"Off the Beat"  by Dominic Hoffman - Cultural Beat

I saw a play last night at Sacred Fools Theater in Hollywood called  Puzzler.  It’s a play about secrets and the keepers of secrets. It takes place in present day Germany but the mystery it’s trying to solve happened some forty years ago. I was thinking while I watched it, that the best secrets always seem to have a bit of age on them. The longer a mystery remains unsolved, the more of it there is to unravel. Or in the case of this play, the more shredded documents must be reconnected. That’s what the job of the protaganist, Niclas Keller is and has been for the last 16 years - to reassemble shredded documents. Thousands of bags. Transcripts and photos from a darker period in German history. A time when everything was being recorded and everyone was being watched and the end result was the uninvited documentation of an entire people.  One in seven people were spies when the wall was still separating East and West Germany. After the fall of the wall, the public wanted to see exactly what was written in their files and the new open government accommodated them by hiring Puzzlers to piece the mass of shredded material together.

There are six actors in Puzzler. Three of them serve as a kind of narrative device, the other three are trying to figure out how much the other knows. They are all completely at cross-purposes. Or are they. It’s difficult to tell. Mysteries are by nature convoluted. Mark Bramhill who plays Keller and Ian Patrick Williams as his superior are two superb actors who guide us through this mystery that all takes place in the span of one evening. Keller’s boss has been there only three months. A student arrives to work with Keller. She will know him for only a few hours. Between the three, decades of mysteries abound and what becomes clear is that secrets are like lies. The more things one hides, the more things one has to hide.
Opens tonight at Sacred Fool Theatre in Hollywood and runs Thu thru Sat until Feb 19   


Animal Kingdom is an Australian crime family movie. The Cody family to be exact. It takes place in Melbourne and is a crazy mess of violence and family dysfunction. The matriarch, Janine Cody, loves her children, no matter what they do. That’s how I came to understand the title Animal Kingdom. This matriarch of a family of reprobates, miscreants and ne’r do wells, is like a lioness. Not concerned with morality, ethics, or any human or civilized concerns, she responds exclusively to loyalty, to blood. The instincts of the savage.

We follow the movie through the eyes of her grandson, a completely innocent but believable Joshua ‘J’ Cody, moves in with her and the felonious Cody family after his mother dies of a heroin overdose, and the movie takes off from there.

Joshua moves through the movie as the cool observer. He allows us to keep our distance from the violence. He is present. Never judgmental. Always simply living in the moment of whatever mayhem his family has placed him in at the time. And there’s lots of mayhem. This is simply his reality. The film revolves around him and his subtle response to the insane situation in which he has been placed. He is a child and it speaks to the circumstances that innocents are left in and how they deal. The proximity in which innocence can exist with madness, and ultimately triumph in spite of it.
This  a wild crazy and at turns violent movie that fits perfectly at the end of football season.

In video stores and at selected theatres.

Events:

Group Capoeira Elite

Sign up 310 902- 6318 / AMMS  Mondays & Wednesdays  7am-8am

Capoeira Elite Program 2010 - 2011

The Capoeira Elite Program is based on the traditions of the martial arts, culture, dance, music, instruments, history research, events, work shops, graduation, outdoor training, field trip to other capoeira schools and individual growth.

The mission to this program brings to the student so called Capoeirista, the status of a martial artist, advance learning abilities, mental, physical & social development, healthy benefits body, mind & soul, educational motivation, self- steem, respect and discipline.

The student will follow the rules of the teaching, learn all the techniques of Capoeira and improve the techniques to the best of their abilities, he or she will be reward on the end of “LEVEL1” by receiving a graduation belt for the achievements he or she accomplished and owned it.

AMMS Location 11671 National Blvd. West L.A.; CA 90064

Some exiting events coming up! Believe it or not... we are starting to work on our yearly

BRAZILIAN CARNAVAL! Save the date, March 5th, 2011... more information coming up!

Plus Mario Costa's CD Release on January 19th at Zanzibar in Santa Monica...

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SAVE THE DATE... BRAZILIAN NITES PRODUCTIONS presents 11th Annual BRAZILIAN CARNAVAL 2011 "EXOTICA" Saturday, March 5, 2011 8pm - 2am CLUB NOKIA / LA LIVE LOS ANGELES The BIGGEST & MOST EXTRAVAGANT CARNAVAL party in Southern California "A faithful replica of the real thing...sweet relentlessness and carnal abandon" - Ernesto Lechner, LA Times For more information and sponsorship opportunities call (818)566-1111 or email us at shows@BrazilianNites.com MORE INFORMATION TO FOLLOW...

http://www.brasilidade.net

Coming up

April 15-16-17, 2011 Coachella music festival

http://www.coachella.com