40, 6:15, 8:50.

Watchmen 1, 4:30, 8:10.

The Wrestler Fri-Sun 4:10, 10:15; Mon-Thur 5:10.

)

MUSIC L I V E

R E V I E W

Animal Collective @ The Music Box Henry Fonda Theater Thursday, February 26 A little over a month after Animal Collective canceled their Los Angeles shows at the last minute – provoking much beardo drama and peasant-skirt hand-wringing, not that it takes much to motivate that crowd to histrionics – the band returned to do their best to soothe the savage hearts of their hardcore fans, many of whom had gone to great lengths to secure tickets to the originally scheduled shows. (Not to mention the great lengths necessary to show up at the Fonda precisely as they began to peak on whatever chemicals they may have ingested.)

While it’s easy for people who are not fans of the band to mock their followers for their outrageous disappointment, those passionate about the group understand that canceling an Animal Collective show is like canceling Christmas, Election Day and ice cream at the same time. Judging by the reaction, all was forgiven the second the lights were dimmed. In an instant, the mass of bodies surged toward the stage, desperate to bask in the band’s benevolence. From out of the darkness came Panda Bear’s distinctive introductory vocal hiccup, and then the curtains rose and there they stood – so engulfed in stage smoke as to be unrecognizable.

Leading off with Merriweather Post Pavilion’s opener “In the Flowers,” the band performed a career-spanning set with coordinated colored light towers flashing on and off. (There would be enough strobe effects to make the more seizure-prone fans a little nervous.) Demonstrating why they are one of the most hyped touring acts, the band slid in and out of songs, tempos and melodic lines with astounding dexterity, understanding exactly what their fans had shown up to hear: their favorite songs, played much louder.

As powerfully moving as their main set was, the band’s encore easily topped what had come before. Beginning with Feels’ “Banshee Beat,” sliding into Panda Bear’s solo work “Comfy in Nautica” (which sounded transcendent through the Fonda’s powerful sound system) and finally ending with Sung Tong’s “Leaf House,” the crowd was eased gently back down to earth in the kindest way possible. At least a small segment of Los Angeles drifted off to sleep that night in blissful afterglow. (Tom Child)

raising the sparks

A Straight Forward Beautiful Situation Akron/Family is like engineering Zeppelin from a Dewey Decimal index on 'Blues, American'

By Chris Ziegler Akron/Family began their band with hundreds of pieces and no whole, jigsawing together their first recordings on FruityLoops in their shared Brooklyn warehouse space. That was the painstaking antithesis of the band’s to-be-developed loose live style, now and then a smash-mix of Sublime Frequencies-style field recordings (like the ambient campfire crackle on coming album Set ’Em Wild, Set ’Em Free, due out in May on Dead Oceans) and outré world music and Sub Pop-compatible indie rock. FruityLoops is designed to arrange seconds-long samples, not seven-minute jams; chopping together the kinds of songs Akron/Family likes to play all night (what bassist-and-more Miles Seaton now calls “wicked jams,” while discussing a recent show that ended up collapsing about sunrise) would have been as fluid and natural as engineering Led Zeppelin from a Dewey Decimal index on Blues, American. But somehow they captured the sparks they wanted – the right sound caught in the wrong way.

Their new Set ’Em Wild (coming in May) was recorded very differently – the first as a trio, after the friendly departure of founding member Ryan Vanderhoof to a Buddhist Dharma center; the first on new label Dead Oceans after departing

from spirit guide Michael Gira’s Young God, the first the band completely self-produced. Explains Seaton: “It’s also the first time we’d taken all the time we wanted. We decided to spend whatever money we needed to on our own and do whatever we needed to do to be able to make this record how we wanted. We all agreed that it was important for us to follow it as far as it was going to go.”

But it’s also a return to the same sort of self-propulsion of the early Akron/ Family – the detail work, says Seaton, perhaps remembering miles walked on the mousepad, and the strange sense of natural wildness learned and nurtured in the middle of urban New York.

The band split apart geographically, recently, recalling the now-global spread of Animal Collective, whose maximally inclusive ideas about music find comfortable parallels in Akron/ Family: Set ’Em Wild snips moments from ringing West African guitar bands, from the bent melodies of Leonard Cohen, from the rattled synthesizer blank rock of middle-era Pere Ubu, from the messy roar of live takes of MC5’s “Black to Comm.” Closer “Last Year” even echoes sound and sentiment both of the Zombies’ “This Will Be

LACITYBEAT 18 march 5-11, 2009

Our Year,” though a happily surprised Seaton says that’s news to him – “I’ve never heard that song!” he says. “But it’s a straightforward beautiful situation.”

The three-piece Akron/Family visits L.A. (after a nod to Chris Darrow at last week’s McCabe’s tribute) for a three-night residency at the Steve Allen Theater, where they’ll be booked with (says Seaton) mind-readers and magicians as well as bands like two-piece T. Rex rockers Golden Animals and the softspoken Harper Simon. It’s the perfect size, Seaton says: small enough that he can see how every single person there fits alongside the next.

“In a room of 150 people, I can see everybody’s eyes,” he says. “And regardless of what’s happening, I can communicate something – even a smile – I can energetically have communication with somebody! If it gets above 500 or 600 you tend to lose that. But when you pump out that noise in a room that small ... anything is possible.” ✶ Akron/Family at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles; steveallentheater.com. Tue.-Thu., 7:30 p.m. $15. All ages. Opening bands include Golden Animals, Harper Simon and more.

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ART

Shashin Desai

"Threepenny Opera": In the shadow of the Gallows

Back To The Future of Poverty ‘Threepenny Opera’ and ‘Rent’ at the begining of a new American century

By Don Shirley As the struggling underclass quickly expands, the time is right to revisit two quasi-operatic musicals, The Threepenny Opera and Rent. They depict earlier manifestations of that struggle, often by the light of enormous overhanging moons.

Jules Aaron’s staging of Threepenny for International City Theatre is the best rendition of this Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht classic that I’ve seen in the Southland.

Aaron never forgets the show’s goal of satirizing capitalism by demonstrating how its precepts are adopted by thieves, murderers and whores.

He chose Michael Feingold’s scabrous translation instead of Marc Blitzstein’s

gentler, more familiar version. And he places the musical numbers front and center because these astringent songs are intended to explode directly in the audience’s collective face.

Aaron hired actors with big voices and supremely authoritative deliveries, supervised by musical director Darryl Archibald. Jeff Griggs, who is best known as a TV soap opera villain, is a dynamo as the charismatic criminal boss Macheath, alternately charming and creepy. As his bride Polly Peachum, Shannon Warne segues smoothly from naïvete to the self-confidence necessary to strip down to her underwear in order to sing “Pirate Jenny” at her own wedding

and, eventually, to assume control of her husband’s gang.

Tom Shelton and Eileen T’Kaye are commandingly snappy as Polly’s parents.

Zarah Mahler sizzles as Jenny Diver, Macheath’s prostitute lover who turns him in – her low-lit reprise of “Mack the Knife” is indelible. Rachel Genevieve is her wily match as Lucy Brown, whose father – the ever-corrupt chief of police – is embodied by the appropriately squishy-looking Paul Zegler.

Add an occasionally gender-flipping chorus, and we’ve got a wonderfully entertaining rogues’ gallery, moving with assurance through Kay Cole’s brisk choreography, under the shadow of an

LACITYBEAT 20 MARCH 5-11, 2009

overhanging gallows. That we can enjoy such unapologetic scoundrels (who were first introduced in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728) speaks well of the actors – or perhaps badly of us.

The characters in Jonathan Larson’s Rent are different, supposedly a lot more like you and me at the most bohemian stage of our lives. In fact, they’re based on those in Puccini’s La Bohème, which premiered almost exactly a century before Rent opened in 1996.

The Renters don’t know how they can possibly pay last year’s rent, as they protest on behalf of the more seriously homeless (who are not all that grateful for their assistance). Yet at least a few of these Alphabet City dwellers made a conscious decision to reject the choices and presumably the resources of their affluent parents in order to work on their art. Whether this makes them more or less sympathetic than the Threepenny miscreants is open to debate, but Larson’s score heavily loads the deck in their favor, just as Puccini did a century earlier. Some of them, of course, have additional problems that go beyond poverty, such as AIDS. Rent still has narrative problems that might have been fixed if Larson hadn’t died immediately before the first preview. But after seeing four versions of this show, I’ve stopped nitpicking the narrative, because I’m swept away by the characters and their full-throttle way of expressing their emotions in song.

The actors who created the roles of narrator/videographer Mark (Anthony Rapp) and HIV-infected rock composer Roger (Adam Pascal) are performing Rent for the first time in L.A., quickly banishing any suspicions that they might be too old, 13 years later. Lexi Lawson is a sensational Mimi, who is more or less the Jenny Diver of Rent, and Justin Johnston is scintillating as the cross-dressing Angel, who’s in love with Michael McElroy’s Tom Collins.

Although Larson was no Brecht, he offers his own critique of capitalism, most sharply in this lyric: “When you’re living in America at the end of the millennium, you’re what you own. So I own not a notion. I escape and ape content. I don’t own emotion – I rent.” At the beginning of the next millennium, as millions of Americans veer farther from “the ownership society,” Rent rings true. V The Threepenny Opera, International City Theatre, Center Theater, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, (562) 436-4610. ictlongbeach.org. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. $30-$45. Closes March 22.

Rent, Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 365-3500. ticketmaster.com. Tue.-Fri, 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m. $25-$75.

Closes March 8.

“AGGRESSIVELY SAUCY.� —Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

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Ty Taylor. Photo by Craig Schwartz.

Roger O. Hirson MUSIC AND LYRICS BY Stephen Schwartz DIRECTED AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY Je Calhoun CO�PRODUCED WITH Deaf West Theatre BOOK BY

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BITES Tango in the Night Fleming’s Steakhouse at LA Live pours out some nostalgia on March 10 with its three-course Vintage Rock Wine Dinner. The meal is coordinated around classic rockthemed alcohol, including Mick Fleetwood’s Private Cellar Riesling and Doobie Red, a wine made by Doobie Brothers manager B.R. Cohn. Perhaps eaters inspired by the dinner’s crossover appeal should start looking now for bottles of Jefferson Aperitif and Cabernet Clearwater Revival.

Call (213) 745-9911 or visit flemingssteakhouse.com for more info.

PHOTO by roshEIla robles

Is This Real Life?

fresh heir

Been there all the time 75 years of the Farmers Market

By Miles Clements There’s a brass band huddled in the heart of the Farmers Market, their puckered lips squeezing out Bourbon Street melodies. Streaming past the band are dozens of eaters wrapped up in the Mardi Gras spirit – feathered masks fringed in a rainbow of colors and beads slung across their bodies like bandoliers.

But though toes may be tapping, all eyes are aimed toward the food – scalliontopped bowls of gumbo and baconwrapped chicken breasts.

Although the defining dishes have changed over the decades, that focus on food has been the constant in the Farmers Market, now celebrating 75 years at Third and Fairfax. That’s an accomplishment – a lifespan that in the food world usually demands some kind of reincarnation. But the Farmers Market has never had to undergo any such rebirth; instead, it simply evolves, adapting its style to changing tastes.

Behind its white walls, the market erupts – the recent Mardi Gras celebration filled the place to capacity, but there’s rarely an hour when the crowds dip below a crush.

Since it started cooking a few years ago, Lotería has consistently been one of the market’s busiest stalls. Because

it translates alta cocina-style Mexican meals to a more street-like setting, you won’t find any steely spits of al pastor here.

But the restaurant delivers elsewhere: a finely spiced mole poblano, a quartet of worthy enchiladas and a great cactus salad, to name a few. Though there’s now a full-fledged Lotería restaurant in Hollywood, the stall is still a top-tier option with a kitchen that can capably bridge the gap between taco trucks and tequila bars.

Singapore’s Banana Leaf is squeezed in on the edge of the Market, but its lines are just as long. Dishes here pull from Malay, Indonesian and Singaporean traditions (think laksa and gado-gado), though some of the most unique plates probably get passed over for the chicken and beef satays. And there’s plenty of reason for that – served with compressed rice cakes known as lontong, those charred skewers top the ranks of the Market’s satisfyingly simple choices.

Sweets-seekers aren’t left out either.

If you grab a good enough parking spot, Thee’s Continental Bakery will entice you right at the entrance.

As its name suggests, the bakery covers a lot of European ground, from carefully layered baklava to fat,

marzipan-shelled slices of Princess cake. Beyond the inimitable Du-par’s, there’s also the equally excellent Bob’s Coffee & Doughnuts, where America’s quintessential pastry gets the kind of care it has always deserved.

Head in without a plan and the Farmers Market can wipe away an entire day, filling you up from breakfast all the way to a second dinner. And popular as they are, the aforementioned stalls don’t even begin to construct a complete cross-section of the market, which, because of its venerable reputation, can vault even the newest vendors to institutional levels.

The Market is stretching its celebratory festivities out across the whole year, but you can share your own personal history of the place now both online and at so-called memory boards stashed throughout the property. After 75 years, it should be obvious that the best memories here are always the edible ones. ✶ Farmers Market, 6333 W. Third St., Los Angeles, (323) 933-9211. Open Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-9 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m.-8 p.m. and Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Lot parking. Food for two: $10-$30. farmersmarketla.com.

LACITYBEAT 22 MARCH 5-11, 2009

Los Angeles’ culinary authenticity goes up for debate on March 11 when Zócalo hosts a forum questioning whether that feta char sui burrito you’re about to eat is even really a burrito at all. The free event at the Skirball Center will be moderated by Jonathan Gold and includes guests Roy Choi of Kogi, Nancy Silverton of Mozza and Sarintip Singsanong of Jitlada.

RSVP at zocalopublicsquare.org.

Well Planned The Planned Parenthood Los Angeles Guild’s Food Fare docks at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on March 12 for some annual culinary fundraising. The event began back in 1979 with a cooking demonstration from Julia Child and it’s packing out this year’s roster with participants like A.O.C., Ortolon, Anisette Brasserie, XIV, Pink’s and Clementine. Suzanne Goin of Lucques and Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Animal will also be on hand signing cookbooks.

Tickets start at $125 for the afternoon session and climb up to $175 for the evening. Visit pplafoodfare.com for details.✶ –M.C. Tips accepted … e-mail miles@eatfoodwith.me or visit eatfoodwith.me.

EIGHT DAYs IN L.A.

Edited by Tom Child

Thursday - Saturday: L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival clucks it up

L.A. City Beat hand picks calendar selections from among the myriad events that happen weekly in Los Angeles. In order to be considered, please submit all information at least two weeks in advance to calendar@lacitybeat.com or write Calendar / L.A. City Beat / 5209 Wilshire Blvd. / Los Angeles, CA / 90036. No faxes or phone calls, please.

CLUBS

Compiled by Ron Garmon

Avaland presents Carl Cox, DJ magazine’s first “Number One DJ in the World,” stopping by on his “Back in the USA” tour.

The Avalon, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood; avalonhollywood.com. Sat., 10 p.m..-7 a.m. $25 presale.

Bootie L.A., El Lay’s monthly mashup bootleg party, rolls on tonight with San Francisco’s Evolution Control Committee plus the usual gang o’ merr ymakers. The Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Ave., (213) 4138200; attheecho.com. Sat., 10 p.m.-2 a.m. $5 before 10 p.m.; $10 after.

Club DNA cuts to the Thurday night chase, promising “models & bottles” for the discriminating, dual-minded clubhopper.

Dress code is “Hollywood chic” and you know what that means. Club Tatou, 333 S. Boylston St., downtown Los Angeles, (213) 482-2000; Thur., March 5, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Ladies on guest list free before 11 p.m.; gentlemen $10. Guest list signup inhousemusicgroup.com.

Club Work It invites you to check out your favorite lesbians. The Medusa Lounge, 3211 Beverly Blvd., Silver Lake, (213) 3825723; medusaloungela.com. Sun., 10 p.m.2 a.m. Free.

Deep’s brings DJ Halo and resident Marques Wyatt to run the voodoo down this Sunday night. The Vanguard, 6021 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 4633331; vanguardla.com Sun., 10 p.m.-4 a.m. $15 presale.

Get Down, the first Friday throwdown at

King King, has the over weening pride to present the first-ever L.A. appearance of DJ Paul Thomas, Toolroom Records wonderboy and rising young remix king whose music has been getting heavy play on Radio 1 this past year. King King, 6555 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, (323) 960-5765; kingkinghollywood.com. Fri., 10 p.m.-4 a.m. $10 before 11.

Hot Butter Fridays puts the glide in yo’ stride with DJ Lady Sha. Dakota Music Lounge, 1026 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica; dakotalounge.com. Fri., 9:30 p.m.-2:30 a.m.

Free before 11 p.m.; $5 after.

Hussy Saturdays with DJ Myles Hendrick and the beautiful people. The Beauty Bar, 1638 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 464-7676; beautybar.com/la. Sat., 10 p.m.2 a.m. Free.

MUSIC

Compiled by Sarah Tressler

Jimmy Eat World, Club Nokia, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., downtown Los Angeles, (213) 765-7000; clubnokia.com. Thur., March 5, 8 p.m. $36.50.

com. Sat., 7 p.m. $25-$45.

G Love and Special Sauce with Eric Hutchinson, House of Blues, 8430 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-5100; hob.com. Sat., 8 p.m. $22.50$26.50. 18+.

Meet the Greet, The Airliner, 2149 N. Broadway, Lincoln Heights, (323) 221-0771; myspace.com/theairlinerclub.com. Sun., 7 p.m. 21+.

Heavyweights of Skacore 2009, including Pistoleros and Viernes 13, The Knitting Factor y, 7021 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 463-0204; knittingfactor y.com. Sun., 6:30 p.m. $16.

Jesse McCartney, House of Blues, 8430 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-5100; hob.com. Mon., 7 p.m. $25$27.50. 18+.

Steel Panther, Key Club, 9039 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 786-1712; keyclub.com. Mon., 8:30 p.m. $20; $32, under 21. 18+.

The Pretenders, The Wiltern, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 3881400. Tue., 8 p.m. $49.50-$65.

Bigelf, Nebula, Key Club, 9039 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 786-1712; keyclub.com. Thur., March 5, 7:30 p.m. $10 in advance; $12, day of the show. 18+.

Cut Copy, Matt & Kim, The Music Box at Henr y Fonda Theater, 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 464-0808; henr yfondatheater.com. Tue., 8 p.m. $23.

All Shall Perish, Whisky A Go Go, 8901 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 6524202; whiskyagogo.com. Thur., March 5, 6 p.m. $15.

Shwayze, LMFAO, House of Blues, 8430 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-5100; hob.com. Wed., 7 p.m. $15$17.50. 18+.

Moving Units, El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire, Los Angeles, (323) 936-6400; theelrey.com. Fri., 7 p.m. $20.

ANAVAN, Birds & Batteries, VOICEsVOICEs, Laco$te, The Smell, 247 S. Main St., downtown Los Angeles, thesmell.org. Wed., see website for cost and times.

Tom Jones, Club Nokia, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., downtown Los Angeles, (213) 7657000; clubnokia.com. Fri., 9 p.m. $45-$65.

Slipknot, Coheed and Cambria, L.A. Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood, (310) 330-7300; thelaforum.

De La Soul, Key Club, 9039 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 786-1712; keyclub.com. Thur., Mar. 12, 7:30 p.m. $30 in advance; $35, day of show. 18+.

LACITYBEAT 23 March 5-11, 2009

THEATER Compiled by Don Shirley

Battle Hymn. Jim Leonard’s play follows teenaged, impregnated Martha (Suzy Jane Hunt) from the eve of the Civil War into the 21st centur y. She refuses to give birth until America is on the road to recover y – and therefore the play is an ideal way to celebrate the Obama era. Leonard maintains a lighthearted tone throughout most of Martha’s odyssey, with deliberate anachronisms, genuinely wacky images and moments that require actors and audience not to take it all so seriously. Hunt’s a wonder in her high-flying role, but so are the four men (Bill Heck, William Salyers, Robert Manning Jr., John Short), who play all the other parts, crossing not only the gender line and occasionally the racial line but also the species line. John Langs’ direction and a couple of musical numbers by Michael A. Levine help energize the proceedings Circle X Theatre at [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 4613673; fordtheatres.org. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m. $12-$20. Closes Sat., March 7.

Candida. Shaw’s comedy about a strong woman (Willow Geer) who’s asked to choose between her popular preacher husband (Mark Deakins) and the gangly and lovesick young poet Marchbanks (Johnathan McClain) is in the skilled hands of director Kathleen F. Conlin and a sterling cast. At last the lustrous Geer, who developed her talents at her family’s Theatricum Botanicum, is entering the wider world of L.A. theater.

Colony Theatre, 555 N. 3rd St., Burbank, (818) 558-7000x15; colonytheatre.org.

Phone or see website for times. $32-$42.

Closes Sun., March 8.

Divorce! The Musical. Erin Kamler’s lively and witty musical focuses most of its arrows on attorneys and other professionals who capitalize on troubled couples. Her splitting-

CALENDAR up protagonists, a Brentwood radiologist (Rick Segall) and a would-be actress (Lowe Taylor) are shallow and materialistic. Still, a little more background on their initial attraction might help us care about their fate as they’re buffeted by their attorneys (Gabrielle Wagner, Leslie Stevens) and their mediator (Gregor y Franklin). It’s almost an evening of musical sketches instead of a full-fledged narrative, but director Rick Sparks gets maximum mileage from it.

Hudson Mainstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 960-1056; divorcemusical.com. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m. $25-$34.99. Closes Sun., March 29.

Double Indemnity. Kathrine Bates’ new dramatization of James M. Cain’s noir novel for Theatre 40 features throaty, eye-raising per formances by Ed F. Martin as the lustful insurance agent and Nancy Young as the murderous, faithless wife. But Beverly Olevin’s staging isn’t helped by the modular, almost bare set, which has to make do without the brooding cinematography of the landmark film based on the same material. For that matter, Theatre 40’s own long-running production of another Bates true-crime script, The Manor, has a similar advantage over this production because it uses the actual mansion where the reallife crime took place. The lack of visual atmospherics here leaves the more unlikely elements of the stor y and the ripe dialogue in plain view, with all of their flaws exposed.

Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills High School campus, (310) 364-0535; theatre40.org. Phone or check website for schedule. $10-$22. Closes Sun., March 15.

Falling Upward. Ray Bradbur y’s comedy,

about the men who frequent a small-town Irish bar, dilly-dallies too long, until an amusing stor y about an inherited wine legacy finally kicks into high gear just before intermission. Then the second act is something else entirely – Mediterraneanstyle “fairies� invade the bar and establish a kind of amity with the regulars. Tim Byron Owen’s revival features a cast of 24, who occasionally break into Irish music, alternately mournful and rambunctious.

Pat Harrington’s genial narrator keeps the disparate parts loosely connected; Mik Scriba plays the bartender who defuses tense situations with offers of free drinks.

It makes an interesting St. Patrick’s Month companion to Theatre Tribe’s A Skull in Connemara, in the smaller theater next door. El Portal Theatre, mainstage, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, (866) 811-4111; raybradbur ysfallingupward.com or plays411.com. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. 3 p.m. $30-$40. Closes Sun., April 5.

Film. In 1964, Samuel Beckett (Phil Ward) arrives in New York to monitor the shooting of his experimental short screenplay Film by novice filmmaker Alan Schneider (Bill Robens), a stage director who helped introduce Beckett’s plays to America. At the taciturn Beckett’s suggestion, the great silent film comic Buster Keaton (Carl J. Johnson), now hard-boiled and almost 70, is the star. Playwright Patrick McGowan treats this stellar alignment with winningly whimsical surreality in Trevor Biship’s staging. The focus is split among Keaton’s memories of his own years as an experimental artist (Mandi Moss as the young Keaton), Beckett’s bumbling flirtation with a prop girl (Deana Barone), and Schneider’s exasperation over his inability to master film, in comparison to his rival Mike Nichols (Trevor H. Olsen). Schneider and Nichols become vaudeville partners in Schneider’s dream, and Nichols gets all the laughs. Theatre of NOTE, 1517 N. Cahuenga, Hollywood. (323) 856-8611. theatreofnote. com. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. 7 p.m.; tonight, Feb. 26, 8 p.m. $18-$22. Closes Sat., March 21.

Grand Motel. In Michael Sargent’s droll new comedy, the Tennessee Williamslike playwright Cornelius Coffin (Dennis Christopher) retreats to a clothing-optional gay motel in Palm Springs during the premiere of his latest Broadway fiasco. As in the Grand Hotel template, other guests and less welcome intruders pass through, under the fretful eye of the proprietor couple (Craig Johnson, Erik Hanson). Coffin and ever yone else are drawn to the naked model (Andy Hopper, almost a Brad Pitt ringer) who’s apparently drifting into oblivion, but Coffin’s female friend (Shannon Holt) has other plans for the playwright before he enters his own coffin. Sargent’s playful but rueful script and his excellent cast are treated to a deluxe simulation of the tacky

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L.A. COMEDY SHORTS FILM FESTIVAL It’s much harder to make most people laugh than to make them cry. This is demonstrably true and perhaps explains why there are so many more universally agreed upon dramas than comedies. While everyone can relate to the loss of a loved one, not everyone enjoys a good pratfall (though if you don’t, we’re not sure we really “get� you). Much respect then to the participants in this weekend’s L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival for practicing a difficult craft. Featuring short works starring the likes of Bob Odenkirk, Cedric Yarbrough, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Adam Carolla in addition to panel discussions about writing and marketing your own comedic shorts, the festival spans three days of gut-bustage and comedy networking to help potentially lift you up from the YouTube hoi polloi and secure you a spot on funnyordie.com. Hey, it could happen. Downtown Independent Theatre, 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles, (213) 617-1033; lacomedyshorts.com/shorts/shorts.htm. Thur., March 5, 4 p.m.; Fri. & Sun., 10 a.m.; Sat. 11 a.m. $10 per screening; $99 for a four-day pass.

(Tom Child) milieu by designer Chris Covics. Unknown Theater, 1110 Seward St., Hollywood, (323) 466-7781; unknowntheater.com. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m. $18-$24. Closes Sat., March 28.

Hamlet, or the Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Denmark. Can a company of nonTroubies master the distinctive Troubadour Theater blend of classic texts, clown comedy and music inspired by well-known pop stars?

A CalRep troupe super vised by Troubie veteran Mike Sulprizio revives the Troubies’ 2005 text with mixed results. It’s possible to imagine some of the individual actors as Troubies, but the ensemble doesn’t yet click in a way that achieves Troubie magic. The venue is an energy-dissipating black box with the audience on three sides. The last part of the play is radically condensed (for example, no Yorick scene), no one is on stilts, the laugh meter is missing, the topical jokes feel dated, and Troubie mastermind Matt Walker isn’t in the room as either the star or as the main director (he’s on the road with Happy Days – groan). Armor y, 854 E. 7th St., Long Beach. (562) 985-5526; calrep.org. Phone or check website for schedule. $17-$20.

Closes Sat., March 14.

The Increased Difficulty of Concentration. This seldom seen absurdist comedy by Vaclav Havel, the great Czech playwright/ex-president, is oh-so-1968. A social scientist (Scott Rognlien) balances a nagging wife, sexy mistress and tempting secretar y with the intrusions of another scientist (Amy Stiller), who’s tr ying to use a temperamental computer to analyze personalities. Stale sexual politics aside, the second act includes some funny, dizzying images of modern theories gone mad.

Stephen Simek translated and Alex Lippard directed for The Next Arena. Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 960-7788; plays411.com/increaseddifficulty.

Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m. $20. Closes Sat., March 28.

Laws of Sympathy. Oliver Mayer is on to something here, in his depiction of how a mother (Anita Dashiell) and newly grown daughter (Diarra Kilpatrick) who have sur vived civil war in Somalia encounter culture shock and possibly worse exploitation in their new life in Atlanta.

Despite the watchful eye of their primar y resettlement counselor (Ahmad Enani), his colleague (Celeste Den) entangles the women with a scandal-tainted ex-track star (Will Dixon) when other job possibilities seem hopeless. The women are drawn to smiling kidvid characters as consolation for their woes. Jon Lawrence Rivera’s staging

LACITYBEAT 24 MARCH 5-11, 2009

for Playwrights’ Arena seems fairly sturdy, although the playwright had to play Enani’s role, script in hand, at the per formance I saw, after Enani called in sick. Perhaps this had something to do with my feeling that the counselors were over-emphasized at the expense of the women themselves. Studio/ stage, 520 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 627-4473; playwrightsarena.org. Fri.Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. 7 p.m. $20. Closes Sun., March 29.

Light Up the Sky. Moss Hart’s behind-thescenes glance at a ’40s Broadway-bound tr yout launches several comic sparklers in Bjørn Johnson’s staging. Colin Campbell’s pretentious director is the swishiest ever, and Benjamin Burdick and Andrea Syglowski go for the brassy ring as a producer and his wife. Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 882-6912; openfist. org. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. $20.

Closes Sat., March 7.

Mammals. A London housewife is going bonkers tending her two young daughters (played by adults) while her husband travels for his job. When he returns home, he announces he’s in love with a colleague – the per fect moment for a couple of childless friends to stop by. John Pleshette’s U.S. premiere of Amanda Bullmore’s play is a funny but dead-eyed glance at the bending and breaking of two couples. Half of the roles are double cast, but the group I saw was exactly right, including the women playing rambunctious kids. Lost Studio, 130 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (800) 5954849; tix.com. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.

Closes Sun., March 8.

Taking Steps. Alan Ayckbourn’s farce mixes up two conventional middle-class Brits (Andy Hoff, Marty Ryan) and their more freespirited mates (Melanie Lora, Kate Rylie), with a couple of amusing participants in a real estate deal (Jonathan Runyon, Bernard White). Directors Ron Sossi and Allan Miller get most of the laughs. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A., (310) 477-2055; odysseytheatre.com. Phone or see website for times. $20-$30. Closes Sun., March 22.

The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.

Daniel Berrigan’s 1971 docudrama, about his and eight fellow Catholic activists’ trial for burning draft records during the Vietnam War, is famous in L.A. for Gordon Davidson’s premiere at the Taper, which was rumored to have been monitored by the FBI. Yet Jon Kellam’s revival is rather staid, especially in contrast to that other recently revived Vietnam protest docudrama

CALENDAR

HUMBLE BEAUTY An hour-long documentary by Leticia Schwartz and Judith Vogelsang, Humble Beauty documents the artistic impulse kept flickering by the artists of skid row. Denizens of a horrifying urban landscape, the artists tell their stories, pointing up the bleak-yet-nourishing fact that the Muse, unlike money, is where you find her. Opening reception and screening, Thur., March 5, 7 p.m.-10 p.m. Koreatown Cultural Education Center, 3471 W. 8th St., Los Angeles, (213) 738-9050 x.101; humblebeauty.com. Exhibit hours are March 5, 7-10 p.m.; March 6, 5-8 p.m.; March 7: 2-5 p.m.; March 8, 2-5 p.m., March 9, 5-7 p.m.; March 10, 5-7 p.m. Free. (Ron Garmon) The Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Andrew E. Wheeler achieves the requisite passion as the author. In a bit of cross-gender casting, Adele Robbins plays the judge, who was entirely too polite and reasonable to generate much dramatic fire. Actors’ Gang, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City, (310) 8384264; theactorsgang.com. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. Closes Sat., March 21.

Violet Sharp. William Cameron’s script depicts the agonies that beset a maid (Meredith Bishop) for Charles Lindbergh’s in-laws, in the aftermath of the notorious Lindbergh baby kidnapping quality. An aggressive detective (David Hunt Stafford) considers her a prime suspect. The scenes feel like simulated re-enactments, with a docudramatic quality. As in many such stories, it isn’t easy to know how much is verified docu and how much is fabricated drama. Still, it’s an engaging demonstration of how seemingly innocent and anonymous bystanders can be drawn into the swath of a widely publicized news stor y. Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills High School campus, (310) 364-0535; theatre40.org.

Check website for schedule. $10-$22.

Closes Thur., March 12.

DANCE/COMEDY/ PERFORMANCE/SIGNINGS COMPILED BY GUELDA VOIEN

John Haskell presents and signs Out of My Skin, Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 660-1175; skylightbooks.com/nasapp/store. Thur., March 12, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Zoe Heller presents and signs The Believers, Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 659-3110; booksoup. com. Tue., 7 p.m. Free.

William Lobdell discusses and signs Losing My Religion, Vroman’s bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 449-5320; . Fri., 7 p.m. Free.

Los Angeles Comedy Shorts Film Festival, Downtown Independent Theatre, 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles, (213) 6171033; lacomedyshorts.com/shorts/shorts. htm. Thur., March 5, 4 p.m.; Fri. & Sun., 10 a.m.; Sat. 11 a.m. $10 per screening; $99 for a four-day pass.

Outfest’s FUSION 2009 Sixth Annual Los Angeles LGBT People of Color Film Festival. Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles; www.outfest.org. Fri.Sun., see website for schedule and ticket prices.

Reversing the Deterioration of U.S./ Russia Relations, Billy Wilder Theatre at the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 443-7000; hammer.ucla. edu. Thur., March 5, 7 p.m. Free.

Adult Writing Seminar Series: Writing About Music, 826LA East, 1714 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 413-3388; 826la. org. Thur., March 5, 7:30 p.m. $25.

Jerry Stahl presents and signs Pain Killers, Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 659-3110; booksoup.com.

Mon., 7 p.m. Free.

Asssscat, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 9088702; losangeles.ucbtheatre.com. Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7:30 p.m. $8, Sat.; Free, Sun.

Stand Up for the Animals (Featuring Lily Tomlin), The Comedy Store, 8433 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 656-6225; thecomedystore.com/home.html. Thur., March 5. 6 p.m. $35-$500.

Facebook (formerly MySpace), Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 908-8702; losangeles.ucbtheatre.com. Wed., 9:30 p.m. $5.

John West discusses and signs The Last Goodnights, Vroman’s bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 449-5320; vromansbookstore.com. Wed., 7 p.m. Free.

Farmlab Public Salon: Fiamma Montemezolo and Bill Kelley Jr., Farmlab Exhibition Center, 1745 N. Spring St., Los Angeles, (323) 226-1158; farmlab.org. Fri., noon. Free.

Fringes-Margins-Borders: L.A.’s Queer Exchange + San Francisco Artists, Highways Per formance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, (310) 315-1459; highwaysper formance.org. Fri.-Sat., 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. $15-$20.

Gayle Greene: An Insomniac’s Slant on Sleep, Richard Riordan Central Librar y, 630 W. Fifth St., Los Angeles, (213) 228-7025; lfla.org/aloud. Mon., 7 p.m. Free.

ART COMPILED BY RON GARMON

Bold Cabelleros and Noble Bandidas.

Images of glamorous outlaws in Latino popular culture. The Museum of the American West at the Autr y National Center, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, (323) 667-2000; autr ynationalcenter.org.

Tue.-Sun., 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. $3-$9; Children under 3, free. Through Sun., May 10.

Drawing on a Printing Machine.

Superstar artist David Hockney thinks Photoshop superior to any other kind of painting, but printing an image far too slow for commercial appeal, thus making the practice fine art by default. Opening

MARCH 5-11, 2009 25 LACITYBEAT

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Our host, Brently Heilbron, auctions everything from rare and collectable memorabilia to wacky, off-beat promo items & more! 03/07 AUCTION ITEMS INCLUDE: UÊÊ --Ê i Ê > «ÊUÊ 1 Ê --ÊÜ> Ê« it UÊ À Ê > `i Ê Õ V ÊL ÝÊÜ Ì ÊÌ iÀ Ã ÊUÊ «À ÛÊ/ V iÌÃÊUÊ Ì°Ê > `ÞÊ- Ê/ V iÌÃÊ All proceeds benefit local and global relief efforts!

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MOVIE MONDAYS

Each Monday in March, Amoeba presents FREE movies in the courtyard of Space15Twenty, just up the street from Amoeba! March 9th features This Is The LifeÊiÝ« À }ÊÌ iÊÀ>V > ]Êà V > Ê> `Ê Õà V> Ê implications of South Central Los Angeles’ famed ‘90s Hip Hop venue The Good Life. Stay for a DVD signing with director Ava Vernay!

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ELIGH & JO WILKINSON AND AFRO CLASSICS Mother & Son: Jo Wilkinson and Eligh (of the California collective Living Legends) have crafted a truly groundbreaking collaborative musical iÝ«iÀ i ViÊ ÊÌ i ÀÊ iÜÊ

ÊSacred Ground. Scarub (Living Legends) and Afro Classics (Scarub of Living Legends and Very of US pros) celebrate their release of their new Classic EP.CD release show later that night at The Hotel Room (downtown LA).

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clubland

Terrakroma.

Time and circumstance happen to us all and, in the case of Terrakroma this weekend, that’s a good thing. Those crazy underground kidz have been throwing some OTH events of late and the chance availability of a “truly incredible glorious gorgeous unbelievable” downtown space this very Saturday night is cause for yet another ad-hoc jollification, this one called Return of the Oyster and featuring DJs Earthbag, Armando and a host of others. Think of it as just like family, and then re-imagine your family as a bunch of sexy party people obsessed with prog and trance.

Location TBA, so get on board with the guest list at terrakroma.com and bring an item or two for the altar. $10 suggested donation. Downtown L.A. (Ron Garmon)

Robert Quarry, Last of the great bloodsuckers

reception Thur., 7-9 p.m. L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955; www. lalouver.com. Through Sat., March 28.

The Getty Commodus: Roman Portraits and Modern Copies. Focusing on the provenance of a single bust of the muchreviled Roman emperor. The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Dr., Los Angeles, (310) 440-7300; getty.edu. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.5:30 p.m. Free. Through Mon., June 1.

Illiterature. A group show featuring the visual jump, jive ’n’ wail of abstract art.

Opening Feb. 21st. Arena 1 Galler y, 3026 Airport Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 3977449; santamonicaartstudios.com. Tue.Sat., 1-6 p.m. Through Sat., March 21.

Requiem for a Vampire

BY RON GARMON Möbius Strip: Despite the passive dead-weight of recession and the active efforts of authorities, the warehouse party scene downtown continues to grow. As an alternative to the increasingly tiresome prepackaged Clubland experience on tap in Hollywood, these ramshackle venues – secreted behind battered signage like Joe’ Imported Mustard or Consolidated Bulk Inc. – host rambunctious gatherings every weekend. They range in size from rent parties thrown to cover the nominal costs of renting in such rat-ridden precincts to go-big affairs like last Saturday’s opening of Ouroboros, a new art-and-party space located so far into that blighted labyrinth that docents were stationed a block away to guide partiers to the sound of the oontz. The usual parcel of wiseguy artisans, robo-hippies and sexy girls with hula hoops was there, along with a double-handed sprinkling of clubkids – happy escapees from safer, more legal fun.

Goodbye Uncle Bob: His brief 1970s fame as suave B-movie vampire was long over by the time I met Robert Quarry, but the late actor – whose death of a host of illnesses on February 20 at age 84 was announced early last week – was still the raconteur and waspish Wildean he played on those flickering Eastmancolor artifacts they even now screen occasionally. Satirist Terry Southern once hymned a select company of actors who could be just as brilliant in one’s living room as ever

on screen, and “Uncle Bob” was in that company. We met during the abortive “’zine revolution” of a few years back, when some friends and I ran one of the love-laborious buggers out of my Van Nuys apartment. The puckish and longlived star of Count Yorga, Vampire – a surprise 1969 hit about a designercoiffed bloodsucker loose in Charlie Manson-era L.A., which spawned a major trend in horror that influenced Anne Rice’s Lestat – was the subject of an epic-length interview. We became friends and I’d occasionally accompany him to conventions and other functions requiring the presence of old monsters, where we’d sit in the dark as his old movies screened and I’d listen to his adder-tongued quips about co-stars like Mariette Hartley and Vincent Price.

A rampant Clubland aristo who hung with all the freaky kids at places like Bito Lidos and The Troub, his party days ended along with his film career after having his legs broken by thugs late one night in Hollywood. He worked with Katharine Hepburn and James Dean, once threw a script at Otto Preminger and had an incident or two from his life copped by David Niven for one of the latter’s fictive memoirs. I last saw him the day he left for the Motion Picture Home last August, helping him pack while bending an ear to his many health-related laments. It only felt like goodbye after Bob gifted me his black vintage Members Only jacket. It hangs in my closet still – stylish and out-of-itstime, just like him. V

Institute: Under Hand. Seeking to upset “the traditional activity of the artist who makes unique objects or manipulates and retouches found objects under the ‘authority of the hand,” this exhibit highlights the ways stor ytelling, a/v recordings and disintegrating ephemera can document how the hand of the artist may construct untruth as readily as truth. If art is supposed to a true representation of the world, what are we to make attempts at deception?

The Institute of Cultural Inquir y, 1512 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 2737181; culturalinquir y.org. Regular hours: Thur., noon-4 p.m.; ever y odd Sat., noon-5 p.m. Free. Through Sun., March 29.

Mannequins: Undressed. Beck Starr’s latest exhibit “combines traditional photography and digital art to capture an iconic look” at the female form. Advocate & Gochis Galleries, The Village, 1125 N. McCadden Pl., Hollywood, (323) 860-7300; lagaycenter.org. Mon.-Fri., 6 p.m.-10 p.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. Through Sat., April 18.

Michael Pukac: Pukac Safari. Yet another showing by this rising young master of the absurd, but this time the theme is the members of the animal kingdom and the 1001 weird uses to which they can be put. Bailey Galler y, 564 S. Main St., Los Angeles, (213) 438-0900; pussyandpooch. com. Tue. & Thur., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Wed. & Fri.-Sat., 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m.

Free. Through Sun., March 29.

New Mythologies. Six L.A.-based women artists build new archetypes. Pharmaka 101 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, (213) 689-7799; pharmaka-art.org. Wed.-Sat., 1-6 p.m. Free.

Through Sat., Feb. 28.

Other People: Portraits from the Grunwald and Hammer Collections.

What Jean-Paul Sartre claimed as Hell is the subject of this far-ranging exhibit of portraiture from the 16th centur y to today. Armand Hammer Museum of Art and

LACITYBEAT 26 March 5-11, 2009

Cultural Center, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 443-7000. Tue.-Wed. & Fri.Sat., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Thur., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $7 adults; $5 seniors/ UCLA alumni. Through Sun., March 15.

Rock, Paper, Scissor. Showing off works done by artists with backgrounds in the music biz, among them Raymond Pettibon, Daniel Johnston and Thurston Moore.

Opening reception Sat., Feb. 28, 7 p.m.10 p.m. Robert Berman Galler y, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station; C-2, D-5 Galleries, Santa Monica, (310) 315-9506; robertbermangaller y.com. Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Free. Through Sat., March 21.

The Sharpie Show. Opening reception on Saturday for this self-explanator y, multiartist exhibit, with live painting by Two Rabbits and beats by DJ Phyz Ed, from 6-9 p.m. Crewest, 110 Winston St., Los Angeles, (213) 627-8272; crewest.com.

Tue.-Thur., noon-7 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., noon-8 p.m.; Sun: noon-6 p.m. Through Sun., March 1.

She: Original Works by Wallace Berman and Richard Prince. The female archetype is explored by two avant-art reconceptualists. Berman, a counterculture SF figure who died in 1976, is represented by previously unseen works and Prince specializes in projecting girly images onto a 1986 El Camino. Michael Kohn Galler y, 8071 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 6588088; www.kohngaller y.com. Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Through Sat., March 7. ’Til Death Do Us Tart. This new Glassell Park galler y hosts a group show to celebrate their inaugural. Butter Tart Galler y, 4124 Verdugo Rd., Los Angeles; buttertartgaller y. blogspot.com. See website for times. Free.

Through Sun., March 1.

Twilight. The Eastside museum named for the preeminent movie monster is fitting host for this showing by Reno ceramics sculptor Rebekah Bogard, whose whimsical fantasy insects are like dainty pornography for fans of David Cronenberg movies. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College, 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, (323) 265-8841‎; myspace. com/vincentpriceartmuseum. Mon.-Wed., noon-4 p.m.; Thur., noon-7 p.m.; Sat., noon4 p.m. Through Thur., April 23.

Vintage Futurism: Recent Works on Wood & Paper. Presenting former graffiti artist Kofie’One’s bold, fantastically detailed abstract cityscapes. Opening reception Fri., 7 p.m.-10 p.m. 01 Galler y, 530 S. Hewitt St., Barker Block- Suite 141, downtown Los Angeles, (213) 689-0101; 01galler y.com.

Tue.-Sat., noon-6 p.m. Free. Through Sun., March 29.

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CASTING WOMEN WITH PHOBIAS: Do you have a phobia that’s holding you back from enjoying life?

Are you looking for help? A major cable network is casting a show that will try and help women overcome their phobias. We’re looking for women who have phobias that constrict their day-to-day life and want to take the next step in overcoming their fears. The show will put female phobic’s into a therapeutic environment to help them face their fears head on.

Under the guidance of

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Please email us with your name, age, contact information, picture, and phobia. Be sure to also include in your e-mail a brief description of how your phobia has prevented you from living life to its fullest and

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Business Services

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**HAWAIIAN HEALING** Pohaku hotstone therapy and lomi lomi massage are both ancient and exceptionally therapeutic for physical exertion and stress. Sunset Blvd. studio or outcalls available. Reasonable rates/ holiday special. Call Rob @ (808)2805359 or email robbyg_ lomi@yahoo.com

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LA CITY BEAT

We are looking for volunteers to take part in a clinical trial of a new study drug.

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Dr. Timothy C Simmons 310-674-0144 Timothy C. Simmons, M.D. West Gastroenterology Medical Group,

8110 Airport Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045

(310) 674-0144

#

West Gastroenterology Medical Group 8110 Airport Blvd (at LaTijera) Los Angeles, CA 90045 This project has been approved by the West Gastroenterology Medical Group Ethics Committee.

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+&

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HIV Positive Women & Men, age 18 to 65 are needed for a UCLA immunology research study.

• You will be asked to donate up to 110 cc (approximately 4 ounces or 8 tablespoons) of blood up to 15 times over 4 years.

• Volunteers will be paid $25 per visit.

To find out more call Alfonso Coro at (310) 206-7288 or e-mail acoro@mednet.ucla.edu Beth D. Jamieson, Ph.D., Dept. of Medicine, Principal Investigator UCLA IRB#: 07-03-009-03 Expiration Date: 1/29/2010 MARCH 5-11, 2009 29 LACITYBEAT

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HOTRENTALS APARTMENT CONDOS LOFTS •

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•

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6220 WEST 3RD STREET LOS ANGELES, CA 90036

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Apartment/ Condos/Lofts

WEST LA : 1BD $1495+up.

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THE PLACE TO STAY IS PALMS/ WEST LA! Single $995+up. 1BD $1275+up.

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LA CITY BEAT

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Pohaku hotstone therapy and lomi lomi massage are both ancient and exceptionally therapeutic for physical exertion and stress. Sunset Blvd. studio or outcalls available.Reasonable rates/ holiday special.

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UNPAID OVERTIME? DENIED BREAKS? We recover $$$$ for unpaid overtime or denied breaks Call Atty.

REAL ESTATE INVESTOR Seeks students for real estate education.

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MARCH 5-11, 2009 34 LACITYBEAT

MARCH 5-11, 2009 35 LACITYBEAT

MARCH 5-11, 2009 35 LACITYBEAT