L.A. Times Sunday Calendar Jan 8 and Jan 15 by LATawards

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S U N D A Y , J A N U A R Y 8 , 2 0 1 7 :: L A T I M E S . C O M / C A L E N D A R

Edel Rodriguez For The Times

LIVING IN A BUBBLE Are Hollywood values out of sync with American values? It’s an easy accusation. But what exactly are Hollywood values? Sex and violence or political correctness? A progressive drive for diversity or a dismissal of working-class stories? The liberal elite or a reality-show host who becomes president? We look at how the movies, TV, music, art and video games reflect, shape and sometimes derail our culture and our politics. BLAME THE MOVIES

A WOMAN’S PLACE

TV’S GREAT MIRAGE

Potent Hollywood visions that for better or worse shape our politics. By Kenneth Turan E3

In films, women advance at work yet still face men behaving badly. By Justin Chang E4

Hollywood’s liberal bias isn’t why we see so few working-class stories. By Mary McNamara E10

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 8 , 2 017

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DEBBIE REYNOLDS and her daughter Carrie Fisher are shown in 2011 in L.A.

Feeling a double loss in Hollywood I was saddened to learn of the deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Fisher’s talents in particular were never fully appreciated. I once met Reynolds when I was a child. She smiled, shook my hand and said: “Hi, I’m Princess Leia’s mother” — a remarkable tribute by the costar of “Singin’ in the Rain” to the iconic status her daughter had achieved in “Star Wars.” Stephen A. Silver San Francisco

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Hollywood has lost two legends from two different eras from the same family. The first movie I ever saw, according to my older sisters, was “Susan Slept Here,” starring Reynolds. She was woven into our lives as a wonderful and talented actress who sang and danced with her whole heart and made it look effortless. The image of her tap dancing between Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain” will always make me smile and be grateful for such lovely memories of Reynolds. Those films are timeless gems. Frances Terrell Lippman Sherman Oaks

Grief in film, and on the page Writer Emily Zemler pointed out that individuals can grow by experiencing grief, which was the intent of the filmmakers who made “Manchester by the Sea,” “Collateral Beauty” and “Arrival” [“A Year of Good Grief in Movies,” Jan. 2]. By choosing the death of a child as their central narratives, they take grief to its deepest level. Having experienced the loss of my parents as a teenager, my guardian a few years afterward and my brother and younger son more recently, I agree that people can grow through grief. However, so many losses can also cause cumulative grief, especially if they occur within a short time. This type of grief can be overwhelming and may never end. We live, we love, we grieve, and somehow we go on. Thank you for a wellwritten article that explains how and why these films focus on our humanity. Libby J. Atwater Ventura ::

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I can’t believe you revealed pivotal information about “Manchester by the Sea” in the opening paragraph. Are you kidding me? I stopped reading because I figured you were going to blow plot lines of any movie you included in your piece. The main newspaper in this movie town doesn’t feel it’s necessary to post a spoileralert warning? I shake my head in utter disappointment. Shame on you. Jan Furutani Los Angeles

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Regarding “What 2017 Needs Is One Big Book” [Jan. 1]: Actually, what 2017 needs is substantive, meaningful, thought-provoking literature. “Gone Girl,” “The Girl on the Train,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” et al., are formulaic books packaged and written for TV and movies. There are a plethora of these kinds of fluffy books written every year exclusively for entertainment and profit but never for cognitive development. Do we really need “a new” E.L. James, whose “Fifty Shades of Grey” was mocked by many for being a meaninglessly infantile and badly written book? I don’t think so. What we really need is a new Kurt Vonnegut, Harper Lee, Carson McCullers, J.D. Salinger — writers who take your imagination everywhere rather than in just one direction. Giuseppe Mirelli Los Angeles

A salute to the ‘Rocket Girls’ I have been reading the articles in The Times about

the new movie “Hidden Figures” [“It Adds Up to a Real Crowd-Pleaser,” Dec. 23, and “The Feminine Side of This Equation,” Dec. 26] and am disappointed that none I have seen have mentioned these women’s predecessors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to the recent book “Rise of the Rocket Girls” by Nathalia Holt, one of the very first employees of what became JPL was a female “computer,” in 1939. During the 1940s and into the ’50s, all the calculations there were done by women. I believe that the women were initially all white, then about 1953 a Chinese woman and a black woman were hired as the department was expanding. Certainly, the experiences of the women in “Hidden Figures” is an important story to be told, and I am looking forward to seeing the movie. I think that anyone who enjoys “Hidden Figures” will enjoy reading about our Southern California “Rocket Girls” — I know I have. John Strawway Encino

Movie picks lack conviction I’ve lost respect and trust in Kenneth Turan as a film critic after reading his year-end selections [“Best of the Year — Movies: Stories That Took Us Deep,” Dec. 18]. He cheapens the honor and integrity of his selections with his absurd ties for first, second and third places. It shows a lack of courage on his part and a lack of conviction in his selections. He shows disrespect for those selections by not telling us more about why he made the top three (actually seven) picks, like his fellow reviewers did, and he displays a childlike “Oh, whatever” attitude by selecting 16 movies for a top 10. Anthony Givhan Bellflower

Expanding the diversity net Diversity in Hollywood seems to be about more blacks [“Globes Blaze a Golden Path to Oscars Diversity,” Dec. 13]. What about all the other minority groups and ethnic cultures? Just sayin’. Sylvia Sanchez Fullerton

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S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 8 , 2 017

HOLLYWOOD VALUES

Irving Lippman Columbia Pictures

IN “MR. SMITH Goes to Washington,” the evergreen 1939 Frank Capra film, James Stewart’s title character, center, is a political novice who stands up to the system.

THE MOVIES GO TO WASHINGTON

Our sense of how things work gets shaped by the screen. So: Mr. Trump.

terests to his last breath. The image was so seductive and made voting for Trump emotionally appealing in a way Clinton’s candidacy never managed that a lot of voters felt no need to look any deeper. One of the 2016 campaign’s most perplexing questions, why revelations of Trump being caught on tape making the crudest possible sexist remarks about women, something that would have killed his candidacy in campaigns past, ultimately made so little difference. Again, the movies have to shoulder part of the blame. For from “Knocked Up” through “Sausage Party,” we live in an age when Hollywood has been beyond eager to stoke the public’s endless appetite for raunchy comedies. Entire careers have been built out of this, in front of and behind the camera, and though it can be argued that Trump’s remarks took things to another level, the fact remains that those films, viewed as they have been by tens of millions of Americans, in effect normalized that kind of once-unthinkable language and gave people with a mind to excuse it leeway to do so.

KENNETH TURAN FILM CRITIC

For better or worse, Donald Trump will become president sooner than you think and the question remains: How did it happen? Pundits of all stripes have weighed in with speculation about possible reasons: the president-elect’s post-fact skills as a campaigner; FBI Director James Comey’s heavy thumb on the scale; “Manchurian Candidate”-type Russian interference; noshow Democratic voters who didn’t understand that elections are about transference of power and not expressions of “she’s just not right for me” personal preference. I have a simpler explanation: Hollywood made us do it. Not the celebrities, not the executives, the movies themselves. For it turns out that the election and the choices it offered voters fit snugly into models the movies have created, archetypes infused so deeply into our culture and our way of thinking that they shape how we view the world, influencing us even if we haven’t seen the films. I don’t think it’s too much to say that the movies were key in creating the cultural forces that made voting for Donald Trump seem like a fine idea. Hollywood movies and the dream-factory visions they create are so potent that they’ve influenced elections overseas. In 1989, when Poland held its most significant voting since World War II, the striving Solidarity party used a picture of Gary Cooper as Marshal Will Kane in “High Noon” with a ballot in his hand and the Solidarity logo on his vest as its central campaign image. The result was a strong showing for the party and the beginning of the end for Poland’s dominant Communists. That movieinspired poster, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said, “has become the emblem of the battle we fought together.” So it’s not much of a stretch to imagine the FBI’s Comey choosing to see himself in the Gary Cooper mold as he contemplated his course of action, a believer in duty and honor insistent on doing the right thing though everyone else in the small town that is Washington, D.C., abandons him. Because whether we are aware of it or not, we often look to the movies to tell us who we are, to reinforce our actions and provide shortcuts that help us categorize and make sense of an increasingly complex world. As far as understanding the mood of the

‘Shake things up’

Gerardo Mora Getty Images

DONALD TRUMP campaigned as an outsider and a crusader. That dovetailed

nicely with images put forth in such movies as “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Photographs, from left, by

Bob Akester Paramount Pictures; Spencer Platt Getty Images

DID HILLARY CLINTON encounter a Tracy Flick effect? In 1999’s “Election”

Reese Witherspoon’s school government campaign affronts a male teacher.

voters headed to election day, look no further than Peter Finch’s fed-up newscaster Howard Beale in Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s prescient 1976 “Network,” encouraging everyone to open their windows and scream, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Trump as Mr. Smith?

So who were voters in this unhappy mood going to select? On the one hand there was Hillary Clinton, immediately recognizable in Hollywood terms as the nerdy girl, the butt of innumerable jokes, the smart person no one likes who can’t get the respect

she deserves. One example out of many here is Alexander Payne’s “Election” and its prototypical overachiever Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), a capable student so disliked that a teacher (Matthew Broderick standing in for WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange?) is willing to go to any lengths to derail her. On the other hand, Donald Trump’s campaigning skills allowed him to pose, against all reason, as Jimmy Stewart’s crusading Jefferson Smith in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” the hero who stands up against the system, who dares to speak out when others are silent, battling special in-

If there is one thing that unites many of Trump’s voters it is a desire to “shake things up,” an understandable wish given the mess in Washington, but one that counts on the unspoken presumption, which history flatly and terrifyingly contradicts, that there is in effect a safety net under this country, that there is a limit to how bad things can get under any presidency, no matter how feckless. Viewed in that light, what’s the risk? Hollywood has promoted this illogical protective idea throughout its history, insisting that this country’s citizens are the good guys, protected by John Wayne and the Almighty and destined to always come out on top. The apocalypse, by definition, rains destruction only on other people. It is not just American films that see things this way; all national cinemas do. You can even see examples in Germany’s World War II movies, in romances like 1942’s Zarah Leander-starring “The Great Love,” perhaps the most successful film of the Nazi era, which exuded brawny confidence that heroic Germans were destined to prevail against any and all enemies. It didn’t quite turn out that way, did it? So how is all this going to play out in the next four years? What kind of ending will reality provide for a story Hollywood wrote? There’s no knowing for sure, but once again, Hollywood provides the best clue, in this case in the person of Bette Davis as tempestuous actress Margo Channing in “All About Eve.” “Fasten your seat belts,” she famously said. “It’s going to be a bumpy night.” kenneth.turan@latimes.com Twitter: @KennethTuran

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 8 , 2 017

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Early in the German comedy “Toni Erdmann,” Ines Conradi (Sandra Hüller), a consultant for an oil giant called Dacoil, goes out with clients for drinks. When she mentions her role overseeing the company’s imminent outsourcing plan, the faux pas rattles Dacoil’s chief executive, who peevishly corrects her in front of everyone. By this point in the evening, the CEO has assigned Ines the humiliating task of taking his wife shopping the next day. When Ines later gives a presentation to the board, she is interrupted, misinterpreted and shut down by her clients plus other members of her team — nearly all of whom, it scarcely needs to be said, are men. Did I mention that “Toni Erdmann” is a comedy? Indeed it is, but for all its uproarious antics, it’s a comedy grounded thoroughly and specifically in the real world. There is nothing particularly funny or far-fetched about the boorishness and condescension with which Ines and her few female coworkers are treated by their male colleagues. Writer-director Maren Ade has the wit — but also the complete seriousness — to treat Dacoil as a microcosm of 21st century globalized capitalism, one that carries the scourge of workplace sexism in an unusually toxic, concentrated form. Ines, in other words, is not alone. Nor is she the only female professional on movie screens this season forced to confront male misbehavior in her place of business. A quick survey of the field would include Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert), the Parisian executive whose sexual assault serves as the impetus for the French movie “Elle,” and Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain), the ruthless Washington, D.C., lobbyist who takes on the gun industry in “Miss Sloane.” The list would also include real-life women, among them Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), the NASA mathematicians whose hardearned contributions to 1960s space travel are measured and recognized in “Hidden Figures.” A much less uplifting drama plays out in “Christine,” which recounts the personal and professional despair that led a Florida reporter named Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) to fatally shoot herself during a 1974 live broadcast. But perhaps no fictionalized biography, however skillfully done, could compete with the dramatic example provided by recent history. Had Hillary Clinton won the U.S. presidential election, it would have been tempting, and easy, to position these movies in a long-overdue parallel narrative of female triumph. But if anything, the themes that unite these pictures feel all the more pointed and resonant in the wake of Clinton’s defeat. I can already sense indignant emails being drafted in response from those inclined to attribute that defeat to the candidate’s moral lapses and strategic blunders rather than, say, a culture of ingrained misogyny. To reopen that debate here would, I’m sure, be enormously productive. But it would almost certainly miss the point of what Clinton, whatever her flaws or virtues as a candidate, came to represent culturally and the iconic stature that she achieved as the first woman to come within spitting distance of the most important job in the country. None of these cinematic heroines and antiheroines is a direct Clinton analogue, though several exhibit the same qualities at work — intelligence, ambition, calculation — that have made Clinton so simultaneously revered and reviled in the public eye. And the movies, perhaps acknowledging the ambivalence that even advanced societies can feel toward the women in power, largely resist the temptation to turn their characters into easy figures of sympathy. Certainly no movie in the past year so gleefully subverted the notion of empowerment as “Elle” or turned the already fraught minefield of gender politics into such dangerously uncertain terrain. In Paul Verhoeven’s raperevenge thriller, Michèle is the chief executive of a video-game company she runs with her friend Anna (Anne Consigny). The presence of two women overseeing a mostly male staff, churning out violently sexualized fantasies for teenage boys, is hardly incidental to the movie’s inquiry. Michèle’s top designer treats her with open contempt, suggesting that she lacks the qualifications to make important creative decisions about game play. (Michèle sarcastically responds that she and Anna must be “bitches who got lucky.”) Later, an office prankster distributes a video clip showing an animated version of Michèle being assaulted from behind

Sony Pictures Classics

IN “ELLE,” Isabelle Huppert

leads a male-centered company.

Kerry Hayes Europa

IN “MISS SLOANE,” Jessica

Chastain is a relentless force.

The Orchard

“CHRISTINE’S” Rebecca Hall

refuses to conform to molds.

Komplizen Film / Sony Pictures Classics

“TONI ERDMANN’S” Sandra

Hüller stares down chauvinism

by a many-tentacled Lovecraftian demon — a symbolic reenactment of the violation that sets off the movie. Michèle takes all these indignities in stride. She seems to have achieved her power not by striking fear into her employees — in the manner of, say, Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada” — but rather by projecting an air of utter indifference to what they think of her. She’s methodical, efficient and a master of the poker face. One of the most enthralling aspects of “Elle” is the way Michèle responds to her attacker; even her displays of fear and fury might well be the skillful ploys of a practiced problem solver. She troubleshoots her way to revenge. Elizabeth Sloane, by contrast, leaves little to chance, as we learn from her machinations to get a guncontrol bill passed in “Miss Sloane.” “Lobbying is about foresight,” she says, and the pleasure of the movie lies in guessing how Elizabeth, though very much the underdog, maintains the upper hand. At the very least, she doesn’t have to contend with the disrespect of her colleagues and rivals; she may be widely loathed, but she’s also acknowledged as a force to be reckoned with. Elizabeth is so ruthlessly drawn that at times she suggests a near-caricature of empowered femininity. Viciously eloquent and disdainful of emotional niceties, she’s all hard edges where many men prefer soft curves. Some might take umbrage at the way “Miss Sloane” seems to equate female strength with a deadening of warmth and emotion. But the movie is shrewd enough to offer a compelling counterexample in Elizabeth’s associate Esme (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an equally passionate crusader who, as badly she wants to win, refuses to sell out her humanity.

Although set during a more distant, restrictive period, Theodore Melfi’s polished and effective crowdpleaser “Hidden Figures” offers a considerably more uplifting experience, treating the injustices of the civil rights era as the building blocks of Hollywood uplift. Katherine, Dorothy and Mary stick out at NASA not just because they’re women but because they’re black, and “Hidden Figures” is particularly deft at conveying the struggle of being a minority twice over. This math-based movie itself demonstrates a talent for multiplication. The focus on three women — all of them facing equally Sisyphean struggles at work — allows for a more complex, wide-ranging sense of the obstacles at hand than a more focused telling would have managed. There is no easy villain here, and the problems of bigotry are shown to be a collective burden. Dorothy’s primary obstacle isn’t a white man but a white woman (Kirsten Dunst) whose refusal to give Dorothy a deserved promotion seems born of her own professional unhappiness. Elsewhere, it’s satisfying to watch as Katherine, wielding her data with masterly assurance, calmly upstages her smug supervisor (Jim Parsons) during a meeting of NASA’s top minds — a meeting she fights her way into, overturning years of pointless, discriminatory protocol. But the movie also takes pains to applaud the decency of another manager, Al (Kevin Costner), who sees Katherine’s talent and fights on her behalf. Notably, he acts not because he suddenly grasps that segregation is an abomination but because he realizes that it’s actively undermining staff productivity. “Hidden Figures” may have a Hollywood sheen, but it’s quite shrewd about how sweeping changes on one front — in this case, the ’60s space race and the rise of electronic computing — can precipitate necessary social reforms on another. Technological winds are also shifting in Antonio Campos’ biographical drama, “Christine,” which offers a smart, subtle critique of the commodification of TV news during the 1970s. It’s a time of growing opportunities for women in broadcast journalism, provided they fit a particular mold: chipper blonds, juicy human-interest stories, etc. Nearly everything about Christine Chubbuck — her hard, guttural voice, her severe on-camera demeanor and her insistence on doing serious, hard-hitting pieces — represents an affront to this paradigm. At the same time, “Christine” refuses to treat sexism as a catch-all motive for why Chubbuck pulled the trigger. What makes the movie such a discomfiting experience is that it acknowledges its heroine’s intelligence, integrity and work ethic while remaining unsparingly honest about her very real shortcomings. The other men in the newsroom — the goldenboy anchor (Michael C. Hall) she loves, the ill-tempered boss (Tracy Letts) she keeps clashing with — may complicate her path to success, but in the end, Christine’s greatest obstacle may well be herself. Nearly all of these stories regard the lot of working women with an understandable degree of pessimism. And yet these movies’ existence, and their willingness to confront tough realities head-on, is surely cause for optimism. And while the major studios have not been quite as attentive as their specialty-division counterparts to the needs of thinking, grown-up audiences, they found their own ways of subverting the status quo. In Denis Villeneuve’s accomplished science-fiction drama “Arrival,” Amy Adams plays a linguist who not only is the best in her field but possesses a crucial gift of intuition — often described, and dismissed, as a feminine trait — that holds the key to humanity’s survival. Disney’s impressively woke animated fantasy “Zootopia” centers on a bunny rabbit who overcomes the biases against her species and gender to fulfill her dream of becoming a police officer. Not to be overlooked is Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” remake, which cast four funny women (Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon) and immediately became a months-long target of misogynist outrage. The ferocity of all that fanboy hatred became the movie’s unavoidable subtext and perhaps even its text: How dare they send in women to do a man’s job! (They dared — and, in a further skewering of Hollywood formula, they even cast Chris Hemsworth as the office mimbo.) That the result wasn’t a particularly memorable movie only seemed to further underscore one of its more infuriating lessons, namely that male mediocrity remains acceptable in American society in a way that female mediocrity is not. Less successful as cinema than as provocation, “Ghostbusters” may offer a more fitting metaphor for the present moment than anyone may have expected from a goofy supernatural comedy about four women just trying to get the job done: It’s a marker of progress, but some of us are ready for a milestone. justin.chang@latimes.com

L AT I M ES . C O M / CA L E NDAR

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 8 , 2 017

Sebastian Mlynarski Roadside Attractions

“WINTER’S BONE,” with Jennifer Lawrence, slips into a sliver of the Ozarks where crime, clan and retribution trammel over a land offering little prosperity.

TRUE TO LIFE OR STEREOTYPICAL? Hollywood has a mixed record on its portraits of America’s working class. By Jeffrey Fleishman The working man is battered and bruised, celebrated and misunderstood. He is stoic and brash. He counts his hours and logs his years. He is the best and worst of us, as willing to walk into a coal mine as onto a battlefield. He endures until he breaks or accepts that the promises of manhood glimmered brighter when he was a boy. The question now is how will Hollywood depict this working man — and working woman — in a culturally divisive era? What are the new narratives in a changing economy and racial strains driven by identity politics? Donald Trump’s election has refocused attention, much like the fall of the U.S. steel industry in the 1970s, on disillusioned and bitter parts of the country shaken by financial decline, foreign competition and addiction. The Democratic Party, once the bastion of labor, has been accused of paying less attention to the white working class and focusing more on minorities and youth. Film and television creators are said to be too liberal and out of touch with the values and concerns of the heartland. Yet as far removed as Hollywood seems from blue-collar realities, movies have for generations played on all manner of working men and women, taking us from steel mills to fishing trawlers, from textile plants to grocery checkout lines, and from one hardpressed town to the next. Such portrayals cast the working class — from “The Grapes of Wrath” to “Harlan County, USA” — as indivisible from the success and failure of the American dream. A number of movies have rendered insightful glimpses of working class and rural America that have risen above region and economic status to encompass the universal. These films have realized that stories — mainly about white, non-college-educated men and women — can veer as easily into stereotype and generalization as movies featuring minorities, transgenders and rock bands. Even the best intentioned blue-collar tales can slip from sparse realism into stock masculinity and false redemption.

Respect for the trials and joys

One of 2016’s most evocative movies, “Hell or High Water,” follows two brothers, Toby and Tanner, across a West Texas landscape of foreclosures and ruin after the 2008 recession. The film has the style of an old western. But it is very much about how today’s capitalism is indifferent to families — at least 60% of Americans don’t have college educations — whose shrinking paychecks and diminished options leave them desperate amid fallow fields, pump jacks and frontier justice. “I think the western is about people in harsh places trying to tame an unfriendly wilderness,” Chris Pine, who played Toby, told The Times. “Because life is defined by struggle, it’s kind of a perfect microcosmic experience to explore that. ‘Here we are, struggling.’ It’s about people persevering and persevering and persevering.” Director David Mackenzie said the mov-

Lorey Sebastian CBS Films

“HELL OR HIGH WATER,” with Ben Foster, left, and Chris Pine, follows two

brothers across a West Texas landscape of foreclosures after the 2008 recession.

Granik, is a dark glimpse at an often unnoticed part of the country. Like movies set in Appalachia or the Rust Belt, the story has a palpable sense of place and isolation. Woodrell, who lives in the Missouri region where his family has had roots since 1838, said recently that “the reason I stayed here so long is that I can walk two blocks and there’s the cemetery where my family is buried. A lot of resonance.” He knows a number of people who voted for Trump. “We’re a town of 14,000. Lost 1,200 jobs to Mexico in the last three years that literally went to Mexico. That’s a brutal punch,” he said. “The people I talked to just wanted to shake things up. I’m a Democrat, but I’m kind of nostalgic for the old Democrats who cared for the working class.” Woodrell’s novels seek recesses both moral and geographical. They navigate sin, fallibility and the grays that make a life, adding force and richness to regional tales that echo far beyond their boundaries. “When any aspect of life gets focused on, it’d be really easy to make something grotesque if you focus on a narrow slice of it,” he said. “It’s not Mayberry, and it’s not all ‘Winter’s Bone.’... You try to make it human, respecting characters and taking them seriously. Show it from their point of view, not mine.”

Suspicion and disillusionment

20th Century Fox

“THE GRAPES OF WRATH,” with Henry Fonda, center, portrays the working

class as being indivisible from the success and failure of the American dream.

ie “felt to me like a snapshot of a nation.” The trials, chores, joys, challenges, demons and dangers of the working class have been viewed through many prisms: Marlon Brando standing up to dockworker corruption in “On the Waterfront,” Sally Field fighting for a textile union in “Norma Rae,” Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken leaving the steel plants of Pittsburgh to fight in Vietnam in “The Deer Hunter,” a labor leader demanding rights for migrant workers in “Cesar Chavez,” George Clooney and his doomed crew chasing fish in the North Atlantic in “The Perfect Storm,” coal miners rising against Pinkertons in bloody battles played out in John Sayles’ “Matewan” and the new “Paterson,” featuring Adam Driver as a poet/bus driver. Such movies have an elegiac dignity at their core, respecting a man or woman’s honor and pride through the lens of their daily toil. A rigorous work ethic has long been one of the nation’s defining traits, deified not only in film but also in literature and music. Much of Bruce Springsteen’s playlist ruminates on accepting the working life with forbearance or escaping it with fuel-injected defiance. And on this plane, notably

in movies, the working man is cast against the shadow of coal tipples, smokestacks, blast furnaces or other emblems of industry to suggest his ultimate fate is controlled by others. “There’s been a lot of talk about the working class and the working man,” said director Kenneth Lonergan, whose “Manchester by the Sea” tells of the lives of a janitor and a fisherman. “But it’s all general. What are they talking about? A lot of people are out there fixing things. There’s a certain amount of sentimentalization when you get to movies.” “Winter’s Bone,” which in large measure introduced Jennifer Lawrence to the world, slips into a sliver of the Ozarks in southwestern Missouri, where crime, clan and retribution trammel over a harsh if beautiful land that offers little prosperity. The working men and women here have turned into drug dealers and enforcers whose codes and moralities are challenged by Ree Dolly (Lawrence), a girl trying to save her home and family from the havoc caused by her methamphetamine-cooking father. Based on the novel of the same title by Daniel Woodrell, the film, directed by Debra

The men in Scott Cooper’s evocatively photographed “Out of the Furnace” are forsaken and hard, living in Braddock, Pa., a steam-streaked steel town of crumbling houses, rail yards, dim taverns and the bones of an industry that once was. Brothers Russell (Christian Bale), a mill worker, and Rodney (Casey Affleck), a damaged Iraq war vet, live amid scoured ambitions that turn violent when Rodney takes up street fighting for money. These are men pushed to the brink by circumstance; a shrinking family in a town of ghosts. “You have to live there to know these people,” said Cooper, who was raised at the edge of the coal fields in Abingdon, Va. “I grew up in a blue-collar sentiment, but so often these people are stereotyped and mythologized in film. They come across as cliché.” He added that the suspicion and disillusionment in the Rust Belt, Appalachia and other regions “come from an ideological and cultural isolation from the rest of America. These are people who see themselves as outsiders, but they were really the backbone of America, especially in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. But lost jobs have led to lost pride and vices.” Those vices have led to years of heroin and prescription drug addiction, early graves and a bitterness toward the government, which many blame for wage stagnation and jobs wiped out by foreign competition. It was this sense of desperation that drew many working class voters to Trump, a rich man who may not be one of them but who has vowed to rattle the establishment. For many, promises had been denied for too long in lands forgotten between New York and Los Angeles. As the working class continues to be redefined by automation and shifting demographics, it is this reality that Washington and Hollywood will be wrestling with for years to come. “I wanted to treat it as honestly as I could,” Cooper said of his film. “The American dream is dead, and it is not really coming back.” jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com Twitter: @JeffreyLAT

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HOLLYWOOD VALUES

| BRIAN TRUITT

THE BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR

Paul Drinkwater NBC

STERLING K. BROWN , right, delivers a powerful

portrayal of a black professional in “This Is Us.” PERSPECTIVE

‘THIS’ “ IS LIFE YOU WILL WANT TO “AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD AMAZING FILM.” | RICHARD ROEPER

SEE ARRIVAL TWICE ‘

’

” .

| PETER TRAVERS

“IN A SIMPLY STELLAR PERFORMANCE

BY AMY ADAMS, SHE MAKES US BELIEVE IN WHOEVER AND WHATEVER SHE IS PLAYING.

She is a miracle worker of an actress and ‘Arrival’ is the stuff dreams are made of. It’s intimate and epic and Denis Villeneuve directs with a searching mind and heart. His film will leave you spellbound.” NOMINEE

BEST DIRECTOR

DENIS VILLENEUVE VANCOUVER FILM CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE

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ERIC HEISSERER WRITERS GUILD AWARD NOMINEE

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (DRAMA)

JOE WALKER ACE EDDIE AWARDS

SILVER FROG WINNER

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

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FROM THE DIRECTOR OF SICARIO AND PRISONERS

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TV finally shows us the daily trials of the successful black man. By Marc Bernardin

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the responses — especially from those who voted for Hillary Clinton, double-especially from those white men who voted Democrat — ran the gamut, from shock to awe to fear before landing on anger. They began railing about injustice to anyone who would listen. “How could this happen? How could forces unseen [to them] and unfelt [again, to them] result in such catastrophe?” Occasionally, those flummoxed white men would turn to a black friend and say, “Do you believe this?” At which point the black friend, if they were feeling particularly honest, would say, “Welcome.” Welcome to the nebulous emotional state that is simultaneously helpless and furious. Welcome to feeling the vast sociopolitical forces arrayed against you while still possessing the desire to just make it through the day. That world-weariness was the source of a skit from the first post-election episode of “Saturday Night Live,” in which host Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock were tickled by the white outrage at Trump’s victory. But that simmering rage, too long the ache from shouldering the tonnage of the black experience, has never been fully painted on American TV until Sterling K. Brown’s Randall Pearson on NBC’s “This Is Us.” Randall, abandoned by his father at a firehouse, is adopted by a white couple after one of their triplets doesn’t survive childbirth. He grows up to become an upwardly mobile black man working and living in the kind of New York suburb where you imagine all the houses have manicured vines growing on them. He’s got a black wife and black children and he wears a suit to work and has a corner office where he trades on the futures market. In those ways he is no different from other black professionals we’ve seen on screen since “The Cosby Show” debuted in 1984. He’s Blair Underwood’s Jonathan Rollins from “L.A. Law” in 1987. He’s James Avery’s Uncle Phil from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Except Randall is angry. Foundationally angry. Angry at the hundreds of micro-aggressions a successful black man navigating a predominantly white world has to absorb on a daily basis. For the first time, on TV, we are registering the weight of that anger. Because Brown, with wounded righteousness, shows it to us. “Because I grew up in a white house you think I don’t live in a black man’s world,” Brown’s Randall says to his father, William (played by Ron Cephas Jones), while they shop in a high-end clothes store. “The one where that salesman there has been eyeballing us ever since we came in here. Or where that security guard has moved just a little off his mark so he can keep us in his sight. And where they’ll definitely ask for an ID with my credit card when I go to pay, even though they haven’t

asked for anybody else’s. Plus a million things every day that I have to choose to let go. Just so I’m not pissed off all the time.” Unlike Sherman Hemsley’s George Jefferson, whose righteous fury was played for laughs; or every “angry black man” who pops up in a doctor-lawyer-cop drama simply to be the thing that needs fixing by the episode’s end; or even Laurence Fishburne’s well-meaning, often-drunk grandfather on “black-ish,” who registers the scars of a life whose edges weren’t defined by him — Randall is a time bomb who regularly resets himself by swallowing his rage. That he doesn’t explode is an everyday miracle. The presidential election showed us a great number of things, but none more illuminating than the idea that America is “one nation, under God” is, for many, just that: an idea. A myth. A story told to kids to cement the dream of a better tomorrow and a world that wanted them — all of them — in it. The election showed us that there was another America — an America that responded to Trump’s speeches and campaign promises of a country that could only be great if “we” registered, isolated and walled off those things “we” didn’t like. An America that preferred “alt-right” to “white nationalist” — and even if they didn’t answer when the KKK came hawking their affiliation, they maybe didn’t throw away the literature, either. It was an America that seemed — if one uses the meteoric rise in hate crimes after Nov. 8 as a barometer — to equate “political correctness” with “empathy.” What makes “This Is Us” such a remarkable achievement is that it’s a show that wades into that America with this portrayal of black masculinity. More than that, it’s not a streaming show (like the routinely challenging “Transparent”) or a prestige cable outing (like “Masters of Sex”). It’s a broadcast drama. It, by definition, has to appeal to a broad audience. And it does. “This Is Us” is the story of the 2016-17 TV season. With its time-shifting, tear-jerking narratives that deal not only with race but with body image, fame and family betrayals, the series is an unmitigated hit. It is not simply playing to the “coastal elites” — “This Is Us” is playing to everyone, everywhere. And some of that everyone are people who insist that all lives matter. Maybe they are showing up to “This Is Us” for the vapidity of Kevin Pearson (Justin Hartley) or the monomania of Kate Pearson (Chrissy Metz) — Randall’s siblings. Maybe they’re tuning in because they love the mustaches of the flashbackto-the-1970s story lines. Doesn’t matter. Because what they are getting is an exploration of barely contained fury. They are getting a tutorial in what it’s like to be the target of the slings and arrows of genetic whimsy — the at-once bad luck and glorious burden of being born black and brilliant in white America. For the first time, America is seeing the struggle of the assimilated man. The enduring fight to not succumb to a death of a thousand high-fives. marc.bernardin @latimes.com

LOS ANGELES TIMES

SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2017

M I CK L a S A LLE

“‘FENCES’ IS A STUNNING FILM. THE FACES OF THE ACTORS ARE RADIANT IN THEIR HUMANITY AND

DIRECTOR DENZEL WASHINGTON GUIDES THE ENSEMBLE CAST

TO SOME OF THE BEST WORK OF THEIR LIVES

while capturing the rhythms, the poetry and the velocity of August Wilson’s screenplay; an experience of exuberance and richness. Grand and timeless.

”

HHHH

CHRIS NASHAWATY

“ YOU WON’T FIND MANY FILMS THIS YEAR AS

POWERFUL AS DENZEL WASHINGTON’S ‘FENCES.’

IT ’S AS GOOD AS

SCREEN ACTING GETS.

A s a fr u st rat e d work i n g- cl a s s hu s ba nd a nd father undone by his own pride,

WASHINGTON IS LIKE AN

EXPOSED NERVE, AND VIOLA DAVIS DELIVERS

INTENSITY

SCREEN ACTORS

HHHH

SCREEN ACTORS

GUI LD NOM I NATION

DENZEL WASHINGTON

BEST ENSEMBLE

I MARVEL AT THE

“

DEEP CRAFT

IN A MOTION PICTURE

BEST ACTOR

NOMINEE

THAT DENZEL WASHINGTON AND VIOLA DAVIS WIELD

WINNER

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

AUGUST WILSON

VIOLA DAVIS

HHHH

A.O. SCOT T

IN BRINGING TO LIFE

characters invented by August Wilson in ‘Fences.’ Denzel Washington and Viola D av i s p l a y a l o n g- m a r r i e d c o u p l e living in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and

CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARD

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA

A PERFORMANCE OF RADIANT WARMTH AND

FEROCIOUS

HHHH

THEIR CHARACTERS ARE AS FAMILIAR

AS THE PEOPLE ” PLAYING THEM.

”

K ENNET H TURAN

REX REED

“ If you close your eyes while watching ‘Fences’ you can listen to the extraordinary language of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

POWERHOUSE

When the camera is on Viola Davis you will not want to look elsewhere. Her per for m a nc e is

FLAT-OUT

ENSEMBLE CAST

G O L D E N G L O B E N O M I N AT I O N S ®

BEST ACTOR DENZEL WASHINGTON BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS V I O L A DAV I S

OF THE YEAR. Filmgoers hungry for poetry of words a nd beauty of a rt should not get deterred. ‘Fences’ is a special movie and

(DRAMA)

PERFORMANCES.

THE BEST

“

A LABOR

OF LOVE

EXTRAORDINARY.” P E T E R T R AV E R S

ONE OF THE BEST

What a triumph for Denzel Washington.Viola Davis is his match in an Oscar -worthy portrayal. ®

YOU WON’T SEE PERFORMANCE

FIREWORKS LIKE THIS ANYWHERE.”

S T E P HE N W H I T T Y

“

FILMS OF THE YEAR.

”

“

SCREENPLAY BY AUGUST WILSON DIRECTED BY DENZEL WASHINGTON

NOW PLAYING IN THEATRES EVERYWHERE

WHAT A STORY. WHAT A PAIR OF ACTORS.

Vi ol a Dav i s a nd D e n z e l Wa s h i n g t o n

ARE AMAZING.

”

A P R I L WO LF E

A PERFORMANCE-DRIVEN MASTERPIECE

“

ALL THE QUESTIONS ABOUT TODAY’S AMERICA STILL HAVE THEIR ECHOES IN ‘ FENCES.’ ”

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BUILDING DISTRUST TV portrayals boosted wariness of Muslims; TV can help fix it. By Lorraine Ali

Craig Blankenhorn HBO

RIZ AHMED stars as a student accused of a crime that had nothing to do with

terrorism in “The Night Of.” There’s been a shift to more nuanced story lines.

Long before Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of banning Muslims from entering the U.S. or creating a registry for those who already live here, there was a master fear monger who made the presidentelect’s divisive rhetoric seem

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like child’s play. It capitalized upon the terror of 9/11 by portraying most Muslims (even those who are American) as terrorists, cast a suspicious eye toward anyone who looked remotely like Sallah from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and pretty much ensured that Westerners would know Islam through only the prism of suicide bombings, religious extremism and oppressed women in burkas. When it comes to exploiting fear of the other for personal gain, the far right has nothing on liberal Hollywood. Television producers, writers, actors and network execs — many of whom have openly criticized ultra-conservative politicians for their intolerant views — have done more to popularize Islamophobia over the last 15 years than all of Trump’s campaign proclamations. “There has never been liberal Hollywood when it comes to the portrayal of Muslims on TV,” says professor and author Jack Shaheen, who’s been researching the subject since the mid-1970s and served as a cultural consultant on films such as “Three Kings” and “Syriana.” “They’ve reinforced the idea that many Americans now have — that all Muslims are terrorists. They knew they could get away with it because no one was going to protest. They’ve been playing to the balcony, and in doing so, they’ve been getting the ratings.” That dynamic grew exponentially after the 9/11 attacks: While President George W. Bush delivered dozens of speeches about how ours was not a war against Islam but “a campaign against evil,” network television was busy putting the finishing touches on the series that came to embody TV’s narrative about our war against evil Islam. Eight weeks after the attacks, Fox released “24,” a series steeped in scheming, swarthy Muslims and the heroic efforts of a very nonswarthy Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). The series outlasted both of Bush’s terms and spawned an army of like-minded shows. The next phase in television terrorism drama included Showtime’s “Sleeper Cell,” which arrived with the tagline “Friends. Neighbors. Husbands. Terrorists,” and “Homeland,” where the mere act of a man praying toward Mecca signaled foreboding events. And with a title like “Tyrant,” it was clear that FX’s drama about an American Arab family was no “Cosby Show.” Even network TV’s good Muslims, like Sayid on “Lost” or Alex of “Quantico,” were defined by their connection to Saddam’s Republican Guard or terror groups who kill in the name of Islam. “It’s like the LGBT community 30 years ago,” says Sue Obeidi, director of the civil rights advocacy group the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Hollywood bureau. “Every time there was a gay character on TV or in film, the story line would be about AIDS. Almost all Muslim story lines up to now are connected to terror. Even if they end up being a good person, it’s often discovered under a cloud of suspicion.” There is no doubt that homegrown terror attacks in the U.S. — from San Bernardino to Orlando — have helped bolster arguments that art is only reflecting reality. But as University of North Carolina professor Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, Duke University professor and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, wrote in a 2015 research paper, “Law enforcement agencies in the United States consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face.” Television of late has been trying to adjust to a changing world by developing more diverse narratives and investing in more projects by creators and

writers of color, including Shonda Rhimes (“Scandal”), Kenya Barris (“blackish”) and Nahnatchka Khan (“Fresh Off the Boat”). But despite the number of shows that have Islamic terror elements in their plots — from “Madam Secretary” to “CSI” — Muslims behind the camera are rare. That lack of representation was glaringly evident in the fifth season of “Homeland,” when graffiti that read “ ‘Homeland’ is racist” in Arabic made it into a scene. Artists hired to decorate the wall of the fictional Syrian refugee camp slipped the words in, and there was no one else on set with enough knowledge of the Arab world to catch their subversive message. “Hollywood is not necessarily biased toward a particular political view, but it is biased toward what does and doesn’t make money,” says author Reza Aslan, who recently co-created an ABC pilot for a comedy about an American Muslim family in the age of Trump. “Since 9/11, the market wanted these almost comic book characterizations of Muslims as the bad guy. But that market has dried up. It’s not interesting anymore. They want different narratives about Muslims and Middle Easterners, and networks are looking for ways to do that.” Characters who arrived during the seemingly endless presidential campaign of the last year and a half have definitely signaled a shift. In HBO’s critically lauded “The Night Of,” we met Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed), an average college student accused of a crime that had nothing to do with terrorism; his journey through the legal system highlighted an institutional prejudice. Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series, “Master of None,” depicts him as a struggling actor who finds himself in all sorts of painfully normal situations — bad dates, flubbed job interviews, disappointing his immigrant parents — situations far too commonplace for TV’s Muslims before him. “If we don’t do it, who else is going to do it?” Ansari said, explaining why he created the show. Yet in an unforeseen twist, Trump’s election has potentially accelerated the interest in more nuanced story lines involving actors like Ansari. “Right after the election — I’m talking the day or two days after — we had people in the industry reach out to us: the USA Network, Amazon, Hulu, a major network,” says civil rights advocate Obeidi. “They have directives from their networks to watch for Islamophobic tones. Not that the studios were giving directives for Islamophobic story lines before, but now they’re saying, ‘We need consultants because our studio wants to be careful of certain red lines.’ That’s all new.” The recent presidential election is such an extraordinary moment in American history, says Aslan, that there’s a new drive among the network and studio executives he’s met with to create a counter narrative to Trump’s. “They want to make a statement about American ideals and the people who make this country what it is, whether that is focusing on minority groups, African American, Muslims, Jews, or whether it’s just simply presenting a different side of the American story,” Aslan says. “But I can say with absolute confidence the industry has been galvanized by this election.” And whether you believe it or not, television is the frontline of shaping public perception. Even when it comes to depicting the ohso-mysterious Muslim. “It’s pop culture that’s going to change opinions about how people feel about one another,” says Obeidi. “Government can protect our rights as citizens — or maybe now with Trump it won’t — but it’s really TV and film that changes the way people feel about one another.” lorraine.ali@latimes.com Twitter: @LorraineAli

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NO ‘MIDDLE’ GROUND ABC’s ‘The Middle’ carries the working-class banner alone. By Meredith Blake In fall 2009, barely a year into the Great Recession, two new family sitcoms aired back-to-back on Wednesdays: “The Middle” and “Modern Family.” Filmed in a quasi-mockumentary style, “Modern Family” followed three affluent, interrelated families in suburban Los Angeles, including a gay couple with an adopted daughter from Vietnam. Praised for its diversity, it was anointed the best new sitcom on television, became a ratings smash for ABC and has gotten 77 Emmy nominations. At least superficially, “The Middle” was less groundbreaking. Created by DeAnn Heline and Eileen Heisler, it centered on the Hecks, an intentionally unremarkable lower-middleclass family living in the small town of Orson, Ind., proud home of the world’s largest polyurethane cow. Dad Mike (Neil Flynn) is a taciturn quarry manager who later launches a diaper business. Mom Frankie (Patricia Heaton) sells cars — or tries to — before studying to become a dental hygienist. They have three kids who aren’t particularly bright, cool or attractive, epitomized by middle child Sue (the exceptional Eden Sher), whose most distinctive trait is her insistence on never giving up, despite being pretty bad at most things she tries. The series revolves around the Hecks’ nearconstant efforts to fix various broken appliances and put (sometimes recently expired) food on the table. It may not have shifted public opinion on same-sex marriage, but in its unassuming way, “The Middle” has been every bit as revelatory as “Modern Family.” Over eight seasons, it has portrayed the economic anxieties of working families with a candor rarely glimpsed on American broadcast television, which has aspiration encoded in its DNA. Though several of ABC’s family sitcoms deal with class more fleetingly, “The Middle” is arguably the only long-running comedy on broadcast television that puts the subject front and center. That it also happens to be set in “one of those places you fly over on your way from somewhere to somewhere else,” as Frankie says in the pilot’s opening narration, rather than a cosmopolitan city or wellheeled suburb, makes it a double rarity. And though “The Middle” is a pleasantly apolitical show, it happens to portray the kind of workingclass, Rust Belt voters who in real life helped propel Donald Trump to victory in November. (It also stars Heaton, one of Hollywood’s more prominent conservatives.) If, as conventional wisdom dictates, the Washington establishment has ignored this demographic for too long, then so has Hollywood — especially television, which has made enormous strides in representations of race and sexuality but still portrays bourgeois, upper-middle-class coastal dwellers as the default norm. Heline and Heisler began developing the idea for “The Middle” about a decade ago, around the time they were writing “Lipstick Jungle,” a “Sex and the City”-esque dramedy about high-powered New York City women. As native Midwesterners turned Angelenos, Heline and Heisler longed to do a show about the world in which they grew up, where “when something goes wrong, your neighbor brings you a casserole,” Heline recalled in an interview. After a number of delays, “The Middle” made it to air at a time when virtually everyone in America was feeling the pinch financially. “I think in some ways it helped our show,” Heline said, “because it felt more relevant.” In the show’s early days, ABC would occasionally give notes along the lines of “try not to make it too de-

pressing,” but Heline and Heisler, who grew up in the Midwest in circumstances similar to the Hecks’, were determined to treat these people with honor. Refreshingly, “The Middle” neither venerates the Hecks as “real Americans,” nor ridicules them as flyover rubes. “The Middle” even looks different from most sitcoms. Instead of tasteful Pottery Barn throw pillows and gleaming stainlesssteel kitchens, the Hecks’ house is furnished haphazardly, cluttered with neglected piles of mail and laundry. Marie Kondo would not approve. While no one would ever mistake “The Middle” for John Steinbeck, its willingness to acknowledge the constant precariousness of the Hecks’ finances makes it quietly revolutionary. In a standout Season 2 episode, “The Big Chill,” Mike gives Frankie the silent treatment after she accidentally spends $200 on a tube of eye cream and eats up their household budget. “I’m not mad that you made a mistake. I’m mad because we can’t afford to make a mistake,” Mike eventually explains to his wife. “You think I like it ... that at this point in our lives, we have to have four jobs just to stay poor?” Now in its eighth season, a time when many long-running sitcoms resort to Cousin Oliver-esque gimmicks in a desperate bid to keep things fresh, “The Middle” continues to find new ways for the Hecks to squeak by. In a recent episode, Sue discovers she isn’t enrolled at college because her family failed to file her financial aid paperwork in time. Mike sells his diaper business to pay her tuition. Heline and Heisler cut their teeth on “Roseanne,” TV’s last great blue-collar hit. The experience taught them that authenticity could be funny. “When we created ‘The Middle,’ that’s what we wanted to go back to,” Heline said. “We felt like the networks had abandoned that.” With a few exceptions — notably, the work of producer Norman Lear in the 1970s — American TV has always been squeamish about acknowledging class because it “goes against the notion of the American dream,” says Anthony Harkins, a Western Kentucky University professor whose research focuses on pop culture depictions of Middle America. “It doesn’t put you in a buying mood.” The booming ’80s ushered in an obsession with yuppies and one-percenters, in shows such as “Dynasty,” “Thirtysomething” and “Diff ’rent Strokes.” “The Cosby Show” broke new racial barriers, but money was rarely a concern for the Huxtables. Then came “Roseanne,” which premiered in the waning days of the Reagan administration in fall 1988. The sitcom about a brash Illinois factory worker, her underemployed husband and their unruly children was one of the top-rated shows for most of its nineseason run. Astonishingly, however, it was never even nominated for a comedy series Emmy. (Then, as now, Television Academy voters preferred shows about affluent urbanites, such as “Murphy Brown” and “Frasier.”) In the two decades since “Roseanne” went off the air, there have been other shows set in small-town, blue-collar America. But they have tended to be niche shows along the lines of “Friday Night Lights” or “Raising Hope,” championed by critics and other “coastal elites” but ignored by the rest of the country. “The Middle” has never been a Nielsen blockbuster, but it has been a steady performer for ABC. It now runs almost even with “Modern Family” in the ratings and is regularly cited as one of TV’s most underrated shows. If the TV Academy remains immune to its charms, Heline and Heisler maintain a very Midwestern attitude. “We’re not the type to demand attention,” Heline said. “We’ll just keep our head down and keep doing what we do.” Twitter: @MeredithBlake

Michael Ansell ABC

EDEN SHER, right, and Atticus Shaffer in “The Middle,” which has yet to win a Grammy since 2009 debut.

HHHH

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Edel Rodriguez For The Times

THE MIRAGE OF EQUAL ACCESS Television shows and technology have created a false sense of America as a classless society. By Mary McNamara There was a lot of soul-searching in the weeks following Donald Trump’s election, especially among those who fill our various screens with news and entertainment. Accusations of elitism and bias among the news media quickly spilled over to Hollywood. Long considered a bastion of pathological progressiveness and wanton liberalism (Remember the blacklist? The one not starring James Spader?), film and television were accused of obsessing too much about things like transgender rights and how many black actors got Oscar nominations and not enough worrying about the concerns of “real Americans”: Rust Belt unemployment, devotion to guns, fear of porous borders, disillusionment with government, feelings of personal alienation and a general sense of a world run amok. How, many wondered, could the creators and arbiters of popular culture have been so out of step with the viewers and moviegoers they serve? The answer is they weren’t and aren’t. Because there is no notion more thoroughly absurd than that of Hollywood’s liberal agenda. Although many members of the entertainment industry espouse, often publicly, a left-leaning political slant, Hollywood is still dominated by white men who prefer to make movies and television shows that revolve around other white men — men beset by feelings of alienation, who often wield guns, who fight (or represent) corrupt government, and generally attempt to survive and/or save a world run amok. Across galaxies, through the centuries, in every genre imaginable. For every film that does not revolve around such a lead character, there are 78 others that do, just as for every series that features a transgender character, there are 8,000 that do not.

In representing the actual demographics of “real” America, television has done a slightly better job than film. But it’s still a mostly white, mostly male, mostly straight world fighting forces that range from the daily stress of family life to armed rebellion against encroachment by aliens, zombies and fascists both historical and imaginary. As for being pathologically progressive, well, nostalgia hasn’t been this big a seller since “The Wonder Years.” The big screen is littered with franchises of years past, while on television, the success of “Mad Men” and “Downton Abbey” sparked an arms race of time machines — back, back we went like companions in “Doctor Who,” checking in with the Vikings, the Wars of the Roses, George Washington’s spies, the Tudors, the Windsors, the ’60s, the ’70s, even, God help us, the ’80s. In every era, the oppression of certain groups — nonwhites, women, gays and lesbians — was duly noted but really not the point. The point was the pleasure of revisiting who we once were, presumably before things got crazy, and watching how change, whether it’s the invention of the compass or desegregation, always freaks everyone out. That, and all the groovy stuff. So anyone who argues that, with the exception of “Duck Dynasty,” the creators of film and television have ignored the declared interests of Trump supporters has clearly not been watching. Just for the record, the good folks of “Duck Dynasty” were one-percenters even before the show got made. And that is the real elitism of film and television — we mostly like to watch people who seem richer than they should be. Being as American as an invention can be, Hollywood doesn’t like to deal with class, except in stories about the British. America likes to pretend it is a classless yet perpetually upwardly mobile society — look, Ma, no aristocracy! Just a bunch of educated landowners! And Hollywood is happy to help, from both sides of the fence. Billions are harvested from so-called populist entertainment, and celebrity is the local version of royalty. But entertainment has always been a class issue because it always costs money, the kind known as “discretionary.” Folks with no discretionary income must entertain themselves; the rest of us pay.

Not always that much — just as Shakespeare’s Globe had the groundlings, early American cinema had the peanut gallery, where folks who were unable to afford the theater could immerse themselves in other worlds brought to flickering life. Cowboys and gangsters and society dames, cops and robbers and Charlie Chaplin, all immediately accessible in the ultimate democracy of black and white. Radio, meanwhile, had put a tireless storyteller into every living room, and it was only a matter of time before the two art forms begat a third: television, which both symbolized, and further messed with, America’s complicated relationship with wealth and poverty and all the demographics in between. Movies were for the masses, but television, at least in the beginning, was for the chosen few. Like indoor plumbing, electric lighting and the automobile, the television became an instant, and ongoing, symbol of class ascendance. Families that could afford a television, and all its subsequent iterations, inspired the envy of their neighbors; the windows of appliance stores drew crowds. The set and increasingly what appeared on its screen were windows on a world of aspiration. Because as TVs became more ubiquitous, the programming, and the advertising that supported it, grew more upscale — to attract the moneyed audience, yes, but also to support the general postwar mythology of suburban serenity. On “The Honeymooners” and “I Love Lucy,” couples still lived in tiny apartments and bickered about who spent what. But at the Cleaver house, mother June did housework in pearls and heels. And Donna Reed figured out how to fire her housekeeper. Even more than film, television mirrored America’s fickle relationship with its own economics, which swung repeatedly between reality and desire. Norman Lear grounded us with the limitations of education, race and single motherhood; writers like Earl Hamner with “The Waltons” and Jason Katims with “Friday Night Lights” reminded us that not everyone lived in a city; shows like “Taxi” and “Laverne and Shirley” organized their days around work rather than hijinks. But increasingly, the dance with poverty

or unemployment that kept even “Bewitched’s” Samantha Stevens on her toes when the boss was due for dinner gave way to a warmer and hazier notion of work, and money, as either a calling (all those doctor and cop shows) or simply wallpaper. “Thirtysomething” took a lot of flak for the touchyfeely adulthood experienced by its cast, but in the years since, pretty much everyone who is not a detective, surgeon or lawyer is a college-educated professional who works only when it’s narratively convenient. Stories that could have been about class injustice — “Breaking Bad,” “Shameless,” “Nurse Jackie” — were instead about other, more personal things. “ Modern Family” became a critical hit despite being so un-modern that, in early seasons, each wing of the family had a single (male) breadwinner, and even “The Middle,” which is one of the few series in which the characters are truly working class, keeps everyone healthy and satisfied, albeit ruefully, with their lot in life. Meanwhile, the business model of both TV and film redefined the term populist. At cineplexes renovated to resemble home theaters and keep “communal” to a minimum, there are no cheap seats; taking a family of four to the movies can cost $60, and that’s with no popcorn or drinks, The cost of television, meanwhile, doesn’t stop with the set, available in an ever-widening array of sizes, rays and definitions; now cable bundles and streaming services are part of the monthly cost of living, for those who can afford them. It’s no wonder film and television shy away from directly addressing class. Who wants to think too much about money when they’re sipping on an $8 soda? Or trying to get through the DVR queue they pay $150 a month for and can never seem to watch? In this world, it makes some sort of sense to consider Hollywood elitist, just as it makes some sort of sense to consider the millionaires of “Duck Dynasty” “real folk” and a billionaire reality host the presidential candidate for real people. But that’s got nothing to do with liberalism, conservatives or politics of any variety. That’s just the good old magic of Hollywood. mary.mcnamara@latimes.com Twitter: @marymacTV

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COMMUNITY STANDS TALL For LGBT makers of screen projects, moving forward is the only option. By Tre’vell Anderson

Skip Bolen Warner Bros. Entertainment

ON “QUEEN SUGAR,” Rutina Wesley, left, is Nova,

who is bisexual. Dawn-Lyen Gardner plays her sister.

The year 2016 was perhaps the strongest yet for Hollywood depictions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. They’re not just comic relief anymore. Consider Rutina Wesley’s bisexual Nova on OWN’s

“Queen Sugar,” Erica Ash’s lesbian M-Chuck on Starz’s LeBron James-produced “Survivor’s Remorse,” the transgender fashion models of Oxygen’s reality show “Strut,” and the boy-to-man protagonist Chiron, who grapples with his sexuality in Barry Jenkins’ Golden Globe-nominated “Moonlight.” These are just a few of the LGBT characters populating some of the best films and TV shows Hollywood has to offer. But producer, writer and director Patrik-Ian Polk, one of many LGBT people in the

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industry, is uncertain how the administration of President-elect Donald Trump will affect Hollywood and the recent increase in more varied representations of — and opportunities for — the LGBT community. “Sometimes in the wake of great progress comes great backlash,” Polk says. With Inauguration Day coming ever closer, a mantra has risen from the private conversations of LGBT Hollywood: “Keep pushing.” “Hollywood has been talking the talk really well lately about diversity and inclusion,” says Polk, who is known for creating the groundbreaking LGBT series “Noah’s Arc” on the Logo TV network and is now a writer on BET’s “Being Mary Jane,” starring Gabrielle Union. “We see all of these gains, but we can’t get complacent. There’s a certain amount of snapback we’re experiencing right now. I think the response to the snapback has to be even stronger.” Despite Trump saying he would be “better for the gay community” than Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign, many in Hollywood’s LGBT community worry that Vice President-elect Mike Pence has a history of anti-gay positions, including signing a muchderided (and later amended) bill that many experts said would have given businesses the legal right to discriminate against LGBT customers. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, put forward by Trump to join the presidentelect’s Cabinet as U.N. ambassador, also opposes marriage equality. Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general, voted against expanding hate crimes prevention legislation for LGBT people (signed into law by President Obama in 2009). And Ben Carson, housing and urban development secretary nominee, once compared homosexuality to bestiality and incest. Writer-activist Michelangelo Signorile expressed the feelings of many in the LGBT community when he wrote of the “potentially devastating” consequences of the new administration in a Boston Globe op-ed titled “Trump’s Cabinet: A Who’s Who of Homophobia.” Concerns that the world of politics might interfere with that of Tinseltown aren’t rooted in an unspeakable fear of the unknown but in historical moments. The McCarthy era gave rise to

David Bornfriend A24

“MOONLIGHT’S” Ash-

ton Sanders in the midst of one man’s growth.

the Hollywood blacklist, denying employment to industry professionals because they were or were accused of being communist sympathizers. Throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s, hundreds of primarily screenwriters but also actors, directors and producers were deemed “un-American” and found themselves jobless — a move supported institutionally by industry executives, the Motion Picture Assn. of America and the Screen Actors Guild.

Watchful, wary

Most in Hollywood think that the idea of a new blacklist is far-fetched, but some are suggesting vigilance. “We’re going to be looking to our superiors to defend our right to tell our stories,” says Zackary Drucker, a producer on Amazon’s “Transparent” who is transgender. “I think the work we’re doing will be more important than ever, and we have to do it with higher volume and greater presence,” she says. “We must be unwavering in our conviction to tell our stories.” Trump’s election has already begun to have its effect on pop culture. A few weeks after the votes were counted, ABC Entertainment Group President Channing Dungey told an industry summit in London that she felt the network hasn’t “paid enough attention to some of the true realities of what life is like for everyday Americans in our dramas.” Some read her statement as a potential signal that the network, whose Shondaland series have led the way in recent years for television diversity, might be rethinking its inclusion efforts. But in a [See LGBT, E13]

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FOCUSFEATURES PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATIONWITH FADETOBLACKPRODUCTIONS A FADETOBLACK PRODUCTION A TOMFORD FILM AMYADAMS JAKEGYLLENHAAL “NOCTURNALANIMALS” MICOSTUME CHAELSHANNON AARONTAYLOR-JOHNSON ISLAFIFILMSHER ARMIE HAMMERPRODUCTIONLAURALINNEY ANDREARIDIRECTOROF SEBOROUGH MICHAELSHEEN CASTING MUSIC BY FRANCINEMAISLER,CSA DESIGNER ARIANNEPHILLIPS BY ABELKORZENIOWSKI EDITOR JOANSOBEL,ACE DESIGNER SHANEVALENTINO PHOTOGRAPHY SEAMUSMCGARVEY,ASC,BSC PRODUCED SCREENPLAY DIRECTED BY TOMFORD,p.g.a. ROBERTSALERNO,p.g.a. BY TOMFORD BY TOMFORD VIOLENCE, MENACE, GRAPHIC NUDITY, AND LANGUAGE

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SHERMAN OAKS Pacific’s Sherman Oaks 5 HOLLYWOOD TCL Chinese 6 Theatres BEVERLY HILLS (818) 501-5121 #392 (323) 461-3331 tclchinesetheatres.com Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR SHOWTIMES • NO PASSES ACCEPTED 4-Hour Validated Parking at Hollywood & Highland $2 (310) 478-3836 laemmle.com

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ATTENTION AMPAS® AND GUILD MEMBERS: Your card and picture ID will admit you and a guest to any performance as follows (subject to seating availability): PACIFIC/ARCLIGHT will admit guild members from AMPAS®, ADG, BAFTA, MPEG, MPSE and PGA (Mon-Thur only, excluding holidays). LAEMMLE will admit guild members from AMPAS® and PGA only (Mon-Thur only, excluding holidays). Please check newspaper circuit listing for theater locations and showtimes. Theater list subject to change.

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S U NDAY , JA N UA RY 8 , 2 017

E13

HOLLYWOOD VALUES

Tim Brown Oxygen

“STRUT’S” transgender models own the runway.

The show’s Arisce Wanzer, left, Laith De La Cruz.

Moving forward

And fight back is exactly what LGBT Hollywood will do, Drucker says, “creating culture as a counterpoint to an undertow of conservatism, which when you distill it is a rejection of modernism, of us and the momentum we’ve gained.” “We have a responsibility to create our democracy and the culture we want to live in,” she adds. “We can’t relinquish our rights before they’re taken away.” The resounding belief is that the historic progress the community has seen in recent years cannot be reversed. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” Polk says. “If anything, we need to push that envelope even further and let these people know that it is not a game,” he says. “Because what Hollywood does best when it’s doing its best is reflect reallife situations, and real-life situations are messy, feature LGBT people and people having abortions.” He adds: “We’re not going back to ‘Leave It to Beaver’ because Donald Trump is in the White House.” Tina Mabry, writer-director of “Mississippi Damned” and “Queen Sugar,” says she is committed as a lesbian “now more than ever to do work that explores people like me.” To others, she says: “You cannot go back into fear. Now is your Stonewall moment.” trevell.anderson@ latimes.com

Eike Schroter ABC

ABC WILL AIR the miniseries “When We Rise,” chronicling the emergence of the LGBT community.

G O L D E N G L O B E®

BEST PICTURE N O M I NAT I O N S

4 3

BEST ACTOR CASEY AFFLECK

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS MICHELLE WILLIAMS BEST DIRECTOR KENNETH LONERGAN BEST SCREENPLAY KENNETH LONERGAN

SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS®

BEST ENSEMBLE BEST ACTOR CASEY AFFLECK N O M I NAT I O N S

WINNER

C R I T I C S ’ C H O I C E AWA R D S

BEST ACTOR CASEY AFFLECK BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BEST YOUNG ACTOR

KENNETH LONERGAN

“A

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

LUCAS HEDGES

MICHELLE WILLIAMS

WINNER

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW AWARDS

BEST PICTURE BEST ACTOR CASEY AFFLECK BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

KENNETH LONERGAN

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE, MALE

LUCAS HEDGES

WINNER

NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS

BEST ACTOR CASEY AFFLECK BEST SCREENPLAY

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

KENNETH LONERGAN

MICHELLE WILLIAMS

MASTERPIECE.”

“HHHH ENGRAVE THE NAME CASEYAFFLECK ON THE OSCAR® FOR BEST ACTOR,

SO EXTRAORDINARY AND ENGULFING IS HIS PERFORMANCE.”

“CASEY AFFLECK JOINS THE RANKS OF GIANTS.” CRITIC’S CHOICE

“MICHELLE WILLIAMS IS STUNNING.” “LUCAS HEDGES IS EXCEPTIONAL.” WRITERS GUILD AWARD NOMINEE BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY KENNETH LONERGAN

ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR

WINNER WINNER WINNER WINNER BEST ACTOR

Pa s a d e n a Bead & Design Show

DRAMA

gender actress in two of the series’ episodes, has seen her fair share of anti-LGBT criticism, but now the antagonism is worse, she says. “They’re getting more vocal about what they really don’t like when we should be talking about equality and pushing further to have more LGBT people’s stories told,” she says. “I think the election is bringing out people’s true colors more. They feel like it’s OK.” Still, Black hopes the show will “serve as inspiration to this generation of activists and artists to fight back” against such sentiment.

DRAMA

[LGBT, from E12] phone interview with The Times, Dungey clarifies her words. “There is a vast group of Americans who don’t necessarily feel like their voices have been heard or that they have been represented,” she says, noting that the network has already “spent a lot of time thinking of diversity and inclusion” through the lenses of race and ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. “The one area we have not spent a lot of time thinking about it is from an economic perspective.” And though the term “everyday Americans,” like “working class,” has most recently been used to describe a section of the population that might oppose the very diversity ABC has presented in its shows, Dungey says she “was referring to people who are working hard to make ends meet,” like those clipping coupons to save money. She believes the network can do a better job to represent those voices, particularly in its drama series. But she insists that this in no way means a regression is on the horizon. “The whole point here is not for us to change what we have been doing but to be a little bit broader in our definition and really look at economic difference in a way we haven’t done so recently,” she says. One show that demonstrates the network’s commitment to diversity, and particularly that of LGBT voices, is the miniseries “When We Rise.” From Oscar-winning writer Dustin Lance Black, the show’s seven episodes retell the gay rights movement in the United States, beginning with the 1969 Stonewall Riots. It’s a story never more important than now, says Black, who is gay. “I would give anything in the world for it to be less topical,” he says, “but, unfortunately, not just in the United States but around the world we’re experiencing a moment of backlash to diversity.” That backlash has shown itself in the comments online about the “When We Rise” trailer released in November. Alexandra Grey, a trans-

BEST ACTOR

CASEY AFFLECK CASEY AFFLECK CASEY AFFLECK CASEY AFFLECK ATLANTA FILM CRITICS SOCIETY G O T H A M AWA R D BOSTON SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS LOS ANGELES FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION RUNNER-UP

WINNER WINNER WINNER WINNER BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BEST ACTOR

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

BEST YOUTH PERFORMANCE

CASEY AFFLECK KENNETH LONERGAN MICHELLE WILLIAMS LUCAS HEDGES SAN FRANCISCO FILM CRITICS CIRCLE BOSTON ONLINE FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION WASHINGTON DC AREA FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

WASHINGTON DC AREA FILM CRITICS

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Jan 12 - 15

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Program Subject To Change Times for 01/08/17 only

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY

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WEST LOS ANGELES at W. Pico & Westwood (310) 470-0492 landmarktheatres.com Free 3-Hour Validated Parking 10:10 AM, 1:10, 4:10, 7:10 & 10:05 PM

HICKEY (NR) 5:45 P.M. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (R) 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, 10:15 P.M. PITCHFORK (NR) 9:10 P.M.

LION (PG-13) 12:15, 2:45, 5:30, 8:00, 10:30 P.M.

JACKIE (R) 12:00, 2:15, 5:00, 7:15, 9:45 P.M.

TO ADVERTISE HERE CALL (213) 237-2184

ELLE (R) 3:30 P.M. LOVING (PG-13) 1:00, 6:30, 9:00

ALISO VIEJO Edwards Aliso Viejo Stadium 20 & IMAX (844) 462-7342 #116 ANAHEIM HILLS Edwards Anaheim Hills 14 (844) 462-7342 #117 BLUE JAY Blue Jay Cinema (909) 337-8404 BREA Edwards Brea Stadium 22 (844) 462-7342 #120 BUELLTON Parks Plaza Theatre (805) 688-7434 BUENA PARK Krikorian’s Buena Park Metroplex 18 (714) 826-SHOW CAMARILLO Regency Paseo Camarillo Cinemas (805) 383-2267

HOLLYWOOD TCL Chinese 6 Theatres (323) 461-3331 tclchinesetheatres.com 4-Hour Validated Parking at Hollywood & Highland $2 Call theatre for showtimes

CATHEDRAL CITY UltraStar Cinemas Mary Pickford (760) 328-7100 CERRITOS Harkins Cerritos 16 (562) 865-4140 CHINO HILLS Harkins Chino Hills 18 (714) 996-HARK CLAREMONT Laemmle’s Claremont 5 (909) 621-5500 CORONA Edwards Corona Crossings Stadium 18 (844) 462-7342 #1723 COVINA AMC Covina 17 amctheatres.com CULVER CITY ArcLight Culver City (310) 559-2416

SANTA MONICA Santa Monica (310) 566-2810 arclightcinemas.com 11:40 AM, 2:35, 5:30, 8:15 & 10:50 PM

ENCINO Laemmle’s Town Center 5 (818) 981-9811 FOOTHILL RANCH Regal Foothill Towne Center Stadium 22 (844) 462-7342 #135 FULLERTON AMC Fullerton 20 amctheatres.com GLENDALE Pacific’s Glendale 18 The Americana at Brand (866) PAC-9790 HUNTINGTON BEACH Century Huntington Beach & XD (714) 373-4573 IRVINE Edwards University Town Center 6 (844) 462-7342 #143 LA HABRA Regal La Habra Stadium 16 (844) 462-7342 #145

ManchesterByTheSeaMovie

SANTA MONICA Laemmle’s Monica Film Center (310) 478-3836 laemmle.com Tickets @ laemmle.com 10:50 AM, 1:00, 4:00, 7:10 & 10:15 PM

LAGUNA NIGUEL Regency Directors Cut Cinema at Rancho Niguel (949) 831-0446 LANCASTER Cinemark 22 & IMAX (661) 940-7086 LONG BEACH Edwards Long Beach Stadium 26 & IMAX (844) 462-7342 #148 LONG BEACH UA Long Beach 6 (844) 462-7342 #509 LOS FELIZ Los Feliz 3 Cinemas (323) 664-2169 MONROVIA Krikorian’s Monrovia Cinema 12 (626) 305-7469 MONTEREY PARK AMC Atlantic Times Square 14 amctheatres.com

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SHERMAN OAKS at The Sherman Oaks Galleria (818) 501-0753 arclightcinemas.com Free 4-Hour Validated Parking 11:45 AM

WEST HOLLYWOOD Sundance Sunset Cinemas sundancecinemas.com Free 3-Hour Validated Parking All Shows 21+ Valid ID Required 1:00, 4:00, 7:00 & 10:15 PM

MORENO VALLEY SIMI VALLEY RANCHO MIRAGE Harkins Moreno Valley 16 Regal Simi Valley Civic Center Century @ The River & XD (951) 686-FILM Stadium 16 & IMAX (760) 836-1940 (844) 462-7342 #164 MURRIETA Reading Cal Oaks 17 REDLANDS (951) 696-7045 SOUTH BAY ArcLight Beach Cities Krikorian’s Redlands Cinema 14 (310) 607-0007 #028 NEWPORT BEACH (909) 793-6393 Edwards Island Cinema THOUSAND OAKS ROLLING HILLS (844) 462-7342 #151 Carmike Thousand Oaks 14 AMC Rolling Hills 20 NORTH HOLLYWOOD (805) 409-2197 amctheatres.com Laemmle’s NoHo 7 TUSTIN ROLLING HILLS ESTATES (310) 478-3836 AMC Tustin 14 @ The District Regal Promenade Stadium 13 ORANGE Century Stadium 25 amctheatres.com (844) 462-7342 #158 (714) 532-9558 VENTURA Century 10 Downtown SAN LUIS OBISPO PALMDALE (805) 641-6555 Palm Theatre Cinemark Antelope Valley Mall (805) 541-5161 WESTLAKE VILLAGE (661) 274-4300 Regency Westlake Village Twin SANTA ANA/COSTA MESA PASADENA (818) 889-8061 Regency South Coast Village ArcLight Cinemas Pasadena (714) 557-5701 WOODLAND HILLS (626) 568-9651 AMC Promenade 16 SANTA BARBARA Plaza de Oro PASADENA amctheatres.com Theatre (877) 789-6684 Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR SHOWTIMES • NO PASSES ACCEPTED (626) 844-6500

ATTENTION GUILD MEMBERS: YOUR MEMBERSHIP CARD AND PHOTO I.D. WILL ADMIT YOU AND A GUEST TO ANY PERFORMANCE.MON – THURS ONLY, BASED ON SEATING AVAILABILITY (EXCLUDING HOLIDAYS). CERTAIN THEATRE RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY. PLEASE CHECK WITH EXHIBITOR FOR POLICY.

E14

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 8, 2 017

L ATI M E S . C O M /CA L E N DA R

THE GUIDE the graphic novel by Wernick and Matthew Spradlin. Directed by Ben Browder. (1:40) R.

aNorman” (2012), “The Boxtrolls” (2014) and “Kubo and the Two Strings” (2016). Now through Jan. 15.

The Bye Bye Man Three college stu-

Hammer Museum, Billy Wilder Thea-

Capsule reviews are by Kenneth Turan (K.Tu.), Justin Chang (J.C.) and other reviewers. Compiled by Kevin Crust.

dents unwittingly unleash a supernatural entity. With Carrie-Anne Moss, Faye Dunaway, Douglas Smith. Written by Jonathan Penner, based on a short story by Robert Damon Schneck. Directed by Stacy Title. (1:36) PG-13.

Openings

Claire in Motion Following the myste-

LACMA, Bing Theatre, LACMA, 5905

MOVIES

rious disappearance of her husband, a woman begins to unspool his life and learns how little she knew about him. With Betsy Brandt, Chris Beetem, Zev Haworth. Written and directed by Annie J. Howell, Lisa Robinson. (1:23) NR.

T U E S DAY One Piece Film: Gold Captain Luffy and the Straw Hat pirates seek riches from the glittering city of Gran Tesoro in this animated adventure based on the popular manga series. With voices by Colleen Clinkenbeard, Christopher R. Sabat, Luci Christian. Directed by Hiroaki Miyamoto. (2:00) NR.

The Crash

F R I DAY Alone in Berlin

After their son is killed in World War II, a middle-aged German couple become activists spreading an anti-Nazi message across the city via postcards. With Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson, Daniel Brühl. Written and directed by Vincent Perez, based on the novel “Every Man Dies Alone” by Hans Fallada.

The Ardennes Belgian drama about

Erica Parise Open Road Films

“SLEEPLESS” has Jamie Foxx (with Michelle Monaghan) as an undercover cop. inept criminal brothers whose bond is threatened by betrayal. With Jeroen Perceval, Kevin Janssens, Veerle Baetens and Jan Bijvoet. Written by Robin Pront and Jeroen Perceval. Directed by Pront. In Flemish, French

and Dutch with English subtitles. (1:33) NR.

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy A group of kids serving Saturday detention at their prestigious school lock

up the teacher but are gruesomely victimized one-by-one when they try to escape. With Drake Bell, Sean Astin, Gina Gershon, Sammi Hanratty. Written by Barry Wernick, James R. Hallam, story by Wernick, based on

The U.S. government recruits a corrupt stock trader to stop a massive cyber attack on the nation’s stock markets. With Dianna Agron, Minnie Driver, Frank Grillo, John Leguizamo, Maggie Q, AnnaSophia Robb, Mary McCormack, Ed Westwick, Andrew James Allen, and Christopher McDonald. Written and Directed by Aram Rappaport. (1:24) R.

48 Hours to Live

A troubled man haunts the L.A. club scene looking for his sister’s killer. With Tommy Flanagan, Cody Longo, Danielle Savre. Written by Rashid El Amin, Gregory Ramon Anderson, Hannah Macpherson. Directed by Benny Boom. (1:40) NR.

Monster Trucks

Determined to escape the town where he grew up, a high school senior builds a vehicle from salvaged parts and encounters an unusual subterranean creature, who quickly becomes an ally. With Lucas Till, Jane Levy, Barry Pepper. Written by Derek Connolly. story by Matthew Robinson and Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger. Directed by Chris Wedge. (1:44) PG.

& PRESENT

MOVIES THAT MATTER: THEN AND NOW SCREENING SERIES

THREE TRAILBLAZING FILMS THAT CELEBRATE THE POWER OF LOVE

WINNER

S T A N L E Y

K R A M E R

A W A R D

PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10 7:30PM FOLLOWED BY A Q&A WITH:

JEFF NICHOLS, JOEL EDGERTON AND RUTH NEGGA

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11 7:30PM FOLLOWED BY A Q&A WITH:

KAREN KRAMER

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN THURSDAY, JANUARY 12 7:30PM ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD

6 3 6 0 W. S U N S E T B L V D , L O S A N G E L E S , C A 9 0 0 2 8

RSVP: https://arclightscreeningseriesrsvp.eventbrite.com For more info, please follow the film on social: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram #ThisIsLoving

“

HHHH

.”

Ann Hornaday, THE WASHINGTON POST

“THERE ARE FEW MOVIES THAT SPEAK TO THE AMERICAN MOMENT AS MOVINGLY – AND WITH AS MUCH IDEALISM – AS JEFF NICHOLS’ ‘LOVING.’” Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“THE MOVIE AMERICA NEEDS RIGHT NOW.” CNN.com

For more on this film, go to www.FocusFeaturesGuilds2016.com

100 Streets A retired rugby player, a

small-time drug dealer and a cab driver face life challenges as their lives connect in a one-square-mile section of London. With Idris Elba, Gemma Arterton, Charlie Creed-Miles. Written by Leon Butler. Directed by Jim O’Hanlon. (1:33) NR.

Reset Documentary followed choreo-

grapher and dancer Benjamin Millepied after he became the new director of the Paris Opera Ballet. Featuring Nico Muhly, Aurélie Dupont, Iris van Herpen. Directed by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai. (1:49) NR.

Sleepless

Jamie Foxx plays a Las Vegas undercover police officer caught between crooked cops and a gangster-controlled casino underground. With Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney, Gabrielle Union. Written by Andrea Berloff. Directed by Baran “Bo” Odar. (1:35) R.

Top Coat Cash On the run from the

mob, an MMA fighter flees Las Vegas for his hometown of Kansas City and gets involved in a series of dangerous bank heists, With David Tittone, Katrina Ann Volonnino, Jessi Burkette. Written by Tittone and David Torre. Directed by Tittone. (1:45) NR.

We Are the Flesh A brother and sister are enslaved by a deranged hermit in his post-apocalyptic lair. With Noé Hernández, María Evoli, Diego Gamaliel. Written and directed by Emiliano Rocha Minter. (1:19) NR. MPAA categories: (G) for general audiences; (PG) parental guidance urged because of material possibly unsuitable for children; (PG-13) parents are strongly cautioned to give guidance for attendance of children younger than 13; (R) restricted, younger than 17 admitted only with parent or adult guardian; (NC-17) no one 17 and younger admitted.

Events & Revivals Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Linwood Dunn Theater,

1313 Vine St., Hollywood, www.oscars.org/events Film Scholars Lecture: Rock ’n’ Film — Cinema’s Dance With Popular Culture. Tue., 7:30 p.m.

American Cinematheque, Aero The-

atre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. (310) 260-1528 www.americancinemathequecalendar.com/ Aladdin (1992) Sun., 2 p.m. An American in Paris (1951) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Sun., 5 p.m. Lion (2016) and The King’s Speech (2010). Mon., 7:30 p.m. The Producers (1968). Fri., 7:30 p.m. Cabaret (1972). Sat., 7:30 p.m.

American Cinematheque,

Egyptian Theatre, 7612 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 466-3456 www.americancinemathequecalendar.com/ 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Sun., Fri., Sat., and Jan. 18, 7:30 p.m. Auntie Mame (1958). Wed.-Thu., 7:30 p.m.

tre, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 443-7000 hammer.ucla.edu Bureau of Feminism: The Uncondemned (2015). Tue., 7:30 p.m. 13th (20016). Ava Duvernay’s documentary on the 13th amendment. Wed., 7:30 p.m. Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 8576010 www.lacma.org/events-calendar One Way Passage (1932). Tue., 1 p.m. Where is Rocky II? (2016). Includes a Q&A with Pierre Bismuth, DV DeVincentis, Anthony Peckham, Mike White, Michael Scott, and Gregoire Gensollen. Fri., 7:30 p.m.

New Beverly Cinema,

7165 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 938-4038 thenewbev.com/ Kiddee: The Flying Deuces (1939). Sun., 2 p.m. Paradise Alley (1978) and Kid Dynamite (1943). Sun.-Mon., 7:30 p.m. Grindhouse: I Drink Your Blood (1970) and I Eat Your Skin (1964). Tue., 7:30 p.m. From Hell to Victory (1979) and The Inglorious Bastards (1978). Bo Svenson inperson, Wed., 7:30 p.m. only. Thu., 7:30 p.m. Dario Argento All-Nighter. Marathon of the Italian horrormeister’s work. Fri., 7:30 p.m. Triple-bill: Crack House (1989), Vice Squad (1982) and Death Wish II (1982). Sat., 7:30 p.m.

Norton Simon Museum, 411 West Col-

orado Boulevard in Pasadena, (626) 449-6840 www.nortonsimon.org Vincent & Theo (1990). Fri., 5:30 p.m.

Old Town Music Hall, 140 Richmond St., El Segundo, (310) 322-2592 or www.oldtownmusichall.org I’m No Angel (1933). Mae West. Fri., 8:15 p.m. Sat., 2:30 and 8:15 p.m. TCM Big Screen Classics, AMC, Cin-

emark, Edwards, Regal and other theaters, www.fathomevents.com Singing in the Rain (1952). 65th anniversary screening. Jan. 15 and 18, 2 and 7 p.m.

UCLA Film & Television Archive,

Billy Wilder Theatre, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 206-8013 www.cinema.ucla.edu/events Family Flicks: Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993). Free. Sun., 11 a.m. Archive Treasures: Road House (1948). Sun., 7 p.m. Straub and Huillet: Not Reconciled, or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules (196465) and Fortini/Cani (1976). Mon., 7:30 p.m. From the Cloud to the Resistance (1978) and These Encounters of Theirs (2005). Fri., 7:30 p.m. Archive Documentary Spotlight: Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) — Part 1 (2015). Sat., 7:30 p.m. Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) — Part 2 (2015). Jan. 15, 7 p.m.

THEATER Capsule reviews are by Philip Brandes (P.B.), F. Kathleen Foley (F.K.F.), Margaret Gray (M.G.), Charles McNulty (C.M.), Daryl H. Miller (D.H.M.) and David C. Nichols (D.C.N.) Compiled by Matt Cooper.

Openings The Lion L.A. premiere of Benjamin

Scheuer’s musical memoir. Geffen Playhouse, Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Today, next Sun., 2 p.m.; Tue.Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; ends Feb. 19. $60-$82. (310) 208-5454.

Jerry Herman: Broadway’s Legend-

ary Composer/Lyricist Jason Graae salutes the three-time Tony winner; with special guest Karen Morrow. Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Lovelace Studio Theater, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. Wed., 8 p.m. $30. (310) 7464000. The Bitter Game Keith A. Wallace’s solo drama about being black in America; for mature audiences; part of the Off-Center Festival. Samueli Theater, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Thu.-Fri., 8 p.m. $25. (714) 5562787. 13 Things About Ed Carpolotti Broadway’s Penny Fuller stars in the West Coast premiere of Barry Kleinbort’s musical comedy about a recent widow whose late husband was involved in some shady dealings; contains adult language. The Edye at the Broad Stage, 1310 11th St. Santa Monica. Thu.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Jan. 29. $45 and up. (310) 434-3200.

Toruk — The First Flight

REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., Los Angeles, (213)237-2800 www.redcat.org Cooley High (1975). A post-screening discussion with actor Glynn Turman will be moderated by Common. Sat., 8 p.m.

Cirque du Soleil’s new show inspired by James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A. Thu.-Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 4 and 8 p.m.; next Sun., 1 and 5 p.m.; ends Jan. 15. $39 and up. www.cirquedusoleil.com

The Cinefamily,

Bee-luther-hatche

ARRAY @ The Broad,

Silent Movie Theater, 611 N Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 655-2510 www.cinefamily.org/ Almodóvar: Broken Embrace (2009). Sun., 1 p.m. Greg Proops Film Club: 9 to 5 (1980). Tue., 7:30 p.m. Almodóvar: Volver (2006). 7:30 p.m. Almodóvar: Matador (1986). Fri., 10 p.m. Friday Night Frights: Friday the 13th Part III (1982). Friday, midnight. Almodóvar: Bad Education (2004). Sat., 7:30 p.m. Almodóvar: I’m So Excited (2013). Sat., 10 p.m.

An Evening With Shirley MacLaine,

Laemmle Music Hall Theater, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 4783836 www.laemmle.com The Turning Point (1977). Wed., 7:15 p.m.

Film Forum, Spielberg Theatre at the

Egyptian, 7612 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 377-7238 www.lafilmforum.org A Distant Echo (2016). George Clark. Jan. 15, 7:30 p.m.

Film Forum, MOCA Grand Auditorium, 250 S Grand Ave, Plaza Level, Los Angeles, (323) 377-7238 www.lafilmforum.org Claiming Space: Collage in Cinema. Experiemtal films and videos by Ephraim, Santiago Alvarez, Barbara McCullough, Ja’Tovia M. Gary, Jean-Luc Godard, Lewis Klahr and Betye Saar. Klahr and McCullough in-person. Thu., 7 p.m. From Coraline to Kubo: A Magical LAIKA Experience, Universal Studios

Hollywood, Globe Theatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City www.universalstudioshollywood.com/ Interactive exhibition dedicated to the animation studio responsible for “Coraline” (2009), “Par-

A book editor makes a shocking discovery when she seeks out the African-American author of an award-winning memoir in Thomas Gibbons’ drama. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre. Fri. -Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Feb. 18. $17-$30. (626) 355-4318.

Brilliant Traces 2Cents Theatre stages Cindy Lou Johnson’s absurdist fable about a man who receives an unexpected visitor at his remote cabin in Alaska. Underground Theatre, 1314 N. Wilton Pl., Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 3 p.m.; ends Feb. 11. $20, $35. (800) 838-3006. Disney’s Aladdin Special adaptation

of the hit musical based on the 1992 animated film mixes English and Spanish. Casa 0101 Theater, 2102 E. 1st St., Boyle Heights. Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2, 5 and 8 p.m.; next Sun., 1, 4 and 7 p.m.; ends Feb. 19. $20-$30. (323) 263-7684.

Earbud Theater Live! Sci-fi and hor-

ror tales presented in a radio showstyle format. The Studio at Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m. $15. (562) 494-1014.

The Imaginary Invalid

Kentwood Players presents Molière’s classic satire about a hypochondriac who schemes to marry his daughter off to a doctor. Westchester Playhouse, 8301 Hindry Ave., Westchester. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Feb. 18. $18, $20. (310) 645-5156.

Improv Co-op Presents Immediate Theater Sketch comedy with “The Continued on Page E15

L AT I ME S . CO M / CA L EN DA R

S U N DAY , JA N UA RY 8, 2 017

E15

THE GUIDE Continued from Page E14 Simpsons’ ” Dan Castellaneta and others. Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Lovelace Studio Theater, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. Fri., 8 p.m. $15. (310) 7464000.

Murder... Murder… Murder… SkyPi-

lot Theatre Company stages Adam Hahn’s new mystery comedy. Pan Andreas Theatre, 5119 Melrose Ave., L.A. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Feb. 5. $20. (800) 838-3006.

Pick of the Vine

15th annual showcase features nine original short plays. Little Fish Theatre, 777 Centre St., San Pedro. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; ends Feb. 11. $23-$27. (310) 512-6030.

Tea With Lois

lates Bartlett Sher’s stunning original staging, features Laura Michelle Kelly as the elegant but scrappy Anna, Jose Llana as the comically poignant King of Siam, and a mother lode of classic tunes, rendered with brio by an exceptional cast. If you’re at all a fan of classic American musicals, this particular production is a joy – a real gift that proves a bracing pick-me-up in trouble times. (F.K.F) Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Today, next Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m.; Tue.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; ends Jan. 21. $35 and up; children under 5 not admitted. (800) 9822787.

New one-act solo drama about silent-era filmmaker Lois Weber. The Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 W. Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 and 7:30 p.m.; ends Feb. 5. $20. (800) 838-3006.

MUSIC

A Time to Kill Return engagement of

Warbly Jets Anyone looking to start

Rupert Holmes’ adaptation of John Grisham’s Southern-set legal thriller. Theatre 68, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Jan. 28. $30. (323) 960-5068.

Zanna, Don’t! Off-Broadway musical

satire set in an alternate reality where homosexuality is normal and heterosexuality is taboo. Chromolume Theatre at the Attic, 5429 W. Washington Blvd., L.A. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 7 p.m.; ends Feb. 5. $30. (323) 205-1617.

Glorious! The True Story of Florence Foster Jenkins, the Worst Singer in the World Peter Quilter’s comedy about the early 20th-century socialite and amateur vocalist. Morgan-Wixson Theatre, 2627 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica. Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Feb. 5. $23 and up. (310) 828-7519.

The Last Vig

“Rocky’s” Burt Young plays an aging mob boss in David Varriale’s new comedy. Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., L.A. Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 7 p.m.; ends Feb. 19. $40. (323) 960-7712.

Matthew Morrison The star of Broadway and TV’s “Glee” sings show tunes and standards with a live jazz band. The Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. Sat., 7:30 p.m. $50 and up. (310) 434-3200. A Murder Is Announced Miss Marple

investigates a mystery in this classic Agatha Christie thriller. Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Sat., 8 p.m.; ends Feb. 11. $14$20; opening night only, $27. (562) 4941014.

Nice Iranian Girl

Layla Rumi’s new solo show about her journey from Tehran to Hollywood; for ages 15 and up. Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Sat., 8 p.m.; ends Feb. 11. $20. (800) 838-3006.

Summer of 69: No Apostrophe

“Parks & Rec’s” Nick Offerman and “Will & Grace’s” Megan Mullally share the stage for a taping of their off-color comedy-variety show. Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Sat., 7 and 9:30 p.m. $39. (949) 8544646.

Chapatti Two animal lovers in Dublin make a late-in-life love connection in Christian O’Reilly’s comedy. Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Next Sun., 5:30 p.m.; ends Jan. 29. $40-$65. (949) 497-2787.

Critics’ Choices Bakersfield Mist Based on an actual

incident, Stephen Sachs’ delightful and provocative comedy pits a boozy Bakersfield trailer dweller who has supposedly discovered an authentic Jackson Pollock at a local thrift shop against the intellectually snide art expert who has been sent to evaluate her find. In this reprise of his 2011 production, Sachs, who also directs, has once again cast delightful husbandand-wife acting team Jenny O’Hara and Nick Ullett as surprisingly equal adversaries in his intellectually wellbalanced dialectic. For those who missed the production the first time around, this is a welcome opportunity to redress that oversight. (F.K.F.) The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., L.A. Today, next Sun., 2 p.m.; Mon., Sat., 8 p.m.; ends Jan. 30. $15– $35; Mondays, pay what you can. (323) 663-1525.

The King and I This tour of the Tonywinning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, which recapitu-

Gay & Lesbian Center’s Renberg Theatre, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Fri., 8 p.m. $30. (323) 8607300.

American Berserk

A celebration of composer John Adams features the Lyris Quartet, the Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble, et al., plus works by Louie Moreau Gottschalk, Scott Joplin, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington. Valley Performing Arts Center, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Sat., 8 p.m. $38 and up. (818) 677-3000.

Da Camera Society Shanghai Quar-

tet featuring violist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu performs works by Mendelssohn, Barber and Brahms. Sat., 4 p.m. Doheny Mansion, Mount St. Mary’s University, 8 Chester Place, L.A. $65, $85. (213) 477-2929.

JACK Quartet New York-based string

Pop Picks by August Brown 2017 with a fuzzy shot of rock and roll could do much worse than this residency, where the rising L.A. combo plays old styles with young vigor and a sense of must-watch urgency. The Satellite, 1717 Silver Lake Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Mon. Free. thesatellitela.com

Deafheaven / Health

Two of the heaviest bands going today make for a bracing start to the new year. Deafheaven’s mix of black-metal ferocity and stylish, sad ambience has brought a few detractors but many more devotees. Health, one of L.A.’s most creative rock acts, made a welcome comeback on 2015’s “Death Magic” pairing the harshest sounds of their career with some of their most purely pop melodies. Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Thu.-Fri. $20. attheecho.com.

ensemble specializes in contemporary-classical music. Bram Goldsmith Theater, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. Sat., 8 p.m. $39 and up. (310) 746-4000.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Concert

Members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra perform with the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles and others; part of LACO’s “Lift Every Voice” series. West Angeles Church, 3045 Crenshaw Blvd., L.A. Sat., 7 p.m. Free. (213) 622-7001.

Symphonies for Youth The L.A. Phil

explores Holst’s “The Planets.” Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Sat., 11 a.m.; also, Sat., Jan. 21. $22, $26. (323) 850-2000.

JACK Quartet and Lightbulb Ensemble The groups unite for a pro-

gram showcasing contemporary composition and newly invented instruments. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. Next Sun., 7 p.m. $16, $20. (213) 2372800.

Nixon Library Sunday Concerts

Classical Compiled by Matt Cooper

Le Salon de Musiques

Works by Tchaikovsky, Arensky, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Taneyev. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 5th Floor Salon, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Today, 4 p.m. $85; students, $45. (310) 498-0257.

Mozart Classical Orchestra Mozart’s

Sonata for Strings, plus works by Piazzolla, Benda and Rossini. Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Today, 3 p.m. $29-$52. (949) 854-4646.

Nixon Library Sunday Concerts Or-

ange County Cello Ensemble performs. Richard M. Nixon Library, 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda. Today, 2 p.m. $2.50-$6; children 6 and under, free. (714) 993-5075.

Harpist Tomoko Sato performs. Richard M. Nixon Library, 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda. Next Sun., 2 p.m. $2.50-$6; children 6 and under, free. (714) 993-5075.

Restoration Concerts Piano quartet

featuring pianist Ines Irawati and violinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu performs works by Mozart, Schumann and Bridge. South Pasadena Public Library, Community Room, 1115 El Centro St., South Pasadena. Next Sun., 4 p.m. $20 at the door. www.friendsofsopaslibrary.org

Russian Passions Carl St.Clair and Pacific Symphony explore Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Next Sun., 3 p.m. $25-$98. (714) 755-5799.

Tchaikovsky and Sibelius Guest conductor Bramwell Tovey leads the L.A. Phil in Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty,” Act 2; William Walton’s “Façade” Suite No. 2; and Sibelius’ violin concerto featuring violinist Ray Chen. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Today, 2 p.m. $59-$190. (323) 850-2000.

LACO violinist Maia Jasper leads the ensemble in an intimate performance that includes works by Weill, Britten and Behzad Ranjbara; part of LACO’s “Lift Every Voice” series. Villa Aurora, 520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades. Next Sun., 3 p.m. $42 and up. (213) 6227001.

Chamber Music Members of the L.A. Phil play works by Bach, Carter and Schumann. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Tue., 8 p.m. $20-$58. (323) 850-2000.

Sundays Live Members of the Capitol

Salastina Music Society

Ensemble perform works by Dvorak, et al. Bing Theater, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Next Sun., 6 p.m. Free. (323) 857-6234.

Piano Spheres Pianist Mark Robson

plays pieces by Glass, Stockhausen, et al. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. Tue, 8:30 p.m. $35. (213) 237-2800.

GALLERIES Reviews by Christopher Knight (C.K.), David Pagel (D.P.) and Leah Ollman (L.O.). Compiled by Grace Krilanovich.

Los Angeles Flute Orchestra The en-

Critics’ Choices

Mehta and Shankar Guest conductor

Zubin Mehta leads the L.A. Phil in Richard Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben” and the West Coast premiere of Ravi Shankar’s Sitar Concerto No. 2, “Raga mala” featuring sitar player Anoushka Shankar. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Fri.Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m. $59-$195. (323) 850-2000.

Well-Strung

Singing string quartet mixes classical and pop music. L.A.

ile, athletic painter, hasn't had a solo show in L.A. since 2010. This presentation of 45 paintings on paper and five more on canvas marks his exhilarating return. Each image doubles as an insistent inquiry into the capacity of paint to conjure space and imply motion, to act out possibilities. The mood overall is one of exuberant restlessness, ingenuity and irrepressibility (L.O.). Jaus, 11851 La Grange Ave., L.A. Sat. noon-4 p.m.; ends next Sun. (424) 248-0781.

Yui Yaegashi: Fixed Point Observation At a time when those who shout

loudest seem to get more attention than those who speak softly, it’s refreshing to come across whisper of an exhibition at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery. The Tokyo-based painter’s first solo show in Los Angeles fills the large rectangular space with the kind of silence that lets you know something important is taking place (D.P.) Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, 1326 S. Boyle Ave., L.A. Tue.-Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends Jan. 21. (323) 943-9373.

Continuing Daisy Redux: Rain Machine (Daisy Waterfall)1969 by Andy Warhol With Digital Augmentation by Refik Anadol About half of Warhol’s “Rain Machine (Daisy Waterfall)” is presented. Warhol’s artificial rain has been replaced by media artist Anadol’s computer-generated raindrops. Think modest midcentury masterpiece stripped to the studs and rebuilt as an aesthetically incompatible extravaganza. “Daisy Redux” is a similar sort of bells-and-whistles miscarriage of historical preservation. Even worse is its suggestion that art needs renovation. Art is not a fixer-upper. It’s something to be seen exactly as it is (D.P.). Young Projects, 8687 Melrose Ave., #B230, West Hollywood. Tue.-Fri., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; ends Feb. 10. (323) 377-1102.

Group Show: Roll Call: 11 Artists From L.A. Sometimes artists make

the best curators. And sometimes galleries organize better exhibitions than museums. Both happen with “Roll Call.” The exhibition sticks to the basics: 35 works by 11 guys. Their paintings are potent (D.P.). L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice. Tue.Sat. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends Sat. (310) 8224955.

MUSEUMS Reviews by Christopher Knight (C.K.), Sharon Mizota (S.M.), Leah Ollman (L.O.) and David Pagel (D.P.). Compiled by Grace Krilanovich.

Frank Gohlke: Texas Memories In a black-and-white 1974 photograph both ethereal and mundane, Gohlke shows a man in profile lightly bundled up in warm clothes and standing in a grassy field among barren trees. What’s odd about the picture, one of 37 in Gohlke’s lovely show, is the low, drifting cloud that partly obscures the solitary figure. It’s smoke caught in a gentle, wintry breeze. Most of the show comprises vintage prints from the 1970s and after. They elaborate on Gohlke’s gift for coaxing abundance out of little (C.K.). Gallery Luisotti, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. Tue.-Fri. 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sat. 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends Sat. (310) 453-0043.

American women. A two-channel video projection plays in a dim space furnished in the style of a 1970s living room and lined with large, silkscreened portraits of prominent entertainment figures: Diahann Carroll, Diana Ross, Pam Grier, Naomi Sims. It is a celebration of black women asserting and defining themselves through media; it is also a powerful statement about the intersection of gender and race (S.M.). Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Mon. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends Feb. 6. (213) 621-2766.

2,000-work collection. The best part is the way individual objects are placed to talk to one another in the galleries. That’s not as easy to pull off as it looks (C.K.). The Broad, 221 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Tue.-Wed. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu.Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends March 19. (213) 232-6200.

Doug

Openings Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment An exhibition of works

by the 18th century French artist. The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. Tue.-Fri. and Sun., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; closed Mon. Opens Tue. Ends April 2. (310) 440-7300.

Critics’ Choices Sekimachi works in an astonishing range of materials but is primarily known as a fiber artist. This handsome, at times breathtaking show touches down lightly across the range of her nearly 60-year output (L.O.). Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Ends today, noon-6 p.m. (323) 937-4230.

John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction McLaughlin’s painting

retrospective is the most moving and viscerally beautiful exhibition to be installed in BCAM since the building opened eight years ago. This is the first time a major institution has mounted a proper, full-scale retrospective. That such an indispensable painter didn’t merit one until 40 years after his death tells you all you need to know about how passed-over this brilliant artist has been. In fact, I’ve been waiting those same 40 years for it (C.K.). LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Mon.-Tue., Thu. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; ends April 16. (323) 857-6010.

Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a

Lady? The artist’s installation is an unabashed love letter to African

Aitken:

Electric

Earth

Smashed hopes, lost love, inevitable decay and social dissolution, all within a seamless Mobius strip of passing time -- Aitken’s work has taken a romantic view of life’s predictable unraveling. Usually the musing is wrapped in a sleek, even slick package of easily consumable commercial design. And too often, unfortunately, it is undone by a grating aura of chic ennui. This large survey of the Los Angeles artist’s career includes sculptures, collages, photographs and project documentation. Seven large-scale, moving-image installations anchor the event (C.K.). Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., L.A. Mon. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thu., 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Fri., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends next Sun. (213) 6266222.

Non-fiction The small exhibition is an

elegiac tone poem, spoken in visual shades of black. With just 10 works by eight artists, it presents no defined thesis but resonates beyond its modest scale (C.K.). The Underground Museum, 3508 W. Washington Blvd., L.A. Wed.-Sun. noon-7 p.m.; ends March 31. (323) 989-9925.

Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach LACMA’s show does an ex-

cellent job of translating 16th century German culture into a revealing 21st century exhibition. The museum has a reputation for organizing important shows of German art, mostly from the modern era, and “Renaissance and Reformation” impressively extends the range (C.K.). LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Mon.-Tue., Thu. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat.Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Ends March 26. (323) 857-6010.

Hank Willis Thomas: Black Righteous Space Within the “Black Righ-

teous Space” that the New York artist has set up inside the California African American Museum, fleeting opportunities arise to add your own voice to those of politicians, blues singers, writers and other notables on a soundtrack the artist composed from audio-clips (C.K.). California African American Museum, 600 State Drive, L.A. Tue.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; ends Feb. 19. (213) 744-7432.

The Shimmer of Gold: Giovanni di Paolo in Renaissance Siena Giovanni

di Paolo was barely 24 when he painted the so-called “Branchini Madonna,” a wonderfully weird confection of big, doll-like figures framed within a furious flutter of cherubim wings. The work is among the great treasures of Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum. Currently, however, the monumental painting is installed across town as the centerpiece of this small but engrossing one-room exhibition (C.K.). The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. Ends today, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Ends today. (310) 4407300.

Loris Gréaud: Sculpt All art is experi-

ence, as John Dewey explained long ago. Given hyper-limited seating, this cinematic experience will mostly exist as word of mouth. Between “Rain Room” and a movie-for-one, LACMA has doubled down on event programming of an overproduced, undernourished sort (C.K.). LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Mon.-Tue., Thu. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat.Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Ongoing. (323) 8576010.

Toba Khedoori Nothing rests easily in

Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time The focus of the exhib-

Khedoori’s work, its drama typically tamped down – even in a romantic, wall-size painting of billowing black clouds. They hang in the air, a pregnant pause, quietly setting a stage for something momentous to happen. Khedoori starts with a primary paradox of art, in which an image is also an object. Playing with contradictions intrinsic to Modernist painting, she comes up with enchanting, unexpected hybrids (C.K.). LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Mon.-Tue., Thu. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat.Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; ends March 19. (323) 857-6010.

ition is fixed on details of the artists’ biographies plus their formal experiments with materials and techniques for reimagining representational painting. Both are important, but neither is enough (C.K.). LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Mon.-Tue., Thu. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat.Sun. 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; ends May 7. (323) 857-6010.

R.H. Quaytman, Morning: Chapter 30 Indigo, saturated eggplant, black,

gray — the colors that dominate the show of Quaytman’s paintings constitute what can only be called a twilight palette. Landscape is at the center of the New York artist’s exhibition of new and recent work, and dusk is falling (C.K.). Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Mon. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends Feb. 6. (213) 621-2766.

Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps During World War II

Kay Sekimachi: Simple Complexity

Pacific Symphony Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 featuring pianist Haochen Zhang. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m. $25-$195. (714) 755-5799. semble performs as part of the eighth annual “Fireside at The Miles” series. Miles Memorial Playhouse, 1130 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica. Fri., 8 p.m. $5, $10. www.milesplayhouse.org

Nathan Redwood The terrifically ag-

When FDR signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, Japanese Americans were forced to evacuate not only their homes but their farms, some 6000 of them along the Pacific coast. The government rustled up the labor to work them, and then put the evacuees to work on other farms to fill in for labor called away by the war. FSA photographer Russell Lee documented the farm labor camps and his photographs, in this quietly devastating exhibition, restore dignity to a population wholly stripped of it by government decree (L.O.). Japanese American National Museum, 100 N. Central Ave., L.A. Ends today, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. (213) 625-0414.

DANCE Compiled by Matt Cooper

Jacob Jonas The Company Contemporary dance troupe makes its Wallis debut with a program that includes two world premieres. Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Bram Goldsmith Theater, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. Fri., 8 p.m. $29-$79. (310) 746-4000.

Continuing Brain: Photographs by Peter Badge

The artist has been working on this series since 2000, photographing Nobel prize-winners from 1954 to 2015. They come from all over the globe. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that most of the photographs depict old white men. If I had a research assistant, I’d have him count and graph the age, ethnicity, gender and nationality — among other characteristics — of the laureates. But that information would need lots of interpretive work to produce anything more than anecdotal curiosities. Unfortunately, the exhibition doesn’t go that far (D.P.). El Segundo Museum of Art, 208 Main St., El Segundo. Fri.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; ends Feb. 12. (424) 277-1020.

Awakenings & Beginnings Dance Festival 2017 Opening Night Rubans

Rouges Dance Company hosts this annual showcase for local and international dance artists. Diavolo Dance Space, 616 Moulton Ave., Brewery Arts Center, L.A. Sat., 7 p.m. $20, $25. (310) 890-8285.

Eifo Efi

Ioannis Mandafounis and Fabrice Mazliah of the German dance collective MAMAZA perform duets incorporating various reflective surfaces. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m. $35. (310) 477-2055.

Stories of Parenthood Lineage Dance and Street Symphony explore parenting. The Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena. Next Sun., 7 p.m. $15, $20. (626) 844-7008.

Creature

This seems less like a thematic exhibition meant to unravel a curatorial thesis than simply a handsomely arranged, smartly installed selection from the Broad’s nearly

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At South Coast Plaza/Sunﬂower & Plaza Dr. 714-557-5701 JULIETA E (11:30, 2:00, 4:30), 7:15, 9:50 MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (12:00, 3:30), 6:45, 9:45 LION C (1:00, 4:00), 7:00, 9:40 Bargain Showtimes in ( )

949-831-0446

SILENCE E (12:15, 4:20), 7:45 HIDDEN FIGURES B (1:15, 4:15), 7:10, 10:05 FENCES C (12:20, 3:30), 6:50, 9:50 LA LA LAND C (1:00, 4:00), 7:00, 9:55 MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (12:30, 3:45), 6:45, 9:45 JACKIE E (2:10, 4:45), 7:30, 9:55 LION C (11:00, 1:45, 4:30), 7:15, 10:00 MOONLIGHT E (11:30 AM)

CHARTER CENTRE 5

7822 Warner Ave. at Beach 714-596-3456 ALLIED E 1:00, 4:00, 7:15, 9:55 THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN E 9:40 PM TROLLS B 11:45 TROLLS 3D B 2:00, 4:15, 6:30, 8:45 JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK C 1:00, 3:45, 7:00 THE ACCOUNTANT E 12:30, 3:30, 6:45, 9:45 THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN E 2:50, 5:30, 8:15 MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN C 12:00 PM

EAST LOS ANGELES

COMMERCE 14

Goodrich & Whittier

323-726-8022

$5.50 All Day Tuesday (Not Applicable in 3D)

UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS E (1:00), 5:45, 10:25 UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS (SPANISH SUBTITLES) E (3:25), 8:05 FENCES C (12:10, 3:25), 6:40, 9:55 WHY HIM? E (2:10), 7:35 WHY HIM? (SPANISH SUBTITLES) E (11:25), 4:50, 10:20 ASSASSIN’S CREED C (12:15, 3:30), 6:45, 10:05 ASSASSIN’S CREED (SPANISH SUBTITLES) C (11:05, 2:20), 5:30, 8:40 PASSENGERS C (1:30), 4:20, 7:10, 10:05 PASSENGERS (SPANISH SUBTITLES) C (12:05, 2:55), 5:45, 8:30 SING B (11:20, 2:00), 4:40, 7:20, 10:00 SING (DUBBED IN SPANISH) B (12:20, 3:00), 5:40, 8:20 COLLATERAL BEAUTY C (2:20), 10:15 COLLATERAL BEAUTY (SPANISH SUBTITLES) C 7:50 PM ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY C (12:00, 3:00), 6:00, 9:15 ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (SPANISH SUBTITLES) C (1:00), 4:00, 7:00, 10:15 OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY E (11:30), 4:50, 10:10 OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY (SPANISH SUBTITLES) E (2:10 PM) MOANA B (2:50), 8:15 MOANA (SPANISH SUBTITLES) B (12:10), 5:35 FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM C (11:15 AM) FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM (SPANISH SUBTITLES) C 4:45 PM

562-804-5615

ALLIED E (12:10, 3:30), 6:50, 10:00 BAD SANTA 2 E 7:40, 10:20 ALMOST CHRISTMAS C (3:20), 10:10 SHUT IN C (11:45, 2:40, 5:15), 7:50, 10:30 TROLLS B (12:30, 2:50, 5:10) TROLLS 3D B (11:30, 1:50, 4:10), 7:00, 9:40 INFERNO C (12:00, 3:00), 7:20 JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK C 7:30, 10:15 THE ACCOUNTANT E (12:20, 3:30), 7:10, 10:25 MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN C (11:50), 6:40, 9:50 STORKS B (11:40, 2:10, 4:30)

SAN FERNANDO VALLEY

GRANADA HILLS 9

16830 Devonshire Street

818-363-3679

HIDDEN FIGURES B (12:00, 3:40), 7:10, 10:10 UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS E (11:30, 2:15), 5:00, 7:50, 10:15 FENCES C (11:40, 3:20), 6:50, 10:00 LA LA LAND C (11:50, 3:30), 7:30, 10:30 WHY HIM? E (11:20, 2:00), 4:45, 7:40, 10:25 SING B (11:10, 12:20, 1:50, 3:10), 4:30, 5:50, 7:15, 8:30, 9:50 ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY C (12:10, 3:50), 7:20, 9:40, 10:20 MOANA B (11:00, 1:40), 4:20, 7:00

PLANT 16

7876 Van Nuys Blvd.

818-779-0323

HIDDEN FIGURES B (10:45, 1:35), 4:30, 7:30, 10:30 A MONSTER CALLS C (10:40, 11:40, 1:15, 2:15), 4:50, 6:25, 7:25, 10:00 UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS E (12:40, 3:05), 4:05, 5:25, 7:40, 9:00, 9:55 FENCES C (12:30, 3:40), 7:05, 10:10 LA LA LAND C (10:30, 1:25), 4:40, 7:35, 10:35 WHY HIM? E (11:55, 2:35), 5:15, 7:55, 10:40 ASSASSIN’S CREED C (11:35, 2:20), 5:05, 7:45, 10:25 PASSENGERS C (11:05, 1:50), 4:35, 7:20, 10:05 SING B (11:10, 12:15, 1:45, 2:55), 4:25, 5:35, 7:10, 8:10, 9:45 COLLATERAL BEAUTY C (1:30), 6:50, 9:10 ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY C (11:00, 2:00), 4:00, 5:00, 8:00, 10:15 ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY DBOX SEATING C 4:00, 10:15 ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY 3D C (1:00), 7:15 ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY 3D DBOX SEATING C (1:00), 7:15 OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY E (12:05, 2:45), 5:20, 7:50, 10:20 MOANA B (10:55, 1:40), 4:20, 7:00 FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM C (10:35, 3:50) DOCTOR STRANGE C 9:40 PM “Locally Owned, Proudly Operated”

6355 Bellingham Ave.

818-760-8400

$1.75 Sun. & Tue! (All 2D Movies, All Day!)

BAD SANTA 2 E 10:00 PM THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN E 12:45, 3:30, 7:45, 10:20 TROLLS B 11:45, 2:15, 4:45, 7:15, 9:45 INFERNO C 12:00, 5:15, 10:30 JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK C 3:45 PM OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL C 2:45, 8:00 THE ACCOUNTANT E 1:00, 4:00, 7:30, 10:30 MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN C 12:30, 7:00 STORKS 3D B 11:30, 1:45, 4:15, 6:45, 9:15

CONEJO VALLEY

AGOURA HILLS STADIUM 8

29045 Agoura Road

818-707-9966

$6 Wednesday all day for all 2D films (upcharge for DBOX & 3D) Now Offering Reserved Seating

VENTURA COUNTY

BUENAVENTURA 6

1440 Eastman Ave. at Telephone Rd. 805-658-6544

All Seats $3.50 • $1.50 Surcharge for 3D Movies $1.00 All Day Tuesday - 3D Surcharge Applies

ALLIED E 12:40, 7:20, 10:15 FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM C 12:10, 3:50, 7:00, 10:10 HACKSAW RIDGE E 12:20, 3:40, 6:40, 9:50 TROLLS 3D B 12:00, 2:20, 4:30, 6:50, 9:10 THE ACCOUNTANT E 12:30, 4:10, 7:30, 10:20 MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN C 4:00, 9:20 STORKS B 11:50, 2:00, 4:20, 7:10

SAN GABRIEL VALLEY

ACADEMY CINEMAS 6

1003 E. Colorado Blvd

626-229-9400

All Seats $2.00 before 6pm • $1.00 All Beef Hot Dogs

ALLIED E (12:30, 3:50), 7:20, 10:10 BAD SANTA 2 E (12:10, 5:10), 7:40

HIDDEN FIGURES B (12:10, 3:40), 5:15, 7:15, 10:05

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN E 7:10, 9:40

LA LA LAND C (11:30, 1:00, 2:20, 4:00), 7:05, 8:15, 9:55

TROLLS B (11:45, 2:00, 4:20), 6:50, 9:10

WHY HIM? E (12:20, 4:40), 7:50, 10:25

INFERNO C (12:20), 7:30, 10:20

PASSENGERS C (12:00, 3:50), 7:30, 10:10

THE ACCOUNTANT E (1:00, 4:00), 7:00, 10:00

SING B (11:10, 1:40, 4:20), 6:50, 9:20

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN E (2:30), 10:15

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY DBOX SEATING - DOLBY ATMOS C (1:00, 4:00), 7:10, 10:05

MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY DOLBY ATMOS C (1:00, 4:00), 7:10, 10:05

STORKS B (12:00, 2:20, 4:40)

FOOTHILL CINEMA 10

854 E. Alosta Ave. at Citrus

MOANA B (1:30, 4:10), 7:00

626-334-6007

All Seats $6.50 before 5pm

ARRIVAL C 9:45 PM

WESTLAKE VILLAGE TWIN

4711 Lakeview Canyon at Agoura Rd. 818-889-8061 MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (12:30, 3:45), 7:00 JACKIE E (12:45, 4:00), 7:15

HIDDEN FIGURES B (11:00, 1:50, 4:40), 7:30, 10:25 UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS E (12:10, 2:30), 5:00, 7:40, 10:00 FENCES C (12:00, 3:20), 7:00, 10:10 WHY HIM? E (11:50, 2:40), 5:15, 7:50, 10:30

VENTURA COUNTY

PASEO CAMARILLO 3

390 N. Lantana at Daily

CHILDREN C (3:40 PM)

805-383-2267

ASSASSIN’S CREED C (12:40, 3:45), 7:15, 10:05 PASSENGERS C (11:20, 2:00, 4:45), 7:35, 10:15 SING B (11:10, 12:20, 1:45, 3:00, 4:30), 7:05, 9:40

LA LA LAND C (12:45, 4:00), 7:15

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY C (1:00,

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (12:30, 3:45), 7:00

4:00), 5:45, 7:20, 9:00, 10:20

JACKIE E (11:45, 2:15, 4:40), 7:30

MOANA B (10:50, 1:30, 4:10), 6:50, 9:30 Showtimes for January 8

E16

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 8 , 2 017

L ATI M E S . C O M /CA L E N DA R

T V THIS WEEK

Sunday Prime-Time TV Celebs put their best dishes forward and then chefs Curtis Stone and Cat Cora judge the results in the new series “My Kitchen Rules.” 9 p.m. Fox

By Matt Cooper SUNDAY Meryl Streep will add to her collection of hardware when she receives the 2017 Cecil B. DeMille Award at “The 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards.” Jimmy Fallon hosts. 5 p.m. NBC The new special “Transition of Power: The Presidency” takes a timely look at one of the great hallmarks of American democracy. 9 p.m. History Channel The new special “Cradle to Grave” examines the many physiological changes the human body goes through over the course of a lifetime. 9 p.m. National Geographic Channel

Robert Viglasky FX

TOM HARDY plays a

man of mystery in the new FX drama “Taboo.” Gabrielle Union gets back to “Being Mary Jane” for a fourth season of this drama. 9 p.m. BET

Climbers in distress get the altitude adjustments they so desperately need in the new docu-series “Everest Rescue.” 10 p.m. Discovery Channel

“The Revenant’s” Tom Hardy is not a man to be trifled with in the new drama “Taboo” set in early 19th century London. Jonathan Pryce, Franka Potente and Oona Chaplin also star. 10 p.m. FX

MONDAY

WEDNESDAY

The Clemson Tigers take on the Crimson Tide of Alabama in the “College Football Playoff National Championship.” From Tampa, Fla. 5:15 p.m. ESPN

“Nature” chills with wildlife from Yellowstone to Antarctica in the new episode “Snowbound: Animals of Winter.” 8 p.m. KOCE

Melissa Rivers and company dish on styles seen at Sunday’s Golden Globes on a new edition of “Fashion Police.” 8 p.m. E!

“SCTV’s” Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara serve up a third season of the sitcom “Schitt’s Creek.” 8 p.m. Pop Scientists and engineers work to prevent another Fukushima in “The Nuclear Option” on a new “Nova.” 9 p.m. KOCE

All right, all right, all right! Matthew McConaughey competes against three of his fans in the debut of the celebrity trivia challenge “Big Fan.” Andy Richter hosts. 10 and 10:30 p.m. ABC

Lisa Edelstein’s back for a third season of “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce.” 10 p.m. Bravo

“Independent Lens” presents “Containment,” a new documentary about efforts to safely store nuclear waste. 10 p.m. KOCE

“Jeff & Some Aliens” — the extraterrestrial kind — co-habitate in this new animated sitcom. 10:30 p.m. Comedy Central

TUESDAY “The Eagle’s Nest,” Hitler’s heavily fortified hideaway in the Bavarian Alps, is up next on this new episode of “Nazi Mega Weapons.” 8 p.m. KOCE The hit family drama “This Is Us” offers its midseason premiere. With Mandy Moore. 9 p.m. NBC “American Experience” revisits a mishap at a U.S. nuclear-missile complex in Arkansas in 1980 in the new episode “Command and Control.” 9 p.m. KOCE

THURSDAY A reality-TV star and her squad whip regular folks into shape in the new series “Revenge Body With Khloé Kardashian.” 8 p.m. E! The stars come out for the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in the special “Taking the Stage: African American Music and Stories That Changed America.” With Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, et al. 9 p.m. ABC

Don Cheadle takes on Wanda Sykes in an all-new “Lip Sync Battle.” Then, it’s the debut of the amateur singing competition “Caraoke Showdown” hosted by Craig Robinson. 10 and 10:30 p.m. Spike Resistance is still futile — but what’re you gonna do? — in Season 2 of the alien invasion drama “Colony.” “Lost’s” Josh Holloway and “The Walking Dead’s” Sarah Wayne Callies star. 10 p.m. USA

FOX MyNt KVCR KCET

ANP BET Bravo CNN Com Disc Disn E! ESPN Food FNC Free FX Hall HGTV Hist IFC Life MSN MTV NGC Nick Ova OWN Spike Sund Syfy TBS TCM

SATURDAY Love is a many splintered thing in the new TV movie “Open Marriage.” With Tilky Jones. 8 p.m. Lifetime Some day her prince will come … and that day is today in the romantic new TV movie “A Royal Winter.” With Merritt Patterson 9 p.m. Hallmark Channel

Sports News Movies (N) New Å Closed Captioning

Madam Secretary (TV14)

10 pm

10:30

Elementary (TV14) Woman

11 pm

News (N) Å

Masterpiece (TV14) Sherlock: Masterpiece (TV14) Sherlock: The Lying

KCAL

BBC

Brava! The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of “Bel Canto,” based on the true story of a hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Peru, airs on “Great Performances.” 9 p.m. KOCE

9:30

KOCE

ABC

A&E

Two-time Tony winner Patti LuPone guest stars on a new “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” 9 p.m. KTLA

NCIS: Los Angeles (TV14)

9 pm

UNI

KTLA

AMC

Giovanni Ribisi plays a real shady character in the new crime drama “Sneaky Pete.” With “Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston and “Justified’s” Margo Martindale. Any time, Amazon

8:30

Navy reservist killed. (N) Å An unusual gift. (N) Å held captive for years. (N) Å The 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards Celebrating the best in TV and film; Jimmy Fallon News (N) Å hosts; Meryl Streep receives the 2017 Cecil B. DeMille Award; from Beverly Hills. Å Elementary (TV14) Å News (N) Å News (N) Å News (N) Å To Tell the Truth (TVPG) With To Tell the Truth (TVPG) With Conviction (TVPG) Murder News (N) Å Sherri Shepherd. (N) Å Kal Penn, Justin Long. (N) Å linked to serial killer. (N) Å News (N) Å News (N) Å News (N) Å Sports Central Joel Osteen The Simpsons Son of Zorn Family Guy Bob’s Burgers News (N) Å Modern Family (TVPG) (N) (TV14) (N) Å (TV14) (N) Å (TVPG) (N) (TVPG) Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Seinfeld Å Seinfeld Å Laughs Å Road Trip With Huell Howser Fish Out of The Aux Music Mixed Blessing Native Shorts Ripley: Believe Northeast California. Water (TVG) videos. Å (TVPG) Å (TVPG) It or Not Å Father Brown (TVPG) Å Shetland (TVPG) Å Vera (TVPG) Fatal stabbing. Å Su Nombre Era Dolores (N) Aquí y Ahora (TVY7) (N) Noticias

NBC

KLCS

Neil Patrick Harris, not Jim Carrey, is the villainous Count Olaf in a new serial adaptation of the darkly comic kids’ books “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.” Patrick Warburton narrates. Any time, Netflix

May the Force be with her: “Rogue One’s” Felicity Jones hosts a new “Saturday Night Live.” 11:29 p.m. NBC

CBS

KDOC

FRIDAY

The Cold War heats up for Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s fact-based 2015 drama “Bridge of Spies.” 9 p.m. Showtime

8 pm

TLC TNT Toon Travel Tru TV L USA VH1 WGN Cine Encr EPIX HBO Show

Masterpiece (TV14) Sherlock: Detective. (N) Å The Lying Detective. (10:36) Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas ›› (2003) Brad Pitt. (PG) Family Guy Å Family Guy Å Seinfeld Å Antiques Roadshow (TVG) Film School On Story Å Boomers Up. No Excuse. (TVG) Truth-Money Leah Remini: Scientology Å Hoarders (TV14) (N) Å Hoarders Overload (N) Å The First 48 Å Rocky III ››› (1982) Sylvester Stallone. (7) Rocky IV ›› (1985) Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire. (PG) Å Finding Bigfoot (TVPG) (N) Finding Bigfoot (TVPG) Researchers hunt elusive creature. Finding Bigfoot Mission: Impossible III ››› (2006) Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman. (PG-13) Å Air Force One Being Mary Jane (TV14) Å Being Mary Jane (TV14) Å Being Mary Jane (TV14) Å Mary Jane Å Real Housewives of Atlanta (N) Married to Medicine (TV14) The Real Housewives of Atlanta Watch What Å A. Bourdain: Parts Unknown Å A. Bourdain: Parts Unknown Å A. Bourdain: Parts Unknown Å Newsroom (N) South Park Å South Park (TV14) (8:25) Å Kevin Hart: Seriously Funny Å Roast Battle II Alaska: Last Frontier Exposed Alaska: The Last Frontier (N) Everest Rescue (TV14) (N) Å Alaska: Frontier KC Undercover Bizaardvark Å Cloud 9 (2014) Dove Cameron. Å Liv & Maddie KC Undercover Mariah’s World (TV14) Å Mariah’s World (TV14) (N) Å The Royals (TV14) (N) Å E! After Party SportsCenter (N) Å SportsCenter Å NFL PrimeTime Guy’s Grocery Games (TVG) Worst Cooks in America (TVG) Cooks vs. Cons (TVG) Å Cooks vs. Cons The Six Thatchers. (7) Å

Fox News Reporting Å Fox Report Å The Greg Gutfeld Show Å The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (6:40) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 ›› (2012) (9:20) Å Transformers: Age of Extinction ›› (2014) Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci. (PG-13) Å Love’s Complicated (2015) (7) Wedding Bells (2016) Danica McKellar, Kavan Smith. Å Golden Girls Å Beach Bargain Beach Bargain Caribbean Life Caribbean Life Island Life (N) Island Life (N) House Hunters American Pickers (TVPG) Å Transition of Power: The Presidency (TVPG) (N) Å Am. Pickers Å Watchmen ›› (2009) Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman. (7) (R) Å Daredevil ›› (2003) (PG-13) A Surrogate’s Nightmare (7) Å Under the Bed (2017) Hannah New, Beverly D’Angelo. Å Surrogate’s Å Lockup Special Investigation Lockup: New Mexico: Extended Lockup Special Investigation Meet the Press Step Up ›› (2006) Channing Tatum, Jenna Dewan. (PG-13) Å Step Up 3 ›› (2010) (PG-13) Return From the Dead (TVPG) Cradle to Grave (TV14) How the body changes. (N) Å Cradle to Grave Crashletes (N) Jagger Eaton Full House Å Full House Å Full House Å Full House Å Friends Å The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ›››› (1967) (6:30) (R) Å The Alamo ››› (1960) John Wayne. Å Undercover Boss (TVPG) Å Undercover Boss (TVPG) Å Undercover Boss (TV14) Å Undercover Å The Expendables 3 ›› (2014) Sylvester Stallone. (7) Å The Expendables ›› (2010) Å Forrest Gump ›››› (1994) Tom Hanks. (PG-13) Forrest Gump ›››› (1994) (10:15) (PG-13) Final Destination ›› (7) (R) Final Destination 2 ›› (2003) Ali Larter, A. J. Cook. (R) Å Possession Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å LEGO Movie Hannah and Her Sisters (7) Å Clever Dummy The Last of the Mohicans ››› (1920) (9:45) Mood for Love Sister Wives (TVPG) Meri’s only daughter, Mariah, makes a stunning announcement. (N) Married-Mom The Librarians (TVPG) (N) Å Journey 2: The Mysterious Island ›› (2012) (PG) Å The Librarians King of the Hill King of the Hill Bob’s Burgers Bob’s Burgers Family Guy Å Family Guy Å Rick and Morty Food Paradise (TVG) (N) Å Waterparks (N) Waterparks Å Top Secret Swimming Holes (N) Waterparks Å Imp. Jokers Imp. Jokers Imp. Jokers Imp. Jokers Imp. Jokers Imp. Jokers Comedy Knock Reba (TVPG) Reba (TVPG) Raymond Å Raymond Å Raymond Å Raymond Å King of Queens Law & Order: SVU (TV14) Å Law & Order: SVU (TV14) Å Law & Order: SVU (TV14) Å Modern Family ATL ›› (2006) Tip Harris, Lauren London. (7:30) (PG-13) Love & Hip Hop (TV14) Å Love & Hip Hop Bones (TVPG) Wheelchair. Å Bones (TV14) Fragments. Å Person of Interest (TV14) Å Person-Interest The Insider ››› (1999) Al Pacino, Russell Crowe. A former Sea of Love ››› (1989) Al Pacino, Ellen executive exposes a cigarette company’s lies. (7:20) (R) Å Barkin. Detective falls for suspect. (R) Å

Summer School ›› (7:20) Å Sweet Home Alabama ›› (2002) Reese Witherspoon. Å In & Out ›› Barbershop: The Next Cut ››› (2016) Ice Cube. Å 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (R) My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 Genius ›› (2016) Colin Firth, Jude Law. The Big Lebowski ››› (1998) ›› (2016) (PG-13) (7:15) Å Editor works with Thomas Wolfe. (PG-13) Å Jeff Bridges. (10:45) Å Secret in Their Eyes ›› (2015) Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kid- The Affair (TVMA) Helen The Affair

man. FBI agent probes murder of colleague’s daughter. Å helps Noah for a price. (N) (TVMA) Outlander (TVMA) Jamie Outlander (TVMA) Claire reveals the truth to Gangs of New York ››› tries to divert army. (7:58) her daughter; Battle of Culloden begins. Å (2002) Leonardo DiCaprio. TMC Hannibal Rising ›› (2007) Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li. Trauma Summer of Sam ››› (1999) John Leguizaduring WWII warps young Hannibal Lecter’s mind. (R) Å mo, Adrien Brody. (10:05) (R) Å Starz

Experience all the glitz and glamour for yourself.

Photo: Ricardo DeAratanha, LA Times, 1/25/15

Photo: Kirk McKoy, LA Times, 1/18/14

Photo: Ricardo DeAratanha, LA Times, 1/15/15

Photo: Robert Gauthier, LA Times, 1/29/12

Exclusive pre-show events On January 28, the winner and a guest will go behind the scenes at the SAG Awards, including a backstage tour and the awards show rehearsals. Deluxe accommodations The winners will receive a two-night stay at a luxurious hotel in Downtown L.A., courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

January 29, 2017 · Shrine Exhibition Center

One lucky winner and a guest will get exclusive access to this star-studded event that brings out some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities. Sweepstakes ends on January 16 at 2 p.m. PT.

Arrive in style On January 29, the winners will arrive by chauffeured car, walk the red carpet and enjoy pre-show cocktails, while watching the arrivals on the big screen. Awards ceremony From a reserved showroom dinner table, the winners will watch the award presentations, acceptance speeches and all the special tributes. Post-awards gala After the awards ceremony, the winners will continue the celebration at the exclusive post-awards gala, featuring a menu by Wolfgang Puck. 16BR1819

Enter now:

latimes.com/Experiences

Photos courtesy of LA Kings

NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT NECESSARY. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Promotion runs from 1/5/17 at 12:01 AM PT to 1/16/17 at 2:00 PM PT. Open only to residents of LA, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino & Riverside counties, 21 + as of 1/3/17. Void where prohibited & outside listed counties. Excludes Sponsor and SAG Awards employees & their hshld/immed fam mbrs. To enter, complete form at www.latimes.com/experiences. Limit 1 entry per person/email address. 1 Prize: 2 tix to Screen Actors Guild Awards® on 1/29/17, plus transportation, hotel & formal wear rental for winner & guest & $100. ARV: $2,700. Odds of winning depend on # of elig. entries. Other restrs apply. Full rules at www.latimes.com/sagsweepsrules. Sponsor: LA Times, 202 W. 1st ST, LA, CA, 90012.

ARTS&BOOKS S U N D A Y , J A N U A R Y 8 , 2 0 1 7 :: L A T I M E S . C O M / C A L E N D A R

Edel Rodriguez For The Times

CONNECTING CUBA AND U.S. With culture barriers lifting, Cuban and American music may mix more BY RANDY LEWIS >>> Cuba’s Roberto Gomez had a single night free on his first trip to San Francisco, part of a short performance visit in his role as lead guitarist for singer-songwriter Carlos Varela, often referred to as “The Bob Dylan of Cuba,” and “The Poet of Havana.” ¶ Gomez might have chosen to head to any number of clubs, restaurants or other social gathering places in one of the most vibrant and culturally rich cities in the U.S. ¶ Instead, foremost on his mind immediately after the Varela concert performance was his search for a power cord to his laptop computer. ¶ “I just want to go back to my hotel,” Gomez said, “and watch all the music videos we cannot see at home.” ¶ It’s a common cry from Cuban musicians in particular, and artists in general. State-controlled media in the socialist country is heavily censored, and access to the Internet has only begun, leaving Cubans often feeling isolated from the cultural conversations going on in their culture-dominating neighbor to the north. ¶ Indeed, one of the most prized commodities among Cubans is “El Paquete” — The Package, typically a 500-gigabyte memory stick containing downloaded [See Cubans, F6]

IN ART’S CORNER

GAMER THEORY

PROTEST RAP

Maybe Sylvester Stallone wasn’t such a bad idea for NEA chief. By Mark Swed F4

How video game trolls helped set Trump’s political attack playbook. By Todd Martens F5

Run the Jewels’ Killer Mike and El-P mix the personal and political. By Randall Roberts F8

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HOLLYWOOD VALUES CULTURE

VITAL ROLE IN PROTEST Culture is at the heart of Standing Rock, and it will reshape art, actions. By Carolina A. Miranda Early in April, a time when the frigid North Dakota plain is still quilted with snow, several dozen Native American men and women set out on horseback for a 25-mile ceremonial ride from the Standing Rock Sioux tribal headquarters in Fort Yates to the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers. There they set up a small encampment of tepees on a site known by Native Americans as Sacred Stone. The camp was a protest against an encroaching crude oil channel, the Dakota Access pipeline, whose placement underneath the Missouri River threatened a key waterway and Sioux burial grounds. At that moment, it might have strained the imagination to believe that nine months later, the camp would not only still be active but that it also would have become a fullfledged cultural touchstone. Standing Rock has galvanized thousands of Native people from all over the continent — along with thousands of nonnative supporters. It has introduced phrases such as “mni wiconi” (Lakota for “water is life”) into the popular parlance. And it succeeded, at least for the short term, in its mission — to persuade the Army Corps of Engineers to block a permit for the pipeline. No matter what ultimately happens with the pipeline, Standing Rock has also demonstrated the vital role of culture in protest and the direction that protest might take in the future over other issues.

A Native protest

At its core, the Standing Rock protest has been a Native American one, with Native iconography, language, ritual and architecture. But beyond Native communities, it’s also a cultural encounter that provides fresh ways of thinking about everything from the contours of the landscape to the nature of protest. Standing Rock, says Nato Thompson, artistic director at the New York-based arts nonprofit Creative Time, “represents an important kind of learning curve.”

John Lamparski WireImage

ACTRESS Shailene Woodley protests the pipeline in New York. Her arrest near

Standing Rock in October was the moment many first became aware of the issue. Recent social movements in the U.S., such as the anti-globalization protests of the 1990s and the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in 2011, championed issues of economic inequity that are still part of the national conversation. But these movements were far less adept at contending with the ethnic and racial issues that intersected with that concern. Coming on the heels of the Black Lives Matter movement, Standing Rock has been different, says Thompson. “There was a profound wrestling with race and culture as it applies to class,” he says. And that could inform the types of protest actions we see in the coming months and years. “The dominant social movement is going to be a pushback against the [Donald] Trump administration,” Thompson says. “It will be extremely galvanizing across a broad spectrum. So I think the issues of Standing Rock — centered around prayer, around humility, around landedness — could be part of a larger movement across America.” Since summer, a cross-section of cultural figures, from painters to photographers to musicians to actors, have been involved in Standing Rock — as activists, supporters

and artists. Artist Guadalupe Rosales, known for creating the Chicano youth archive “Veteranas and Rucas” (currently on view at Los Angeles’ Vincent Price Art Museum), ferried winter supplies to North Dakota in her truck. Melissa Govea, of the Los Angeles collective Ni Santas, helped fabricate protest signs at an art tent in one of the camps. The punk/hip-hop L.A. band Aztlan Underground played a concert at the Red Warrior camp over Thanksgiving as a way of lifting morale. Actress Shailene Woodley has supported Standing Rock since August, through public appearances and by making a number of trips to the area to participate in some of the actions. In October, Woodley made headlines when she was arrested with more than two dozen other people during an attempt to blockade the pipeline route. This was the moment many beyond the Native and protest communities first became aware of Standing Rock. Artists in the U.S. can play a marginal role in political life, so their gestures are often treated sensationally or skeptically by the press. (Sample headline: “Shailene Woodley Knows She’s Not Saving the World.”) But this type of involvement is

hardly new. Actress Jane Fonda, who has a lifetime of activism under her belt, has publicly supported the #defundDAPL (Defund the Dakota Access pipeline) cause on social media, has donated shelters and bison meat to camp kitchens and flew to North Dakota in late November to help serve Thanksgiving meals. In December, she withdrew her funds from Wells Fargo as an expression of public protest, since the bank has invested in the pipeline project. “Throughout history, actors have stood up to power,” Fonda told The Times at a December Standing Rock event held at the Depart Foundation, an arts space in West Hollywood. “Artists in general, through their writing, through their plays, through their acting, through their art — it’s very natural for artists to be standing with Standing Rock.” More significantly, artists of all races and ethnicities were on hand to take part in an unprecedented cultural event — a large gathering of Native Americans that required nonnatives to adapt to the Native way of doing things. “It’s a whole different reality out there,” says Andrea Bowers, a Los Angeles-based artist whose work has explored issues of solidarity and protest. “It’s a different set of rules. It’s based on Native prayer and spirituality, and there’s a different hierarchy of power, so it’s necessary to just step back and be in service.” Susanna Battin, another Los Angelesbased artist, whose work often engages issues of water and landscape, had a similar experience during her November visit. “The media coverage has been about the conflict and confrontation,” she says. “But this was a historic cultural moment — the collaboration, the listening, the breaking down of colonial misconceptions, the style of leadership that we in middle class white America just haven’t experienced.” Outsiders, in fact, were given an information packet that outlined the ground rules when they arrived. Among these: “Follow indigenous leadership,” “understand this moment in the context of settler colonialism,” “never attend a ceremony without being expressly invited.”

‘Water protectors’

“This is our culture,” says Cannupa Hanska Luger, a New Mexico-based artist who was born on the Standing Rock Reservation and has participated in the protests since they began. “This is why we say this is not a protest, why we are ‘water protectors.’ We’re not just in protest of a pipeline. What we are trying to do is maintain a cultural practice. “Our original bible, that comes down from on high, it is the land. We tell stories about magical characters that are bound to the landscape. Why is that stone red? There is a story. So where everyone else sees a pipeline and ‘progress,’ what we see is someone going through our bible and editing things without any care, ripping a line straight through that story.” The Native-focused culture of Standing Rock is part of what drew hundreds of indigenous people from all over. “That was the motivator for me to go,”

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Scott Olson Getty Images

NIGHT FALLS on Oceti Sakowin Camp near Cannon Ball, N.D., where Native and nonnative activists gathered to protest construction of Dakota Access pipeline.

says Raven Chacon, an Albuquerque-based artist who is also an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation — and part of the contemporary arts collective Postcommodity. “What you saw was truly a global community, but with the majority of them being American Indian people. That was something I’d never seen in my life.” But Standing Rock was transformative for nonnatives too. Doug McLean is a longtime environmental activist and photographer who went to Standing Rock on numerous occasions in the summer and fall. “When I worked at Greenpeace,” he says, “there was the concept that it was founded on which was the Quaker principle of bearing witness. The best journalists and the best artists are the ones who get the most out of the way and are simply a lens.” Bearing witness is exactly what many of the artists at Standing Rock have done —

and it is already filtering into their work. Luger created dozens of mirrored shields from Masonite and reflective vinyl that were as much protective devices for frontline protestors as they were bright works of sculpture. Bowers took pictures around camp; Battin, of the industrial pipeline architecture penetrating agricultural fields. Chacon, who was inspired by Standing Rock’s sonic qualities, created audio of one of the prayer-filled actions. “All of the women in the camp walked onto the bridge, which has been a site of contention,” he says. “About a thousand women walked up there in complete silence. So I was able to capture the sound of a thousand people being completely silent. The only sound you could hear was drones. It was surreal.” How exactly some of these elements will work their way into art, and, ultimately, the larger culture, remains to be seen. But as

with Occupy, which helped inspire a wave of artist-activist movements, some of which are still active, Standing Rock is set to have a cultural butterfly effect. Molly Larkey is a Los Angeles sculptor who went to Standing Rock over Thanksgiving weekend. During her journey, she collaborated with photographer Jen Rosenstein to create a record of the myriad individuals who attended the protest. “I’m really interested in that what Standing Rock did was show how things can be different, how culture could be different,” she says. “I’m really interested in how we organize our money, how we can create different kinds of economies. “It can be things that happen in small ways too. How we relate to each other, for example. At camp, you were encouraged to slow down, be receptive, listen. It reminded you how important those things are.” “I don’t know anyone whose life wasn’t

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changed by being there,” says Joel Garcia, co-director of the Boyle Heights arts nonprofit Self-Help Graphics, who traveled to Standing Rock over Thanksgiving with a group of Chicano artists, many of whom observe indigenous traditions as part of their Mexican heritage.”It recalibrates things for sure.” Bowers, who was at Standing Rock when a group of U.S. military veterans arrived in support of the protest, was moved by the nature of group dynamics motivated by respect. “To see Native and white vets get into arguments, then have them talk it out, and in the end, I’d see them hug each other — saying, ‘You’re here, you are family now,’ ” she says. “It’s not the way we do things. This was a respect to culture, and the process embodied that, everything embodied that.” carolina.miranda@latimes.com

“IF YOU’RE AT ALL A FAN OF CLASSIC AMERICAN MUSICALS, THIS PRODUCTION IS A JOY.”

INCLUDING

LOS ANGELES TIMES

NOW THRU JANUARY 21, 2017

HOLLYWOODPANTAGES.COM • 800-982-2787 Jose Llana and Laura Michelle Kelly. Photo by Matthew Murphy

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HOLLYWOOD VALUES THE ARTS

Pete Souza The White House

AMONG the paintings gracing walls of the Obama White House are two by Edward Hopper: “Cobb’s Barns, South Truro,” top, and “Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro.”

WITH ‘ROCKY’ IN THIS RING ...

After Obama, the NEA needs to pack more punch. Maybe Stallone? MARK SWED MUSIC CRITIC

When a colleague shared a British tabloid report that Donald Trump was considering appointing a certain Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone as head of the National Endowment for the Arts, we rolled our eyes, speechless. Stallone has since said he would decline any offer for the top arts spot from President-elect Trump. Yet — and I can’t believe I am saying this — Sly Stallone may not have been such a bad idea for the NEA after all. How fundamentally the world has turned in 2017. Four years ago, when there was still hope that President Obama might turn out to be an arts leader, I had proposed that for his second term he eliminate the NEA altogether and instead create a Cabinet-level Department of Culture, putting us on par with the rest of the world’s civilized countries. I further suggested as candidates the two most probing, visionary and persuasive artists and public intellectuals I could think of: director Peter Sellars and Bard College President Leon Botstein. There are many in Congress who would gladly eliminate the NEA to save an infinitesimal fraction of the federal budget (less than four one-hundredths of 1%, to be exact), replacing the NEA with nada. What the agency needs now more than vision is a fighter. A little star power wouldn’t hurt, either. Could Rocky save it? Obama never promised to be an arts president. What candidate does? (Bernie Sanders did, but he is the only major one in recent memory.) Still, there were indications early on that the Obama White House would prove to be a second Camelot, following the example of the arts-embracing Kennedys. The mood for Obama’s first swearing-in was classily set by classical musicians in 2009. Violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Gabriella Montero warmed up the dignitaries with John Williams’ “Air and Simple Gifts,” written for the occasion. As with so much in Washington, a phony controversy ensued when it was learned that the quartet instrument-synced, but it was simply too cold to offer “Simple Gifts,” which required nimble fingers on strings and keys. That may have also been the start of giving Obama cold fingers when it came to the arts. Even so, for their new home, the Obamas borrowed from the National Gallery the most sophisticated art that had graced White House walls since Camelot. The first family occasionally showed up at the Kennedy Center or museums. The first lady hosted afternoon gatherings of musicians from different disciplines. We were told that the president was a reader of poetry. The most promising sign of all was Obama’s unpretentious grace in the company of artists. He said the right things. We took it for granted that he supported the arts and understood their importance for the better-

Kirk McKoy Los Angeles Times

SYLVESTER STALLONE , he of “Rocky” fame, has said he would decline any

offer to lead National Endowment for the Arts, if asked by the Trump team.

Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times

Drew Gurian Invision/Associated Press

OPERA SINGER Andrea Bocelli has backed out of performing at Donald

Trump’s inauguration. In his place? “America’s Got Talent’s” Jackie Evancho.

Win McNamee Getty Images

SETTING the mood with “Air and Simple Gifts” during President Obama’s first

inauguration, in 2009, are Itzhak Perlman, left, Yo-Yo Ma and Anthony McGill.

ment of society. The vast majority of artists in America felt that Obama was on their side. So we coasted. The president had to pick his fights, and the NEA, it turned out, was never to be one of them. In 2009, another phony controversy occurred when the farright website Breitbart News reported that a spokesperson for the Obama administration had reputedly tried to politically influence artists. That pales next to President Reagan phoning up theater critic Dan Sullivan at The Times in 1981 to ask that he prop up Reagan’s old Hollywood pal Buddy Ebsen, whose new musical was a flop. Ultimately, Obama appointed as NEA heads Broadway producer Rocco Landesman in his first term and arts executive Jane Chu in his second. Both proved personable promoters of the arts and the agency, treating their posts more as caretakers than visionaries. I used to regularly see a representative from the NEA at the Los Angeles Philharmonic during earlier administrations when something particularly novel was presented. No more. Still, the agency appeared to mean well. Its minuscule budget, always under $150 million a year, got divvied up to museums, performing arts groups, local education agencies and community projects as best it could. Landesman and Chu spent much of their time as arts activists, drumming up business. But let’s get real. France’s federal arts budget rose last year to more than $4 billion! That’s $575 per person for the arts, as opposed to 45 cents per person in our country. What this ultimately means is that while Obama valuably helped the mood of the arts in America, he did less for the arts infrastructure. He displayed considerably greater interest in pop culture and sports than in arts advocacy. He handed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to but a handful of noted and deserving artists — including architect Frank Gehry, painter Jasper Johns and Ma — whereas he picked a significantly larger number of Hollywood stars. Mood, nonetheless, matters, and the vast majority of American artists are now worried about a Trump administration. We’ve heard the reports of the transition team struggling to find willing performers for the inauguration. According to Itay Hod of the Wrap, the Trump team has gone so far as to offer ambassadorships to agents who can lasso a star, all to little avail. Operatic crooner Andrea Bocelli backed out, but 16-year-old operatic crooner wannabe Jackie Evancho seems to be in. The Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (minus members who are opting out or quitting in protest) thus far fill the insipid bill. Meanwhile, artists who became complacent under Obama no longer are. President Lyndon B. Johnson did not decide against running for a second term because of a painting; Richard Nixon (who happened to support the NEA) did not resign as president because he was offended by a symphony. But protest artists the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan and Robert Crumb created a national temperament that helped change governments. Antagonize the artists, and it may seem as though the world’s turning in 2017 will, in fact, be back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. mark.swed@latimes.com

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HOLLYWOOD VALUES GAMES THE PLAYER

BASE INSTINCTS

Gamergate opened fire on diversity. Its strategy blasted into politics too. By Todd Martens

See if this campaign tactic sounds familiar: Rally white men who feel the world is changing too fast, leverage racial bias for the cause, and demean women along the way. The strategy belonged to a radical corner of the gaming world that may have provided the winning playbook for the campaign that won the presidential election. “Gamergate” is the term now used to describe the movement in which Internet trolls attacked high-profile people in the game industry if they attempted to change — or even speak out about — the misogynistic themes of video games. They are the gaming world’s radical right, and they’re fighting back against what they see as the onslaught of politically correct culture. Now at least one of the people who provided a platform for the movement is headed for the White House. Stephen K. Bannon oversaw the far-right Breitbart News, which published numerous articles about Gamergate, before becoming Donald Trump’s campaign chief executive. One report, from 2014, carried this headline: “Feminist bullies tearing the video game industry apart.” Today, Bannon is Trump’s pick for White House chief strategist and senior counselor. The trajectories of Trump and Gamergate could be practically charted by the same graph — guys (for the most part) who a significant portion of the country didn’t take seriously pandered to humanity’s most base instincts and won. Entertainment and politics are increasingly blurred. The president-elect, for instance, regularly tweets about “Saturday Night Live,” and nearly caused a culture war over “Hamilton.” Bannon once spoke favorably of Darth Vader, seemingly comparing himself to the “Star Wars” villain. Spoken like a strategist, or like someone pandering to his fans? As Paul Booth, an associate professor at Chicago’s DePaul University who studies fan culture, put it: “You can look at the political race as a fan event.” The term “Gamergate” emerged as a hashtag in mid-August 2014. It described the attacks, particularly on women in the gaming world, by trolls and eventually their de facto leader Milo Yiannopoulos (see story on F10), who became Gamergate’s Breitbart champion. The writer electrified his base much the same way as did the Donald Trump campaign, arguing that the mainstream media and those with progressive thoughts simply failed to understand real gamers. “GamerGate,” he wrote, “has exposed both the feminist campaigners and even some gaming journalists as completely out of touch with the very reasons people play games.” A sort of “drain the swamp” for the digitally connected. Female game designers and journalists who spoke out about a more inclusive future for the medium were harassed on social media with threats of physical attacks, rape and death. Their emails were leaked (sound familiar?), and details about their personal lives published online. “Lock her up,” Trump supporters shouted about Hillary Clinton. “I hope you die,” Gamergate champions tweeted at Anita Sarkeesian, a prominent cultural critic who critiques games from a feminist perspective. One developer, Jennifer Hepler, author of “Women in Game Development: Break-

Rockstar Games

IN THE WORLD of massive game franchise “Grand Theft Auto,” a high body count and violent maneuvers win the day.

Nintendo of America

NINTENDO’S “Super Mario Run”

relies on the damsel-in-distress trope. ing the Glass Level-Cap,” told The Times that she went so far as to install bulletproof glass on her windows after a lengthy online campaign against her. She was singled out for the inclusion of LGBT-friendly characters in a sword-and-sorcery game. Gamergate advocates argued that gaming journalists were corrupt and were colluding to bring a politically correct makeover to the medium (read: take away our digital guns, treat women as more than sex objects and cast anyone other than a white male as the lead protagonist). Yiannopoulos, banned from Twitter over allegations that he coordinated the sexist and racist harassment of “Ghostbusters”

star Leslie Jones, galvanized his believers by claiming that gaming had come under attack by an “army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners.” Those who bought into his words targeted their ire at female critics who sought to intellectualize the medium. Ultimately, they were only bringing to light gaming’s more regrettable traits: that it has long pandered to a male-focused, gun-obsessed community where women were damsels more often than heroes. Even Nintendo’s mobile title “Super Mario Run,” the biggest game of this winter, perpetuates the myth that women are to be rescued rather than kick butt. The biggest, most visible games are still largely created by men for boys. Gamergate ultimately was driven by nostalgia and fear of change. “Keep politics out of games” was Gamergate proponents’ rallying cry, but they may as well have been saying, “Make games great again.” There’s evidence that major developers are listening to their broader audience rather than being bullied by Gamergate, as recent titles such as “Uncharted 4: A Thief ’s End,” “Watch Dogs 2” and Dishonored 2” have touched on mature themes with a wide variety of characters. Yet Gamergate brings to the fore some uncomfortable facts. The International Game Developers Assn. recently pegged the game industry at about 80% male, and while some surveys note that the game-playing community is close to a 50-50 male-female split, consoles and gaming computers are still predominantly used by the male gamer. Geoffrey Zatkin, co-founder of gaming consultancy Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, noted at a gaming event last March that North American gamers in

2015 leaned male 55% to 45%. But on home video game consoles, that number jumps to 60% male. On PCs, it’s 64%. For much of the last decade, the biggest game franchises — “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto” among them — were driven by guns and disparaging views of women and minorities. And unlike the Republican Party, the game industry has done this without lobbying money. It may as well have been content unwittingly aimed directly at the so-called altright community, the loosely defined movement made up of social-media-savvy white nationalists that has also attracted neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and misogynists. There is a connection to Gamergate. “The people who promoted Gamergate said they were concerned about journalism ethics,” read a post on PressThink, a site maintained by New York University professor Jay Rosen. “As a professor of journalism with a social media bent, I felt obligated to examine their claims. When I did I discovered nasty troll behavior with a hard edge of misogyny.” Of course, Gamergaters were simply amplifying the content directed toward them — the rape jokes of “Grand Theft Auto,” the gun-fetishism of nearly every other game and a fantasy vision of the world ruled almost exclusively by white men. So Hollywood isn’t out of touch with the real — make that conservative — America, after all. The entertainment powerhouses behind the world’s biggest games have directly targeted it. And now the rest of the country — the majority of voters behind the popular vote, if you will — can’t press the jump button to avoid it. todd.martens@latimes.com

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HOLLYWOOD VALUES POP MUSIC

CAUTION IN CUBA [Cubans, from F1] American music, movies and television programs secreted into the country from the U.S. by relatives, friends or cunning entrepreneurs. Consider it a contemporary expression of the cultural grapevine that has long kept Cuban musicians apprised of what their peers elsewhere in the world are doing. Cuba’s artists and musicians take pride in forging a cultural scene outside of the direct influence of Hollywood and the kind of hit-making pull that has led countries such as France to impose quotas on American movies and music. But there is still a strong desire for artists and musicians to interact with their counterparts in the U.S. and around the world. “I come from a generation of musicians that grew up with no access to the Internet whatsoever,” said trumpeter Yelfris Valdés, who left Cuba in 2014 to work in London, where he has played with various worldbeat groups as well as his own Dub Afro Electric Jazz ensemble. “Although when I started to learn about jazz music at school, I was fully aware of what was happening with the composers [and] arrangers from around the world. “Fellow musicians who were already traveling would feed to the rest of us what was going on in the industry,” Valdés said. “Thanks to that information I received as a student, I am now producing a more complex type of music. The more styles of music I can have access to, the richer my own music becomes.” Which means, despite the stereotype created by the large number of pre-Cuban revolution American cars commonly found in Havana and other cities, Cuban music is hardly stuck in the 1950s.

Future remains uncertain

Along with the traditional son and salsa music that thrives in clubs and theaters around the country, it’s possible these days to find Cuban hip-hop and R&B acts serving up their equivalent to the latest videos by American trend-setters such as Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé or Rihanna. But it’s a relatively recent development, and Cubans still don’t have ready access to the actual videos, much less live music, from Western pop stars. The Cuban government has a strict filter on media coming into the country. That is compounded by the political, economic and cultural embargo imposed by the U.S. on Cuba almost 60 years ago, established following Fidel Castro’s history-shifting revolution on Jan. 1, 1959. Easing of some elements of the embargo under President Obama’s administration has allowed great opportunity for Cuban

Randy Lewis Los Angeles Times

GUITARIST Roberto Gomez, second from right, performs with “The Bob Dylan of Cuba” Carlos Varela’s band.

musicians to visit the U.S. and perform here. Cuba and its music, for instance, will be the focal point internationally at the 2017 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. But many musicians and artists who have welcomed improved relations with the U.S. expressed uncertainty and concern about whether President-elect Donald Trump is more likely to continue opening travel and commerce opportunities or return to more restrictive policies. As the decades have rolled by, musicians, especially the younger generations, have often struggled to work with their American counterparts, to perform and promote their music to U.S. audiences and to be actively engaged with the most lucrative music market in the world. “Youth is characterized by the desire to explore and know,” said singer, guitarist, percussionist and educator Jesus Bello. “Most of the young musicians wish to work abroad not only to obtain better pay for their work, but for the exchange with other musi-

cians.” The reverse is equally true: Americans and other musicians outside Cuba are frequently compelled to visit to learn more about the country’s music and musicians. “It’s a great, rich place of music — there are so many styles,” Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger said following his band’s first performance in Cuba in March, a free show that drew a massive crowd estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 people. “I have no pretense of understanding where it’s all coming from. Music historians must love it, because there is so much richness in one fairly small place.”

A Buena Vista breakthrough

A major step toward bringing Cuban music to the outside world came in 1997, when American roots musicians Ry Cooder and British producer Nick Gold visited Havana. They spearheaded the Buena Vista Social Club project, a recording and companion documentary (by German filmmaker Wim

Wenders) that spotlighted a coterie of veteran Cuban musicians performing the infectious music that’s lived and breathed within the country but was previously little exposed in the U.S. “There’s a world of music down there,” said singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, who recently led a contingent of international oceanographic scientists to Cuba to study the relatively pristine ocean around the island. During that trip, he arranged for them to be exposed to the music of Varela, for whom Browne has become something of a cheerleader in the U.S., along with other Varela admirers among the rock music community including Dave Matthews and Bonnie Raitt. “We’re isolated from Cuba, rather than Cuba being isolated from the world,” Browne told The Times recently. “We are the ones that have isolated ourselves from this incredibly rich musical culture. For all of the attempts at isolation, Cuban music has still had an incredible influ- [See Cubans, F7]

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HOLLYWOOD VALUES POP MUSIC

CUBA’S PUSH [Cubans, from F6] ence in the U.S. It’s influenced jazz, it’s influenced a lot of our music over the years. But we don’t know the most contemporary stuff ” because of the embargo. Bello agrees that the embargo has resulted in misconceptions and ignorance among Americans about the deep well of Cuban music. “Silence and isolation between our ways of life have made many [American] people imagine Cuba in a very different way than it is,” Bello said, a situation that increased travel opportunities has begun to change. “I think it is very good for people to see the different ways and musical programs we have in Cuba, from the academies and the theaters to the most authentic manifestations that have been transmitted orally from generation to generation, such as peasant music, rumba and the tunes of African saints, changüí, nengón, parrandas, etc.” One of the more dramatic results of the recent easing of relations is the April release of “Papa Hemingway in Cuba,” the first major Hollywood film to be shot in Cuba since before the revolution.

Cultural trade-offs

Cuban music purveyors as well as rank-and-file fans also point to the watershed moment in March when the Stones performed, although non-Cubans who attended that show noted that most in the audience seemed familiar with the group only in the most general way, and sang along en masse only with one song: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” “Just 3½ years ago things were totally different,” said Nancy Covey, who booked concerts at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica in the late 1970s and early ’80s, and now runs a music-focused tour company. “The first time I went, I didn’t have any communication with the outside world; they didn’t either and they were desperate to know what was going on in the States. “It used to be that all they had [in terms of American recordings] was really old, battered vinyl you’d find at flea markets,” she said. “It reminded me a lot of the old Soviet Union. Even in the last year it has changed so much — they’re starting to get iPhones and have access to the Internet. “I can’t imagine that the influx of American music and culture is not going to be a huge game-changer,” she said. “They’re hungry for it, and here it comes — but they don’t get that they might lose a whole lot of what they have.” That crystallizes a fear expressed often in Cuba: that a full lifting of the embargo, should it occur, may unleash what Cuban architectural historian Miguel Coyula called “a tsunami” of cultural and economic changes that could overwhelm his country. “The government here is reactive, not proactive,” Coyula told an American visitor in November. “They will wait until it happens and then try to figure out how to respond.” Cuban musicians say their motives for coming to the U.S. are closely scrutinized by both governments because of fears on both sides that once here, they would try to remain. Bello, who lives in Santa Clara, about 170 miles east of Havana, is planning a U.S. visit in the spring to work with a group of musicians in New Jersey interested in learning more about the traditional Cuban music styles in which he is fluent. But he faces challenges, not only in receiving travel visas for himself and others he wants to bring along, but also in arranging funding for the trip and securing venues for stateside performances that could help offset the prohibitive costs of travel and accommodations in the U.S. “In general, few people come to Cuba wanting to know about our work,” Bello said recently. “It is important for us and for those who don’t know Cuba. I am looking forward to the possibility to share my work [in the U.S.]. Even after the roads that were opened by the Buena Vista Social Club, it is still not anything easy.” Bello faces the doubleedged struggle of passing on

Cuban music traditions to younger players, many of whom would rather leave Cuba and try to pursue careers in the U.S., Europe or elsewhere. Cuban universities still focus on training musicians in European-rooted classical traditions, and Bello is pushing to get Cuban academics to acknowledge and accept traditional Cuban music performance as part of the curriculum at the university level.

His son, Jose Manuel Bello, has been brought up with the traditional son and has formed a band consisting of other players in their early 20s, helping fulfill his father’s wish to keep the traditions strong with Cuban youth. “I always stress to the young people with whom I work that the path within the music Is infinite,” Bello said. “Each one must find the course that best suits him and exploit his talent as

much as the opportunities and his talent will allow it.” Along that line, Varela band guitarist Gomez noted that he’d been well-trained in classical guitar techniques in his years at Cuban universities. But he had to seek out and study with a private teacher to learn the nuances of the rock guitarists he wanted to emulate, players including British musician Richard Thompson, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Dire Straits’

Mark Knopfler — a different vocabulary he brings to bear in working with Varela. American drummer Michael Jerome, a member of Thompson’s band, visited Cuba in 2013 and soaked up what he could of the distinctive rhythms of Cuban music, even arranging for individual lessons with Cuban percussionists while there. He takes a largely positive outlook at the prospect of cultural walls coming down between the U.S. and Cuba.

“I do think Cubans will appreciate more access to American music and we’ll see a lot more evidence of that influence reflected in the coming years,” he said. “I don’t think Cubans will lose any uniqueness or identity. If anything it will be strengthen by the fear of losing it, and/or the love and uniqueness of sharing it. It’s like nothing else and is desired because of it.” Twitter: @RandyLewis2

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S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 8 , 2 017

L ATI M E S . C O M /CA L E N DA R

HOLLYWOOD VALUES POP MUSIC

RUN THE JEWELS — Killer Mike, left, and El-P — aimed to document “the temperament of the last couple of years for us and being friends” on the duo’s new album.

RAP PIRATES

Run the Jewels’ verbal broadsides mix the personal and political. By Randall Roberts

In late December, while Killer Mike waited in a Hollywood rehearsal space for El-P, his musical partner in the acclaimed rap duo Run the Jewels, the subject of politics and movies came up. Killer Mike (born Mike Render), who in 2016 channeled his thoughtfully blistering verses on race and class into action by endorsing and campaigning with Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primaries, had just seen a trailer for the forthcoming “War for the Planet of the Apes.” He was worried, he said, that the franchise had become “sanitized.” “It’s like they depoliticized them,” said Killer Mike, contrasting the reboot series with the allegorical first “Apes” films of the late 1960s and ’70s. “What made movies at that point great — and TV probably until about the early ’80s — was that it was so provocative,” Killer Mike said. “ ‘All in the Family’ was good because it was provocative. I remember ‘The Jeffersons’ episode with the Klansman — George saves his life and he was like, ‘You should have just let me die.’ ” Seeing that episode as a kid required that Killer Mike, now 41, “think it through and grow out of your own little bigotry — and still have a good time.” A similar duality marks “Run the Jewels 3,” Killer Mike and El-P’s decidedly nonsanitized third album, which was surprise-released on Dec. 24. “RTJ3,” a notably dark record with the occasional ray of light, was written and recorded with the divisive presidential campaign as the backdrop, and as both lost close friends. Tapping at his phone while camped out on a couch, Killer Mike pulled up the “Apes” trailer. As grim theme music played, a menacingly deep-voiced character said, “I did not start this war. I offered you peace. I showed you mercy. But now you’re here to finish us off.” His eyes lighted up with excitement. “I’m going to one of those fancy movies to see this ... where you can buy dinner.” El-P, his hair still wet from a shower, rolled into the room, casually dropped a joint on the coffee table as he sat down and started talking about writing and recording “Run the Jewels 3” during what Killer Mike called “tumultuous times.” The dilemma across 2016 lay in how much politics to include in a creative project that began as a way for a pair of middle-aged solo

Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times

A MASK of Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is held aloft during Run the Jewels’ 2016 set at Coachella.

The rap duo’s Killer Mike channeled his verses on race and class into action by endorsing and campaigning with Sanders. artists to blow off steam and have fun making rap music together. El-P (Jaime Meline), who didn’t campaign for anyone but supported his partner’s Sanders stumping, acknowledged their competing reflexes: “You see people wanting [artists] to say something when no one is — and then you see people being exhausted by people saying something.” Mixed into the mess, he added with a cuss, was “having our own ideas of the type of records we would love to make if none of that … was there.” The results, said El-P, were tracks on the album “written almost in despite of the the world crumbling around us.” “To borrow a phrase from a television show, ‘Winter’s coming,’ ” said Killer Mike. “I felt like that making this entire record. I felt a darkness.”

Searing insights

As with the first two albums, “RTJ3” mixes Killer Mike’s searing insights, from the perspective of a black Atlantan with a cadence to match his acuity, with El-P’s beat production and razor-witted, eloquent cou-

plets as a white Brooklynite whose work as a rapper and producer has earned him underground respect and acclaim. Across its discography, the team hasn’t avoided hard questions about race, law enforcement and politics — nor have the two shied away from exploring the deeply personal and their love of the kind of hip-hop revelry that defines their favorite albums. As they started writing in December 2015, El-P said the two didn’t discuss overarching themes or decide to devote themselves to making a political record. Most important, he said, was documenting “the temperament of the last couple of years for us and being friends. Being in it and being affected by the world around us.” It may be hard to see the playfulness and fun amid the darkness, he added, but that’s a huge part of what they want out of their work. So is “how we are with each other, no matter what’s going on,” El-P said. “We’re still smoking weed and cracking jokes and hanging out with each other and enjoying each other’s company. And that is the foundation of the record.” But that apparently was easier said than

done, because “Run the Jewels 3” opens with a Killer Mike-rapped indictment. Torn between competing instincts from verse one, Mike sets “Down” in a room with two things before him. “Ballot or bullet, you better use one,” Mike raps as he namechecks three different amendments to the Constitution: “One time for the freedom of speeches / Two time for the right to hold heaters / Just skip to the fifth with the cops in the house / Close your mouth and pray to your Jesus.” Stumping for Sanders, Killer Mike said, made him increasingly disillusioned as the year wore on. “This country is going … mad. Let’s just be honest. I was campaigning with what I felt like was a good man for good reasons — and in the middle of that I saw good people doing atrocious things to sabotage that. And that really ... with me,” he said. “I said a line in there, ‘I’ve seen the devil working behind the curtain and came back with some evidence,’ ” Killer Mike said, quoting a line from the song “2100.” “I saw what the DNC [Democratic National Committee] did, and it affected me in a way that I

L AT I M ES . C O M / CA L E NDAR

S U N DAY , JA N UA RY 8, 2 017

Matthew Eisman Getty Images

“MUSIC is unique because it can get behind enemy lines and affect people,” Conor Oberst says of the political climate.

PERSPECTIVE

A QUIET VOICE IN THE GLOOM Mel Melcon Los Angeles Times

couldn’t make this record and not be darker on parts — because I felt more cynical.” In “Talk to Me,” Killer Mike recounts his experience on the campaign trail by namechecking the Arabic word for Satan while seeming to critique Donald Trump: “Went to war with the devil and Shaytan / He wore a bad toupee and a spray tan.” For his part, El-P has “Jaws” on his brain, but he seems to be talking not just about the shark but also America when he raps, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat, boys — you’re in trouble.” On the album-closing “A Report to the Shareholders / Kill Your Masters,” he spits judgment on politicians: “Can’t contain the disdain for y’all demons / You talk clean and bomb hospitals / So I speak with the foulest mouth possible / And I drink like a Vulcan losing all faith in the logical.”

Timely, playful references

Across the hundreds of couplets, “RTJ3” references online surveillance, the police state, Chicago gangland and a power structure that earns profits despite the poverty surrounding them. “Good day from the house of the haunted — get a job, get a house, get a coffin,” El-P raps on “Don’t Get Captured.” “Don’t stray from the path, remain where you at — that maximizes our profit.” That track begins a three-song suite that pocks the album with grimness, as though a new reality were sinking in. A sample from “The Twilight Zone” opens “Thieves”: “This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one.” Asked about the darkness, El-P seemed torn. “Certainly, there are points,” he said, but “it doesn’t stay and it’ll never be the foundation of who we are.” Rather, he stressed that the primary goal remained “to just make raw … dope records and see where we can push each other and where our styles intertwine.” Playfulness, in fact, abounds. In “Call Ticketron,” El-P revels in wordplay as he reassures Run the Jewels listeners that the “last two pirates alive are still yargin’ ” — but are living in a future where “the hovercraft’s cool but the air’s so putrid.” “Everybody Stay Calm” features the rapper referencing “Willie Wonka”: “OompaLoompas, I’ll shoot a tune at ya medullas/ I’m cool as a rule but I’ll scalp a ruler.” El-P even wades into the 2016 meme centered on the spelling of the children’s series “Berenstain Bears.” The result is a work that reconciles competing reflexes with an approach El-P described as “a swagger, or way to perceive yourself, in the face of authority and in the face of the majority of the people. A way to have personal power based on an ethos and not based on your position in society.” Eyeing the joint on the table, Killer Mike suggested taking a smoke break, and the two stood to make their way outside. But first, El-P had one more thing to say: “If I see a king walking through the streets in all his regalia, I know that if I spit on him, all of the clothes and all the power doesn’t mean a … thing, because in that moment, me and him are the same. Am I right for doing it? I don’t ... know. But I’ll talk about the instinct.” randall.roberts@latimes.com

Finding solace in music by Conor Oberst, a guiding light in Bush era. By August Brown The day after the 2016 election, Conor Oberst called his old friend Michael Stipe from R.E.M. for condolence. “He’s someone I look up to as a voice of reason,” Oberst said. “He was torn up about it all, but good to talk to. He said that now’s the time to find more resolve than ever to donate to Planned Parenthood and all the institutions that we’re going to have to rely on.” The two had performed, with Bruce Springsteen, on the Vote for Change tour in 2004, hoping to rally support for John Kerry’s ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign. That was the last time the singer-songwriter felt so despondent about American politics. Until November, that is. “I think this is worse,” Oberst said of the election of Donald Trump as president. “But I felt more freaked out in ’04. Maybe because I was younger and less cynical.” People like to joke that at least the protest music will be good in the Trump era. Right now, though, it’s hard to imagine dancing. But for fans around the 36-yearold Oberst’s age, listening to his older music now can stir up those same feelings of being young, outraged and despondent about politics. His new music might be even more harrowing. Bright Eyes’ 2005 album “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” was lauded for its 10 songs of immaculate, articulate folk-rock that will probably stand as Oberst’s lasting achievement. It had moments of shuddering fury, but for many fans, it brought a quiet dignity to what felt like total helplessness in the face of an election loss. They were afraid that the Iraq war would never end, that gay marriage was impossible, that America had re-elected (by an even greater margin than before) a president who to many seemed a distillation of America’s darkest tendencies. I went to see Oberst last month at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown. He played a few solo dates to support his new album, “Ruminations,” which has earned comparisons to Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” for being a minimalist, almost demo-quality recording that nonetheless captures a bleak mood of its own. It’s spare and harrowing in a way we haven’t heard from Oberst since he was a quivery 19-yearold, spinning gothic folk tales from his frigid corner of the Midwest. But mostly, I went because Oberst’s voice had walked me through my last bout of dark thoughts after a presidential election, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I needed it again. Oberst had one of the few good protest songs of the George W. Bush era. I still remember seeing Oberst perform “When the President Talks to God” in an outsize cowboy hat on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” and thinking that somewhere, an FBI file was being hastily assembled. “At the time, we felt like we had to do something,” Oberst said. “I was nervous when we did the [stage] blocking, and started to freak out. I was just wearing a hoodie, and I thought, ‘No, I need a cowboy suit, something to hide inside where if you were just flipping through the channels in the South, you’d think, “Hmm, he looks like a nice lad.” ’ ”

Scott Gries Getty Images

THE SINGER performs at a Vote for Change gig in 2004. Oberst and other musi-

cians hoped to rally support for John Kerry’s presidential campaign that year.

But even in protest, his music at the time of “Wide Awake” was graceful. It was richer and more personal than much more overtly protest music usually is. It wasn’t just railing at bad policy; it was 10 vignettes of feeling utterly lost and packing up and moving to a place where you felt more wanted.

A great comfort

For me, that was L.A. For Oberst, it was New York. To this day, few records better capture the transcendence and loneliness that comes from being young and starting anew. Flasks on the subway after dark; protest marches that did nothing but meant everything; a dawning of how big and terrifying the world was, but also how rare and valuable your refuges were in the midst of it all. “Music is unique because it can get behind enemy lines and affect people,” Oberst said. “Some kid in Utah can get his hands on a Clash record and be introduced to whole new ideas, and that’s still a powerful thing.” At the Koreatown show, hearing Oberst’s voice singing “Lua” again, in the dead silence of an actual sanctuary, was both a great comfort and almost a cruel joke. All that work of the last eight years to make the world more just, and now we’re right back here again. Even before this, Oberst had a very rough few years, dealing with a since-

retracted accusation of sexual assault and a brain cyst. I don’t know what the new era of protest music will sound like. I know it will be black, it will be Latino, it will be Muslim and indigenous and it will be done by women and members of the LGBT community. These are the people with much to lose in Trump’s America, and they should be listened to with moral authority now. The best artists making protest music today — Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar — use the personal to catalyze the political. Insisting on the validity of your life and emotions in the face of it is an act of bravery. “I don’t know what Trump means for art,” Oberst said, “but art does thrive in adversarial times, so hopefully, people will continue that.” Stumbling out of that church after Oberst’s performance, I was reminded that protest music isn’t necessarily about affecting change or fixing things. Making music at all can be an act of defiance, if just to say that you existed and felt this way at a specific time, in spite of every reason to despair and stay quiet. “Go listen to ‘The Future’ by Leonard Cohen,” Oberst said. “It sums up the dark side of my perspective and it pretty much envisions Trump’s America: ‘Give me crack and ... sex, take the only tree that's left… I’ve seen the future, brother. It is murder.’ ” august.brown@latimes.com

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L AT I M E S .C O M/ CA L E N DA R

HOLLYWOOD VALUES BOOKS

BESTSELLERS LOS ANGELE S TIME S JAN. 8, 2017

Fiction

Drew Angerer Getty Images

WRITER and Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ book is being published by Threshold Editions, a Simon & Schuster imprint.

FEVERED PITCH

Provocateur’s big book deal reflects how industry plays to our cultural divide. By Carolyn Kellogg

Less than 24 hours after Milo Yiannopoulos’ upcoming book was announced, pre-orders for the controversial young conservative’s “Dangerous” propelled it to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list, knocking the recently deceased Carrie Fisher’s “Princess Diarist” down to No. 2. “I think he has a much wider fan base than people realize,” said Tom Flannery, Yiannopoulos’ literary agent at AGI Vigliano. Reached by phone in Malibu, Flannery declined to confirm the deal’s dollar amount, but the Hollywood Reporter, which broke the news, reported that Yiannopoulos received $250,000 for the book. Yiannopoulos, who is tech editor at Brietbart, is a provocateur whose language dovetails with the “alt-right,” although he disputes that classification. He has said “America has a Muslim problem,” called Black Lives Matter activists “extremists,” and suggested that women should stop going online so “I, Donald Trump and the rest of the alpha males will continue to dominate the Internet without feminist whining.” He found his greatest mainstream fame when he was banned from Twitter following the harassment of “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones, who was deluged with sexist and racist tweets sparked in part by Yiannopoulos. Twitter didn’t specify the reason for the ban but noted that it had previously warned Yiannopoulos for violating its terms of service. The fact that someone with extreme views considered offensive by many people received such a significant book advance shows how the publishing world reflects, and plays to, many of the divides in our culture. Few left-leaning readers realize that within mainstream publishing, conservative books are a booming business. Threshold Editions, which will publish “Dangerous” in March, is a 10-year-old imprint dedi-

cated to publishing conservative voices. Its peers include Sentinel, Crown Forum and Broadside Books. Together, they publish a mix of polemics, memoir, reportage and fiction. Flannery approached these imprints specifically with Yiannopoulos’ book, explaining, “They all knew who Milo was — all the conservative imprints were interested in talking to him.” Another thing they have in common is that they’re all imprints of one of the five major publishers: Threshold is part of Simon & Schuster; Sentinel and Crown Forum are part of Penguin Random House; and Broadside is an imprint of HarperCollins. They typically do business in New York just like their fellows. Broadside founder Adam Bellow, a son of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow, described himself to the New York Times as “a conservative in a liberal industry.” “Conservative books sell at least as well as quote unquote liberal books,” says Jim Milliot, editorial director of the trade journal Publishers Weekly. Major publishers created these imprints: “It was a deliberate move by the publishers to say, ‘We’re going to sell these conservative books in this imprint,’ ” Milliot says. But, he notes, “most people don’t buy a book by imprint.” That proved to be the case when there was blowback over Yiannopoulos’ book deal. As quickly as his fans ordered his book from Amazon, his critics decried it. And in so doing, many overlooked Threshold Editions, his conservative imprint, and instead targeted parent company Simon & Schuster. Comedian Sarah Silverman, who has 9.5 million Twitter followers, tweeted, “The guy has freedom of speech but to fund him & give him a platform tells me a LOT about @simonschuster YUCK AND BOO AND GROSS.” And the Chicago Review of Books, an independent online outlet, announced that it would not review any Simon & Schuster books in 2017. “From a purely financial standpoint, Simon & Schuster was smart to capitalize on an extremely popular figure,” editor Adam Morgan told The Times by email. “But from an ethical standpoint, I don’t know how Simon & Schuster editors will sleep at night knowing they normal-

ized hate speech for profit.” This is an essential tension in the outcry over Yiannopoulos’ deal. Publishing has long made it a practice to stand up for free speech, going to court to battle for books such as James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Should Yiannopoulos’ right to free expression be defended equally? Or does what he write in “Dangerous” cross the line from controversial statements into hate speech? Threshold Editions declined to provide a preview of the book, so it’s impossible to say. Simon & Schuster is standing by the book and asked protesters to “withhold judgment.” In a statement to the Associated Press, the publisher noted, “We have always published books by a wide range of authors with greatly varying, and frequently controversial opinions.” That’s not entirely the case. In 1990, Simon & Schuster responded to media protests three months before the publication of Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho” by dropping the book. (The novel was later published by Vintage.) Those who have objected to Yiannopoulos deal pointed to the size of his advance. “The right to free speech is different from the right to a $250,000 megaphone,” notes Morgan of the Chicago Review. For Threshold to turn a profit on the deal, the publisher would have to sell 50,000 to 100,000 books, insiders estimate. That’s a lot of books, about as many sales as have been clocked by the new oral history of “The Daily Show.” Flannery is confident the book will connect with readers. “I think that Milo really holds a mirror up to what’s happening in America,” he says. But Buzzfeed culture editor Saeed Jones speculated on Twitter that the deal may actually be reflecting publishing itself: “The publishing industry as of this year is 79% white. Being racist is quite profitable.” It’s possible that both are true. And whether publishing is or isn’t in the business of defending free speech, it is in the business of selling books. Milliot says of Yiannopoulos, “They wouldn’t have signed him if they didn’t want to sell him.” carolyn.kellogg@latimes.com

HOW TO CREATE NOW A 10-point plan for getting creative work done while worrying about Trump. JOHN SCALZI CRITIC AT LARGE

It’s not a great secret that Donald Trump and his incoming administration are not hugely beloved by America’s creative class. What’s probably less known is that Trump’s election put a number of creative people into mental tailspin. The possible disappearance of the Affordable Care Act, through which many secured health insurance, is just the first of their concerns. For many artists, being worried, anxious or depressed steals away the ability to create. The new reality of Trump’s America means a lot of creatives have to find a new balance to get back to creating. How to do that, if you are knocked for a loop by the election? Here are some of the things I’ve done, and that other writers and creatives are telling me they are doing.

Acknowledge the facts of life. On Jan. 20, there’s an administration coming into office that fills a lot of creative people with despair. If you’re one of those people, don’t run from that fact or try to shove it down to some part of your brain where you don’t have to think about it, because denial won’t change it. At the same time, recognize that no matter who is in power, you still have work and create, and eat and pay bills and pamper your pets. It’s all right to acknowledge that day-to-day life exists, even in the face of existential crisis. Indeed, if you’re taking care of your day-to-day, you’re usually in a better position to deal with everything else.

Figure out your bandwidth. Some people can engage in the world, including social media, and all its bad news, and still get their work done. Some people need to remove them-

selves almost completely. Most creative people live somewhere in between. Ask yourself how much space your brain needs for creative work, and how much distance it needs from the outside world to do it. If reading the news, Facebook and Twitter makes it hard for your creative side, face it, acknowledge it and plan accordingly. And don’t feel bad about it.

space to read, to play music, and to enjoy the movies and TV shows I haven’t caught up on. Likewise:

Disconnect (temporarily). Especially now, it might be useful for a “hard reset”: taking a week (or two! Or more!) away from most news and social media in order to give your brain the equivalent of a few deep, cleansing breaths and the ability to switch focus away from the outside world and back into your internal creative life.

Connect with friends and community. The weekend after the election, when I and most creative people I knew felt especially low, I went to a wedding of friends, with other friends in attendance. For several hours we laughed and joked and enjoyed life and remembered that even in dispiriting times, when it’s easy to curl up into a defensive ball or to shut people out, your friends and community will do a lot to see you through. They will inspire you. And they don’t mind your goofy dance moves (or if they do, they’ll let it slide anyway).

Create creative space daily. When I’m writing a novel, my best creative time is the first thing in the morning. My brain is fresher, I feel more inventive and not cluttered with the news of the day. So I get up and get to my daily quota (which for me is 2,000 words, or four hours of writing, whichever comes first) before going on the Internet. When are you most creative? Find that time and then create (and guard) it in your daily routine.

Reconnect (judiciously). When you go back to the news of the world, and to social media, it’s perfectly all right to ask yourself: Is this making me happy? Is it giving me useful information? Is it inspiring me to engage in the world or does it make me want to run from it? If it’s not helping you, let it go. Unfollow that Facebook friend passing along fake news, mute that angry person on Twitter. Evaluate the news sources you read and keep the ones that offer news accurately and truthfully.

Do other things that make you happy. News and social media expand to fill the space you allot to them. Last year, I realized I was spending so much time watching my friends freak out on Twitter and Facebook that I read fewer books and spent less time with my other hobbies. This year, I’m intentionally carving out

Give help when you can. Many creative folks have made protesting and resisting a priority for 2017. But if you don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to engage that way and still be creative, there are still things you can do. Among the simplest: Give money to organizations looking out for the people at risk under the new administration. Do likewise for people you know in need. We’re in an era where “pay it forward” is an especially evocative phrase.

Get help if you need it. Sometimes depression and anxiety don’t go away with helpful tips. There’s no shame in acknowledging depression and anxiety. Treating them can clear a path to becoming creative again. Get help; it’ll help.

Remember: Your work matters. There are people who rationalize that the next few years will be great for art, in the way that Margaret Thatcher’s rule was great for music in the UK. I don’t think much of that argument — there’s always great art, in every political climate — but I do think that people will need art and the creative people who make it. Your work will matter to someone; it will help them get through. But only if you make it in the first place. Take care of yourself, then get to work. John Scalzi, a Los Angeles Times critic at large, is a Hugo award-winning novelist.

weeks on list

1. Moonglow by Michael Chabon (Harper: $28.99) A multi-generational saga of a family’s secrets, lies and loves.

2. Swing Time by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press: $27) Dreams of becoming dancers take two childhood best friends down different paths.

3. The Whistler by John Grisham (Doubleday: $28.95) A whistleblower alerts a Florida investigator to a corrupt judge.

4. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday: $26.95) A slave escapes via the Underground Railroad.

5. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne & John Tiffany (Pottermore: $29.99) This script from the West End play finds adult Harry Potter working at the Ministry of Magic.

6. The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown: $29) A dying magnate hires Harry Bosch to track down an heir to his fortune.

7. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling (Arthur A. Levine: $24.99) Trouble ensues when Newt Scamander’s magical creatures escape in New York City.

8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down by Jeff Kinney (Abrams: $13.95) Greg and Rowley try to make a big-time scary movie after finding an old video camera in the basement.

9. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (Harper: $27.99) A kiss in California leads to divorce, remarriage and a family secret that unfolds over a generation.

10. All the Light We Cannot 133 See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner: $27) A blind French girl and a German teen struggle in occupied France during World War II.

Nonfiction 1. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (Harper: $27.99) The investment banker’s account of growing up poor in Appalachia.

2. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis (Norton: $28.95) A history of the birth of behavioral economics from psychologists Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky.

3. Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer & Dylan Thuras (Workman: $35) 700 of the world’s most curious places.

4. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen (Simon & Schuster: $32.50) “The Boss” writes of his youth, battles with depression, family life and drive to perform.

5. The Book of Joy by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama (Avery: $26) The spiritual leaders share their wisdom.

6. The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (Greystone Books: $24.95) The case that trees in the forest are purposeful, social beings living in dynamic relationship with each other.

7. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (Spiegel & Grau: $28) The host of “The Daily Show” recounts the challenges of growing up mixed-race in South Africa.

8. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau: $24) The hazards and hopes of black male life.

9. Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (Grand Central: $40) Behind-the-scenes of the Grammy winning musical.

10. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher (Blue Rider Press: $26) The actress revisits her “Star Wars” days, revealing an affair with Harrison Ford.

PAPERBACKS Fiction 1. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman ($16) 2. A Dog’s Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron ($12.99) 3. The Sellout by Paul Beatty ($16) 4. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen ($16) 5. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur ($14.99)

Nonfiction 1. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ($20) 2. We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ($7.95) 3. Barbarian Days by William Finnegan ($17) 4. You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero ($16) 5. How to Relax by Thich Nhat Hanh ($9.95)

Rankings are based on chain results and a weekly poll of 125 Southland bookstores. For an extended list: www.latimes.com/books

CALENDAR

S U N D A Y , J A N U A R Y 1 5 , 2 0 1 7 :: L A T I M E S . C O M / C A L E N D A R

2017 MOVIE AND TELEVISION PREVIEW

Michael Waraksa For The Times

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

FEEDBACK Meryl Streep, thank you. Ken Stachura Glendale

given the threat to the character of our nation that we face due to the nature and behavior of our incoming president, it was gratifying to see someone of the stature of Meryl Streep taking him to task for just one outrageous incident he has perpetrated, the mimicking of a reporter with a disability. Never content to let any perceived slight pass without engaging in a nuclear war of words, Mr. Trump’s response to Miss Streep was predictable. He sought to denigrate and diminish the acclaimed actress by characterizing “one of the most over-rated in Hollywood,” a “Hillary lover” and “one of those liberal movie people.” He went on to assert that he did not and would not mock someone with a disability, this despite what we have seen with our own eyes. I do not imagine we will ever see tweets from our soon-to-be-leader to address injustices in our country, rather we can expect his undignified 140 characters

Getty Images

Streep gets political Regarding Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech. Meryl Streep actually threatened us (the audience) that if it were not for Hollywood actors “ . . . you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.” Well, as far as I’m concerned: Bring on the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the College Football Playoff National Championship and Super Bowl LI! Maj. Charles M. Prignano, USAF, retired Colorado Springs

I saw your diatribe last night against Presidentelect Trump and the people who voted for him. Let me remind you, Ms. Streep, you are not a self-made woman, we, the little people, made you. We are the people who went to see you and your friends in movies. You are an actress, nothing more to us. So stop lecturing us! We put up with your person for the last eight years. So you and your friends can put up with our choice for president for the next four years. Make America Great Again. Deborah Vitale Boston :: I have not generally been an advocate of celebrities using award shows to make political statements, but

MICK LaSALLE

“‘FENCES’ IS A STUNNING FILM. THE FACES OF THE ACTORS ARE RADIANT IN THEIR HUMANITY AND

DIRECTOR DENZEL WASHINGTON GUIDES THE ENSEMBLE CAST

TO SOME OF THE BEST WORK OF THEIR LIVES

AND DELIVERS ONE OF THE BEST SELF-DIRECTED PERFORMANCES IN HISTORY.”

or less means of communication to be engaged in simply to settle personal scores. To use his favorite words, Mr. Trump is “a disaster” and “sad.” Oren Spiegler Upper Saint Clair, Penn. :: As the caregiver for my disabled brother, thank you, Meryl Streep, for not letting America forget that President-elect Donald Trump willfully and deliberately mocked a disabled person. Without equivocation, my brother and I immediately recognized Trump’s words and actions as mocking… for my brother has been the painful recipient of and I have been the shocked witness to similar mocking of the disabled through the years. Trump, his surrogates and his supporters take the rest of us Americans as fools as they continue with their despicable, revisionist history that he didn’t mock this disabled man. Sadly for this country, when he takes the oath of office Friday, Trump will be mocking the Bible he touches, the Constitution he is sworn to defend, and the disabled Americans he is to be entrusted to lead and protect. For the first time in its long and glorious history, America will have an unAmerican leader. Donald Bentley La Puente :: Ms. Streep’s act should not have been characterized as “political defiance.” She is representative of us, the Loyal Opposition. Susan White Los Angeles

SCREEN ACTORS

“ YOU WON’T FIND MANY FILMS THIS YEAR AS

POWERFUL AS DENZEL WASHINGTON’S ‘FENCES.’

IT ’S AS GOOD AS

SCREEN ACTING GETS.

AS A FRUSTRATED WORKING-CLASS HUSBAND AND FATHER UNDONE BY HIS OWN PRIDE,

WASHINGTON IS LIKE AN EXPOSED NERVE , AND VIOLA DAVIS DELIVERS

GUI LD NOM I NATION

DENZEL WASHINGTON

BEST ENSEMBLE

NOMI NEE

INTENSITY.

”

A.O. S COT T

I MARVEL AT THE

“

DEEP CRAFT

IN A MOTION PICTURE

BEST ACTOR

THAT DENZEL WASHINGTON AND VIOLA DAVIS WIELD IN BRINGING TO LIFECHARACTERS INVENTED BY AUGUST WILSON. DENZEL WASHINGTON AND VIOLA DAVIS PLAY A LONG-MARRIED COUPLE LIVING IN PITTSBURGH IN THE 1950S AND

WIN NE R

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

AUGUST WILSON

VIOLA DAVIS

WRITERS GUILD AWARD

A PERFORMANCE OF RADIANT WARMTH AND

FEROCIOUS

SCREEN ACTORS

GUI LD NOM I NATION ®

GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD ®

THEIR CHARACTERS ARE AS FAMILIAR AS T HE PEOPLE PLAYING THEM.”

ONE OF THE BEST PICTURES OF THE YEAR PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA

HHHH HHHH HHHH R E X R E ED

A LABOR

HER PERFORMANCE IS

OF LOVE

EXTRAORDINARY.

”

ANN HORNADAY

“‘FENCES’

SEARING

IS PROOF THAT THE

JOYOUS CADENCE

RELEVANCE

OF AUGUST WILSON’S

BEST WRITING

WORKS IN MORE THAN ONE MEDIUM.”

SCREENPLAY BY AUGUST WILSON DIRECTED BY DENZEL WASHINGTON

There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump mocked a disabled man. Bad behavior? Yes. Disqualifying for president? I don’t think so. How many stone-throwing Hollywood producers, actors, writers and financiers in that awards audience have not done the same or worse behind closed doors? Roger Turk Pueblo West, Colo.

Calendar Section Phone: (213) 237-7770 E-mail: calendar.letters@ latimes.com Mailing Address: Los Angeles Times Calendar Letters 202 W. 1st St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 Letters: Submissions are subject to editing for space and content considerations.

PRESENTED BY STUDIO GHIBLI

5WINNER

INCLUDING

INDEPENDENT

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT, MUSIC IN AN ANIMATED FEATURE PRODUCTION

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE SAN FRANCISCO FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

“ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR. A KNOCKOUT.”

-Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES

“GRADE A+! A TOUCHING ANIMATED ODE TO THE CYCLE OF LIFE. A MASTERPIECE OF IMAGES.” -Eric Kohn, INDIEWIRE

“ RINGING WITH ANCIENT WISDOM AND

MICHAEL PHILLIPS

“The Middle”: A caption with an article about ABC’s “The Middle” in the Jan. 8 Calendar section said the show has yet to win a Grammy. It should have said the show has yet to win an Emmy.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

FILMGOERS HUNGRY FOR POETRY OF WORDS AND BEAUTY OF ART SHOULD N OT GET DETERRED. ‘FENCES’ IS A SPECIAL MOVIE AND

WHEN THE CAMERA IS ON VIOLA DAVIS YOU WILL NOT WANT TO LOOK ELSEWHERE.

FLAT-OUT

THE BEST

OF THE YEAR.

PERFORMANCES .

For the record

ANNIE AWARD NOMINATIONS

ENSEMBLE CAST

POWERHOUSE

Thank you for publishing my letter regarding “A Rich Banquet of Productions Honoring Bard” [Dec. 26]. I appreciate the platform you afforded me. One quick editing point, however: In the second paragraph of my letter, the term “affect,” as in “feeling,” was changed to “effect.” I did mean to say “affect.” The line was: Great dramatists — with Shakespeare at the top of that list — provide the emotional through-line connecting the affect of times past with the emotion of the here and now. Nonetheless, I am grateful for all the good work you do. Ben Miles Huntington Beach

THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU SPIRITED AWAY, PONYO AND THE WIND RISES

“ K E N NE T H T U R A N “ IF YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES WHILE WATCHING ‘FENCES’ YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE EXTRAORDINARY LANGUAGE OF AUGUST WILSON’S PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING PLAY.

A word about a word change

AUGUST WILSON’S WRITING ALLOWS THE AUDIENCE TO FEEL THAT ‘FENCES’ HAS BEEN CRAFTED FOR THE AGES.”

UN CERTAIN REGARD • SPECIAL PRIZE WINNER • CANNES 2016

RED

THE

C H RI S N A S H AWAT Y

Regarding headlines on first page of Calendar and Arts & Books [Jan. 8]. I hate the new headline font. Jack Shakely Rancho Mirage

How to reach us

HHHH HHHH HHHH

Tone down the headlines

TURTLE A FILM BY

MICHAEL DUDOK DE WIT

P E T ER TR AV ER S

ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR YOU WON T SEE PERFORMANCE FIREWORKS LIKE THIS ANYWHERE

“

’

HOLLYWOOD

. .”

N O W P L AY I N G I N T H E AT R E S E V E R Y W H E R E

CENTURY WESTWOOD WEST LOS ANGELES WEST CITY @ LOS ANGELES at Sunset & Vine AMC Westwood at W. Pico & Westwood Cinemark 18 & XD (323) 464-4226 Century City 15 (310) 307-7003 (310) 470-0492 (310) 568-3394 arclightcinemas.com amctheatres.com ipictheatres.com landmarktheatres.com cinemark.com

SHERMAN OAKS BALDWIN HILLS at The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Sherman Oaks Galleria Plaza 15 + Xtreme Santa Monica (818) 501-0753 (323) 296-1005 (310) 566-2810 cinemark.com arclightcinemas.com arclightcinemas.com SANTA MONICA

CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATRES AND SHOWTIMES NO PASSES ACCEPTED

ATTENTION AMPAS AND GUILD MEMBERS: Your card and picture ID will admit you and a guest to any performance as follows (subject to seating availability): AMC will admit: AMPAS, ACE, ADG, ASC, BAFTA, CAS, DGA, MPEG, MPSE, PGA, SAG (Nom Com) and WGA (Mon-Thur only, excluding holidays). CINEMARK will admit guild member only: AMPAS, DGA, PGA, Sag (Nom Com) and WGA (Valid 7 days a week). LANDMARK will admit: AMPAS, DGA, PGA, SAG (Nom Com) and WGA (Mon-Thur only, excluding holidays). PACIFIC/ArcLight will admit: AMPAS, ACE, ADG, ASC, BAFTA, CAS, DGA, MPEG, MPSE, PGA, SAG (Nom Com) and WGA (Mon-Thur only, excluding holidays). REGAL will admit: AMPAS, DGA, PGA, SAG (Nom Com) and WGA (Mon-Thur only). Please check newspaper circuit listing for theatre locations & showtimes. Theatre list subject to change.

WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM

STARTS FRIDAY

VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.THEREDTURTLEMOVIE.COM

L AT I ME S . CO M / CA L EN DA R

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

Comedy Central

“DETROITERS” pals play and work in a new series.

Disney

EMMA WATSON and Dan Stevens are Belle and the brute in the live-action movie “Beauty and the Beast.”

Melinda Sue Gordon Warner Bros. Pictures

“DUNKIRK” is Christopher Nolan’s WWII film.

Frank W. Ockenfels Warner Bros. / Sony Pictures

SEQUEL “Blade Runner 2049” is set 30 years later.

HBO

MORE war ahead in Season 7 of “Game of Thrones.”

Mathieu Young Showtime

Universal Pictures

“GET OUT” is Jordan Peele’s directorial debut.

SHOWTIME takes on the 1970s comedy scene that flourished in L.A. in its new series “I’m Dying Up Here.”

Hilary Bronwyn Gayle HBO

INTRIGUE follows a trio of rich moms in HBO’s limited series “Big Little Lies.”

Chuck Zlotnick Columbia Pictures

A YOUNG superhero (Tom Holland) in big-screen “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

Oh, the sights in store

Each winter gives way to spring, to hope eternal, to new movies and TV shows to watch while ignoring the fresh flowers and summer breezes and changing foliage of the unforgiving outdoors. And looking at the release schedule, there’s no reason to think that 2017 won’t deliver wonders for our eyes and ears. From old favorites (HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” Universal’s “The Fate of the Furious”) to shiny new confections (Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” the CW’s “Riverdale”), the year to come does what all new years do: dangle promise before us, daring us to reach for it. ¶ Here are the movies and television shows that the L.A. Times’ Calendar staff is most excited to see in 2017. We don’t know if any of them will be any good — and check on latimes.com for even more choices — but we can’t wait to find out. ¶ (Reminder: Release and premiere dates subject to change.) — Marc Bernardin

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

“THE BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR”

L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS NOMINEE

“ONE OF T THE BEST FILMS YEAR.” OF THE T -Melissa And derson, VILLAGE VOICE

SLANT • SIGHT & SOUND • FILM COMMENT CAHIERS DU U CINÉMA • METRO • BUZZFEED

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW TOP 5 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS

“sensational. A WORK OF GREAT BEAUTY.”

“SCRUPULOUS, COMPASSIONATE AND SURPRISING.”

Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

PETER SIMONISCHEK SANDRA HÜLLER

-A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES

TONI ERDMANN

Emma Suárez

Adriana Ugarte

El Deseo presents

A FILM BY MAREN ADE

a film by

WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM

now playing

Almodóvar

WEST LOS ANGELES The LANDMARK at W. Pico & Westwood (310) 470-0492 landmarktheatres.com Sun & Mon: 10:10 • 12:35 • 3:00 • 5:25 • 7:50 • 10:10 Tue & Wed: 12:35 • 3:00 • 5:25 • 7:50 • 10:10 Thur: 11:50 • 5:00 • 10:10

WEST LOS ANGELES Landmark Nuart (310) 473-8530 landmarktheatres.com Daily: 1:00 • 4:30 • 8:00 IRVINE Edwards Westpark 8 (844) 462-7342 #144

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

BEST FOREIGN LA LANGUAGE FILM

PASADENA Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 (626) 844-6500 laemmle.com

WEST HOLLYWOOD Sundance Sunset Cinemas sundancecinemas.com All Shows 21+ Sun: 12:30 • 2:45 • 5:00 • 7:30 • 10:00 Mon-Wed: 1:45 • 4:15 • 6:45 • 9:15 ENCINO Laemmle’s Town Center 5 (818) 981-9811

WWW.TONIERDMANNMOVIE.COM

PASADENA Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 (626) 844-6500

SANTA ANA The Frida Cinema thefridacinema.org

WWW.JULIETAMOVIE.COM

“LOVED IT... DON’T MISS IT.” JEFFREY LYONS, LYON’S DEN RADIO

“POWERFUL, ENGROSSING AND PROVOCATIVE.” AVI OFFER, NYCMOVIEGURU.COM

A FILM BY

CHRISTOPHER PAPAKALIATIS ACADEMY AWARD WINNER

CHRISTOPHER ANDREA MARIA MINAS TAWFEEK NIKI J.K. SIMMONS PAPAKALIATIS OSVÁRT KAVOYIANNI HATZISAVVAS BARHOM VAKALI

We are all one, even if we sometimes feel...

www.worldsapartfilm.us

HOLLYWOOD ArcLight Cinemas At Sunset & Vine (323) 464-4226 arclightcinemas.com

STARTS FRIDAY

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Q&A with Filmmaker/Cast after main evening show Fri & Sat Visit arclightcinemas.com for details

tickets.landmarktheatres.com 10850 W. Pico at Westwood • West L.A. 3 Hours Free Parking. Additional 2 Hours $3 with Validation. Showtimes and Information: (310) 470-0492

THE WINE BAR HAPPY HOUR • Mon – Thur 4 – 6pm • $2.00 Oﬀ House Drinks ●■

LA LA LAND (PG-13)

●■

(10:10) 1:15, 4:20, 7:25, 10:25

(10:20) 1:15, 4:10, 7:00

●

11:05, 2:00, 4:55, 7:50, 9:45, 10:35 ● (R)

CENTURY WOMEN

PATERSON (R)

(11:10) 1:50, 4:30, 7:10, 9:45 ●■ (R)

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (10:10) 1:10, 4:10, 7:10, 10:05

(11:00) 1:45, 4:30, 7:15, 9:55 ●■

FENCES (PG-13)

●■

LION (PG-13)

JACKIE (R)

(10:00) 12:20, 2:40, 5:05, 7:30, 9:50

(10:50) 1:35, 4:20, 7:05, 9:50 ●■

●■ (R)

LIVE BY NIGHT

SILENCE (R)

(10:35) 1:30, 4:25, 7:20, 10:10

(12:00) 3:30, 7:00, 10:20 ●

MOONLIGHT

JULIETA (R) (R)

(10:10) 12:35, 3:00, 5:25, 7:50, 10:10

(11:10) 1:50, 4:25, 7:30, 10:00

Pixar

MIGUEL (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez of L.A.) dreams of becoming an accomplished musician in “Coco.”

‘COCO’

He’s in tune with the Day of the Dead Director Lee Unkrich wanted an authentic take on the celebration By Kevin Crust

11272 Santa Monica Blvd • West L.A. • (310) 473-8530 ●■

TONI ERDMANN (R)

Since we were formally introduced to Pixar via a hopping desk lamp and a rubber ball in the animated short “Luxo Jr.” three decades ago, the studio has brought to life toys, insects, monsters, fish, cars, rodents, robots and increasingly, as the technology caught up, humans. In “Coco,” directed by Lee Unkrich and opening Nov. 22, Pixar will focus its talents toward something else entirely: skeletons. The film takes place in Mexico and tracks the journey of a fully fleshed 12-year-old named Miguel, consumed with his familia’s generations-long ban on music. This is particularly vexing to the boy since his dream is to be become a great musician like the late Ernesto de la Cruz.

(1:00) 4:30, 8:00

1045 Broxton Ave • Westwood • (310) 208-3250 ●■

ARRIVAL (PG-13) (2:00) 4:30, 7:00, 9:30

VALID SUNDAY~ JANUARY V# ONLY

Info Line

310.478.3836

ROYAL

11523 Santa Monica Blvd.

West L.A.

NOOFTAFRAID SUBTITLES www.LAEMMLE.com

AHRYA FINE ARTS 8556 Wilshire Blvd.

Beverly Hills

THE ARDENNES I (10:40 AM) 3:10 PM 9:55 PM

RESET 4:00 PM 7:15 PM

NERUDA E (10:50 AM 1:30 PM) 4:20 PM 7:10 PM 9:55 PM

WE ARE THE FLESH I (1:50 PM)

THINGS TO COME C 5:00 PM THE EAGLE HUNTRESS A (1:00 PM) 5:30 PM 7:40 PM THE HANDMAIDEN I (1:40 PM) 8:00 PM

MONICA

1332 Second Street

Santa Monica

100 STREETS (10:40 AM 1:00 PM) 3:20 PM 5:40 PM 8:00 PM 10:15 PM

NoHo 7

5240 Lankershim Blvd.

No. Hollywood

THE BOOK OF LOVE C (1:50 PM) 4:30 PM 7:10 PM 9:55 PM PATRIOTS DAY E (10:00 AM 12:40 PM) 3:50 PM 7:00 PM 10:10 PM SILENCE E (10:20 AM 1:00 PM) 4:30 PM 8:00 PM

THE CRASH E 9:55 PM

HIDDEN FIGURES B (10:10 AM 1:10 PM) 4:10 PM 7:10 PM 10:10 PM

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (10:00 AM 1:00 PM) 4:00 PM 7:10 PM

LA LA LAND C (10:20 AM 1:20 PM) 4:20 PM 7:20 PM 10:15 PM

LION C (10:20 AM 1:10 PM) 4:10 PM 7:10 PM 10:10 PM

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (10:25 AM 12:50 PM) 7:00 PM

ELLE E (10:00 AM 1:00 PM) 4:00 PM 7:00 PM 10:15 PM

JACKIE E (10:15 AM)

MOONLIGHT E (11:00 AM 1:50 PM) 4:40 PM 7:30 PM 10:10 PM

LION C (10:00 AM 1:30 PM) 4:30 PM 7:30 PM 10:15 PM

MUSIC HALL

ELLE E 4:00 PM 10:10 PM

9036 Wilshire Blvd.

Beverly Hills

CLAIRE IN MOTION I (12:10 PM) 2:20 PM 7:20 PM

TOWN CENTER 17200 Ventura Blvd.

Encino

THE CRASH E 9:55 PM

FENCES C (1:50 PM) 8:10 PM

THE SNARE I 9:45 PM

JULIETA E (10:40 AM) 3:10 PM 5:30 PM 8:00 PM 10:15 PM

JACKIE E (12:00 PM) 2:30 PM 5:00 PM 7:30 PM ELLE E (12:40 PM) 3:50 PM 7:00 PM

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (1:20 PM) 7:00 PM

LOVING C 4:30 PM

NERUDA E (1:50 PM) 7:20 PM

ATTACK OF THE LEDERHOSEN ZOMBIES I 9:55 PM

JACKIE E (10:50 AM) 4:20 PM 9:55 PM

PLAYHOUSE

LION C (10:20 AM 1:10 PM) 4:10 PM 7:10 PM 10:10 PM

673 E. Colorado Blvd.

Pasadena

SILENCE E (10:10 AM 1:10 PM) 4:50 PM 8:30 PM FENCES C (10:00 AM) 4:20 PM LA LA LAND C (10:10 AM 1:10 PM) 4:10 PM 7:20 PM 10:15 PM TONI ERDMANN E (10:00 AM 1:00 PM) 4:40 PM 8:20 PM

ELLE E (10:45 AM) 5:00 PM THE EAGLE HUNTRESS A (1:00 PM) MOONLIGHT E (11:10 AM) 4:30 PM 10:00 PM

CLAREMONT 450 W. 2nd Street

Claremont

JULIETA E (1:40 PM) 7:30 PM

PATRIOTS DAY E (10:00 AM 1:00 PM) 4:00 PM 7:10 PM 10:15 PM

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (1:20 PM) 7:10 PM

SILENCE E (1:00 PM) 4:40 PM 8:20 PM

NERUDA E (10:40 AM) 4:30 PM 10:15 PM JACKIE E (1:50 PM) 7:40 PM

HIDDEN FIGURES B (10:00 AM 12:50 PM) 3:50 PM 7:00 PM 10:00 PM

LION C (10:15 AM 1:00 PM) 4:00 PM 7:00 PM 9:55 PM

LA LA LAND C (10:20 AM 1:20 PM) 4:20 PM 7:20 PM 10:15 PM

ELLE E 4:10 PM 10:00 PM

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (12:40 PM) 7:00 PM

THE EAGLE HUNTRESS A (10:45 AM)

ELLE E (10:00 AM) 3:40 PM 10:10 PM

MOONLIGHT E 10:10 PM

THE EAGLE HUNTRESS A (10:30 AM)

BARGAIN IN ( )

FOR 1/15/2017 ONLY

Miguel hails from a village named for Santa Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians, and modeled by Pixar on towns in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. A mystical, magical chain of events leads Miguel to the skeletonpopulated Land of the Dead, and accompanied by a streetwise vagabond named Hector, he tests his musical prowess and unravels a family mystery he never knew existed. Unkrich has long been fascinated by the celebration of Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, especially the iconography and folk art surrounding the event, when the living and the dead are briefly reunited. “It seemed like a really beautiful celebration,” said the director, who comes to “Coco” with “Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo” and “Toy Story 3” under his belt. “This idea of actively and joyously remembering your loved ones who are no longer with you seemed like a great place to tell a real emotional family story and also have a lot of fun.” Five years ago, Unkrich began planning his film but “Coco’s” path to fruition was not without bumps. In 2013, the Walt Disney Co., Pixar’s parent, withdrew an application to trademark “Día de los Muertos” after a public uproar over its cultural insensitivity. “It was a mistake that happened, and we regretted it immediately,” said Unkrich. From the beginning, Unkrich sought to involve members of the Latino community in the process “so that at every turn we could have as much authenticity and as specific a voice as possible. Hopefully, it will never be tone deaf or lapse into cliche. Based on the reactions from the consultants who we’ve shown the film to already, we feel confident that we’re doing a great job and doing right by the culture.” The quest of authenticity extended to the characters and casting. Ernesto de la Cruz, voiced by Benjamin Bratt, is a composite of be-

Jesse Grant Getty Images for Disney

DIRECTOR LEE UNKRICH involved members of the Latino com-

munity in the filmmaking process for “Coco” from the beginning. loved Mexican musicians such as Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete and Vicente Fernández. Character actress Renée Victor (“Weeds”) voices another key character, Miguel’s abuelita, the Coco of the film’s title. “One of the joys of working on the film has been Gael García Bernal,” said Unkrich. The “Mozart in the Jungle” star plays Hector, Miguel’s trickster sidekick. “He’s just an amazing guy, and he’s brought so much charm and fun.” According to Unkrich, “finding a good kid actor is like finding a needle in a massive haystack.” For the crucial part of Miguel, the film’s star, the director cast 11-year-old Anthony Gonzalez, who lives in Los Angeles and has since turned 12. “It’s been a race against time to get this done before his voice changes,” said the director. “He’s really great, and I’m lucky to have found him. He makes the movie super-special.” Though it’s not strictly speaking

a musical, there are a lot of songs in “Coco,” as virtually all of the characters are performers. The soundtrack will be a mix of original music and Mexican standards. “When people think of Mexican music, they most often think of mariachi, and that of course is one part,” said Unkrich. “But there’s really a vast landscape of music, and we’ve tried to embrace all of it.” Unkrich brushed off concerns of similarities to Jorge Gutiérrez’s 2014 “Book of Life,” an animated musical fantasy produced by Guillermo del Toro, which was also set in Mexico around the Day of the Dead. “We’re telling a very different story than he was,” said the filmmaker. “Obviously, it’s still set against the holiday so there are a few common elements here and there, but the two stories are completely different. You can have more than one Christmas story.” kevin.crust@latimes.com

LOS ANGELES TIMES

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2017

“ROBERT DE NIRO GIVES ONE OF HIS WARMEST PERFORMANCES

IN RECENT YEARS. A SPARKLING ENSEMBLE HIGHLIGHTED BY AN ABSOLUTELY LOVELY LESLIE MANN.” -Tim Grierson, SCREENDAILY

“ROBERT DE NIRO PLAYS THE PART SUPERBLY.

THE ACTING IN THE FILM IS OUTSTANDING. DANNY DEVITO GIVES ONE OF HIS BEST PERFORMANCES.” -Stephen Farber, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

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S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

Photographs by

Jaap Buitendijk Tristar

JONNY LEE MILLER, left, plays Sick Boy to Ewan McGregor’s Renton in “T2: Trainspotting.” The focus? “Disappointed masculinity,” director Danny Boyle says.

This time, choose a reunion

‘T2: TRAINSPOTTING’

Two decades later, Renton, Sick Boy and the rest of Scottish gang are back to catch us up on their lives By Steven Zeitchik

It wasn’t long after “Trainspotting” came out in 1996 that the movie began to epitomize an era. Directed by Danny Boyle and written by John Hodge (from a book by Irvine Welsh), the film captured the growing consumerism, heroin-chic and Cool Britannia of the time. There were numerous memorable scenes (upside-down babies, heinous bar bathrooms), kinetic edits, indelible monologues (Choose Life! Colonized by Wankers!) and that raw uptempo soundtrack. As it followed the exploits of Renton, Sick Boy and other on-the-margin types in Edinburgh, “Trainspotting” took on landmark status. The film, of course, also launched the careers of Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller — not to mention Boyle, years ahead of “Slumdog Millionaire,” “127 Hours” and his reputation for slick sizzle. So why, two decades later, are Boyle and Hodge returning with a sequel, “T2: Trainspotting,” out March 3? Isn’t it like that awkward high school reunion, everyone looking a little different, no one truly wanting to be here? The Times talked with Hodge and Boyle to get answers. JOHN HODGE, WRITER You had a script years ago, based on Welsh’s 2002 sequel, “Porno.” How did that become this? I did write a script about 10 years ago. It wasn’t very good. See, there are two “Trainspottings” — there’s Irvine’s book, and there’s our movie. At first, they were just slightly different. But over the years, that difference expands. And the new script might have been too close to the novel. It didn’t seem to flow from our “Trainspotting.” Some of it, I think, was the porn industry — in 2002, you could still make money from it. It felt like time had overtaken the novel. What made you decide to try again? I think the biggest reason was that Danny reached out to the four actors and said, in principal, “If John writes a script, would you do it?” And they all said yes — they all had to say yes. And then the pressure was on. How do you make that gang grow up when the whole point of the first movie is that they don’t want to grow up? How did you deal with that? I don’t want to give away too much, but I think that was the challenge and the appeal. What are these guys like 20 years on? Like all of us, we change a lot over 20 years, but bits of us remain the same. I think the fact that so much time had passed also liberates the movie. If it was just five years later, we’d just expect more of the same — they’re just going to rob a casino in Monaco. Now, people expect things to be different, for a lot of life to be lived. The world has changed a lot too — that consumer culture at hyper-speed has gotten even faster. And, of course, technology has entered the picture. I think we saw an opportunity there — to show how consumer culture has been inflated and employment is less secure and corporations even more powerful. This movie has become more topical since 1996. It’s become more topical since we started writing it.

DANNY BOYLE, DIRECTOR Did you ever think you’d be making any sequel, let alone to “Trainspotting”? I can’t say I did. Even when we were talking about it. But one of the big reasons is I’d just run into people and hear

DIRECTOR Boyle, second from left, discusses a scene on set with actors Ewen Bremner, left, McGregor and Miller. “If

you’re lucky, as we were, you get a chance to unfreeze” characters, Boyle says of revisiting his Scottish ruffians years later.

the way they talk about characters. They still remember their names. When does that happen? I can’t remember Jennifer Lawrence’s character’s name in “Passengers,” and I saw that yesterday. That active filmmaking style you used then was so unique. Now it’s commonplace. How do you match that? Or do you not even try? That’s the tension. If the soundtrack and the style don’t live up to what you had then, it will disappoint people. But it’s also 20 years later, and the boys are not running around like they used to. John said this all began when you reached out to the four actors. Was that a tough call to make — “Hey, remember this thing that made your careers? Come and try to top that.” [Laughs] Actually, I think they were all fine in theory. In practice, I knew if the

script didn’t deal with them equally, like the first one, they wouldn’t do it. So then we had to come up with a movie that did that and also wasn’t … bad. Then there’s the prism of aging, which is terrifying for a lot of us but really terrifying for actors. You remember them frozen in time, and suddenly they’re in the present. Which is also part of the appeal — we get to not only to imagine how characters turned out but also actually see that in front of us. When we first started making this film, I thought the subject was time. And that the reason we didn’t make it 10 years ago is because the actors didn’t look like they’d aged enough. Or I wasn’t old enough. [Boyle recently turned 60.] And I realized after making this film it isn’t about time — it’s about masculinity, about disappointed masculinity. When we made the first film, everyone said it was

about drugs, and I said it was about friendship. But I realize now it was really about boyhood. And this is about manhood. It’s funny you use the word “boyhood.” I can’t help feeling there’s something Richard Linklater-ish about this. Like “Boyhood” or even the “Before” films, we get to check in to see how characters have — or haven’t — matured. Movies have this weird Hollywoodizing effect, this glamorizing effect, even gritty films like “Trainspotting.” It makes people desirable by freezing them. And if you’re lucky, as we were, you get a chance to unfreeze them — sometimes literally, even, by dropping pieces of the first movie in. You get the past and present simultaneously. And that’s a rare, powerful thing. steve.zeitchik@latimes.com

L AT I ME S . CO M / CA L EN DA R

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

The 10 films we’ve gotta see Tomei, Donald Glover, Robert Downey Jr. There are lots of reasons fans were thrilled by 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War,” but high on that list was “Holy crap, is that Spider-Man?! And he’s a teenager?! And he sounds like he’s from Queens?!” With that extended cameo, Marvel head honcho Kevin Fiege erased the Andrew Garfield-led “Spider-Man” movies from memory and set the table for a new version of the old webslinger, one who had goofy-boy-genius bursting from his red-and-blue seams. “Homecoming” finds Peter Parker in high school navigating the whims and whimsies of an adolescent life — bullies, homework, girls, supervillains — while dealing with the extracurricular responsibilities that come with being “Avengers”adjacent. A Spider-Man film that aims to mate teen angst with John Hughes-ian bounce? Yeah, that’ll play. — M.B.

Times Film Staff

From the first flurries of franchises in January through the last gasp at Oscarqualifying runs in December, there will be, conservatively, around 300 films released in 2017. For the purposes of this preview, The Times’ film writers and reporters chose to write about the movies they were most excited to see in the year to come. So in chronological order ...

John Wick: Chapter Two Feb. 10 Director: Chad Stahelski Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Ruby Rose No one expected much from the first “John Wick.” Looking at the cast list and synopsis, it looked as if it could’ve been the kind of action-thriller that airs Sunday night at 11 on some basic-cable network: Keanu Reeves plays the shadowy title figure, who kicks off a revenge spree after Russian thugs kill his dog. And, yes, that is pretty much what “John Wick” is. It is also the kind of grindhouse, exploitation fun that Hollywood doesn’t make any more, executed with style and verve by directors Stahelski and David Leitch — themselves stuntmen, fight choreographers and second-unit directors making the leap to the big chair. “John Wick” made $86 million worldwide off an estimated $20-million budget. With that kind of math, you get a sequel. This time around, it doesn’t seem that a puppy needs to die to prompt Wick — again played by Reeves like a world-weary Neo, able to work ballistic miracles with a gun in his hand — to commit mayhem. And anyone who grew up on the action cinema of the ’80s and ’90s is already in line for popcorn. — Marc Bernardin

Clay Enos Warner Bros.

“WONDER WOMAN,” set circa World War I, features Gal Gadot in the title

role, marking the first female-led superhero film since 1984’s “Supergirl.”

Get Out Feb. 24 Director: Jordan Peele Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Keith Stanfield Comedy star Peele (“Key and Peele,” “Keanu”) makes the leap to horror — and goes behind the camera — with this Blumhouse thriller with a frighteningly resonant premise: Chris (Kaluuya), an African American man, and his white girlfriend Rose (Williams) pay a weekend visit to her family in the suburbs, where he discovers insidious shenanigans targeting the black residents of her very idyllic, very Caucasian hometown. Peele (who also wrote the script) updates the simmering suburban paranoia of “The Stepford Wives” into a 21st century nightmare in which micro-aggressions are murder on more than just your nerves — and all too familiar in today’s still-divided America. Keener and Whitford costar as the parents whose discomfort over their daughter’s new romance might just belie something more sinister, while up-and-comer Stanfield (“Straight Outta Compton”) pops up as a fellow visitor with a smile on his face and panic in his eyes. Peele’s genre debut comes loaded with social commentary and opens during Black History Month — and judging from the reaction to its sharply entertaining first trailer, could spark a new subgenre of close-to-home horror thrusting interracial and class tensions into the pop culture conversation. — Jen Yamato

Beauty and the Beast March 14 Director: Bill Condon. Cast: Emma Watson, Ewan McGregor, Dan Stevens, Ian McKellen, Luke Evans, Josh Gad Let’s be real, a live-action “Beauty and the Beast” with full-on musical soliloquies is a bold idea. But the thought of Watson as Belle running up a hill belting out, “I want adventure in the great wild somewhere,” hits right in that sweet nostalgia spot, hard. There is absolutely no way a live-action film about singing household objects and a young woman falling in love with what appears to be a furry minotaur, and yet we’re curious. Deadly curious. The chances of finding one member of this office sitting front row full-on cry-singing through “Bonjour” one minute and then uncomfortably squinting at Stevens’ interpretation of the Beast is high. Why? Because the cast reads like it came straight out of the Internet’s dream journal. Watson and Stevens play the leads while McGregor was cast as the candlestick Lumiere, McKellen is the clock Cogsworth and Emma Thompson is the teakettle Mrs. Potts. Early standouts Evans as the egomaniacal villain Gaston and his lackey Le Fou played by Gad are already creating plenty of buzz when the two started singing from their Instagram accounts. It feels like Disney has been ramping up to this feature film for years, first with the song-free live adaptation of “Cinderella” in 2015 followed by Jon Favreau’s “Jungle Book,” which trotted out a few familiar tunes from the animated classic. But this “Beauty and the Beast” adaptation feels less like another artist’s interpretation but an homage to the past. — Meredith Woerner

The Fate of the Furious April 14 Director: F. Gary Gray. Cast: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Dwayne Johnson, Charlize Theron, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Helen Mirren The last 16 years have been one epic globe-trotting roller coaster for Dominic

Niko Tavernise Lionsgate

“JOHN WICK: Chapter 2” is a stylish, exploitation-flick throwback starring

Keanu Reeves as a world-weary fighting machine primed for action.

Dunkirk July 21 Director: Christopher Nolan. Cast: Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Harry Styles First off, it’s the source of our favorite stupid movie rumor of all time, which had Nolan spending $5 million of Warner Bros.’ money to buy a vintage Nazi war plane, outfit it with an Imax camera and then spectacularly crash it for a scene in this upcoming World War II epic. It’s crazy, right? Nolan would never destroy … an Imax camera. History buffs can also rest easy as Warner Bros. assures us that no priceless airplanes were harmed during the making of this film — though many were in fact used to tell the true story of the massive, miraculous evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, in the early days of the war. It’s Nolan’s first foray into history and, as you’d expect from the guy who made “Interstellar,” “Inception” and “The Dark Knight” trilogy, it’s going to be ambitious, extravagant and, yes, set to a bombastic, eardrum-rattling score by composer Hans Zimmer. There are no half-measures with Nolan, which, given the subject matter, will be entirely appropriate this time around. The 1940 Dunkirk rescue turned what Winston Churchill called a “colossal military disaster” into a “miracle of deliverance.” Shooting with both Imax and 65mm film cameras, expect Nolan’s “Dunkirk” to capture every inch of the rescue’s horror and triumph. — Glenn Whipp

The Dark Tower July 28

Universal Pictures

“THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS” series is back, this time without the late Paul

Walker. But the rest of the gang is here, including Michelle Rodriguez.

Toretto (Diesel) and his motley gang of streetwise racers-turned-international operatives. Such is life when you live a quarter-mile at a time. But after emotionally eulogizing their beloved late co-star Paul Walker in 2015’s seventh “Fast and Furious” installment, the high-octane saga of this multicultural new-millennium familia drifts into soapy high-action drama with a shocking twist: Just as the crew is settling into new normal lives, along vrooms a villainous Theron to seduce Dom away from his honeymoon and over to the dark side. Shaking up Hollywood’s most adaptable and cannily evolving action franchise by pitting Diesel against his brawny brethren, led by Johnson, director Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”) takes the helm and adds Theron, Mirren and Scott Eastwood. Will Dom’s crew ride or will they die to bring their brooding leader back while battling an anarchist bent on igniting global chaos? How many Coronas will be spilled as unexpected betrayals and alliances rock Universal’s hit franchise? — J.Y.

Alien: Covenant May 19 Director: Ridley Scott. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride It hasn’t always been easy being a fan of the “Alien” franchise. Launched in 1979 with Scott’s masterpiece, the series has soldiered on for four decades through various follow-ups and Predator-battling spinoffs that have occasionally hit the mark (James Cameron’s “Aliens” comes to mind) but often proved disappointing. The most recent installment, 2012’s prequel “Prometheus,” grossed more than $400 million worldwide, but critics and audiences were divided on the film, with some finding it ponderous. (In space no one can hear you scream, but on the Internet everyone can hear your bellyaching.) Now, to the delight of longtime fans, Scott appears to be bringing the series back to its horrifying roots. In “Alien:

Covenant,” the crew of a colony ship, en route to a distant planet, finds what they at first think is an undiscovered paradise, only to realize that it is inhabited — surprise! — by the titular monstrous xenomorphs. At 79, Scott still makes movies with the hard-charging intensity of someone a third his age, and the idea of him going back to the spine-chilling core of one of his greatest films — well, it’s enough to make your heart nearly burst out of your chest. — Josh Rottenberg

Wonder Woman June 2 Director: Patty Jenkins. Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright In the oversaturated market of bros in capes, it’s high time a woman punched her mighty fist through the countless waves of male-centric superhero movies. All the world’s waiting for the “Wonder Woman” movie not only because this will be the first female-led superhero movie since 1984’s “Supergirl” but also because the character Diana Prince (a.k.a. Wonder Woman, played here by Gadot) is fire. The daughter of a god, Wonder Woman is a warrior who carries her sword in the back of a ballgown and deflects bullets with her bracelets. More importantly, she considers it her sacred duty to defend the world. She’s driven by love and justice, so while Batman is sulking in his cave, Diana is out in the trenches getting things done. In the film, Diana will leave her idyllic homeland (populated by fierce actresses like Wright and Connie Nielsen) to help the Allies in World War I. The icing on the cake? The film is directed by Jenkins from the 2003 gut-kick of a film “Monster.” It’s a collection of great talent both in front of and behind the camera, so fingers crossed for “Wonder Woman,” because it’s about damn time. — M.W.

Spider-Man: Homecoming July 7 Director: Jon Watts. Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Michael Keaton, Marisa

Director: Nikolaj Arcel. Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor Stephen King fans have a big summer ahead. Elba stars as Roland Deschain, a lone gunslinger-knight on a quest to save his world by reaching the titular spire that stands at the nexus of time and space. McConaughey goes evil as the Man in Black, a power-hungry sorcerer with his own nefarious designs on harnessing the tower’s potential. Hollywood has been attempting to adapt King’s ambitious eight-novel lit series for a decade now; over the years the bestselling science-fiction horror-western property has been developed by the likes of J.J. Abrams and Ron Howard. This summer we’ll see if Sony Pictures and MRC have done the near impossible with Danish director Nikolaj Arcel (the Oscar-nominated “A Royal Affair”) at the helm: Adapting King’s celebrated genreblending magnum opus into a feature film that not only brings the books to life but also whets appetites for a planned 2018 TV spinoff series set to explore the saga’s backstory. — J.Y.

Blade Runner 2049 Oct. 6 Director: Denis Villeneuve. Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Robin Wright and Jared Leto Initially met with mixed reviews, Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner,” adapted from Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” has gone on to become a stone-cold sci-fi classic. A visually stunning, emotionally haunting rendering of an all-too-plausible dystopian future, the neo-noir tale of a cop (Ford) who hunts down renegade androids has cast a vast influence over the pop culture landscape, from movies like “The Fifth Element” and “The Matrix” to TV series like “Battlestar Galactica” and “Westworld.” While the idea of a follow-up has been kicking around for nearly 20 years, many doubted the magic of the original could ever be recaptured, assuming any attempt at a sequel would be just a pale replica (or replicant) of the original. But as the pieces have come together — with Ford stepping back into his iconic role as Rick Deckard and Villeneuve, who directed the moody, cerebral sci-fi hit “Arrival,” at the helm — anticipation has steadily mounted. Set three decades after the events of original film, “Blade Runner 2049” centers on a young LAPD blade runner (Gosling) who uncovers a secret that leads him on a quest to find Deckard, who has been missing for 30 years. If you consider yourself a sci-fi fan and that doesn’t get you excited, you should probably submit yourself to a Voight-Kampff test to make sure you’re really human. — J.R.

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

A winter’s worth of movies Below are the films opening theatrically through April 21. Release dates and other details, as compiled by Kevin Crust, are subject to change. Sadly, “Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies” (Jan. 13) and “My Entire High School is Sinking Into the Sea” (2017 TBA) fall outside this window.

F R I DAY

Comedy-drama Sony Pictures Classics

Documentary Shorts International

Action horror BH Tilt

The Daughter

Running Wild

The Devil’s Candy

Drama Kino Lorber

Don’t Knock Twice Supernatural horror IFC Midnight

Eloise

Psychologial thriller Vertical Entertainment

A Good American

Antarctica: Ice and Sky Documentary Music Box Films

Documentary The Film Collaborative

Grace of Jake

The Axe Murders of Villisca

Paranormal thriller IFC Midnight

Detour

Drama Indican Pictures

I Am Not Your Negro

Documentary Magnolia Pictures

Thriller Magnet Releasing

Drama SP Releasing / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Thriller Screen Media Films

A United Kingdom

Drama Fox Searchlight

F E B . 17 American Fable

Dramatic thriller Sundance Selects

Comedy Warner Bros. / New Line Cinema

Drama Weinstein Co.

From Nowhere

The Red Turtle

Animated fantasy Sony Pictures Classics

Saving Banksy

Documentary Parade Deck Films

Split

Psychological thriller Universal Pictures

Staying Vertical Comedy-drama Strand Releasing

Trespass Against Us Drama A24

Drama Filmrise Magnolia Pictures

‘I AM NOT

YOUR NEGRO’

Oklahoma City

Documentary American Experience

Rings

Supernatural horror Paramount Pictures

The Space Between Us Sci-fi adventure STX Entertainment

Trouble With Terkel

Worlds Apart

Romantic drama Cinema Libre Studio

XXX: The Return of Xander Cage

Spy thriller Paramount Pictures

JA N . 2 7 A Dog’s Purpose

Drama Universal Pictures

Animated comedy Indican Pictures

War on Everyone

Action comedy Saban Films / Lionsgate

Wheeler

Drama Momentum Pictures

F E B . 10 Bornless Ones

Horror Uncork’d Entertainment

Chapter & Verse Drama Paladin

David Brent: Life on the Road

Comedy Netflix

Do You Dream in Color? Drama Uncork’d Entertainment

The Great & Small

Drama Breaking Glass Pictures

The Great Wall

Action thriller Universal Pictures

Kedi

Fall

Drama Breaking Glass Pictures

Get the Girl

Comedy Vertical Entertainment

Gold

Drama TWC — Dimension

Kung Fu Yoga

Action comedy Well Go USA

Lost in Florence Romantic drama Orion Pictures

Midsummer in Newtown

Documentary Participant Media / Vulcan Productions

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter Action horror Screen Gems

The Salesman

Don’t Hang Up

Horror Vertical Entertainment

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) Documentary HBO Documentary Films

Fifty Shades Darker Drama Universal Pictures

Havenhurst

Horror Brainstorm Media

John Wick: Chapter 2

Action thriller Summit Entertainment

Drama Monument Releasing

Horror anthology Magnet Releasing

Drama Amazon Studios / Cohen Media Group

Documentary FilmRise

They Call Us Monsters

Documentary Matson Films

FEB. 3 The Comedian

The Shack

Drama Summit Entertainment

T2: Trainspotting Drama TriStar Pictures

Table 19

Comedy Fox Searchlight

Wolves

Youth in Oregon

Comedy-drama Samuel Goldwyn Films

Documentary Oscilloscope Laboratories

M A R C H 10 Brimstone

Wonder

Drama Lionsgate Films

A P R I L 12

Buster’s Mal Heart

Gifted

Sci-fi thriller Well Go USA

CHIPS

Action comedy Warner Bros.

Horror IFC Midnight

The Last Face

Romantic drama Saban Films / Lionsgate

Life

Sci-fi thriller Columbia Pictures

Power Rangers

Drama Fox Searchlight

A P R I L 14 The Fate of the Furious Action thriller Universal Pictures

Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent Documentary The Orchard

Man in the Camo Jacket Documentary XLrator Media

Norman: The Rise and Fall of a New York Fixer

Sci-fi action Lionsgate Films

Comedy-drama Sony Pictures Classics

Bitter Harvest

Kong: Skull Island

Wilson

Vince Giordano — There’s a Future in the Past

Drama Roadside Attractions

Action adventure Warner Bros.

Drifter

Romantic comedy-drama EuropaCorp

Comedy Fox Searchlight

Horror XLrator Media

M A R C H 31

Dying Laughing

Thriller Lionsgate Premiere

Aftermath

Documentary Gravitas Ventures

All These Sleepless Nights

Get Out

Documentary The Orchard

Suspense thriller Universal Pictures

The Blackcoat’s Daughter

The Girl With All the Gifts Horror Saban Films / Lionsgate

Kiki

Documentary Sundance Selects

My Life as a Zucchini Animated drama GKids

Rock Dog

Animated comedy Summit Premiere

Tulip Fever

Romantic drama Weinstein Company

MARCH 3 Actor Martinez

American Violence

Before I Fall

Drama Open Road Films

Burlesque: Heart of the Glitter Tribe Documentary XLrator Media

Supernatural horror A24

Chuck Zlotnick

‘KONG: SKULL ISLAND’

My Scientology Movie Documentary Magnolia Pictures

The Ottoman Lieutenant War drama Paladin

Personal Shopper

Mystery IFC Films

Raw

Horror Focus World

The Sense of an Ending Romantic drama CBS Films

Somewhere Beautiful Romantic drama Bueno Films

The Wall

Thriller Amazon Studios / Roadside Attractions

M A R C H 15 Frantz

War drama Music Box Films

Comedy-drama The Orchard

Cézanne et Moi

Drama Magnolia Pictures

Drama Film Movement

All Nighter

Comedy Good Deed Entertainment

Lavender

Musical Walt Disney Pictures

Atomica

Beauty and the Beast

The Belko Experiment

Drama Music Box Films

Drama Roadside Attractions

Documentary First Run Features

A P R I L 21 Born in China

Documentary Walt Disney Pictures

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City Documentary Sundance Selects

The Lost City of Z

Adventure Amazon Studios / Bleecker Street

Nola Circus

Comedy XLrator Media

Unforgettable

Dramatic thriller Warner Bros.

Ghost in the Shell

Sci-fi fantasy Paramount Pictures

Step Sisters

Comedy Broad Green Pictures

The Zookeeper’s Wife Drama Focus Features MARCH TBA

The Discovery

Karen Ballard

‘UNFORGETTABLE’

Drama Netflix

APRIL TBA

Suntan

Graduation

Romantic comedy-drama Strand Releasing

APRIL 7 Alive and Kicking

The Assignment

Sci-fi thriller Syfy Films

Thriller AMBI Media Group

Carrie Pilby

After the Storm

The Last Word Comedy Bleecker Street

Animated comedy 20th Century Fox / DreamWorks Animation

Documentary Magnolia Pictures

Mr. Gaga: A True Story of Love and Dance

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M A R C H 17

Junction 48

Live Action, Animation,

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From a House on Willow Street

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Warner Bros. Pictures

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Bokeh

Sleight

The Freedom to Marry

Dramatic thriller Votiv Films / Amazon

Comedy-drama Good Deed Entertainment

BATMAN MOVIE’

MARCH 24

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As You Are

Growing Up Smith

The Sunshine Makers

Comedy Quiver Digital

War drama Sony Pictures Classics

Shot! The PsychoSpiritual Mantra of Rock

FEB. 24

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Documentary Bond/360

Middle Man

13 Minutes

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Strike a Pose

Drama Strand Releasing

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Salt and Fire

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Comedy-drama The Orchard

Sun Drama Monterey Media

Lovesong

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Donald Cried

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Action adventure 20th Century Fox

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Mine

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Animated adventure Warner Bros.

Logan

Contemporary Color

Thriller Cinedigm

The Lego Batman Movie

Mean Dreams

My Name is Emily

Land of Mine

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‘LOGAN’

MARCH 8

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War drama Sony Pictures Classics

Documentary The Film Collaborative

Documentary Oscilloscope Laboratories

Joe Lederer

‘A DOG'S PURPOSE’

The Last Laugh

Stray Bullets

Fist Fight

The Founder

Action comedy A24

Romantic thriller IFC Midnight

Psychological thriller 20th Century Fox

Comedy Gravitas Ventures

Free Fire

Sex Doll

A Cure for Wellness

Doobious Sources

Paranormal horror IFC Midnight

Comedy Warner Bros. / New Line Cinema

Thriller Saban Films / Lionsgate

Colossal

Fantastical romantic comedy Neon

Drama Sundance Selects

Live Cargo

Drama Gunpowder & Sky Distribution

One Week and a Day

Dark comedy Oscilloscope Laboratories

Paint It Black

Drama Imagination Worldwide

Queen of the Desert

Dean

Romantic drama IFC Films

Gods Knows Where I Am

Comedy-drama Sycamore Pictures

Comedy-drama CBS Films

Documentary Bond/360

Going in Style

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The Transfiguration Horror Strand Releasing

L AT I ME S . CO M / CA L EN DA R

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

Katie Yu The CW

THE “RIVERDALE” pilot introduces a modern-day version of Archie (K.J. Apa), left, Veronica (Camila Mendes), Jughead (Cole Sprouse) and Betty (Lili Reinhart).

Diyah Pera The CW

APA as Archie, left, and Luke Perry as his dad, Fred, in the new “Riverdale.”

Katie Yu The CW

MARISOL NICHOLS plays Hermione Lodge, left, and Mendes is Veronica.

New twist on the Archie gang

‘RIVERDALE’

The crew from the comic book series gets a personality update and a seedy murder mystery to solve By Meredith Woerner

On paper, the concept sounds a bit mad: What if the freckled-faced teens of the wholesome “Archie” comics were wrapped up in a seedy murder mystery? And yet the CW’s “Riverdale,” which premieres Jan. 26, is arguably one of the most anticipated new series of 2017. Ever since “Riverdale’s” pilot debut at San Diego Comic-Con last summer, fans have been buzzing about this “Twin Peaks” meets “Dawson’s Creek” drama. Gone are the cartoonish glances and cross-hatched sideburns, the new Archie — as embodied by K.J. Apa — is ripped. In fact, everyone in Riverdale — “The town with pep!” — has changed. Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) pops Adderall, Veronica Lodge’s (Camila Mendes) family is in ruins, Ms. Grundy (Sarah Habel) is no longer a senior citizen but a “Lolita”-sunglasses-wearing cougar, and, oh, yeah, Archie’s dad is Luke Perry. The plot picks up after the suspicious death of a Riverdale High student and teeters between teen drama and murder mystery for the rest of the season. “We always try to tell a story that works both as an ‘Archie’ story and as a noir, David Lynch-ian kind of story,” said Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, series creator and executive producer. Aguirre-Sacasa’s eclectic work history laid the groundwork for the series. As a playwright he wrote the book for Duncan Sheik’s musical adaptation of “American Psycho,” he worked on TV series including “Big Love,” “Looking” and “Glee,” and, after 11 years writing comic books, he was named chief creative officer for ”Archie” Comics. Despite “Riverdale’s” new moody aesthetic of fog-filled streets (even Pop’s Chok’lit Shoppe is shrouded in mist), Aguirre-Sacasa insists that the central themes of the series will always return to those of the “Archie” comics he grew up reading. “Our show is not that different from the core of ‘Archie’ from the 1940s or the 1950s. Archie, in the comics, was a good kid who always tried to do his best, frequently screwed up, made things worse before he

made them better, and then learned a lesson. The Archie on our show is actually like that as well. He is basically a good kid, but he’s in much more adult situations than he ever was in the comic book. He’s wrestling with that, but his essence is still the same.” The same holds true for Betty and Veronica, he says, noting that the former is still the “perfect girl next door” who gets good grades and wants to be a cheerleader. “What we’re exploring is, what is the cost of being perfect?” Executive producer Greg Berlanti, who oversees the CW comic book adaptations of “Arrow” and “The Flash,” can trace his “Archie” influences all they way back to his days working on “Dawson’s Creek.” “This is one of the few instances where I’m working on something where it is actually [one of] the roots of the comic-book love triangle,” said Berlanti. “The original DawsonJoey-Pacey was Betty-Archie-Veronica.” But no matter how timeless the central themes may be — and despite the addition of the first openly gay character from the “Archie” comics in Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) — the producers felt that the source material still needed an update for modern audiences.

“A lot of these comic books were written in a time where the bulk of people reading them and writing them were white,” Berlanti said. “That’s not the world we live in anymore. We were cognizant about changing the ethnicity and updating the characters to make sure we didn’t want to look at a poster of ‘Riverdale’ with just all white people on it.” Veronica Lodge is now played by Latino actress Mendes, and local Riverdale band Josie and the Pussycats is an allblack trio led by Ashleigh Murray. The relationship between Betty and Veronica has also received tweaking. While the central love triangle remains intact, “Riverdale” has turned the trope slightly askew, refocusing more on the friendship between the women and not their desire for Archie. “I’m not interested in stories about girls fighting with each other,” says executive producer Sarah Schechter. “That, to me, feels really antiquated, and it’s certainly not helpful. It doesn’t feel real to the depth of my relationship with other women as a woman. We were never interested in making them frenemies. They’re both complicated women.”

Not all characters were destined for a total overhaul. Archie is still very much a red-head, which Apa is reminded of every two weeks when his hair is bleached down and re-dyed, “The first time I did it, I was sitting in the salon for about10 hours.” Apa says. “I remember staring at myself and thinking, ‘I’m going to be bald by the time we finish this.’ ” Even though the actor hails from New Zealand, Apa believes “Riverdale” has global appeal, with the great unifier being, once again, surviving high school. “[Archie’s] figuring out, through trial and error, his relationships with people, with Betty and Veronica, with girls, with his career choice. ... I think people can relate to that, a lot of people went through the same thing in high school. I know I did,” he says. “I think there’s a reason why ‘Riverdale’ plays really well to adults, because we were all teenagers, and I think we all still feel a little bit of that: ‘Who are we and how do we define ourselves and what’s important to us?’ It’s an ongoing process,” explains Schechter. “A part of you is a teenager forever.” meredith.woerner@latimes.com

E10

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

Jude Law’s big act of faith

‘THE YOUNG POPE’

The actor put himself in the hands of director Paolo Sorrentino for his first TV series in nearly 20 years By Meredith Blake

NEW YORK — Jude Law knows what you’re thinking. An HBO series called “The Young Pope,” starring one of Hollywood’s most dashing leading men in the title role? “Everyone was expecting, with me in the part and the name, oh, it’s going to be choir boys and prostitutes at the Vatican,” said Law, relaxing in his hotel suite on a bright afternoon in November. Instead, the most scandalous thing about Law’s character, a youthful but arch-conservative American pontiff, born Lenny Belardo, is his penchant for chain-smoking and guzzling Cherry Coke Zero. Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, the 10-episode limited series defies easy categorization, even if its seemingly straightforward title has already inspired a popular Twitter meme. Dreamlike and methodically paced, “The Young Pope” is more interested in Big Questions of belief and the allure of tyranny than behind-the-scenes intrigue. Though it is (relatively) light on the nudity and beheadings, the series is classic HBO — filmed on location in Italy, with sumptuous production values and A-list talent (Diane Keaton co-stars as Sister Mary, one of Lenny’s closest confidantes). “The Young Pope” is Law’s first foray into series television in nearly two decades. While it’s become increasingly fashionable for movie stars of his stature to dabble in the small screen, the actor, 44, claims he’s agnostic about medium and was more drawn to the opportunity to work with Sorrentino. “There was a humanity, a wit, an ability to take quite personal stories and somehow elevate them to being global,” said Law of Sorrentino films including “Youth” and the Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty.” Dressed in harem-style sweatpants and a cashmere hoodie, Law comes off as a bit of an aesthete; even his leisure wear makes a statement. He trusted himself in the hands of Sorrentino, a filmmaker with a flair for surreal imagery — “The Young Pope” opens with a dream sequence of a naked baby crawling on a pile of dolls — that can seem puzzling to the actors trying to bring it to life. “It’s a director’s medium, and you’re there to be a color on the palette,” he said. “If you trust them enough, you know that it will make sense in its entirety.” In turn, Sorrentino says he was looking for a performer who could capture the “juxtaposition between childishness and virility, innocence and power” that characterizes Lenny, elected by cardinals who foolishly expect him to be their “telegenic puppet.” Instead Lenny wields his power mercilessly, ushering in a new era of conservatism and dogmatism at the Vatican. He dresses down an elderly nun for greeting him with a kiss and takes the name Pius XIII, a callback to a more traditional era in the church. Though he was not raised in a particular religion, Law takes an a la carte approach to belief, “gathering what I see as personally affecting from all faiths.” “And like every other teenager, I dabbled with a bit of Buddhism,” he added. To prepare for “The Young Pope,” the actor read papal diaries and church histories and was even granted a tour of parts of the Vatican. He was impressed by the presence of seemingly mundane facilities — a bank, a laundry, a pharmacy where “hemorrhoid cream sells very well,” he says with a laugh. But ultimately it was more useful to focus on Lenny’s humanity rather than the institution he represents. He and Sorrentino, who describes Law as “an additional screenwriter,” spent a great deal of time discussing Lenny’s childhood and its effect on his faith. Abandoned by his hippie parents, Lenny was raised by nuns in an orphanage, never feeling loved and believing that God would fill the void. Sister Mary is a kind of surrogate stage mother to Lenny — the Mama Rose to his Gypsy, Law jokes. (Keaton, he says, referred to him as “your eminence” throughout the production.) The actor’s parents were both adopted and, while they grew up in much different circumstances than Lenny, “I had an emotional attachment to what it is like to be an orphan,” he said. Lenny is the opposite of the current Pope Francis, whose modesty and inclusive tone have endeared him to many. And this is quite by design, said Sorrentino, who was interested in exploring how the church might respond to Francis in the future. “In the Vatican too, like in other states, an alternation between progressiveness and conservatism is plausible.” Lenny immediately orders a ban on photographs and merchandise bearing his image — not out of humility but because he wants to make himself as “unreachable as a rock star,” as mysterious as Daft Punk, Banksy or Stanley Kubrick. He delivers his first address at night, under the cover of darkness, so that no one can see his face. Asked whether he sympathizes with Lenny’s basic assumption — that an air of mystery can be beneficial to an artist — Law replies with an enthusiastic “hell, yes.” “Some of my greatest regrets are not being guided as a young actor. No one tells you you don’t have to do the photos. You look back and you think … why did I let all that stuff in? But also why did I give all that stuff away?” At times, “that stuff ” has also been taken from Law, whose personal life has been the subject of almost relentless tabloid scrutiny since “The Talented Mr. Ripley” catapulted him to fame 17 years ago, most notably in the hacking of his voicemail by reporters at the News of the World. And yet despite this, Law is refreshingly unguarded, meeting in his hotel room without a publicist. Gracious and polite, he pauses frequently to consider questions he’s asked in a way that seems thoughtful rather than circumspect.

Carolyn Cole Los Angeles Times

JUDE LAW juxtaposes “childishness and virility, innocence and power,” says “Young Pope” director Paolo Sorrentino.

Although he calls the media scrutiny “deeply exhausting,” he’s never considered walking away from acting — at least not seriously. “Since people have been hunting and eating and cohabiting, we’ve also told each other stories. It’s a beautiful aspect of our communities. Why stop that?” Law says he’s guided by a creative restlessness rather than any overarching career plan. He recalls seeing John Gielgud in Peter Greenaway’s “Prospero’s Books.” “Here was this 80-something-year-old man performing naked and still putting himself out there. I just thought, ‘What a career. Still doing stuff that probably scares the life out of you.’ ” While Sorrentino is writing a potential second season of “The Young Pope,” Law is coy about his possible return. For now he’s focused on other projects, including a stage version of Luchino Visconti’s “Obsession,” directed by Tony-winning Ivo van Hove, at the Barbican in London this spring. “I’m curious,” he says. “That’s my religion.” HBO

meredith.blake@latimes.com

LAW as “The Young Pope,” arch-conservative American Lenny Belardo.

L AT I ME S . CO M / CA L EN DA R

S U NDAY , JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

E11

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Legion Marvel Comics adaptation. FX

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Doubt Legal procedural with Katherine Heigl. CBS

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OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY E 11:40, 2:20, 4:50, 7:30, 10:20 ALLIED E 7:20, 10:15 FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM C 12:10, 3:50, 7:00, 10:10 HACKSAW RIDGE E 12:20, 3:40, 6:40, 9:50

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL C 10:20 PM

TROLLS 3D B 12:00, 2:10, 4:30, 6:50, 9:10

THE ACCOUNTANT E 1:00, 7:15

THE ACCOUNTANT E 12:30, 4:10, 7:10, 10:00

MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN C 12:00, 7:40

STORKS B 11:50, 2:00, 4:20

STORKS 3D B 11:30, 1:45, 4:15, 6:45, 9:15

CONEJO VALLEY

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$6 Wednesday all day for all 2D films (upcharge for DBOX & 3D) Now Offering Reserved Seating

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OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY E (12:00, 2:30, 5:00), 7:40, 10:20 ALLIED E (3:50), 10:10

LIVE BY NIGHT E (12:30, 4:10), 7:40, 10:30

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN E (4:50), 10:15

MONSTER TRUCKS B (11:20, 1:50, 4:20), 6:50, 9:40

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND

PATRIOTS DAY E (12:00, 3:30), 7:10, 10:20

THEM C (1:00, 4:00), 7:00, 10:00

HIDDEN FIGURES B (12:10, 3:40), 5:20, 7:20, 10:10

HACKSAW RIDGE E (12:40, 4:10), 7:20, 10:30

LA LA LAND - DOLBY ATMOS C (1:00, 4:00), 7:00, 10:00

TROLLS B (11:50, 2:10, 4:30), 6:50, 9:10

LA LA LAND C (2:20), 8:15

THE ACCOUNTANT E (12:50), 7:10

PASSENGERS C (11:30 AM)

STORKS B (11:40 AM)

SING B (11:00, 1:30, 4:00), 6:40, 9:20 ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY C (12:20, 3:50), 7:30, 10:25

WESTLAKE VILLAGE TWIN

INFERNO C (2:00), 7:30

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THE BYE BYE MAN C (12:00, 2:20, 4:50), 7:25, 10:00

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LIVE BY NIGHT E (1:10, 4:20), 7:40, 10:35

SILENCE E (11:45, 3:30), 7:00

MONSTER TRUCKS B (11:20, 2:00, 4:30), 7:05, 9:40

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (12:15), 7:30

PATRIOTS DAY E (12:10, 3:30), 7:10, 10:15

JACKIE E (4:00 PM)

SLEEPLESS E (12:20, 2:50), 5:10, 7:50, 10:10

VENTURA COUNTY

PASEO CAMARILLO 3

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LA LA LAND C (12:45, 4:00), 7:15

HIDDEN FIGURES B (11:00, 1:50, 4:40), 7:30, 10:30 UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS E (12:30, 3:00), 5:20, 8:00, 10:25 WHY HIM? E 9:50 PM SING B (11:10, 1:40, 4:15), 6:50, 9:30

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA E (12:30, 3:45), 7:00

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY C

JACKIE E (4:40 PM)

(1:00, 4:00), 7:20, 10:20

ELLE E (1:00), 7:30

MOANA B (10:50, 1:30, 4:10), 7:00 Showtimes for January 15

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S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

2017 MOVIE AND TV PREVIEW

10 shows on our watch list will become ordinary.” Already filmed once in 1990 by Volker Schlöndorff with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, the miniseries promises suspenseful action in its trailer. And though the novel is subtler than a brief synopsis makes it sound, it wouldn’t be hard to turn it into a sort of feminist “Logan’s Run.” But Moss is an actress who cuts facets into a role like a master jeweler, and any opportunity to watch her work is worth taking. Also in the cast: Samira Wiley, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd and “Gilmore Girl” Alexis Bledel, far from Stars Hollow. — R.L.

Times Television Staff

Z: The Beginning of Everything Amazon, Jan. 27 A “bio series” focused on Zelda Sayre, later Fitzgerald — of the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Fitzgeralds — the Fitzgerald many have found the more compelling of the two. Adapted by the team of Nicole Yorkin and Dawn Prestwich (“The Killing”) from Therese Anne Fowler’s historical novel, the series is unusually convincing both for an American period piece and for a biopic, that most treacherous of dramatic forms. Christina Ricci, the former Wednesday Addams, may not be the first actress you’d imagine to play the belle of 1918 Montgomery, Ala.; physically, she doesn’t resemble Zelda at all, but she has spirit to burn, a fierce intelligence and in her mid-30s is both completely credible as a rule-bending, skinny-dipping, cigarettesmoking, party-loving teenager and not too young to play the character through the rest of her short, fabulous, finally circumscribed life. The series promises to take the couple from their meeting in Montgomery to the New York high life into which Scott’s early success catapulted them — to expatriate Paris and on into a world that eventually had no use for them. With Christina Bennett Lind as Zelda’s childhood pal Tallulah Bankhead; David Strathairn, always a bonus, as the exasperated Judge Sayre; and David Hoflin as the eventual author of “The Great Gatsby,” “Tender Is the Night” and “The Last Tycoon,” which is also being adapted as an Amazon series. — Robert Lloyd

Twin Peaks Showtime, May 21

Nicole Rivelli Amazon Prime Video

“Z: THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING” stars David Hoflin and Christina

Ricci as the young, spirited couple who would become the celebrated Fitzgeralds.

24: Legacy Fox, Feb. 5

Can Fox’s iconic “24” survive a 25th hour? That’s one of the most intriguing questions facing viewers at the start of the new year when Fox reboots with “24: Legacy,” putting a new spin on the premise of a thriller playing out in real time. The “24” brand has been absent since the 2014 finale of limited series “24: Live Another Day.” Back is the explosive opening title, the “events unfold in real time” introduction, the on-screen running clock and the breakneck pace. Not back is Kiefer Sutherland, the heart and soul of the series with his portrayal of Jack Bauer, the world-weary spy who saved the world several times. (Sutherland is now trying to run the country as a low-level Cabinet member unexpectedly promoted to president of the United States in ABC’s freshman drama “Designated Survivor.”) This version of “24,” which debuts Feb. 5 following the Super Bowl, stars Corey Hawkins, best known for playing Heath on “The Walking Dead” and Dr. Dre in the film “Straight Outta Compton.” Hawkins plays Eric Carter, an Army Ranger and leader of a raid on a terrorist cell. Now the survivors of that cell are out to track Carter and his fellow warriors in an effort to secure a weapon stolen during the raid that will unleash an attack on America. Fox is taking a huge risk with “24: Legacy,” replacing a veteran star like Sutherland with a relatively unknown African American actor. No other characters from the original series — at least in the first few episodes — are present (What, they couldn’t even bring back Chloe?). Though there will be a few familiar faces, including Miranda Otto and Benjamin Bratt, the supporting cast is largely new — and culturally diverse. Still, many of the elements that helped make “24” a hit — car and foot chases; double- and triple-crosses — are front and center. It will be interesting to see if the show’s devoted fans will keep the show ticking beyond this season. — Greg Braxton

Detroiters Comedy Central, Feb. 7

Sam Duvet and Tim Cramblin are admen, but with none of the style, savvy or skills of Don Draper and Roger Sterling. The old friends and Detroit locals, played by real-life old friends and Detroit locals, and show creators Sam Richardson (“Veep”) and Tim Robinson (“Saturday Night Live”), are low-budget ad execs — full of small ideas and big aspirations. Cramblin Advertising was once respected for its weighty accounts with Delta and Budweiser, but since the lowachieving Tim took over for his father (who went insane), the firm specializes in late-night TV ads for local hot tub kings and shady accident attorneys. The two strive to regain the agency’s glory by landing their first big account with Chrysler, but somehow their campaign ideas (“Jesus Chrysler, What a Car!”) keep missing the mark. The 10episode series follows the duo’s quest to land a big one, even if the awkward buddies with “Loser” practically printed across their out-of-date Gap polo shirts have no idea how to get there. “Detroiters” also features guest spots by Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Che and Malcolm Jamal-Warner, among others. The show’s executive producer, Jason Sudeikis, also costars as the hard-toplease Chrysler VP. The absurdly funny chemistry between him and Richardson and Robertson and the show’s clever references to the Motor City’s culture and scenery make the series a wonderfully quirky ride through advertising’s not-sosexy underbelly. — Lorraine Ali

Take Five / Hulu

“THE HANDMAID’S TALE” includes Alexis Bledel as Ofglen, a handmaid

forced into sexual servitude in an adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel.

The last time “Twin Peaks” was on the air, George H.W. Bush was president and bingeing was something you did with food, not television. But grab a slice of cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee because the beloved cult series returns May 21. The original series, set in the small town of Twin Peaks, Wash., followed Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as he investigated the brutal murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer. Premiering in 1990, the series became an unexpected cultural sensation, with viewers hooked on the central mystery, oddball characters (e.g. the Log Lady) and off-kilter humor but was canceled after two seasons following a sharp ratings decline. Despite its short life span, “Twin Peaks” continues to influence other TV shows, from “The Killing” to the upcoming “Archie” adaptation, “Riverdale.” Details about the much-anticipated revival are elusive, but here is what we do know: The series will be 18 hours, with a two-hour premiere, and is entirely directed by Lynch, who also wrote the series with co-creator Mark Frost. Lynch rounded up several key members of the original cast — most notably MacLachlan, who reprises his role, Sherilyn Fenn as Audrey Horne, Madchen Amick as Shelly Johnson, and Kimmy Robertson as Lucy Moran. The ensemble will also include a number of Lynch veterans who are technically new to the “Twin Peaks” universe: Laura Dern, Naomi Watts and Robert Forster. — M.B.

I’m Dying Up Here Showtime, June 4

Ray Mickshaw Fox

“24: LEGACY” places Corey Hawkins at the center of the on-the-clock action as

an Army Ranger whose team is under attack by members of a terrorist cell.

Big Little Lies HBO, Feb. 19 If you thought the “Real Housewives” of Bravo took drama and passive aggressiveness to new, petty heights, HBO’s limited series “Big Little Lies” takes the histrionics to a murderous level. The seven-episode series follows three mothers of grade-schoolers in an elite community. The dark side of parenthood emerges as those seemingly “perfect lives unravel to the point of murder,” according to the official release. The series, based on Liane Moriarty’s bestseller, stars Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley — uh, “True Detective” who? Like the book, the miniseries will have its share of humor. The trailer includes a snarky jab from Witherspoon’s character to another mother about, well, another mother. “She’s not a nanny, she’s a mom. She’s just young, like you used to be.” But, unlike the book, the TV adaptation is set in wealthy Monterey, Calif., not an Australian suburb. All the episodes are directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (“Wild,” “Dallas Buyers Club”) from scripts by David E. Kelley. Rounding out the cast are Alexander Skarsgard, Laura Dern, Adam Scott, Zoe Kravitz, James Tupper and Jeffrey Nordling. — Yvonne Villarreal

Feud FX, March 7 Ryan Murphy has probably done more than anyone in Hollywood to bring the anthology series into vogue. In 2017, he will build on the success of “American Horror Story” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” with “Feud.” The first season dramatizes the notorious if somewhat misunderstood rivalry between screen legends Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Based partly on the script “Best Actress” by Jaffe Cohen and Michael Zam, the eight-episode “Feud” goes behind the scenes of “What Ever Happened to Baby

Jane?,” the 1962 film that both women hoped would revive their flagging careers but which ultimately became a camp classic. Davis earned an Oscar nomination, much to Crawford’s irritation. Future seasons will explore other epic personal grudges. “Feud” is poised to burnish Murphy’s reputation as a latterday George Cukor, a storyteller known for showcasing female performers. The series will reunite him with several favorites, including Jessica Lange, who follows in Faye Dunaway’s footsteps portraying Crawford (though it remains to be seen if she’ll reach the over-the-top heights of “Mommie Dearest”). Murphy regulars Sarah Paulson and Kathy Bates will play two other classic stars, Geraldine Page and Joan Blondell. New to the Murphy oeuvre is Susan Sarandon, who, in a bit of note-perfect casting, will appear as Davis. Much like “The People v. O.J. Simpson” used the most sensational trial of the ’90s to examine still-relevant themes of police corruption, gender, race and celebrity, “Feud” will likely go beyond the catfights and expose enduring truths about women, aging and Hollywood. — Meredith Blake

The Handmaid’s Tale Hulu, April 26

Margaret Atwood’s never-out-of-print novel of a near-future American dystopia becomes a miniseries. Though written in 1986, its imagining of a right-wing theocratic totalitarian patriarchy feels germane to a moment in which reproductive rights are under attack and when — here and abroad — the religious beliefs of some are used to circumscribe the civil liberties and, indeed, the humanity of others. Elisabeth Moss plays Offred, a “handmaid” whose job is to bear children for a ruling-class couple who can’t. (Pollution and STDs have wreaked havoc on reproduction.) It is also, in a timely way, a text on the normalization of weirdness: “This may not seem ordinary to you now,” the book’s Offred is told of her new duty, “but after a time it will. It

As HBO’s “Vinyl” was to classic rock, this newcomer is to the 1970s comedy boom around L.A.’s Sunset Strip. Created by Dave Flebotte (“Masters of Sex”) and executive produced by standup veteran Jim Carrey, “I’m Dying Up Here” examines the transition in comedy from setups and punchlines to something more idiosyncratic and personal. The show is loosely based on the William Knoedelseder 2010 book of the same name that explored the rambunctious history of the Comedy Store. It occupies the same world when careers were born by an invitation to sit next to Johnny after a set on “The Tonight Show,” but unlike the vanquished HBO show the series doesn’t fixate on stand-ins for the famous names. Instead it centers on a group of young comedians, including real-life Comedy Store regulars like Andrew Santino and Al Madrigal along with Ari Graynor (“Whip It”), Clark Duke (“Greek”) and Oscar winner Melissa Leo, whose performance as the owner of the Goldie’s offers a strong foundation. Focusing on the often dark and desperate quest for fame and the weird addictive alchemy that results when a well-crafted joke lands, the series should resonate with hardcore comedy fans. — Chris Barton

Veep spring, HBO Game of Thrones summer, HBO Nasty women with high political aspirations will rule in 2017 or at least on some of HBO’s most popular returning series. Two very different shows — the fantastical drama “Game of Thrones” and the political satire “Veep” — left us with opposite scenarios in 2016: a women occupying the highest governing seat in the land and one taking leave of it. Now the question as to how those women deal with that power, or the loss of it, makes Season 7 of “GoT” and six of “Veep” two of the most anticipated returning shows of 2017. In “Veep,” Selina Meyer (Julia LouisDreyfus) became POTUS after the elected president resigned, but it was short-lived. Last season, up for reelection, she lost, to another woman. The big question is how the incompetent, narcissistic and ill-informed Meyer will deal with her post-election-loss spiral and transitioning back to life outside the White House. Either way, it’ll surely mirror the reality of the real-life election of 2016. It’s been a long, hard and disgustingly muddy road for the women of Westeros, but in the seventh season, they’re finally poised to seize power from the men who’ve demeaned, abused and locked them up. Cersei Lannister’s (Lena Headey) on the throne in King’s Landing. Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) is poised to challenge her, as is Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), who’s amassing another army. All are fierce and ready to rule. There will be dragons. The new year is looking up. — L.A.

L AT I ME S . CO M / CA L EN DA R

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THE GUIDE winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, which recapitulates Bartlett Sher’s stunning original staging, features Laura Michelle Kelly as the elegant but scrappy Anna, Jose Llana as the comically poignant King of Siam, and a mother lode of classic tunes, rendered with brio by an exceptional cast. If you’re at all a fan of classic American musicals, this particular production is a joy – a real gift that proves a bracing pick-me-up in trouble times. (F.K.F) Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Today, 1 and 6:30 p.m.; Tue., 8 p.m.; Wed., 2 and 8 p.m.; Thu., 8 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; ends Jan. 21. $35 and up; children under 5 not admitted. (800) 982-2787.

MOVIES Capsule reviews are by Kenneth Turan (K.Tu.), Justin Chang (J.C.) and other reviewers. Compiled by Kevin Crust.

Openings F R I DAY Antarctica: Ice and Sky French glaciologist Claude Lorius, whose work provided evidence of man-made global climate change, is profiled in this documentary. Directed by Luc Jacquet. In English and French with English subtitles. (1:29) NR.

MUSIC

The Axe Murders of Villisca

Three friends sneak into an Iowa house where a mass murder occurred 104 years earlier to record paranormal activity. With Robert Adamson, Jarrett Sleeper, Alex Frnka, Conchata Ferrell, Jon Gries. Written by Owen Egerton. Directed by Tony E. Valenzuela (1:18) NR.

Bakery in Brooklyn Cousins clash after they inherit their aunt’s boulangerie and differ on how to run the business. With Aimee Teegarden, Krysta Rodriguez, Griffin Newman. Written by Gustavo Ron, Paco Zegers. Directed by Ron. (1:40) NR. Detour

An innocent law student allows a violent couple to play on his suspicions that his stepfather arranged the car crash that left his mother in a coma. With Tye Sheridan, Stephen Moyer, Emory Cohen, Bel Powley. Written and directed by Christopher Smith. (1:37) R.

Doobious Sources Stoner buddies who fancy themselves to be investigative journalists make a wealthy enemy. With Jason Weissbrod, Jeff Lorch, Creagen Dow, Edward James Gage, Roy Abramsohn and Joe Cortese. Written by Clif Lord and Tommy Sowards. Directed by Lord. (1:48) NR. The Founder Michael Keaton stars as McDonald’s empresario Ray Kroc, who turned a Southern California burger joint into a billion-dollar business. With Nick Offerman, Linda Cardellini. Written by Robert D. Siegel. Directed by John Lee Hancock. (1:55) PG-13. My Father, Die Deaf and mute since

age 12, a man spends two decades preparing to take revenge on his father for killing his brother. With Joe Anderson, Gary Stretch, Candace Smith, Kevin Gage, Ross Britz, Thomas Francis Murphy, Gabe White. Written and directed by Sean Brosnan. (1:42) NR.

The Red Turtle Stranded on an island

with turtles, crabs and birds, a man experiences the milestones of being human in this silent animated film. Directed by Michael Dudok de Wit. (1:20) PG.

Saving Banksy The ethics of collecting art is examined in this documentary about one patron’s attempt to “save” a work by the artist Banksy. Featuring Glen E. Friedman, Blek Le Rat, Doze Green, Hera, Risk and Ben Eine. Written by Eva Boros and Paul Polycarpou. Directed by Colin Day. (1:20) NR. Split A man with 23 distinct person-

alities struggles with an emerging 24th that threatens to dominate the others in a chilling way. With James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Jessica Sula, Haley Lu Richardson. Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. (1:57) PG-13.

Staying Vertical A carefree filmmaker

becomes a reluctant single father after he is seduced by a bohemian shepherdess. With Damien Bonnard, India Hair, Raphäel Thiéry. Written and directed by Alain Guiraudie. In French with English subtitles. (1:38) NR.

Trespass Against Us The patriarch of a British crime family stops at nothing to keep his son in line when he begins thinking of another way of life for his family. With Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, Lyndsey Marshall, Killian Scott, Rory Kinnear, Sean Harris. Written by Alastair Siddons. Directed by Adam Smith. (1:39) R. Worlds Apart

Three foreigners each find love with locals in this tryptich set against the socio-economic turmoil of contemporary Greece. With J.K. Simmons, Christopher Papakaliatis, Andrea Osvárt. Written and Directed by Christopher Papakaliatis. (1:55) NR.

XXX: The Return of Xander Cage Vin Diesel returns for his third outing as a former extreme sports star turned government agent this time embroiled in a global conspiracy. With Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Rory McCann, Toni Collette, Samuel L. Jackson. Written by F. Scott Frazier, based on Characters Created By Rich Wilkes. Directed by D.J. Caruso. (1:47) PG-13. MPAA categories: (G) for general audiences; (PG) parental guidance urged because of material possibly unsuitable for children; (PG-13) parents are strongly cautioned to give guidance for attendance of children younger than 13; (R) restricted, younger than 17 admitted only with parent or adult guardian; (NC-17) no one 17 and younger admitted.

Events & Revivals American Cinematheque, Aero The-

atre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. (310) 260-1528 www.americancinemathequecalendar.com Moana (2106). Sun., 2 p.m. Marathon Man (1976). Tue., 7:30 p.m. The Great Dictator (1940). Fri., 7:30 p.m. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Sat., 7:30 p.m. The Sound of Music (1965). Jan. 22, 7:30 p.m.

American Cinematheque,

Egyptian Theatre, 7612 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 466-3456 www.americancinemathequecalendar.com Last Tango in Paris (1972). Sun., 7:30 p.m. Focus on Female Directors 2017. Program of shorts includes Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (USA, 14 min.); Eileen O’Meara’s Panic Attack (USA, 3 min.); Christina Beck’s Hooker #2 (USA, 9 min); and others. Discussion follows. Wed., 7:30 p.m. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). Fri., 7:30 p.m. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Sat., 7:30 p.m. The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave

Pop Picks by August Brown and Mikael Wood

Wild Bunch

“THE RED TURTLE,” directed by Michael Dudok de Wit, goes into wider release on Friday. (1971). Spielberg Theatre, Sat., 7:30 p.m. John Travers Memorial. The Cinematheque remembers its longtime videographer with a screening of his Student Academy Award-winning 16mm short, Jenny (1986, 44 min.). Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Jan. 22, 7:30 p.m.

The Cinefamily,

Silent Movie Theater, 611 N Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 655-2510 www.cinefamily.org Almodóvar: Dark Habits (1983). Sun., 4:30 p.m. Talk to Her (2002). Sun., 7 p.m. Kika (1993). Sun., 9:45 p.m. What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984). Thu., 7:30 p.m. The Skin I Live In (2011). Thu., 10:15 p.m. Labyrinth of Passion (1982). Fri., 10:30 p.m. High Heels (1991). Sat., 4:30 p.m. Law of Desire (1987). Sat., 7 p.m. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989). Sat., 10 p.m. The Flower of My Secret (1995). Jan. 22, 4:30 p.m. Julieta (2016). Jan. 22, 7 p.m.

The Best Friends Club #1: A Great Idea New sketch show inspired by “The Baby-Sitters Club” book series. Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, 5919 Franklin Ave., L.A. Tue., 9:30 p.m. $7. www.losangeles.ucbtheatre.com

Matilda — The Musical Orange County premiere of this Tony-winning adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book about a mischievous schoolgirl. Segerstrom Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tue.-Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 7:30 p.m.; next Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m.; ends Jan. 29. $29 and up. (714) 556-2787. Saturday Night Fever — The Musical

Stage adaptation of the disco-themed 1977 drama that starred John Travolta. The Granada Theatre, 1214 State St., Santa Barbara. Tue.-Wed., 7:30 p.m. $33 and up. (805) 899-2222.

Film Forum, Spielberg Theatre at the

27th Annual LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards Ceremony Includes mu-

Hammer Museum, Billy Wilder Thea-

Adler & Gibb

Egyptian, 7612 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 377-7238 www.lafilmforum.org A Distant Echo (2016). George Clark. Sun., 7:30 p.m. tre, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 443-7000 www.hammer.ucla.edu Black Audio Film Collective. Tue.Wed., Fri.-Sat., Jan. 24-25. Handsworth Songs (1986). 12 p.m. Mysteries of July (1991). 1 p.m. The Last Angel of History (1995). 2 p.m. Three Songs on Pain, Light and Time (1995). 3 p.m. Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993). 3:30 p.m.

LACMA, Bing Theatre, LACMA, 5905

Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 8576010 www.lacma.org/events-calendar Jewel Robbery (1932). Tue., 1 p.m. A Counter Inaugural Event: Until, Until, Until... (2015–16). Ben Vereen’s performance in blackface, as a tribute to vaudeville legend Bert Williams, in front of thousands of guests at an inaugural ball for Ronald Reagan in 1981. Discussion following with filmmaker Edgar Arcenaux. Fri., 7:30 p.m.

New Beverly Cinema, 7165 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 938-4038 thenewbev.com It’s a Joke, Son! (1947) with Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Sun., 2 p.m. Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) and Hercules and the Captive Women (1961). Sun., 6:30 p.m. Mon., 7:30 p.m. Rock All Night (1957) and The Last Woman on Earth (1960). Tue., 7:30 p.m. The Last Picture Show (1990) and Texasville (1990). Wed.-Thu., 7:30 p.m. The Yakuza (1974) and Rolling Thunder (1977). Fri.-Sat., 7 p.m. Inglourious Basterds (2009). Fri., midnight. Gulliver’s Travels (1939). Sat.-Jan. 22, 2 p.m. Shanty Tramp (1967). Sat., midnight. A Public Affair (1962) and Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966). Jan. 22, 6:30 p.m. Jan. 23, 7:30 p.m. Old Town Music Hall, 140 Richmond

St., El Segundo, (310) 322-2592 www.oldtownmusichall.org All-Star Comedy Festival. A selection of silent and sound comedies. Fri., 8:15 p.m. Sat., 2:30 and 8:15 p.m. Sun., 2:30 p.m.

TCM Screen Classics,

AMC, Cinemark, Edwards, Regal and other theaters, www.fathomevents.com Singing in the Rain (1952). 65th anniversary. Sun. Wed., 2 and 7 p.m.

UCLA Film & Television Archive,

Billy Wilder Theatre, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 206-8013 www.cinema.ucla.edu/events Archive Documentary Spotlight: Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) — Part 2 (2015). Jan. 15., 7 p.m. Straub and Huillet: Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times or Perhaps One Day Rome Will Permit Herself to Choose in Her Turn (1969) and History Lessons (1972). Fri., 7:30 p.m. Black Sin (1988) and The Death of Empedocles, or When the Green of the Earth Will Glisten for You Anew (1986). Sat., 7:30 p.m. Archive Treasures: The Barker (1928). Jan. 22, 7 p.m.

Openings

sical performances by DOMA Theatre Company. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Tue., 7:30 p.m. $100. www.OvationAwards.com

U.S. premiere of Tim Crouch’s drama about two conceptual artists in late 20th century New York. Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City. Wed.Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; next Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m.; ends Jan. 29. $25-$70. (213) 628-2772.

Amy Snowden & Friends An evening

of comedy. Comedy Central Stage @ The Hudson, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. Wed., 8 p.m. Free; reservations required. (323) 960-5519.

Bassem Youssef: The Joke Is Mightier Than the Sword CAP UCLA pre-

sents the Egyptian comic and TV host. Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Westwood. Wed., 8 p.m. $19-$39. (310) 825-2101.

7th Annual Company Creation Festival New works by local ensembles,

Justin Roberts & The Not Ready for Naptime Players Roberts and com-

pany perform kid-friendly rock songs. Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Hwy., Malibu. Sat., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. $10, $15. (310) 506-4522.

King Hedley II An African American man returns home to Pittsburgh after a stint in prison in August Wilson’s 1980s-set drama. The Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., L.A. Sat., 7:30 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Feb. 12. $35. www.eventbrite.com. The Last Five Years

Jason Robert Brown’s romantic musical charts the relationship between an aspiring author and a struggling actress. La Mirada Theatre, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada. Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Feb. 12. $20-$70. (562) 9449801.

Morgan’s Journey

Family-friendly interactive show about a young clown’s adventures; for ages 4 to 8. Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Lovelace Studio Theater, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. Sat.-next Sun., noon and 2:30 p.m.; ends Jan. 22. $20. (310) 746-4000.

God Bliss (In the Name of Semelah)

New work from Eko Nugroho and his Indonesian shadow theater ensemble Wayang Bocor tells the story of how Islam came to Java and Indonesia. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. Next

Sun., 7 p.m.; ends Jan. 22. $20, $25. (213) 237-2800.

Hansel & Gretel: A Wickedly Delicious Musical Treat Multimedia-en-

hanced all-ages rock musical based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale. Valley Performing Arts Center, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Next Sun., 3 p.m. $38 and up. (818) 677-3000.

David Sedaris: A Work in Progress

The author and humorist workshops material for an upcoming book in this CAP UCLA presentation. Little Theater at Macgowan Hall, UCLA, 245 Charles E. Young Dr. East, Westwood. Next Sun., 7 p.m.; ends Jan. 28. $59. (310) 825-2101.

Critics’ Choices Bakersfield Mist Based on an actual

incident, Stephen Sachs’ delightful and provocative comedy pits a boozy Bakersfield trailer dweller who has supposedly discovered an authentic Jackson Pollock at a local thrift shop against the intellectually snide art expert who has been sent to evaluate her find. In this reprise of his 2011 production, Sachs, who also directs, has once again cast delightful husbandand-wife acting team Jenny O’Hara and Nick Ullett as surprisingly equal adversaries in his intellectually wellbalanced dialectic. For those who missed the production the first time around, this is a welcome opportunity to redress that oversight. (F.K.F.) The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., L.A. Today, next Sun., 2 p.m.; Mon., Sat., 8 p.m.; ends Feb. 26. $15– $35; Mondays, pay what you can. (323) 663-1525.

The King and I This tour of the Tony-

Gregory Porter Last year Gregory Porter told me that “Holding On,” his sleek, skittering collaboration with the British dance duo Disclosure, started out as a bare-bones piano ballad. Given how much I’d thought of Porter’s fine 2013 album, “Liquid Spirit,” this was something I had to hear. Now I can: A handsome, slow-and-low rendition of “Holding On” — not merely unplugged but with different chords that alter the vibe of the song — opens Porter’s new record, “Take Me to the Alley.” But if the song sets you up to expect some kind of concerted attempt at a pop crossover — his John Legend moment, let’s say — then think again. On “Take Me to the Alley,” Porter, 44, actually turns inward, focusing on the musical values and the subject matter closest to him. With the soul legend Mavis Staples. (M.W.) Segerstrom Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. Fri. $49-$119. scfta.org.

Classical Compiled by Matt Cooper

JACK Quartet and Lightbulb Ensemble The groups unite for a pro-

gram that features contemporary composition and newly created instruments. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. Today, 7 p.m. $16, $20. (213) 2372800.

Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra

Mendelssohn’s Octet, plus a world premiere by Oliver Lewin and West Coast premieres by Patrick O’Malley Continued on Page E14

COUNCILMEMBER JOSE HUIZAR - PRESENTS -

performed in repertory; details at www.sonofsemele.org. Son of Semele Theater, 3301 Beverly Blvd., L.A. Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 5 p.m.; ends Feb. 12. $18. (213) 351-3507.

fellowship

Cornerstone Theater Company presents this immersive work in which audience members are invited to help prepare sack lunches to feed the hungry in L.A.; details at www.CornerstoneTheater.org. Various locations, L.A. Thu.-Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 5 p.m.; next Sun., 2 p.m.; ends Feb. 12. Pay what you can (suggested donation, $20). (800) 578-1335.

Latin Standards

Marga Gomez explores her life as a comic, a lesbian, and daughter of a famed Cuban entertainer in this solo show; for mature audiences; part of the Off-Center Festival. Judy Morr Theater, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; ends Jan. 21. $25. (714) 556-2787.

SATURDAY, JAN. 28, 2017

4pm-11pm | FREE | ALL AGES | RAIN or SHINE on BROADWAY, 3rd STREET to OLYMPIC BLVD in DTLA

Time of Women Belarus Free Theatre presents this docudrama about three women imprisoned for protesting election results in Belarus in 2010; in Russian with English subtitles; for mature audiences; part of the OffCenter Festival. Studio Performance Space, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Thu.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; ends Jan. 21 $25. (714) 556-2787. Whose Stories? Who Tells Them? Se-

ries of five panel discussions on writers and diversity. Various venues in Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre. Thursdays, 7 p.m.; ends Feb. 18. Free. www.sierramadreplayhouse.org

Dina Martina

The drag artist presents music, comedy and more. Cavern Club Theater, 1920 Hyperion Ave., L.A. Fri.-Sat., 8 and 10 p.m.; ends Jan. 28. $25. (800) 838-3006.

Rose and the Rime A young woman

seeks the witch who murdered her parents in the West Coast premiere of this dark fable. Sacred Fools Theater Company, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 3 p.m.; ends Feb. 7 p.m. $25. (310) 2818337.

Under the Streetlamp Vocal quartet

sings classic doo-wop, pop, rock and more. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. Fri., 8 p.m. $50-$85. (562) 467-8818.

What If? Jenny Jacobs’ new autobiographical cabaret show. The Found Theatre, 599 Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach. Fri.-Sat., 7 p.m.; next Sun., 4 p.m.; ends Jan. 22. $20. (562) 433-3363.

Chapatti Two animal lovers in Dublin connect in Christian O’Reilly’s romantic comedy. Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Today, 5:30 p.m.; Wed., 7:30 p.m.; Thu., 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 7:30 p.m.; next Sun., 1 and 5:30 p.m.; ends Jan. 29. $40-$65. (949) 497-2787.

Beckett5 The KOAN Unit presents five short plays by Absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett: “Krapp’s Last Tape,” “Come and Go,” “Footfalls,” “Act Without Words II” and “Catastrophe.” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 5 p.m.; ends March 5. $25-$34. (310) 477-2055.

A Touch of the Poet Return engage-

Drumline

ment of Eugene O’Neill’s drama set in early 19th century New England. Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. Today, next Sun., 3 p.m.; Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 3 p.m.; other dates; ends Jan. 29. $25$30. (310) 822-8392.

nic Finocchiaro’s new romantic comedy about a woman trying to return a lost dog to its owner. Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., L.A. Sat., 8 p.m.; next Sun., 4 p.m.; ends Feb. 26. $20, $34. (310) 307-3753.

Migos With just a quick shout-out from “Atlanta’s” Donald Glover onstage at the Golden Globes, the trio’s “Bad and Boujee” rocketed back up the streaming charts to become an immediate sensation (again). The nod wasn’t a surprise (they appeared on the series in a cameo) but was a reminder that their loopy charisma is one of the defining sounds of rap right now. (A.B.) Novo, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Wed. lalive.com.

Celebration of the marching-band style popularized at historically black colleges and universities. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. Sat., 8 p.m. $45-$85. (562) 467-8818.

The Found Dog Ribbon Dance Domi-

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Continued from Page E13 and Yuan-Chen Li. First Presbyterian Church, 1220 2nd St., Santa Monica. Today, 3 p.m. Pay what you can. www.kco.la.

Mehta and Shankar

Nixon Library Sunday Concerts

Harpist Tomoko Sato performs. Richard M. Nixon Library, 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda. Today, 2 p.m. $2.50-$6; children 6 and under, free. (714) 993-5075.

Restoration Concerts Quartet featuring pianist Ines Irawati and violinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu performs works by Mozart, Schumann and Bridge. South Pasadena Public Library, Community Room, 1115 El Centro St., South Pasadena. Today, 4 p.m. $20 at the door. www.friendsofsopaslibrary.org. Salastina Music Society Los Angeles

Chamber Orchestra violinist Maia Jasper leads the ensemble in an intimate performance that includes works by Weill, Britten and Behzad Ranjbara. Villa Aurora, 520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades. Today, 3 p.m. $42 and up. (213) 622-7001.

Sundays Live Members of the Capitol

Ensemble perform works by Dvorak, et al. Bing Theater, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Today, 6 p.m. Free. (323) 857-6234.

Chamber Music Palisades Works by

Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Isaac Albeniz, Jacque Ibert and Jake Heggie, plus songs by Schubert and Richard Strauss. St. Matthew’s Parish, 1031 Bienveneda Avenue, Pacific Palisades. Tue., 8 p.m. $30; students with I.D., free. (310) 463-4388.

Green Umbrella: All-Reich The L.A.

Phil New Music Group is joined by Synergy Vocals for a program that includes the West Coast premiere of Steven Reich’s “Pulse.” Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Tue., 8 p.m. $20-$58. (323) 850-2000.

Glendale Noon Concerts Saxophon-

ist Doug Masek and pianist Bryan Pezzone perform works by Bruce Broughton, Astor Piazzolla, et al. Glendale City Church, 610 E. California Ave., Glendale. Wed., 12:10 p.m. Free. (818) 244-7241.

Forging ‘The Knife’ — Kurt Weill Before Broadway Los Angeles Chamber

Orchestra and USC faculty and students explore music from the German composer’s career in 1920s Berlin. USC’s Newman Hall, 3616 Trousdale Parkway, L.A. Thu., 8 p.m. Free; reservations required. (213) 6227001.

Gil Shaham Plays Prokofiev The vio-

linist joins the L.A. Phil under guest conductor Lionel Bringuier for Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2; program also includes Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s “ Night on Bald Mountain.” Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Thu.Sat., 8 p.m. $59-$195. (323) 850-2000.

Music Without Borders

L.A.-based composer Derrick Spiva Jr. and Bridge to Everywhere ensemble present original works inspired by traditional and indigenous music. Théâtre Raymond Kabbaz, Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles, 10361 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. Fri., 7:30 p.m. $15, $25. (310) 2860553.

St. Matthew’s Music Guild Music for

solo guitar, guitar and voice, and guitar and string quartet; with guitarist Ines Thomé and soprano Katina Mitchell. St. Matthew’s Church, 1031 Bienveneda Ave., Pacific Palisades. Jan. 20. Fri., 8 p.m. $35. (310) 573-7421.

Da Camera Society Viola de gamba quartet Phantasm performs works by Bach, Purcell, et al. Sat., 3 p.m. Doheny Mansion, Mount St. Mary’s University, 8 Chester Pl., L.A. $55, $75. (213) 477-2929. Missa solemnis

The Los Angeles Master Chorale performs Beethoven’s mass, backed by a full orchestra. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Sat., 2 p.m.; next Sun., 7 p.m. $29 and up. (213) 972-7282.

Pasadena Symphony Celebration of Baroque music features works by Bach and Handel; with violinist William Hagen and soprano Sherezade Panthaki. Ambassador Auditorium, 131 S. St. John Avenue, Pasadena. Sat., 2 and 8 p.m. $35-$116. (626) 793-7172. Songs of Hope and Freedom The Holman Choir marks the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday with gospel music including traditional spirituals. First United Methodist Church, 500 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Sat., 4 p.m. Free; donations accepted. www.fumcpasadena.org Storm Large Sings 7 Deadly Sins The

Pink Martini vocalist joins Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for selections from the Brecht-Weill theater piece; program also includes Weill’s Song Suite for Violin and Orchestra, and the West Coast premiere of Bruce Adolphe’s Violin Concerto, “I Will Not Remain Silent.” Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. Sat., 8 p.m. Also, Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Westwood. Next Sun., 7 p.m. $27 and up; discounts available; student rush, $12. (213) 622-7001.

Symphonies for Youth The L.A. Phil

explores Holst’s “The Planets.” Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Sat., 11 a.m. $22, $26. (323) 850-2000.

Baxter Concerts

L.A. Phil violinist Mischa Lefkowitz and pianist Mina Perry perform works by Beethoven, Faure, Dvorak, Schubert, et al. First United Methodist Church, 13222 Bailey St., Whittier. Next Sun., 2 p.m. Free. (562) 698-0022.

Hyewon Chang

The young pianist performs pieces by Beethoven, Scriabin and Schumann. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre. Next Sun., 7 p.m. $15, $20. (626) 355-4318.

The Fairy Queen Long Beach Opera teams with Culture Clash for a Las Vegas-set reimagining of Henry Purcell’s 17th-century musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; sung in English. Beverly O’Neill Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. Next Sun., 2:30 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 and 8 p.m.; ends Jan. 28. $49-$150. (562) 470-7464. Mozart Classical Orchestra Mozart’s

Symphony No. 41 and Third Violin Concerto featuring violinist Isabella Lippi, plus Johann Strauss’ “Roman Carnival Overture.” Irvine Barclay

Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Next Sun., 3 p.m. $29-$52. (949) 8544646.

Nixon Library Sunday Concerts Pia-

no duo Minji Noh and Kook Hee Hong performs. Richard M. Nixon Library, 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda. Next Sun., 2 p.m. $2.50-$6; children 6 and under, free. (714) 993-5075.

Itzhak Perlman in Recital The violinist performs with pianist Rohan de Silva in this Philharmonic Society of Orange County presentation. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Next Sun., 3 p.m. $50 and up. (949) 5532422. Sundays Live Student musicians of Crossroads Chamber Ensemble perform. Bing Theater, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Next Sun., 6 p.m. Free. (323) 857-6234. Robert Thies

The pianist performs pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Debussy and Ravel. The Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., L.A. Next Sun., 3 p.m. $35. www.EbellEventTickets .com

USC Thornton Symphony

The orchestra, under conductor Carl St.Clair, performs Richard Strauss’ “An Alpine Symphony,” and Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos featuring pianists Bernadene Blaha and Kevin Fitz-Gerald. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Next Sun., 2 p.m. $30-$44. (323) 850-2000.

MUSEUMS Reviews by Christopher Knight (C.K.), Sharon Mizota (S.M.) and David Pagel (D.P.). Compiled by Grace Krilanovich.

Openings The Sculptural Line An exhibition of drawings from the 15th through the 20th century. The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. Tue.-Fri. and Sun., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; closed Mon. Opens Tue. Ends April 16. (310) 440-7300. Hammer Projects: Simon Denny An

installation by the New Zealand born, Berlin-based artist. Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Tue.Wed., Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Thu., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Mon. Opens Sat. Ends April 23. (310) 443-7000.

Hammer Projects: Kevin Beasley An

installation in the museum’s Vault Gallery by the New York-based artist. Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Tue.-Wed., Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Thu., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Mon. Opens Sat. Ends April 23. (310) 443-7000.

Critics’ Choices John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction McLaughlin’s painting

Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a Lady? The artist’s installation is an

unabashed love letter to African American women. A two-channel video projection plays in a dim space furnished in the style of a 1970s living room and lined with large, silkscreened portraits of prominent entertainment figures: Diahann Carroll, Diana Ross, Pam Grier, Naomi Sims. It is a celebration of black women asserting and defining themselves through media; it is also a powerful statement about the intersection of gender and race (S.M.). Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Mon. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends Feb. 6. (213) 621-2766.

Non-fiction The small exhibition is an

Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach LACMA’s show does an ex-

Toba Khedoori Nothing rests easily in

Continuing Brain: Photographs by Peter Badge

Creature

This seems less like a thematic exhibition meant to unravel a curatorial thesis than simply a handsomely arranged, smartly installed selection from the Broad’s nearly 2,000-work collection. The best part is the way individual objects are placed to talk to one another in the galleries. That’s not as easy to pull off as it looks (C.K.). The Broad, 221 S. Grand Ave., L.A. Tue.-Wed. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu.-Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; ends March 19. (213) 2326200.

Doug

Aitken:

Electric

Earth

Smashed hopes, lost love, inevitable decay and social dissolution, all within a seamless Mobius strip of passing time — Aitken’s work has taken a romantic view of life’s predictable unraveling. Usually the musing is wrapped in a sleek, even slick package of easily consumable commercial design. And too often, unfortunately, it is undone by a grating aura of chic ennui. This large survey of the Los Angeles artist’s career includes sculptures, collages, photographs and project documentation. Seven large-scale, moving-image installations anchor the event (C.K.). Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., L.A. Ends today, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. (213) 626-6222.

Hank Willis Thomas: Black Righteous Space Within the “Black Righ-

FOX

KLCS A&E AMC ANP BBC BET Bravo CNN Com Disc Disn E! ESPN Food FNC Free Hall HGTV Hist IFC

Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time The focus of the exhib-

TBS

MTV NGC Nick Ova OWN Spike Sund Syfy TCM

USA

R. H. Quaytman, Morning: Chapter 30 Indigo, saturated eggplant, black,

WGN

Yui Yaegashi: Fixed Point Observation At a time when those who shout

DANCE Compiled by Matt Cooper

Eifo Efi Ioannis Mandafounis and Fabrice Mazliah of the German dance collective MAMAZA perform duets incorporating reflective surfaces. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Today, 2 p.m. $35. (310) 477-2055. Stories of Parenthood

Lineage Dance and Street Symphony explore parenting. The Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena. Today, 7 p.m. $15, $20. (626) 844-7008.

Awakenings & Beginnings Dance Festival 2017 Closing Night With

Rubans Rouges Dance Company, Not Man Apart, et al. Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. Sat., 8 p.m. $32-$45. (310) 890-8285.

Fin de Fiesta Flamenco artists from

the U.S. and Spain. Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Sat., 8 p.m. $40-$100. (949) 854-4646.

Family Guy

11 pm

tion between a murder and a weaponized virus. (N) Å

News (N) Conviction (TVPG) (N) Å News (N) Sports Central News (N)

(TV14) (N) Å (TV14) (N) Å Big Bang Å Big Bang Å Seinfeld Å Seinfeld Å Out of Water Å The Aux Å Mixed Blessing Native Shorts Shetland (TVPG) Å Vera (TVPG) Å Blue Demon (N)

News (N) News (N) News (N) Å Joel Osteen Modern Family (TVPG) Å Laughs Å

Experience Å

Noticias Victoria on Masterpiece (TVPG) Doll 123. (Premiere) On the Bee Gees: One death of her uncle King William IV in 1837, an 18-year-old Night Only

Star Trek: The Motion Picture ›› (1979) William Shatner. (G) Family Guy Å Seinfeld (TVG) Antiques Roadshow (TVG) Film School On Story Å Passing On (TVPG) Å Money Leah Remini: Scientology Å Hoarders (TV14) (N) Å Hoarders Overload (N) The First 48 Predators ›› (2010) Adrien Brody. (7:30) (R) Å John Carter (2012) Taylor Kitsch. (PG-13) Finding Bigfoot (TVPG) Finding Bigfoot (TVPG) Hawaii’s 3-foot-tall Menehune. (N) Finding Bigfoot Groundhog (6) Groundhog Day ››› (1993) Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell. (PG) Å Weird Science Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor › (2013) Jurnee Smollett-Bell. Mary Jane Real Housewives: Atlanta First Family of Hip Hop (TV14) Real Housewives: Atlanta Watch What Anthony Bourdain (TVPG) Å Anthony Bourdain (TVPG) Å Anthony Bourdain (TVPG) Å Newsroom Beerfest (2006) (6:50) (R) Super Troopers ›› (2001) Jay Chandrasekhar. (R) Roast Battle II Alaska: Last Frontier (TV14) Alaska: The Last Frontier Everest Rescue (TV14) Top of The Wheel

MSN

ile, athletic painter, hasn’t had a solo show in L.A. since 2010. This presentation of 45 paintings on paper and five more on canvas marks his exhilarating return. Each image doubles as an insistent inquiry into the capacity of paint to conjure space and imply motion, to act out possibilities. The mood overall is one of exuberant restlessness, ingenuity and irrepressibility (L.O.). Jaus, 11851 La Grange Ave., L.A. Ends today. (424) 248-0781.

The Mick

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KDOC

Nathan Redwood The terrifically ag-

The Simpsons (TVPG) Mr.

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Elementary (TV14) A connec- News (N)

Sherlock on Masterpiece

Life

Critics’ Choices

Sports News Movies (N) New Å Closed Captioning

KOCE

Loris Gréaud: Sculpt All art is experi-

Reviews by David Pagel (D.P.) and Leah Ollman (L.O.). Compiled by Grace Krilanovich.

9:30

NCIS: Los Angeles (TV14) Cal- Madam Secretary (TV14)

Burns seeks revenge. (N) Å MyNt Big Bang Å Big Bang Å KVCR Road Trip (TVG) KCET Father Brown (TVPG) Å UNI Su Nombre Era Dolores (N)

GALLERIES

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len, Sam, Granger and Deeks Elizabeth and her staff fly to Africa. (N) Å get arrested. (N) Å NBC The Celebrity Apprentice Å Dateline NBC (TVPG) (N) Å KTLA Elementary (TVPG) Å News (N) ABC To Tell the Truth (TVPG) (N) To Tell the Truth (TVPG) (N) KCAL News (N) News (N)

8:30

TLC TNT Toon Travel Tru TV L VH1 Cine Encr EPIX HBO

(TV14) The Final Problem. (Season finale) (7) (N) Å

Winter is Coming. (N) Å

princess becomes queen. (N) Å

(TVG) Å

(TV14) Gold Rush. (N) Å

(TVPG) Å

the World. (N) Å

KC Undercover Bizaardvark Finding Nemo ›››› (2003) Albert Brooks. (G) Å KC Undercover Mariah’s World (TV14) Å Mariah’s World (TV14) (N) Å The Royals (TV14) (N) Å Mariah’s World NBA Basketball (6) (N) Å SportsCenter (N) Å NFL PrimeTime Å Basketball Å Guy’s Grocery Games (TVG) Worst Cooks in America (TVG) Cooks vs. Cons (TVG) Å Cooks vs. Cons Fox News Reporting Å Fox Report Å The Greg Gutfeld Show Å Hunger (5:20) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ››› (2013) Jennifer Lawrence. (PG-13) Å Lucy ››› (2014) Scarlett Johansson. (R) Å Lucy (2014) Scarlett Johansson. (R) Å Unleashing Mr. Darcy (7) Love by Chance (2016) Ben Ayers, Beau Garrett. Å Golden Girls Beach Bargain Beach Bargain Caribbean Life Caribbean Life Island Life (N) Island Life (N) House Hunters Transition of Power (7) Å The 44th President: In His Own Words (TVPG) (N) Å Pickers Wedding Crashers ››› (2005) Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn. (R) Å Liar Liar ›› (1997) (10:45) If Looks Could Kill (2016) (7) Open Marriage (2017) Tilky Jones, Nikki Leigh. Å If Looks Kill Lockup: Wichita- Extended Lockup: Raw Å Lockup Corcoran Meet the Press 50 First Dates ›› (2004) Adam Sandler. (PG-13) Å Bring It On ›› (2000) (PG-13) Obama: The Price of Hope (TV14) (N) Å Obama: The Price of Hope (TV14) Å Crashletes (N) Jagger Eaton Full House Å Full House Å Full House Å Full House Å Friends Å Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ››› (2000) (7:30) (PG-13) The Matrix Reloaded ››› (2003) (R) Å Alex Cross › (2012) Tyler Perry, Matthew Fox. (PG-13) Å Alex Cross › (2012) (PG-13) Gone in Sixty Seconds (6:30) Now You See Me ›› (2013) Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo. (PG-13) Å A Few Good Men ››› (1992) Tom Cruise. (R) Å A Few Good Men ››› (1992) (10:15) (R) Å Resident Evil: Retribution (7) Resident Evil: Extinction ›› (2007) Milla Jovovich. (R) Å Drag to Hell Horrible Bosses 2 ›› (2014) Jason Bateman, Charlie Day. (R) Å Horrible Bosses 2 ›› (2014) The Ladykillers ›››› (7) Water Nymph Bangville Mabel Married Fatty and Mabel And the Ship Sister Wives (TVPG) (N) Long Lost Family: Next (N) Married by (N) The Librarians (TVPG) (N) Å Gravity ››› (2013) Sandra Bullock. (PG-13) Å The Librarians The Brak Show H. Birdman Rick and Morty Rick and Morty American Dad Family Guy Å Family Guy Å Food Paradise (TVG) (N) Å Waterparks Waterparks Top Secret Beaches (TVG) (N) Waterparks Jokers (TV14) Jokers (TV14) Jokers (TV14) Jokers (TV14) Jokers (TV14) Jokers (TV14) Jokers (TV14) Reba (TVPG) Reba (TVPG) Raymond Å Raymond Å Raymond Å Raymond Å King of Queens Law & Order: SVU (TV14) Å Law & Order: SVU (TV14) Å Law & Order: SVU (TV14) Å Modern Family Get Rich (6) Å 8 Mile ››› (2002) Eminem. A Detroit man tries to achieve success. Love, Hip Hop Bones (TV14) Å Bones (TV14) Å Engagement Å Engagement Å Engagement Å Insomnia ››› (2002) Al Pacino, Robin Williams. (R) Å Dog Day Afternoon ›››› (1975) (R) Å The Game Plan ›› (7:05) The Abyss ››› (1989) Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. (PG-13) Å The Age of Adaline ›› (2015) Blake Lively. (PG-13) Å Berlin Station (TVMA) Å Dirty Grandpa Now You See Me 2 ›› (2016) The Young Pope (TVMA) (Pre- The Young Pope (TVMA) The Young Jesse Eisenberg. (6:45) miere) Newly elected Pope Newly elected Pope Pius XII Pope (TVMA) (PG-13)

Pius XII begins reign. (N) Å begins his reign. Å Homeland (TVMA) (Season The Affair (TVMA) Alison has Homeland urges Qasim to stop the sub- premiere) Carrie and Franny a sobering realization, and (TVMA) Å way tunnel attack. Å return. (N) Å ponders the unthinkable. (N) Starz Black Sails (TVMA) The hunt The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America Money Monster for the Urca begins. Å (2016) Mick Jagger, Keith Richards. Å (R) (10:42) Å TMC Paranoia › (2013) Liam Hemsworth. (PG-13) Å Traffic ››› (2000) Michael Douglas. (R) Å Show

Homeland (TVMA) Carrie

T V THI S W EE K THURSDAY

By Matt Cooper

“Jurassic World’s” Chris Pratt takes a break from being a big movie star to put in an appearance on his wife Anna Faris’ sitcom “Mom.” 9 p.m. CBS

SUNDAY President Obama reflects on his time in office in the new specials “Obama: The Price of Hope” and “The 44th President: In His Own Words.” 8 p.m. National Geographic Channel; 9 p.m. History Channel “Victoria” rules! “Doctor Who’s” Jenna Coleman portrays the British monarch, who reigned for so long they named an entire era after her, in this new historical drama on “Masterpiece.” . 9 p.m. KOCE They’re the “First Family of Hip Hop” and they don’t stop in this new reality series about the progeny of the couple who founded the rap-music label Sugar Hill Records. 9 p.m. Bravo Jude Law is the main man in the Vatican in the new series “The Young Pope.” With Diane Keaton. 9 p.m. HBO; also Mon. A case long closed gets a fresh hearing in the new six-part, three-night special “Is O.J. Innocent? The Missing Evidence.” Martin Sheen narrates. 9 and 10 p.m. Investigation Discovery; also Mon.-Tue. Keep calm and Carrie on: Emmy winner Claire Danes is back for a sixth season of the Emmy-winning espionage drama “Homeland.” 9 p.m. Showtime The world’s oldest rock ’n’ roll band is Havana good time in Cuba, Argentina, etc., in the new concert documentary “The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America.” 9 p.m. Starz MONDAY Mordecai and Rigby, we hardly knew ye: The whimsical animated series “Regular Show” airs its final three episodes. 6, 6:15 and 6:30 p.m. Cartoon Network

“Divided” the nation may be, but that won’t stop people on opposite sides of various issues teaming up to win cash prizes in this game show. 9 and 9:30 p.m. GSN JoJo Whilden Showtime

CLAIRE DANES re-

turns in the sixth-season premiere of “Homeland” on Showtime. Efforts to return Native American artifacts and sacred objects to the tribes from which they were taken are explored in the documentary “What Was Ours” on a new “Independent Lens.” 10 p.m. KOCE Sexy singles share a “Summer House” in the Hamptons in this new reality series. 10 p.m. Bravo TUESDAY Somebody boil some water! The triplets are due on a new episode of the hit family drama “This Is Us.” 9 p.m. NBC The newsmagazine “Frontline” surveys the U.S. political landscape only to find the “Divided States of America” in this special two-part episode. 9 p.m. KOCE; also Wed. New school year, same old “Teachers” as this sitcom returns for its sophomore season. 10 p.m. TV Land

“20/20” presents the Inauguration Eve special “America’s New First Family: The Trumps Go to Washington.” 10 p.m. ABC Send in the clown : Zach Galifianakis is still “Baskets” in the return of this quirky comedy. 10 p.m. FX Former late-night talkshow hosts Jay Leno and Craig Ferguson go chin-tochin on a new “Lip Sync Battle.” 10 p.m. Spike FRIDAY Broadcast and cable networks will offer live coverage as Donald J. Trump takes the oath of office at the 45th “Presidential Inauguration.” 8:30 a.m., various channels The fur will fly in the new drama “Frontier,” set in the Canadian wilderness in the late 18th century. “Game of Thrones’” Jason Momoa stars. Any time, Netflix A chart-topping R&B songstress sings her way from one end of NYC to the other in “Alicia Keys — Landmarks Live in Concert: A Great Performances Special.” 9 p.m. KOCE

Trash talkers: Hosts Erin Gibson and Bryan Safi will be “Throwing Shade” on politics and pop culture in this new satirical series based on their popular podcast. 10:30 p.m. TV Land

The new special “Puppy Bowl: Where Are They Now” catches up with some of the super-cute pooches who’ve participated in past editions of this annual special. 9 p.m. Animal Planet

WEDNESDAY

SATURDAY

Critics, schmitics! Everyday folks pick their favorite TV shows, movies, etc., at the “People’s Choice Awards 2017.” Joel McHale serves as emcee. 9 p.m. CBS

Iliza Shlesinger and Jay Pharoah are among the funny folks bringing the yucks in the special “Howie Mandel All-Star Comedy Gala.” 8 p.m. KTLA

“Bering Sea Gold” launches its 10th season. 10 p.m. Discovery Channel

Nia Long is the wind beneath Idina Menzel’s wings in “Beaches,” a made-for-cable update of the 1988 comedy-drama that starred Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler. Followed by a “Beaches Music Special.” 8 and 10 p.m. Lifetime

Seek and ye shall find a new season of the docuseries “The Story of God With Morgan Freeman.” 9 p.m. National Geographic Channel

The exploits of the U.S. Navy’s storied SEAL Team Six are dramatized in the new series “Six.” With Walton Goggins. 10 p.m. History Channel

“Once Upon a Time’s” Jessy Schram gets her “Birthday Wish” — we’d wish for more cake — in this new romantic TV movie. 9 p.m. Hallmark Channel

ARTS&BOOKS S U N D A Y , J A N U A R Y 1 5 , 2 0 1 7 :: L A T I M E S . C O M / C A L E N D A R

Liz O. Baylen Los Angeles Times

A FAIRCHILD compressor awaits use at the Village, where many records have been recorded over the years, including “Tusk,” “Californication” and “Forever Young.”

CRANKED TO 11

Forget that garage or bedroom studio. It’s all happening — still — at the storied Village.

BY RANDALL ROBERTS >>> It’s more than fate that has brought Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie to Studio D, the recording suite inside this one-time Masonic temple. It is history. ¶ “It’s almost eerie, you know?” Buckingham says. “Almost too familiar in a strange way.… A time warp. You walk into the bathroom, the tiles are the same. Everything.” ¶ “Stopped in time,” echoes McVie, sitting on a couch next to him. ¶ Buckingham and McVie, together to make their first duet album after decades of Fleetwood Mac collaborations, have returned to the Village Recorder, now called Village Studios, the same place where four decades ago they made their 1979 double album, “Tusk.” ¶ Inside the studio’s wood-paneled suite, which they helped design while riding high on “Rumors” royalties, Buckingham and McVie are prepping for a vocal session. But first comes a photo shoot. Beyond the mixing board on the other side of the glass, drummer Mick Fleetwood’s imposing kit stands at the ready. [See Village, F6]

BUILDING TYPE

The link between power and place

A new column looks at a city in transition from the ground up — and defiantly going its own way.

Exciting new short stories by Roxane Gay

By Anna James

CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE ARCHITECTURE CRITIC

It’s easy these days to think of California as a republic unto itself, declaring its political and cultural independence at every opportunity, zigging as Donald Trump’s America zags. But the state’s biggest city has at least one important thing in common with the country as a whole as we move into 2017: a sense of upheaval and dramatic flux, of old assumptions turned inside out. Los Angeles is in the midst of its biggest construction boom in decades. County voters just passed (with 71% approval) a salestax hike that will raise a staggering $100-billion war chest for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It’s no exaggeration to say that a new Los [See Open City, F3]

BOOK REVIEW

Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times

WILSHIRE GRAND spire is emblematic of the lofty civic goals for Los Angeles.

In her new short-story collection, “Difficult Women,” Roxane Gay is razor sharp on the constant contradictions of being a woman — the terrible mundanity and the terrible violence of it all and the way these things rub up against each other so fondly. In 2014, Gay seemed to be everywhere, with Time declaring it “the year of Roxane Gay” after the publication of a book of essays, “Bad Feminist,” and her debut novel, “An Untamed State.” The essays were exciting because she put a label on a debate that had been stewing for a long time. If the term “bad feminist” doesn’t sound that revolutionary from a 2017 perspective, in the 2014 maelstrom of heated arguments about what feminism means and who is doing it “right,” her collection [See ‘Women,’ F10]

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L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

ARTS & BOOKS WELSH EXPAT CATE LE BON DIVES INTO THE 1980S CALIFORNIA SOUNDS, F5

FROM 1949 AND TIMELY CLASSICAL MUSIC, F4

ESCAPING CHINA’S GULAG UNDER MAO BOOK REVIEW, F8

POP ART

POP & HISS

Desert festival changes direction By August Brown

Vitra Design Museum

GEORGE NELSON’S Marshmallow sofa is exhibited alongside paintings at Orange County Museum of Art’s “Pop Art Design” show.

How design popped If someone says “Pop art,” Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans or Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-bookish paintings may immediately come to mind, but a new exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art pushes deeper, looking at the influence of the movement on furniture, architecture and graphic and industrial design since the early 1950s. “Pop Art Design,” which runs through April 2, is organized by the Vitra Design Museum in Germany in collaboration with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. About 150 pieces on display include familiar paintings by Warhol, Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns exhibited alongside George Nelson’s Marshmallow sofa, Charles and Ray Eames’ LAR-1 chairs and the rarely exhibited stars-and-stripes patterned Leonardo sofa by Studio 65. The Newport Beach museum has supplemented the show with works from its collection, including Vija Celmin’s Pink Pearl “Eraser,” Billy Al Bengston’s “Birmingham Small Arms I,” Wallace Berman’s collage work and sculptor Claes Oldenburg’s “Wedding Souvenir.” “Often the story of Pop art is told from the American perspective,” senior museum curator Cassandra Coblentz said. “Because it’s organized by a European museum, it really brings an international scope and context to this movement.” One highlight is Pratone, a sculptural lounge chair from Gruppo Strum of Italy. Made of polyurethane foam similar in texture to a pool float, the piece resembles a giant patch of grass. A graphic design section of “Pop Art” showcases a mix of posters and album art from the Beatles, “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits” by Milton Glaser and the 1968 Mexico City Olympics as well as a New York City subway map and the title sequence from “North by Northwest.” “We paired Richard Hamilton’s images with a set of black-and-white dishes by Lichtenstein,” Coblentz said. “Looking at all these objects from an equal perspective is quite remarkable.” — Liesl Bradner

Andreas Suetterlin Vitra Design Museum

“TO SUSAN and Sansi From Sandro” by Alexander Girard is featured in the exhibit.

The lineup for this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was surely booked months ago. But there’s a prescience in its choice of headliners: Two radical, inventive black artists at the peak of their powers and influence as well as an English rock band devoted to reinvention and melancholy. Private pain, public resilience and music that feels necessary and new: This is the Coachella lineup we need right now. When a festival famous for its white-guy rock headliners picks music’s most visible black woman to lead a new charge, that’s important. Beyoncé is the fest’s first female solo headliner since Björk in 2007 and its first woman-of-color solo headliner to date (M.I.A. was second on the bill in 2009, and Arcade Fire is co-fronted by the HaitianCanadian Régine Chassagne). Beyoncé’s touring production and strict focus on perfection often keep her off the festival circuit. But the set feels like more than a tour stop for her. It’s a reminder that for whatever ugliness the last year in politics may have yielded, the best of pop music is moving in its own direction, and it’s one of inclusiveness, virtuosity and an increasing fearlessness. While Beyoncé was last year’s undisputed pop culture triumph, Kendrick Lamar has been using his platform to make some of music’s most startling, visually furious statements. His 2016 Grammys showcase — emerging shackled in a chain gang, departing over an image of Africa overlaid with the word “Compton” — was the best thing on the Grammys in years and all the more important for its political urgency. Lamar’s played Coachella before, but given the wide-open potential of his hometown’s biggest stage and the fear many of his young fans feel about the coming period in American life, his ferocity may be just the catharsis that the festival hasn’t seen since Rage Against the Machine in 2007. Even Radiohead, a multi-time headliner and one of the few rock bands that can credibly compete now in the strange sonic arenas of hip-hop and R&B, carved out new room in its sound to tackle this modern isolation. Ironically, it’s in a recording of one of its older tunes, the live favorite “True Love Waits,” that finally arrived on record on last year’s album “A Moon Shaped Pool.” It’s full of loss and despair but still tender enough to be someone’s first dance at a wedding. Twitter: @augustbrown

Collection Vitra Design Museum

THE SHOW includes Pratone, a sculptural lounge chair from Gruppo Strum of Italy.

Andrew Harnik Associated Press

BEYONCÉ will headline

Coachella in April.

L AT I ME S . CO M / CA L EN DA R

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

ARCHITECTURE

Good time to build on new ideas of terms. Some weeks I’ll look closely at a single new building or architect’s body of work, other weeks at a book or museum show on architecture or the production design of a new movie or TV series. The column will be a place to communicate with Times readers, publish Q&As with the most intriguing figures in the field and flag upcoming architecture events. Subject matter won’t be hard to come by: In the next few months alone we’ll see the opening of the new Wilshire Grand tower in downtown L.A. — the tallest building on the West Coast, if thanks only to its spire — and the Marciano Art Foundation on Wilshire Boulevard. Over the course of 2017 we’ll hear (or need to press for) updates on redesign efforts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Union Station, Silver Lake Reservoir and Pershing Square. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of Richard Meier’s Getty Center and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, as well as the 150th birthday of Frank Lloyd Wright. Airbnb, Y Combinator, Google spinoff Sidewalk Labs and other tech giants have launched initiatives that will move them directly into the realm of architecture and urban planning. And in making plans to spend that $100 billion, Metro will take its place among the most important patrons of public architecture and urban design in Los Angeles history, hardly a role the agency has embraced. As much as it will have a natural Southern California and West Coast focus, the column is also meant to boost a national and international conversation about contemporary architecture. The profession finds itself at a pivotal moment, having finally moved past the obsession with celebrity architects and icon-making that defined it for the better part of two decades. Now a rising generation of architects is shaping new priorities for the field, paring down the forms of their buildings even as they broaden their social,

wHY

A RENDERING of one of the gallery spaces in the Marciano Art Foundation, opening on Wilshire Boulevard.

political and environmental goals. Their work needs more attention and sharper analysis. There’s no manifesto here to launch the column, no call for a radical rethinking of architecture criticism. But it’s become clear in recent weeks that we desperately need, at the very least, to get a better handle on the relationship between power and place: between metropolitan centers like Los Angeles and London, which increasingly see themselves as city-states, and the pull of nostalgic, often baldly racist nationalism; between a vision of infrastructure vulnerable to being looted by profiteers versus a sturdier notion of public works; and between two very different contemporary expressions of the collective, the hopeful kind we’ve recently seen filling the streets of Seoul and Mexico City and the trollish kind capable of flooding, if not drowning, online culture. If your definition of the field is elastic enough — and I hope to use this space to stretch mine as far as it will reasonably go — architecture can help you think in new ways about every one of those issues. In that sense it’s a sort of universal key. Or at least a way to pick more than one lock at the same time.

WINNER OF 4 TONY AWARDS B E S T M U S I C A L R E V I VA L INCLUDING

Jose Llana and Laura Michelle Kelly. Photo by Matthew Murphy

[Open City, from F1] Angeles — taller and less suburban, with a dramatically expanded transit network — is taking shape. Its emergence, though, has provoked a backlash that from certain angles looks a lot like an existential crisis. On the same Tuesday in March that will see Mayor Eric Garcetti facing no real opposition for reelection, L.A. voters will consider Measure S (once known as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative), which calls for a two-year moratorium on major new development projects. Its backers say new construction is out of control — and out of scale with historically low-rise Los Angeles. What they can’t quite bring themselves to say is that the measure itself is an expression of mourning for an L.A. that is already dead, a city of single-family subdivisions, highway construction, discriminatory zoning and free parking that worked (to the degree that it ever did) only as long as the region continued to sprawl voraciously at the edges. A few days from now in Washington, a New York City real-estate developer — a man who has feuded publicly with architecture critics throughout his career, campaigned on a promise to build a border wall and may spurn the insufficiently gilded White House as a primary residence — will be sworn in as president. His strongest electoral support came from parts of the country that have been drained of jobs and investment as America’s coastal cities have boomed. Los Angeles is rediscovering its sense of civic ambition even as President-elect Donald Trump seems ready to turn the country inward and exploit, if not provoke, tensions with foreign powers. L.A. is a city on the verge in a nation that may begin to feel consistently on the brink. For all those reasons it seems a good moment to announce that I’ll be appearing every week in this section, writing a column that will consider contemporary architecture on the broadest

christopher.hawthorne @latimes.com Twitter: @HawthorneLAT

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CLASSICAL MUSIC

A revival that has relevance A race-themed work not performed in L.A. for 67 years is back for a Black Lives Matter era. By Catherine Womack When Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s hit 1949 Broadway production of “Lost in the Stars” went on a nationwide tour, black audience members in many Southern cities were required to watch the musical from segregated balconies — a reality that must have felt particularly cruel given the work’s story line. Set in apartheid-era South Africa, “Lost in the Stars” is based on Alan Paton’s novel “Cry, the Beloved Country.” Weill and Anderson chose the book as the subject of their operatic Broadway play specifically because its African story line so directly addressed the realities of a still-segregated America. In Los Angeles, one of the more progressive stops on that 1950 tour, audience members were racially integrated. That performance –– produced by the long-defunct Los Angeles Civic Light Opera at the historic Philharmonic Auditorium at 5th and Olive streets –– is believed to be the last time L.A. audiences could see a professional production of “Lost in the Stars” until now. On Jan. 28 and 29, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, in partnership with the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA and the New York-based SITI Company, will bring “Lost in the Stars” to life in L.A. for the first time in 67 years. The performances will take place at UCLA’s Royce Hall and will mark the first time the chamber orchestra has produced a fully staged musical theater work. The production will also serve as the climactic conclusion to the orchestra’s three-week “Lift Every Voice” series. L.A. is not alone in neglecting Weill’s final composition for stage. Unlike Weill favorites like “The Threepenny Opera,” “Lost in the Stars” has rarely been produced. Worldwide, fewer than a dozen revivals have been staged during the last seven decades. The orchestra’s music director, Jeffrey Kahane, said there were good reasons why the work has been largely shelved. For starters, it is a complex piece to cast and produce. A sort of hybrid play-musical-opera, it features equally demanding speaking and singing roles, and it traditionally requires a racially split cast (half black and half white). “I don’t really know what it is,” SITI director Anne Bogart joked. “It demands operatic singing, but it also demands acting in the way a Bertolt Brecht play would, and it demands great choral singing, too. I don’t really know whether it’s an opera or a musical or a piece of po-

Photographs by

Genaro Molina Los Angeles Times

MEMBERS of the SITI Company in “Lost in the Stars,” which is part of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra’s “Lift Every Voice” series.

‘Lost in the Stars’ Where: Royce Hall at UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles When: 8 p.m. Jan. 28, 7 p.m. Jan. 29 Tickets: Start at $25 Information: (213) 622-7001, www.laco.org

MUSIC DIRECTOR Jeffrey Kahane conducts musicians with

the orchestra and Anne Bogart directs actors with SITI group. litical activism. It’s really a hybrid. That’s just one of the things that makes it extraordinary.” L.A. Chamber Orchestra and Kahane are casting the operatic roles and handling the musical details, while Bogart and actors from her company are managing the theatrical elements. Another reason why the work may have been passed on for so long: It is somewhat stylistically antiquated.

“It’s a Broadway show from the 1940s,” Kahane said, “and so there are certain aspects of it that I suppose one could take exception to because of the sort of old-fashioned nature of it. Some people might think it is a little overly simplistic or sentimental.” But the bones of the work — its story, subject and songs — stand the test of time, he said. “It was an act of tremendous courage in 1949 for these two men,

against all odds, to put on a Broadway play about apartheid,” Kahane said. “It is still a work of incredible power. The score has some unbelievably beautiful music, including the title song, which really is one of the greatest songs ever composed for Broadway.” Bogart said she “flipped out” when Kahane introduced her to the piece. She found the music extraordinary, the story heartbreaking and the issues it addresses incredibly pertinent. “It is so much about Black Lives Matter,” Bogart said. “I couldn’t imagine working on a more relevant piece. And the idea of doing it with a number of different communities — my SITI Company actors, Jeffrey Kahane and LACO, the really great African American opera singers and the community choirs — I couldn’t think of a better

way to spend January in 2017.” The 2016-17 season marks Jeffrey Kahane’s last as LACO’s music director and this production, along with the rest of the “Lift Every Voice” series, is a passion project years in the making for the conductor-performer. At the heart of Kahane’s musical send-off is a devotion to collaboration and community. Kahane said his orchestra owes a huge debt of gratitude to CAP UCLA executive and artistic director Kristy Edmunds, who connected him with Bogart and SITI and supported the project from Day 1. “This really is an amazing threeway partnership,” Kahane said. “And we have an unbelievable cast. Having the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in the pit is also going to lend it something extra special.” Bogart is equally as excited by the collaborative elements of this production and is hopeful that the sense of community fostered on stage will be infectious. “It’s a piece that is made by many different communities,” she said, “and I hope that in the audience there will be people from many different backgrounds and interests. My hope is that this will bring us all together.” calendar@latimes.com

Giving voice to the fight for equality A composer had a civil rights activist in mind when he wrote ‘I Will Not Remain Silent’ concerto.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra What: Program includes Bruce Adolphe’s “I Will Not Remain Silent” and Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins” When: 8 p.m. Saturday at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale; and 7 p.m. Jan. 22 at UCLA’s Royce Hall, 340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles Tickets: Start at $27 Information: (213) 622-7001, www.laco.org

By Catherine Womack “America must not remain silent” — that was civil rights activist Rabbi Joachim Prinz’s plea at the 1963 March on Washington. “Bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem,” he declared in a speech that immediately preceded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s. “The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.” Composer Bruce Adolphe had that speech in mind when he wrote “I Will Not Remain Silent,” a vividly metaphorical two-movement violin concerto loosely based on Prinz’s life. The concerto will receive its West Coast premiere on Saturday and Jan. 22 by the L.A. Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Jeffrey Kahane as part of the orchestra’s three-week “Lift Every Voice” series exploring courage and compassion. Violinist Daniel Hope is the soloist. Saturday also marks the date of the Women’s March on Washington, a coincidence that feels eerily prescient to the concerto’s composer. “When I first composed the piece [in 2014], I didn’t expect that its message would seem as relevant as it suddenly seems,” Adolphe said last week. “This piece suddenly has a power to it that is very appropriate to that weekend and to the times that seem to be ushering in, and I can’t say I’m happy

Barbara Luisi BaLu Photography

“I DIDN’T expect that its message would seem as relevant as it

suddenly seems,” composer Bruce Adolphe says of his concerto.

about that.” Adolphe originally composed the piece in commemoration of Prinz’s life and activism. The composer first learned about Prinz through a personal connection:

The rabbi was a relative of Adolphe’s wife. (When Adolphe and his wife were married, Joachim Prinz’s son, Jonathan Prinz, performed the ceremony.) As a Jewish American with a deep interest in

history and human rights, Adolphe was drawn to Prinz’s story of outspoken resistance to Nazism and the rabbi’s fervent civil rights activism as an American émigré. In “I Will Not Remain Silent,” the violin personifies Prinz’s voice, struggling against an orchestra that represents Nazi Germany in the first movement and civil rights era America in the second. In writing the violin’s lines, Adolphe drew inspiration from the Jewish cantorial music he grew up with, infusing the soloist’s part with the kind of modal tonality, rhythmic freedom and emotional qualities listeners will recognize as distinctly Jewish. “There’s an ethnic identity that is immediately understandable,” Adolphe said, pointing to the stylistic traditions of Jewish violinists like Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman and Yehudi Menuhin. At the end of the first movement, Adolphe said, “the violin is striving to say something and the orchestra is congealed, basically,

into a big fist. It’s trying to smash the violin, and it produces a very irregular, completely unpredictable series of hard blows. But the violin does not get crushed, and it remains the last note of the movement.” In the second movement, a texture dominated by the inflection of black American spirituals and jazz music is regularly interrupted by violence, again delivered forcefully by the orchestra. “The march to freedom and happiness is continually interrupted by the texture of the music being destroyed,” Adolphe said, “but it keeps coming back together.” The end of the second movement is less conclusive than the first. There’s a sense of hope as well as fear. Adolphe said he placed a musical question mark at the end of the piece because he felt it would be incorrect to end the piece triumphantly. The pursuit of equality and justice in America is not over. Violinist Daniel Hope said he appreciated the open-endedness of the concerto’s final moments. “We’re living in a very interesting time,” he said, “and so the question of how you perceive the piece very much depends on one’s own perception of how one sees the world. It’s about a struggle, and it’s about [whether we] succeed in that struggle.” For Hope, part of the piece’s appeal is the light it sheds on Prinz’s life. “There are so many stories out there. We know so few of them,” he said. “When they are given wings, in this case musical wings, it’s something very powerful, very emotional.” calendar@latimes.com

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POP MUSIC

DRUMMER Tamar Barzilay takes a break outside the studio, in an old Masonic temple.

Photographs by

Liz O. Baylen Los Angeles Times

JEFF GREENBERG surveys his domain, which he took over in the ’90s, cleaned up and renamed Village Studios. Greenberg believes the reason the Village has succeeded is simple: “Professionals like being around other professionals.”

Humming with history, music

[Village, from F1] McVie’s lyrics are piled on a music stand not far from Buckingham’s amp and guitar. In an isolation room is a baby grand piano. A scrum of colleagues facilitate needs of the longtime bandmates, Buckingham in blue jeans, a black leather jacket and flip flops, McVie in jeans, a T-shirt and a blazer. “It feels like coming home,” she says. Reaching to touch Buckingham’s arm, McVie explains the circumstances that led her to write songs for the album that’s brought them back to the Village. “When I bumped into Mick and you guys,” she says, “I thought, ‘Yeah, let’s see what I could cough up.’ ” She sent him demos and, combined with material Buckingham had been working on with other members of Fleetwood Mac, decided to return to Studio D. Buckingham smiles. “Not only is this room sort of a home away from home because of the history,” he says, “it’s also something we had a little bit of a hand in helping to create.” “Tusk” devotees know that across a year of work, Fleetwood Mac made Studio D its clubhouse during the album’s extended, expensive and drug-fueled gestation. That Buckingham and McVie have come back to the Village has a certain symmetry — it connects the band’s and the facility’s wild past and its gussied-up present. In an adjoining room, the Village’s owner, Jeff Greenberg, is making sure everyone is comfortable. Fleetwood Mac may have made history here, but Greenberg saved the Village, and he knows how much has changed in the recording studio industry since “Tusk.” Pop and hip-hop producers now make beats using laptops and headphones. Would-be bedroom pop stars can turn YouTube-quality tracks into viral hits. By contrast, the imposing brick building, constructed in 1922 as a Masonic temple, later the West Coast headquarters of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s meditation empire, is a wonder of permanence. Within these walls, so much enduring music has been put to tape, a lot of it celebrated through gold records on the walls of its many hallways. The space seems to hum with history. Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,”

GOLD RECORDS line a hallway at the Village. Everybody from Bob Dylan to Fleetwood Mac to John Mayer has recorded here.

Heart’s “Barracuda,” Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody” and much of Steely Dan’s classics were recorded or mixed here. The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan holed up at the Village to build “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” Both the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” and the music for Showtime’s David Duchovny TV series of the same name were made at the studio. Few of the millions of commuters zipping by on the 405 a few blocks to the east know that the film scores for “Toy Story,” “Cars” and “WALL-E” were set to tape (or hard drive) here. Soundtracks for Whitney Houston’s “The Bodyguard,” “Dirty Dancing,” “Moulin Rouge” and many more moved through these mixing boards. T Bone Burnett regularly uses the place, doing the

scores for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “Crazy Heart” here. The Band and Martin Scorsese worked on “The Last Waltz” under this roof.

Think about tomorrow

But the Village doesn’t only look back. On this December day, the place is buzzing with creativity. In Studio F, actor and comedian Cheech Marin is recording the audiobook of his forthcoming autobiography, “Cheech Is Not My Real Name … but Don’t Call Me Chong!” A team of pop songwriters — Nate Campany, Nico Hartikainen and Georgia Ku — brainstorms during a writing session in Studio B — the same spot where Supertramp did “Breakfast in America.” Among the young writers’ individual credits are composing tracks

for pop stars including Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen and Tove Lo. Hotshot session bassist Tal Wilkenfeld, who has worked with artists including Prince, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, is recording her own songs down the hall in another of the facility’s four studios. The Village can handle up to nine simultaneous sessions and regularly hosts private concerts, listening sessions and live events for KCRW-FM (89.9) and Spotify. Owner Greenberg, whose striking mane of gray-brown hair would make men half his age envious, treats those making music within his 25,000-square-foot domain with the grace of a violinist cradling a Stradivarius. Peeking his head in, at first like

a high school principal, Greenberg enters the studio where Marin is at work and then comments with mock outrage, “I just want to say one thing: Of all the people on Earth, this guy has not been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, goddammit.” Marin laughs, echoing the outrage. He and comedy partner Tommy Chong recorded at least one of their classic albums at the Village back in the day — “Do you know which ones?” Marin asks. “I can’t remember, because it’s all a blur.” Calling the process of recording his audiobook “tedious,” Marin nevertheless hopes to engage potential listeners. “I picture somebody listening to it while traveling in a car from here to Denver,” he says. “You want to entrance them into the story, so

MICROPHONES, top, are kept in a special locker room. Else-

where at the Village, Tal Wilkenfeld, above, works on her album. there’s a lot of acting out.” Continuing his tour of the studios he’s spent the last two decades roaming and renovating, Greenberg walks into a room and says, “This is the piano Tom Newman did ‘Shawshank’ on.” A whirlwind of a man who bought the place in1995 after working as Rick Springfield’s agent at ICM, helping to launch skateboarding as a professional sport and booking and promoting the Greek Theatre under Nederlander Concerts, Greenberg has revitalized the Village. The man can spin yarns all day about growing up in Los Angeles, casually dropping in a stories about the guy who produced Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon jump or being dressed down by Ann-Margret for misidentifying her as Ann.

“My staff has a trick. Just touch your finger to your nose and I’ll shut up,” he advises at one point. The Village Recorder was a dump when Greenberg assumed control, he says. “There was garbage floor to ceiling on the second and third floor.” The gold records, however, told a different story. “I saw Supertramp, ‘Breakfast in America’ on the wall and I said, ‘OK, let’s give it a shot.’ ” Greenberg, in partnership with Grammy-winning sound engineerpartner Al Schmitt (Miles Davis, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke), cleaned out the garbage, filled it with gear and renamed it the Village Studios. Their timing wasn’t great. In the mid-1990s, the studio business was shifting away from massive complexes as less expensive

CHRISTINE McVIE and Lindsey Buckingham relax during recording of their first duet album.

multi-track home recording upended the business.

The tales it could tell

Greenberg believes the reason the Village has succeeded is simple: “Professionals like being around other professionals.” Guitarist and songwriter John Mayer keeps a studio on the second floor, one of the most successful of a community of musicians who regularly book time at the Village. The Band’s Robbie Robertson has worked on and off at the Village since the 1970s, and Studio Ed is home to Grammy-winning producer and engineer Ed Cherney. On the third floor, in a former musical instrument storage space once occupied by, among others, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, pop songwriter Noel Zancanella is meeting with a few would-be collaborators. When Danny Elfman rented the space, he renamed it Muerte Surgical Instruments. Zancanella, whose homey suite feels like a secret clubhouse, started as a Village coffee boy under Greenberg. He rose to assistant engineer, struck out on his own and has since co-written or coproduced hits for Taylor Swift, OneRepublic and Maroon 5. After his success, Zancanella debated building a home studio at his place in Venice. He opted for the Village instead. “It’s just a whole different vibe,” he says, relaxing on his couch. “It’s so much more epic, and people really take it seriously.” The bonus: “You just know that you’re going to probably run into somebody weird.” “I’ve had sex on the roof,” former Sex Pistol Steve Jones says matter-of-factly a few hours later in the Village kitchen, waiting for take-out soup to arrive before an audiobook session for “Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol.” When he was recording his album “Mercy” at the Village in the late 1980s, Jones says he ended up in a 20-minute conversation with George Harrison. Jones’ takeaway? “He was a nice dude.” “There’s something about these Masonic places,” Jones says. “I think they leave a spirit behind.” The space’s rise is in no small part because of Village Recorder founder George “Geordie” Hormel. He bought the building in 1969 while the Maharishi was holding meditation sessions there. A pianist and studio technician, Hormel in the 1950s led a Hollywood musical trio backing entertainer Pat Collins, known as the “Hip Hypnotist,” while writing songs that were used in hit TV shows, including “Leave It to Beaver,” “Rin Tin Tin” and “Lassie.” Not that he needed the money. Hormel, briefly married to actress Leslie Caron (“An American in Paris,” “Gigi”), bought the building in 1969 with funding from his family’s

fortune as owners of Hormel Meats and its moneymaking Spam division. With big ideas and much gusto, Hormel had impeccable timing. Naming it the Village Recorder, he equipped the spot with high-tech gear as major labels were booking the kind of big-budget projects required of post-Beatles studio bands. “Tusk” is said to have cost more than $1 million to make — about $4 million in 2016 dollars. Equally important, unlike the professorial Capitol Studios in Hollywood, where engineers dressed up for work, the Village Recorder under Hormel turned a blind eye to the various drug-fueled excesses of the time. That the facility survived the 1970s and ’80s — long before Greenberg had anything to do with the place — without an indictment is as notable as it is unlikely.

A special device

“He had a bookcase that would turn around, and on the other side would be all these drugs and stuff,” recalls his nephew Smokey Hormel, who learned about the rockstar life as a teen visiting the studio. He’s now a session guitarist best known for his work with Beck, Johnny Cash and Adele. Asked about the secret hideaway, Greenberg confirms its existence: “A button would push and a wall of mirrors would rotate around, and there was a passageway into a small bedroom.” In the bedroom? A hatch to a ladder that led to a secret exit. “It was well done,” Greenberg says. “Never in a million years would I have found it, I must say.” Speaking from his current home in New York, Hormel recalls going to the studio once with his dad — Geordie’s brother Thomas: “Steely Dan was in there recording, and we walked by another open studio and Sly Stone was in there waving a gun around and totally berating his — I guess it was his roadies — because someone had stolen his drugs. He was having a complete meltdown.” In fact, Hormel said he thinks cocaine helped fuel the Village Recorder during the debauched 1970s — and ruined it as addiction took hold. Specifically, he recalled that the Village had in its instrumental arsenal a piece dubbed the Timeline Continuum Device. Those in need of marching powder need only request daily rental of the instrument, a budget-evading means of making record labels foot the bill. The Village still has the device, Greenberg says, but no longer rents it out. Smokey Hormel ceased going to the Village in the late 1980s, a decade after “Tusk.” “That place had a lot of dark energy,” he says. By then, his Uncle

Geordie had moved to Phoenix. The studio languished. Hormel says he returned for a recording session after Greenberg and Schmitt rehabbed it, and he couldn’t believe the transformation. “They must have gotten a bunch of shamans in there to really chase the evil spirits out, because that place now has a completely different feeling.” Decades later, sitting in Studio D, Buckingham and McVie no longer require use of the Continuum Device. Their new project started after McVie returned from a solitary period spent, she says, “being a retired lady and being busy walking my dogs.” After overcoming a fear of flying that had kept her from traveling, she visited Mick Fleetwood in Maui and played a few songs with him. “The seed was kind of sown,” she says, “and I thought, ‘I wonder, could I do this again? And would my heart really to be in it?’ ” Looking at Buckingham, she says, “And, you know, a better thing’s never happened to me. I’ve reconnected with the band and found a fantastic person to write with. We’ve always written well together, Lindsey and I, and this has just spiraled into something amazing that we’ve done between us.” They’re nearly done with the album they’re calling “Buckingham McVie.” As they prepare for an afternoon session, Buckingham says “we’ve all lost a few brain cells since those days.” But the space itself hasn’t changed, even if under Greenberg’s guidance, like Buckingham and McVie themselves, the Village long ago got clean. Its survival matters, says mixing engineer Cherney, who was relaxing outside the Village with Greenberg in a couple of chairs near the valet station. A three-time Grammy winner who has worked on albums by artists including Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson and Etta James, Cherney had a frontrow seat when, virtually overnight, the big recording studios found themselves competing with backyard outfits built in converted Calabasas garages. At the time, Cherney’s wife, an executive at the Record Plant, urged him to follow suit. But he didn’t want his own studio. “I loved working at the Record Plant, Ocean Way and Capitol,” Cherney says. “That was the greatest part of the job, being with a bunch of the greatest cats in the world, with five, six, seven, eight people in a room and making music. Not songs written by a committee. But somebody with a vision.” randall.roberts@latimes.com

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BOOK REVIEW

Mao’s victim, freedom’s hero Xu Hongci’s ‘No Wall Too High’ is a moving memoir of imprisonment and escape from Communist China By Richard Bernstein

No Wall Too High

One Man’s Daring Escape from Mao’s Darkest Prison Xu Hongci, edited and translated by Erling Hoh

Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 336 pp., $27

Xu Hongci is a legend in a certain Chinese subculture: The estimated 550,000 people who were accused of being “rightists” in Mao Zedong’s purge of the late 1950s and spent 20 years or more as inmates of China’s gulag archipelago. In that large crowd of unjustly, illegally imprisoned people, Xu is the only person known to have escaped and made a free life in another country. Not surprisingly, his account of how he accomplished that remarkable feat is at the center of “No Wall Too High,” one of the most compelling and moving memoirs to emerge from Communist China, which is now appearing in English for the first time. The actual escape, which took Xu on a clandestine journey of many thousands of miles, is absolutely heart-stopping, material for a Hollywood thriller. But Xu’s book is more than that. It is the story of a deeply personal, intimate, crushing encounter with history, specifically the tumultuous Chinese history of the second half of the 20th century. It is also a story of remarkable human endurance, of a refusal to be crushed, of the will to be free. Xu was born in 1933, just as China was being engulfed in the long years of war and civil war that ended in the Chinese Communists coming to power in 1949. He was from a family whose middle-class circumstances were sharply reduced when Japan embarked on its full-scale invasion of China in 1937. When Japan was defeated and civil war loomed between the ruling Nationalists of Chiang Kaishek and the Communists of Mao Zedong, Xu, at the tender age of 14, joined the Communist Party. In the early years of Maoist rule, he became a student at the Shanghai No. 1 Medical College. He fell in love. The future looked bright. But then he fell victim to one of Mao’s more insidiously destructive gestures. In 1956, the Great Helmsman invited the country’s intellectuals to express themselves freely. “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend,” was the operative slogan. Taking the Great Leader at his word, Xu wrote a big character poster (the text of which is in an appendix to his book) raising numerous criticisms, among them China’s “mechanical aping of the Soviet Union.” For his efforts, Xu was declared a rightist and sent off to China’s gulag. Fourteen years and several prisons later, unable to endure the hunger, the psychological and physical torture, the hard labor and the humiliations of incarceration as a “counter-revolutionary,” he made his unlikely, hairraising escape. Xu’s story has a sort of happy ending. His escape was to Mongolia, where he married and had children. He was able to return to Shanghai permanently in 1984, when, with Mao dead, China “reversed the verdicts” that had been declared against Xu and his fellow “rightists.” He then wrote a 572page memoir, which was published in Hong Kong in 2008, shortly before his death of kidney cancer at age 74. This English version has

Xu Family

XU HONGCI , author of “No Wall Too High,” is the only person known to have escaped China’s gulag archipelago under Mao Zedong.

been deftly edited and translated by Erling Hoh, a Chinese writer living in Sweden, who has provided helpful notes explaining the historical context for each stage of Xu’s life. Among the many virtues of the book is the prickly richness of the people that Xu encounters along his tortured itinerary. There are the teenagers in Shanghai who introduced him to left-wing politics in the 1940s. There’s his girlfriend, who, after Xu was declared a rightist, yielded to the intense pressure to denounce him in the public “struggle” sessions he was forced to endure. There are his fellow prisoners, those who, like him, resisted and tried to escape; others who turned into lackeys, toadies and informants — like the one who denounced Xu for placing a stamp with a portrait of Mao on its side. There is a succession of jailers, a

rare one here and there who tried, at least a little, to mitigate the harshness of life in China’s gulag but many more who displayed a kind of sycophantic cruelty trying to impress highups with their revolutionary fervor. What Xu is describing in most of his book is life under the distorting, dehumanizing political pressure imposed by Maoism, which faced people with a kind of Hobbesian choice: You either played along and sided with the party against those designated as targets for revolutionary wrath or you risked becoming a target yourself. He tells a lot of stories illustrating this, including his own first, unforgettable experience of revolutionary violence when he was 19. He saw crowds whipped into a frenzy against enemies of the people, who were then publicly executed. Xu was nauseated. “But this was revo-

lution,” he told himself, “and if I wanted to be a revolutionary, I would have to toughen up.” Orwellian absurdity is the leitmotif here. Xu’s original sentence was for six years, but once he’d served that time (during which he tried and failed twice to escape), he was kept in prison as what was euphemistically called a “post-sentence detainee.” Then, during the great Maoist purge known as the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, he was sentenced to an additional 20 years as an “irredeemable reactionary element.” Tortured, beaten with a rifle butt, racked by hunger, paraded through the streets before a howling mob, his hands so swollen he could barely hold a pen, he was nonetheless forced to sign the court’s verdict. It’s hardly a surprise that, when he manages to cross the border into Mongolia, he feels “overjoyed to

have escaped once and for all from the grim, merciless clutches of the Communist dictatorship.” “China’s tragedy,” Xu writes in at one point, “is that it will never allow people to speak the truth.” Things are better in China than they were during the years of Xu’s ordeal, but his own attempt to tell the truth about the Maoist dystopia illustrates the accuracy of his prediction. The party has banned dwelling on the mistakes of the past, which means that “No Wall Too High,” gripping and inspiring as it is, has never been published in mainland China. Bernstein is a former foreign correspondent for Time magazine and the New York Times. His most recent book is “China 1945: Mao’s Revolution and America’s Fateful Choice.”

Nonfiction explores Darwin, war and LSD The National Book Review

The Book that Changed America

How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation Randall Fuller

Viking, $27

In this fascinating history, Fuller tells the story of how Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” found a national audience in the United States, through a series of conversations that began at a New England dinner party. Fuller focuses on the Transcendentalists in Concord, Mass., including Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott, and describes how Darwin’s ideas took hold at a time when the Civil War approached and knowledge of science had been piqued. Fuller, author of “From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed Ameri-

can Literature,” draws on his keen understanding of the period and artfully explains how Darwin’s ideas transcended science and advanced the cause of abolition — and continue to resonate today.

War Against War

The American Fight for Peace 1914-1918 Michael Kazin

Simon and Schuster, $28

Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown and editor of Dissent, brings a fascinating perspective to the war that is still known as the Great War. He focuses on Americans who advocated for peace, seeking to understand “empathetically but not uncritically” the thinking of those who were convinced America was better off on the sidelines. Kazin paints a portrait of the diverse coalition of realists and idealists who sought, instead of resorting to military

force, to create a new global order, one based on “cooperative relationships between nation states and their gradual disarmament.” He convincingly argues that the U.S. decision to join the Allies was a turning point in history and one that reverberates today — including in the form of the “surveillance state, which he notes was “launched during the First World War primarily to spy on U.S. citizens” who did not support their nation’s role in the conflict.

Letters to a Young Muslim Omar Saif Ghobash Picador, $22

In this short book Ghobash, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Russia, writes in the form of letters to his sons (born in 2000 and 2004) drawing on his own life and family history. “I want you to know about the things I believe

after more than thirty years of thinking about my father’s death,” he says. “His death forced me to try to answer a bunch of difficult questions; it shaped the way in which I view the world.” The diplomat states emphatically that “Islam is a religion of peace” and insightfully explains the Muslim landscape in the Arab world, as well as Southeast Asia, Central Asia and North Africa. Writing in challenging times, he makes a clarion call for perseverance, kindness and humor that will “create a ripple effect in our culture.”

A Really Good Day

How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life Ayelet Waldman Knopf, $25.95

Waldman has tried a dizzying array of prescription

pharmaceuticals and is a veteran of yoga and mindfulness training, yet she is still plagued by dramatic mood swings, chronic pain, anxiety and insomnia. She decides to try “microdoses” — tiny amounts of the psychedelic drug LSD, a treatment calculated so that she won’t hallucinate but will feel beneficial effects. This is not a drug memoir like “The Bell Jar” or “Girl, Interrupted” — Waldman is too funny and resistant to making herself the hero of her own stories for that sort of account. She draws on her experience as a federal public defender who is a critic of harsh drug sentencing guidelines and weaves into her personal story larger questions about the national drug policy. Ultimately, though, this is a winsome account of Waldman’s unusual way of dealing with her neuroses.

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BOOK REVIEW

Siemon Scammel-Katz

IN HER NEW NOVEL, “Transit,” Rachel Cusk blurs the line between fiction and reality, just as she did in her last book, “Outline.” Both feature a writer named Faye.

Listening can be hypnotizing In ‘Transit,’ a divorced mom gets an earful from the many people in her life, and the stories are illuminating By Laird Hunt

Transit Rachel Cusk

Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 272 pp., $26

If listening is an art, then the narrator of Rachel Cusk’s new novel, “Transit,” is a virtuoso. Faye, a writer, has recently returned to London with her two sons after a divorce. As she goes about rebooting her life, she listens to contractors, builders, old boyfriends, cousins, hairdressers, students, fellow writers, panel chairs, real estate agents, prospective love interests and more. Indeed, as in Cusk’s last novel, “Outline” (2015) — set in Athens and also narrated by Faye — the majority of this hypnotizing new offering consists of the sometimes-pages-long speeches of Faye’s interlocutors, who seem, once they have started talking, either unwilling or unable to stop. Sometimes, as in the equal parts hilarious and unbearable case of a logorrheic fellow writer named Julian, the speakers are already blabbing away when Faye encounters them, and all she has to do is sit back and let them talk. With others, like an initially reticent male student in Faye’s creative writing workshop, a bit of prompting at the outset is required and then a story pours forth. Still others, like women Faye encounters at her cousin’s house, require

something resembling ongoing engagement from Faye to continue speaking. But speak and speak and speak they all do. If this sounds like a recipe for sleep soup, rest assured: It is anything but. This is because everything in the novel is filtered through Faye, and Faye is as funny and moving and ruthlessly articulate as she is good at paying attention. She is also up to something. At first, we might be forgiven for imagining that her central aim is satirical: to expose the quacks and mansplainers who cross her path and the quirks of contemporary life that come to mind. This is part of the calculus in and great pleasure of “Transit”: “A friend of mine, depressed in the wake of his divorce, had recently admitted that he often felt moved to tears by the concern for his health and well-being expressed in the phraseology of adverts and food packaging, and by the automated voices on trains and buses, apparently anxious that he might miss his stop; he actually felt something akin to love, he said, for the female voice that guided him while he was driving his car, so much more devotedly than his wife ever had.” But Faye doesn’t just offer funny send-ups and skewerings of the computer-generated astrologers, ex-boyfriends and nasty neighbors who importune her; we also hear from people she clearly loves, like her sons, or those she feels both empathy and disdain for,

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

like a female student obsessed for odd reasons with the painter Marsden Hartley. Listening, and then reporting — to the page, to us — what she has heard, is a way of being for Faye, one she is actively, interestingly pursuing. As she says deep in the novel, “I had found out more, I said, by listening than I had ever thought possible.” One suspects that Cusk has too. Many of the things she finds out are strange and striking. Once she has gotten her workshop student to speak, we discover that he is not just the innocuous, empty bumbler being dominated by a fellow student that he first appears to be. His

pride and joy is a handsome dog, a Saluki, a breed renowned for its grace and ability to follow instruction and act as one with its pack. As he observes, about the day he first goes to pick it up and finds it among its fellows, “Whenever their trainer passed, the nine long, elegant noses would lift in perfect synchronicity and follow her movement like nine compasses.” The student goes on, in the wake of the subtlest prompts from Faye, to speak with depth and passion, channeling in turn, as Faye does his, the voice of the breeder, who first encountered the dogs on a beach in Oman: “There, running along the sand beside the frill of surf, was a pack of dogs. Their silence and lightness and speed was such that they appeared almost to be some kind of hallucination.” Another notable interaction also takes us far from the autumnal gloom of London. Conversing with one of the builders working on her new apartment, an otherwise laconic man named Pavel, Faye learns that he has built a house in a forest in his native Poland. “The house had enormous windows, he went on, that went from the ceiling to the floor. In every room — even the bathroom — the forest was so visible that you almost felt you were living in the open air.” Like Pavel’s, the house of fiction is made from materials both transparent and opaque. We don’t know, of course, what Faye, a fiction writer, is choosing to leave out or to

underplay or invent in her reconstructions. She makes no promises to us. Nor does her creator, Cusk, whose life looks from a distance to have more than a little in common with Faye’s. This is fictional autobiography or autobiographical fiction that refuses to name — and thereby limit — itself. A concomitant desire to understand or at least illuminate the mechanisms and limits of freedom moves insistently through the pages of “Transit.” It is not for nothing that Faye’s new apartment, whose floors and walls are being ripped out and replaced, sits at the center of the book. Faye’s interest transcends the very real concerns of how to balance feeling simultaneously unmoored and liberated of someone rebuilding her life after the messy breakup of a marriage. It seems clear that Faye has been thinking about and listening for useful information on this subject for a good while. When, in the relatively rare moments that Faye reveals what she has been moved to think about all she is taking in, she never draws easy conclusions, or offers explicit judgment, so we are free to draw and make our own. This kind of freedom is no small gift. It is hard to have to wait for Cusk’s next novel to see where Faye’s listening and readouts of it will take her, and us, next. Hunt’s new novel, “The Evening Road,” is out in February.

Irreverent tales of Arab-American women By Lorraine Ali

Him, Me, Muhammad Ali Randa Jarrar

Sarabande Books: 216 pp., $15.95 paper

One is a tightrope walker in a French circus who tries to lasso the moon. Another is a child who’s been kidnapped from a Pathmark in New Jersey by people kinder than her own mother. And another searches for the remnants of family in the bombed-out buildings of the Gaza Strip. There is no easy way to connect the dots between the mostly fictional female characters in “Him, Me, Muhammad Ali,” Randa Jarrar’s debut collection of short stories, except that they are all of Middle Eastern descent and all deviate from the usual perceptions many Americans have about Arab women. “Lost in Freakin’ Yonkers” finds a young, trash-talking Egyptian American pregnant with her irresponsible boyfriend’s baby much to the horror of her parents. In “A Sailor,” a woman who’s grown apart from her husband tries to make him jealous — or at least care — by sleeping with a Turkish soldier. “A Frame in the Sky” reads like an autobiographical account of Jarrar’s own family experience of being forced to leave Kuwait after Iraq invaded in 1990. Jarrar, in her late 30s, is the American-born daughter of Palestinian and Egyptian parents and grew up in the Persian Gulf, Cairo

and the East Coast. “Him, Me, Muhammad Ali” follows Jarrar’s award-winning novel, 2008’s “A Map of Home” about a girl growing up between the Middle East and the U.S. Her own experience of moving between continents and cultures is reflected all over “Him, Me, Muhammad Ali” through characters that always seem to be searching for that one place where they fit in. Often, they don’t, so it’s the nebulous in-between space where their lives unravel. In “Accidental Transients,” 29year-old virgin Dina describes life on a farm with her Arab family. Dina has disappointed her overbearing father, and even feels the burn when she’s grappling with her own personal crisis, like learning her brother is getting married before her. “I just pulled into the farm and was lugging my mannequin head into the house when I found out about this,” writes Jarrar. “I use the head when I teach at Moda College. My parents once hoped I’d become a scientist, marry an Arab (even though there are none around), pop out three or four kids, and win the Nobel Prize for science. Instead I’m a hairstylist and I teach on the side. Today’s class was on blowouts.” This collection is not flowery or sentimental, like many personal stories about the immigrant experience or Middle Eastern family life can be. It’s instead sharp and irreverent, sometimes even unapologetically crude.

RandaAdela Santana

Sarabande Books

RANDA JARRAR’S collection is ‘Him, Me, Muhammad Ali’

In the title story, the fictional daughter of an Ethiopian father and Egyptian mother tells how her journalist parents met while covering Ali’s legendary boxing match with George Foreman in Zaire. Her father credited Ali and Foreman’s sparring partner with his daughter’s existence: “ ‘If he hadn’t have pulled up his sharp and ashy elbows, Foreman wouldn’t have run into them and split his eyelid open. The fight wouldn’t have been delayed five weeks.’ As it turned out, those weeks were all it took for my dad to capture my mother’s heart and her prissy Egyptian panties.” Jarrar is hardly the romantic. Love between couples here is often

no more than sex, casual and flippant in the new world, or the unwanted consequence of an arranged marriage in the old world. When her characters are in relationships, it’s often in the context of a parent or family they never really had a strong bond with. It might be the resentment-filled space between mothers and daughters or the disappointment of fathers who are just far enough out of touch to remain a mystery. But when Jarrar’s sense of humor tangles with her character’s feelings of estrangement, the results are often charming and funny — in a bittersweet sort of way. Here’s how one character describes the social life of her immi-

grant father: “My dad’s best friend is an Argentine named Astor, a longtime fact checker at the Sun. Their friendship was a tango and involved very little verbal exchange. The played chess and drank coffee and maybe once or twice went fishing. Their dynamic: My father would say something — he had a way of saying everything as if it were the truth of God — and Astor would raise his full eyebrows, blink his eyes once, tilt his head and respond: ‘Yes, I remember that,’ ‘Not true,’ or ‘That never happened.’ I was twelve and recently arrived in New York City when I first met Astor at a dive on the Lower East Side. ‘Meet Astor. He is named after Piazzolla,’ my father said, and Astor raised his brows, blinked once, shook his head and said, ‘Not true.’ ” Many of the stories in “Him, Me, Muhammad Ali” have been published elsewhere, over a wide span of years (it has been eight years since her novel was published). That explains the inconsistent tone that is refined and detailed one minute, reckless and immature the next. And around half of these short stories don’t feel fully explored or finished. They are unique and original but sometimes lack a satisfying conclusion or realization. Or maybe that’s the point. Nothing is conclusive, or clear, or clean — especially when the world around you never seems to be your own. lorraine.ali@latimes.com

F10

S U N DAY, JA N UA RY 15 , 2 017

L AT I M E S. C O M /CA L E N DA R

BOOK REVIEW

Among ‘Difficult Women’ [‘Women,’ from F1] of essays came just at the right moment. Suddenly the phrase “bad feminist” was everywhere, and Gay managed to strike a chord on how complex intersectional feminism is. Not that these debates have gone away, but they have evolved, thanks in part to Gay opening up the conversation. “Bad Feminist” was published in Britain while I was working as the literary editor for Elle UK and although it was enjoyed in the office, it was ultimately not mentioned in the magazine after being deemed “too American” by my editor. But Gay’s reputation spread: Everyone was asking if you’d read “Bad Feminist,” and she was a veritable phenomenon in the U.S. So when I received a proof copy of her new collection of short stories from her U.K. publisher, I was interested in the way I am always curious about writers who elicit excitement when they create something new. “Difficult Women” is about many kinds of women; they vary in race, ethnicity, sexuality and age. It is about sisters, friends, daughters and wives, although those simple labels belie complicated relationships. Many of the relationships are with men, but the really interesting ones are about the bonds between women, and two of the most affecting stories concern sisters (“I Will Follow You” and “How”). These short stories have given Gay’s writing and ideas a way to transcend boundaries in a way “Bad Feminist” couldn’t and reveal her to be a writer as interested in form and language as she is in social commentary. The stories are explicitly or implicitly set in the U.S. but they feel universal in a way nonfiction never truly can, because it does not need to be mired in the particular or the accurate. Gay then builds on this feeling by the clever use of magical realism. There’s a distinct echo of Angela Carter or Helen Oyeyemi; dark fables and twisted morality tales sit alongside the contemporary and the realistic, although the majority of them have some element of magic or the surreal at play. There are common themes throughout the collection, but you never know what you are going to get next. Dark twists move to happy endings, brutality moves to romance from story to story. Although most are straight prose there are moments of narrative playfulness. “Florida” features snapshots of different lives within a gated community in Naples, and in the title story, a taxonomy of different types of women is used to great effect: loose women, frigid women, crazy women. Each woman is divided into sections: “What a Loose Woman Sees in the Mirror”; “What a Crazy Woman Thinks About While Walking Down the Street.” The respective answers are: “Nothing. She doesn’t look. She doesn’t need to. She knows exactly who she is,” and “It’s the presumption in the way he doesn’t hide his interest

Human Acts Han Kang

Hogarth: 224 pp., $22

South Korea is such a prosperous democratic republic that it’s easy to forget that the country was under military dictatorship as recently as 1987. Easy, at least, from the outside — in South Korea, everyone over 30 has lived through authoritarian rule, which might explain why millions have turned out for the ongoing protests against the current president, Park Geunhye, the daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee. Author Han Kang — who won the Man Booker International prize last year for her first novel translated into English, “The Vegetarian” — was born in Gwangju in 1970. In May 1980, just months after Han moved to Seoul, Gwangju became the site of a democratic uprising and a brutal government-ordered massacre. Han grapples with this violent history in her engrossing new novel, “Human Acts.” The book centers on the death of a 15-year-old boy named Dongho, killed with an unknowable number of others during the uprising that made “Gwangju” “become another name for whatever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been mutilated beyond repair.” Dong-ho is not among the first to die — he leaves the relative safety of his home to look for his missing neighbors and ends up volunteering to watch over the growing number of unidentified corpses in the municipal gymnasium. The book opens with these bodies — the first chapter is told from the

LOS ANGELE S TIME S JAN. 15, 2017

Fiction

weeks on list

1. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday: $26.95) A slave escapes via the Underground Railroad, imagined as a train running under America.

2. Moonglow by Michael Chabon (Harper: $28.99) A multi-generational saga of a family’s secrets, lies and loves.

3. Swing Time by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press: $27) Dreams of becoming dancers take two childhood best friends down different paths.

4. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Viking: $27) In 1922, a Russian count is sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel for the rest of his life.

5. The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown: $29) A dying magnate hires Harry Bosch to track down an heir to his fortune.

6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down by Jeff Kinney (Abrams: $13.95) Greg and Rowley try to make a movie after finding an old video camera.

7. Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine: $28.99) An African American nurse is taken to court by white supremacists in a racially charged case.

8. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis by Anne Rice (Knopf: $28.95) Vampire Lestat discovers the ancient sea powers of Atlantis.

9. Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple (Little, Brown: $27) The author of “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” offers a funny new novel about an imperfect mother.

10. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne & John Tiffany (Pottermore: $29.99) This script from the West End play finds adult Harry Potterworking at the Ministry of Magic.

Nonfiction

Jay Grabiec

ROXANE GAY topped bestseller lists with her essays, but her fiction may have broader reach.

Difficult Women Roxane Gay

Grove Press: 272 pp., $25

that makes her hold the sharp letter opener in the cool palm of her hand.” The story ends with dead women: “Death makes them more interesting. Death makes them more beautiful.” The stories are frequently about sex or rape but are not titillating or gratuitous; they are harrowing and unflinching. The scenes of sexual violence feel relevant, raw and true to life, and they are effectively contrasted against scenes of consensual, if rarely gentle, sex. Among them are a handful

of unashamed, unusual, love stories; “North Country” is about a tentative relationship in snowy Michigan and “The Sacrifice of Darkness” is a fable about the legacy of a man who flies into the sun. The longer stories are usually the most successful, managing to balance clever concepts with a more languid reveal. The short “flash” stories can collapse a little under the weight of the one idea or line that birthed them. Having said that, of a collection of 21 stories, eight were truly exceptional pieces of storytelling and I actively disliked only one (“A Pat,” the shortest story, which seemed a touch trite to me, standing out in a collection that mostly fiercely resists cliches and convention).

That she slips seemingly effortlessly among the voices of these different, difficult women is perhaps the core of why new writing from Gay is so exciting to so many readers. The stories feel like snapshots of real lives, even the more fantastical stories. It is a book about the violence done to women and the violence of being a woman. The book is dedicated: “For difficult women, who should be celebrated for their nature” but it is not quite a celebration but more of a history and a testament. It feels like the book we have been waiting for Gay to write. James is an author and journalist living in London who tweets at @acaseforbooks.

Taking on Gwangju, fictionally By Steph Cha

BESTSELLERS

boy’s point of view and takes place predominantly among these “silenced corpses, and that horrific putrid stink.” Dong-ho and fellow civilian volunteers Eun-sook, Seon-ju and Jin-su oversee the handling, transfer, and identification of the dead. There are logistical issues — the city has run out of coffins, for starters — but these are not what trouble Dong-ho. Instead, he asks, “Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi [the national flag]? As though it wasn’t the nation itself that had murdered them.” He wonders about the souls of the dead and keeps candles burning in bottles by each body. “Human Acts” is told from the viewpoints of different characters, all connected to Dong-ho. His lost neighbor — Dong-ho’s friend Jeong-dae, also just a boy — narrates after his own death, from a rotting pile of corpses stacked in the shape of a cross. Eun-sook and Seon-ju have chapters, as do Dongho’s mother and a writer who serves as a stand-in for Han Kang. As a whole, these sections make up a “psychological autopsy” — to borrow a phrase from a fictional professor at the edges of the book — of Gwangju and its victims, many of whom survived the massacre only to lose themselves in the tides of trauma. The result is torturously compelling, a relentless portrait of death and agony that never lets you look away. Han’s prose — as translated by Deborah Smith — is both spare and dreamy, full of haunting images and echoing language. She mesmerizes, drawing you into the horrors of Gwangju; questioning humanity, implicating everyone. The book is filled with state violence — murder and torture, as well as the softer oppressive tools,

Hogarth

like censorship and imprisonment — and its disempowering, dehumanizing effects. An ex-prisoner imagines the calculation behind the government’s campaign of brutality: “We will prove to you that you are nothing but filthy stinking bodies. That you are no better than the carcasses of starving animals.” Like “The Vegetarian,” “Human Acts” interrogates the relationship between body and soul, trying to find where, exactly, humanity resides in our animal forms. Han’s writing is literally visceral, luxuriating in the gleaming nastiness of the body. “Watery discharge and sticky pus, foul saliva, blood, tears and snot, piss.... That was all that was left to me,” says the former prisoner. “No, that was what I myself had been reduced to. I was nothing but the sum of those parts. The lump of rotting meat from which they oozed was the only ‘me’ there was.” The imagery is often gory in a terrible, unflinching way: “The woman in school uniform

wiped the face of a young man whose throat had been sliced open by a bayonet, his red uvula poking out.” Relentless mass violence goes a long way toward obscuring the beauty of individual life and raises questions about whether the essence of humanity is even worth pinning down and understanding: “Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species?” one character asks. “It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, in Kwantung and Nanjing, in Bosnia, and all across the American continent when it was still known as the New World, with such a uniform brutality it’s as though it is imprinted in our genetic code.” Yet “Human Acts” isn’t devoid of warmth, even if almost all of its moving moments grow out of deep suffering. Two torture survivors establish a friendship based on alcohol and shared trauma; a man cleans his brother’s skull, “polish[ing] the teeth one by one.” Han makes extensive use of the second person — more than a third of the book is written in this mode. This is a bold choice, and it doesn’t always pay off (“Your hair is cropped short. You are wearing jeans and ultramarine sneakers”), but the overall impact is unnerving and painfully immediate. Even the first- and third-person sections are sprinkled with second-person asides, addressing Dong-ho or other silent interlocutors who start to feel a lot like, well, you. At the end of this chapter, the ex-prisoner confronts the unseen professor interviewing him about his experiences: “So tell me … what answers do you have for me? You, a human being just like me.” Cha is the author, most recently, of the novel “Dead Soon Enough.”

1. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher (Blue Rider Press: $26) The actress revisits her “Star Wars” days, revealing an affair with Harrison Ford.

2. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis (Norton: $28.95) A history of Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and the birth of behavioral economics.

3. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (Harper: $27.99) The investment banker’s account of growing up poor in Appalachia.

4. The Book of Joy by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama (Avery: $26) The spiritual leaders share their wisdom.

5. Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: $28) Solutions on thriving amid accelerating technology and globalization.

6. Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: $28) Tactics, routines and habits of billionaires and performers compiled from 200 interviews.

7. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (Spiegel & Grau: $28) The host of “The Daily Show” recounts the challenges of growing up mixed-race in South Africa.

8. The Daily Show by Chris Smith and John Stewart (Grand Central: $30) The satirical news show as experienced by its staff and guests.

9. Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard (Holt: $30) The battles with Japan in the Pacific during WWII and the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

10. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (Penguin: $20) A bio of the Founding Father and first U.S. Treasury secretary.

PAPERBACKS Fiction 1. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman ($16) 2. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur ($14.99) 3. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins ($16) 4. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen ($16) 5. The Sellout by Paul Beatty ($16)

Nonfiction 1. We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ($7.95) 2. Barbarian Days by William Finnegan ($17) 3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ($20) 4. You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero ($16) 5. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly ($15.99)

Rankings are based on chain results and a weekly poll of 125 Southland bookstores. For an extended list: www.latimes.com/books

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