Blogcritics Author: Purple Tigress

Theater Review: Fahrenheit 451 (South Pasadena, CA)

Purple Tigress — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:35:23 EDT

Ray Bradbury's own scripting and his theater company's production shows promise, but the master of sci-fi short stories isn't the master of the stage yet.
A lot has happened in the world since Ray Bradbury wrote his 1953 Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury has adapted his novel for the stage and it is the current guest production by Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena. Bradbury's play starts slow, with some weak transitions, and yet there are some promisingly...

Theater Review: Don Juan (LA)

Purple Tigress — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:41:50 EDT

Don Juan gets his due at Glendale's A Noise Within. This is a sexy, lustful, and wildly funny revival of Moliere's morality play.
Lord Byron portrayed Don Juan as a victim of Catholicism's sexual repression and of women's desires, but in Moliere's version, Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, Don Juan is an atheist condemned to hell. The current production of Don Juan at Glendale, California's classical repertory theater, A Noise Within, maintains the integrity of Moliere's...

Los Angeles Japan Film Festival 2008 - Atagoal's Cat Magical Forest

Purple Tigress — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:47:18 EDT

Can a fat cat save the world from serene conformity?
This 2006 computer animated movie, Atagoal wa Neko no Mori directed by Mizuho Nishikubo, is about a boisterous cat whose morality is suspect, but whose passion for life saves the day. Based on a popular manga by Hiroshi Masumura, this screenplay by Hirotoshi Kobayashi condemns mindless conformity for the sake of peaceful existence. The title...

Los Angeles Japan Film Festival 2008 - Hula Girls

Purple Tigress — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:51:34 EDT

Can young girls and a tropical dance save a small mining town?
What do you do when your small, poverty-stricken town where the major industry is coal mining, is headed for financial disaster as the coal mines slowly close down?In the late 1950s and early 1960s, one town had the answer. They opened the Joban Hawaiian Center in January 1961. It was the first resort facility and theme park to open in Japan and...

Los Angeles Japan Film Festival 2008 - Tokyo Cowboys

Purple Tigress — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:28:52 EDT

Is it really still a white man's world, even in Japan? Saft's documentary is another "white man making his fortune in the Orient" tale.
There's a moment in the rough cut version of Tokyo Cowboys, supposedly a documentary of foreign men in Tokyo, that startled me, causing all my built-up understanding of the situation to come crashing down from the foundations carefully built up by director Daneeta Loretta Saft. Saft comes on the screen and we learn she was married to the guy,...

Theater Review: My Fair Lady (LA)

Purple Tigress — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:55:46 EDT

This gorgeous production provides a wonderful evening of tunes, costumes, and comedy. It's too loverly to miss.
If you haven't seen this sublime Cameron Mackintosh and the National Theatre of Great Britain production of My Fair Lady yet at the Ahmanson, call for tickets now. The run ends on April 27, although you'll have a second chance when it opens for a limited run at the Orange County Performing Arts Center from June 4 to 15. Director Trevor Nunn's...

Greening the Earth 2008: Till The Well Is Dry

Purple Tigress — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:27:04 EDT

The well is running dry, but so few commemorate World Water Day. What is earth without water?
Yesterday, April 25, I went to a re-enactment of Allan Kaprow's 1967 "Fluids," an event held in conjunction with a retrospective on Kaprow, "Art as Life" that opens at MOCA this weekend. What "Fluids" was is an art happening, 30-foot by 10-foot by 8-foot structures made of 50-pound blocks of ice. It had no...

Los Angeles Japan Film Festival 2008 - Classics and Comics

Purple Tigress — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:25:09 EDT

The Japan Film Festival in Los Angeles turns five years old and suffers from some growing pains.
The Japan Film Festival is historically five years old and suffers from some growing pains. Originally called the Chanoma Film Festival, it focused on films that focused on everyday life. Chanoma literally means living room. After all, samurai and geisha movies come over to the US. More recently, anime has become popular here. Films about everyday...

Let's Debate The Great Debaters

Purple Tigress — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:21:08 EDT

Is it okay to promote a stereotype or false assumption if you are black?
Is it okay to promote a stereotype or false assumption if you are black?That is the question that the movie The Great Debaters indirectly asks. Two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington directed and led a cast that included Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker in what is a moving story about the kind of odds faced by a small black school,...

Theater Review (LA): Orson's Shadow

Purple Tigress — Sun, 3 Feb 2008 11:01:05 EST

This polite history of backstage dramatics is given a light-filled, lively production at the Pasadena Playhouse.
The Pasadena Playhouse's production of Orson's Shadow is a provocative, behind-the-scenes look at stage actors, in this case famous ones. Egos explode in this well-acted celebration of theatrical fireworks and wit with dead-on comedic timing. Those who love movies might remember Orson Welles as a man whose early promise was killed by ego...