A Truly Homegrown Concert on Friday by Premier Culver High Musicians

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"MY Generation" is a music showcase featuring the variety of talent in the music department of the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts at Culver City High School.

This concert, produced by AVPA’s Pink Elephant Music Company, will take place on Friday at 7 p.m. in the Robert Frost Auditorium, 4401 Elenda St.

Numerous Genres

Tickets are $10 general admission, $7 ASB/seniors/children/faculty, and are available at the door. No reservations are needed.

Students will perform in genres as diverse as rock, bluegrass and jazz.

Most of the pieces are original compositions by the students themselves.

The AVPA Jazz Ensemble will also perform, as will AVPA’s Chamber Singers, who will present the rousing gospel tune, "Plenty Good Room," which features several soloists.

Visiting the Underworld

Frédérik SisaA&E

In the wake of New York World Dance’s Gothic Bellydance DVD comes Bellydance Underworld, a production that comes not from the East Coast, but from our own neck of the woods, courtesy of the Hollywood Music Center. Right off the bat, before even watching the program, there are good omens aplenty. Ariellah – the highlight of Gothic Bellydance – as the dancer ushering in the program is most definitely one. The musical choice of Jill Tracy’s Doomsday Serenade for Tempest’s performance is another.

The good news is that Bellydance Underworld lives up to the anticipation. To start with, the production quality is dead-on and professional. Actual sets are provided for the dancers; oriental rugs, drapes, assorted ornaments. Combined with kinetic lighting and the occasional smoke effect, the dancers are offered atmospheric, evocative environments for their performances. In a similar vein, Vigen Khatchatourian’s direction certainly has a music-video flair – doubled images, quick cuts – but doesn’t get carried away by silly camera tricks and overly flashy editing.

Mothers, Don’t Let Your Sons Grow Up to Be Cowboys

Ross HawkinsA&E

Once upon a time, the American cowboy was a folk hero and an icon.

But that has all changed since the 1960s.

Today, the term “cowboy” is used to define somebody who “shoots from the Lip.”

New Meaning

If he actually uses a gun, he is just as likely to kill an innocent bystander as he is the villain.

Western movies began to change back in the 1950s when television Westerns were a staple on network television.

A Young Artist Who Reads the Paper in a Very Creative Way

Ari L. NoonanA&E

The artist Jane Castillo’s exhibit Curves, at the Bandini Gallery, 2635 S. Fairfax Ave., Culver City, just south of Washington Boulevard.

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 5, through Saturday, May 19. (310.837.6230.)

As cultural mavens and even ordinary residents have learned in recent months, our town is maternally nurturing a fragrant, expanding rose garden of art galleries.

Gore in This New Movie Is Unrelated to Global Warming

Frédérik SisaA&E

Two words describe “Hot Fuzz,” the latest film by the people who brought us “Shaun of the Dead.” The first is unprintable in polite society. The second is “hysterical.” Why is difficult to explain without spoiling the experience or taking yet another pedantic detour into how subjective humor is.

I could start with the basics: “Hot Fuzz” is superbly directed by Edgar Wright, offering zippy camera work that clicks with a dynamic editing style. The film looks good, flows well, and succeeds at being riveting from beginning to end. From a writing standpoint, Wright and co-writer Simon Pegg hit the nail right on the head, which is a rather obvious thing to say given this review’s opening paragraph. As for the performances, well, there’s certainly nothing to complain about. Headliners Pegg and Nick Frost demonstrate the same fizzy chemistry they shared in “Shaun of the Dead,” and are supported by a cast so accustomed to doing a bang-up job – need I sing the praises the Jim Broadbent? – it almost seems redundant to point it out.

Student Dance Soars During Culver High Spring Concert

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Nothing communicates like the art of dance. And the Dance Dept. at Culver City High School’s Academy of Visual and Performing Arts’ Spring Dance Concert—Dance OFF! VI—will prove it.

The three-night concert begins at 7 p.m. on Thursday, and resumes on Friday and Saturday in the Robert Frost Auditorium, 4401 Elenda St. Tickets are $10 general and $7 ASB/senior.

Two Art Openings, at Bandini Art and at S.B. London

Ari L. NoonanA&E

Two starkly different art openings of particular note in Culver City are happening —

Bandini Art

At Bandini Art, 2635 S. Fairfax, just south of Washington Boulevard, Jane Castillo’s new installation,Curve, opened last weekend, featuring a spectacular adventure in paper. She explores the qualities of shredded paper for the first time. (Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., through May 19. Call 310.837.6230.)


Theatre for Everyone!

Frédérik SisaA&E

When I arrived at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, I was a bit surprised by the usher accompanying her verbal greeting with its sign language equivalent. But the reason became clear soon enough. Sitting in the lobby, I saw it fill up with people holding conversations both verbally and in sign language. It all makes sense when we consider that “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” is a joint production of the Center Theatre Group and Deaf West Theatre.

Of course, I wondered how a musical, of all things, could be made accessible to both hearing and deaf members of the audience. Would they have an interpreter on the side of the stage, translating dialogue and song lyrics? As it turns out, the answer is more wonderful and inventive than that: The actors themselves signed their parts, in addition to speaking and singing. Bringing to mind the hand gestures of the classical Indian dance performance I’d recently attended, the expressiveness of the actors’ sign language and how they integrated it smoothly into their performances is the stuff of awe. Huzzah, then, for a bold production that fosters inclusion and accessibility in art.

Sorry, but Disney Ain’t Pixar

Frédérik SisaA&E

The difference between an animated Disney film and a Pixar film could very well boil down to this: Enough is just right for Pixar, more tends to be better for Disney. More sentimentality. More exaggerated and cartoonish mannerisms for characters. Just…more. Exhibit A is the villain in “Meet the Robinsons”: A bowler-hat, moustache-twirling villain lacking only a girl to tie to railroad tracks. But at least there’s something amusing, even sympathetic, in this rather goofy, none-too-bright fellow. Exhibit B just shows how easy it is to get carried away. The robot servant of the Robinsons, Carl, graced with extendable head and limbs, and prone to go-go-gadget silliness, is as trite and irritating as the animatronic robot greeting visitors in Disneyland’s Innoventions. Maybe Carl is intended to fill the comic relief role, but in a film full of arbitrarily eccentric characters, that’s not saying much.

A ‘12’ That Is Worthy of a 10

Frédérik SisaA&E

It’s a brilliant play, layering on a high-stakes courtroom drama atop the simmering character study of 12 very different men called in to decide the fate of a young man who allegedly murdered his father. And it’s a virtuoso production. The robust set design – a single jury room, complete with table, chairs, overhead lights, windows – casts the audience in the visceral and immediate role of fly on the wall. Richard Thomas and George Wendt headline the cast, but they all deliver equally brawny and magnetic performances. There actually is a great deal of humor, too, but not the kind of joking that makes a comedy out of the play. Instead, it’s the kind of humor that arises naturally out of the everyday absurdities and quirks that afflict people. It’s yet another way in which the play achieves a flawless pacing of tension and release, confrontation and compromise.