Movie Miento: LA MURALS on the Rise...

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Latino Book and Family Festival } CSULA

From: Desk, Ref [mailto:refdesk@sbccd.cc.ca.us]
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 12:26 PM
To: SBVC Adjunct Faculty; SBVC Full Time Faculty
Subject: Free book festival at Cal State LA

7th annual Free Latino Book Festival at Cal State LA - Oct 9 & 10, 2010. Easy to get to, off the Metrolink line!

Victor Villasenor, Luis J. Rodriguez, Sonia Nazario, Alisa Valdes Rodriguez, and over 100 more authors under the same roof!

The Latino Book & Family Festival is coming up in four weeks. With over 100 Latino authors presenting, this event is not to be missed!

Check out the festival website for more info: www.lbff.us


Thanks to Victoria Pak, SDSU, for tipping me and my readers to this cool gig!

Siqueiros Exhibit and More in Los Angeles!

Fante Square in Los Angeles

I am an old, big fan of John Fante! So a big gracias to poet extraordinaire Manuel Paul Lopez who sends word of a Fante development in Los Angeles; click the image for the story.

Of Conservative, Catholic, Tex-Mex Archbishops in the News

Devoted Catholic and de Sade scholar, Sam Wood, our newbie correspondent, sends in a link to an LA Times blog posting on Catholic doings north of the OC. Hit the euphoric curate to your left for the skinny.

Gronk is Up to Art in LA!!!!

The Gustavo Arellano Show on KPFK! April 1, 2010

Today's show on KPFK.org with the one and only Gustavo Arellano at the helm is already on the internets streaming; give it a listen and leave a comment! Thanks to all the listeners who wrote in to drop a line. As always, there are three ways to listen: podcast (xml), streaming, and direct download.

Josh Kun @ Steve Turner Contemporary

Beam Me Up Scotty! Leonard Nimoy on the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog

The 50th Anniversary Company of Angels Awards show in LA was a blast--I don't have time to post captions yet, but here are some snapshots from the show!


Culture Clash accepting the Company of Angels Award


Bill Nericcio, Ric Salinas and Onahoua Rodriguez


Leonard Nimoy, Lila & Bill Nericcio


Mrs and Mr. Leonard Nimoy with Ric Salinas, Culture Clash



One more photo--last Thursday, October 15, 2009, was my last day as Chair of English and Comparative Literature at SDSU; after a tumultuous two-years that saw our department rise, thrive, and evolve into a West Coast arts force, the toll of the budget cuts and increasing clashes with well-meaning and demented colleagues (they know who they are) left me with no choice but to bow out gracefully. Here's a final shot of the Chair's office @ literature.sdsu.edu! I look forward to my return to the classroom in January 2010 and continued success as the Director of MALAS, SDSU.




UPDATE

More photos from the red carpet at the COMPANY OF ANGELS gala!

Catching Up on Catherine Ramirez's THE WOMAN IN THE ZOOT SUIT

Beautiful Music from the City of Angels! Lawrence Downes in the New York Times

Eliding the Past: The Erased Murals of Los Angeles

Sherman Alexie and Charles Burnett Present Kent Mackenzie's THE EXILES @ Che Cafe, UCSD

A tip of the hat to my tribal co-conspirator in cinematic cultural studies, SDSU's David Kamper, for luring my eyes to a remarkable film restoration of Kent Mackenzie's 1961 noir/native classic The Exiles. The "look" of this film will thrill fans of Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique, and Georges Franjou's Eyes Without a Face. Roger Ebert's recent spin on the film is sobering: "How would this film have affected me in 1961? I saw Cassavetes' "Shadows” about that time, knew what the first wave of American independents were doing, would have known it was special. But now it has such a tragic poignancy. These people are doomed, unless a lucky few found sobriety. Their tears and blood have alike dried. The juke box music is so happy, and they move to it so dutifully. I am reminded of Scorsese's "Who's That Knocking at My Door" and "Mean Streets." Different ethnic groups, same dead end. When you can walk into a bar and call everyone by name, that doesn't mean you have a lot of friends. It means you have a fate, and are returning to seek it." But don't let Ebert's down denouement keep your eyes from the screen--sometime between 1958 and 1961 American indy movie magic was made and Mackenzie is able to capture through his lens the beating pulse of something new: Ethnic American figuration that forces us to rethink our right-at-hand stereotypes and replace them with the delicious and complex contradictions of noirish word and image.

Hit the image to screen the trailer!



The film screens this saturday at UCSD's Che Cafe! Be there!

"Next Stop Cucamonga": A Texas & California Odyssey!

Every now and then someone slips up and leaves the cell-door open and a professor gets to excape her or his host asylum to hit the road and go "on tour," sort of speak.

Ok, it's not quite the Frampton Comes Alive tour or Cheap Trick, Live at Budakan sans groupies, but it's as close as us mortar-board wearing, would-be / wanna-be, band-on-the-run, robe & hood sporting wonks are gonna get to that legendary life of tour-buses, champagne, and debauchery.

So it is with great pleasure that I let slip to occasional readers and random image-safari visitors that I am visting Austin (The University of Texas at Austin, UT, November 1), San Antonio (The University of Texas at San Antonio, UTSA, November 5), Los Feliz (at Skylight Books, November 7), Los Angeles (The University of Southern California, USC, November 8), and Santa Cruz (at the Felix Kulpa Gallery, The University of California, Santa Cruz, UCSC, December 7) in support of Tex[t]-Mex.

If you are near one of the readings come out and say hola! Mil gracias a La Bloga for the shout-out regarding this tour!

The poster (below) that Michael Buchmiller did for the Texas gigs is nothing short of amazing--gracias to genius Buchmiller for his savvy graphic eye. Guillermo Nericcio García, rogue, semiotic, imagemeister from memogr@phics designcasa, came up with one as well (left) for the USC reading. Each appears here in living color.

Arrivaderci!