YOU HURT MY FEELINGS. Sometime in the future, a forensic anthropologist trying to understand human society in the year 2023 will wonder how it felt to identify as “bougie” in a world on the brink of collapse. How did people dance on the edge of that abyss? Did they really sublimate the pervasive sense of […]
The Miniplex
Posted inArts + Scene
Heroine Withdrawal
HIGH DESERT. Maybe we don’t need another detective series. Maybe every red herring has been fileted by now and it’s time to call it a day. I have watched a lot of TV. It has all been done. Around the time a psychic detective solved a murder by seeing through the eyes of a haunted […]
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Music Tonight: Saturday, May 27
Seattle’s Some Surprises is a dream pop outfit fronted by songwriter Natasha El-Sergany, whose tunes jingle and jangle with a pleasant and resonant hum. Let me break cover for a moment and take you through a walk behind the proscenium arch of the Miniplex, where I have in the lost, dewy past played music, served […]
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Music Tonight: Friday, May 26
DJ duo Hispanic! At the Disco returns to the Miniplex for what is all but certain to be a raucous night of cumbia, reggaeton, merengue and all points in between. I’m going to toss a dart at the clock and suggest that 9 p.m. is a good time to roll through and I’d pack at […]
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Live,Love & Death, Laugh
LOVE & DEATH. Like fish in a river, each of us have a lure that, no matter how clever we are or how much we want to resist its color and flash, will snag us every time. If you popped open my custom tacklebox, there among the action heroines, hauntings and heists (and makeover montages […]
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Not that Kind of Mother
THE MOTHER. Now that the Mother’s Day brunch dishes have been cleared, the bath bombs dissolved and hug coupons redeemed, let’s talk action movie motherhood. Wives and children are a civilizing force on action movie men, who put aside the weapons of war for family. Well, at least until someone kidnaps or murders said objects […]
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Margaret and Goliath
It should be abundantly clear I don’t participate much in the cultural conversation, at least not in any meaningful, modern way. The Editor has gone so far as to say I’m too much a recluse to qualify as an internet troll. Yet, rumblings and fragments of messages still filter through the roof of my bunker […]
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Music Tonight: Friday, May 5, Cinco de Mayo
Having never traveled to Mexico, I’m not too hip to this holiday, in the sense of how widespread its celebration is outside of my native state of California. However, my general aim in this column is to learn and share. One thing I do know is that Makenu is a fantastic local cumbia band playing […]
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Beau is Afraid and a Little Funny
BEAU IS AFRAID. I’ve long harbored pet theory (borne of petty resentment) about only sons of single mothers. Having observed them at varying distances for the better part of a life, albeit with inescapable preconceptions, I would say this theory is something more than anecdotal; it is still very much the product of an addled […]
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Music Tonight: Friday, April 28
At the Miniplex tonight at 8 p.m., Black Humboldt presents Los Angeles spoken-word poet, rapper, music producer and activist Chris Siders, who will be performing a rap set alongside his opening act ANTIMATRR, before continuing the show with some work from the rest of his oeuvre. This is a developing show with more performers to […]
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The B List
Because this is an era defined in part by unearned nostalgia, we still frequently refer to a certain type of cinema as “B movies” or, if our geekiness tends to anachronism, “programmers.” This calls back to a time when the movie industry was more siloed but also more disparate, when studios diverted resources and talent […]
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Fresh Blood
THE POPE’S EXORCIST. Most — nearly all — exorcism movies come off as nasty, pale hokum, and for good reason. The Exorcist (1973) towers over all of them, the alpha and the omega, a procedural examination that presents itself without cynicism and without any seeming agenda. It does the essential work of believing its own […]