Thursday, October 8, 2015
Green Day’s American Idiot at the Woodlawn Theatre, San Antonio.
When American Idiot opened on Broadway in 2010, it brought to the venerable St. James Theatre a radical new s…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:58PMTuesday, September 29, 2015
Leave it to Eli Roth, the king of torture porn, to lovingly resurrect another disgusting genre — the cannibal vomitorium atrocities from the ’70s and ’80s — with his new film …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:42PMFriday, September 18, 2015
Report and film reviews from the Alamo City Film Festival by our man in Texas, Kurt Gardner:
In keeping with its mission of showcasing films and filmmakers from around the world, the Alamo C…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:52PMTuesday, August 25, 2015
Made in 2013, but amazingly not receiving U.S. distribution until this month, Tom at the Farm is the fourth film by Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan, who made his first film at age 20 (I Kil…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:38PMThursday, August 20, 2015
Almost 60 years ago, Broadway audiences were shocked by West Side Story, an audacious piece of musical theater that dared to take on the subject of race relations. With Jerome Robbins’ fie…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 09:27PMFriday, August 14, 2015
Festival report by Kurt Gardner.
Of the many films I saw at the San Antonio Film Festival, which took place July 28th through August 2nd, a standout for me was a feature entitled Mome…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:19PMThursday, August 6, 2015
Of the dozens of shorts screened at this year’s San Antonio Film Festival, some really stood out in terms of execution, creative vision, and dramatic heft.
Here’s another selection of co…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:19PMWednesday, August 5, 2015
A silver-tongued convict on the run from the cops meets a young man trying to escape his past, and together they form an unlikely alliance on the highways of Texas.
The year is 1980, and Jak…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:58PMMonday, August 3, 2015
A variety of entertaining and provocative short films are being screened at this year’s San Antonio Film Festival from filmmakers all over the world. So far, I’ve had the opportunity to …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:20PMWednesday, July 29, 2015
One of the most highly anticipated films of the year, Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw arrives with Jake Gyllenhaal bulked up and ready to spar, but alas — Kurt Sutter’s cliché-ridden screenp…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:54PMTuesday, July 28, 2015
Director David Zucker, actor Sean Young, and stuntman Corey Eubanks are all scheduled to attend the San Antonio Film Festival, which takes place July 28th through August 2nd at the Tobin Cen…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:22PMWednesday, July 8, 2015
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Quiara Algeria Hudes’ Water By the Spoonful is the middle play in a Philadelphia-set trilogy that centers on Elliot Ortiz (Paul Ramos), a wound…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 06:41PMWednesday, July 1, 2015
The Deco District’s flagship theater takes on a Broadway behemoth, and the result is practically perfect in every way.
In the early 2000s, when Disney started mining its film properties fo…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:44PMMonday, June 22, 2015
Two different one-man shows at the Hollywood Fringe, covering two completely different topics, have something in common: excellence in performance and craftsmanship.
What Be G*d is Blessing
…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 08:13PMWednesday, June 17, 2015
Our newest Exit Review is a guest report from critic Kurt Gardner. Kurt is reviewing Charivari in Voyeurville, which is now playing at the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2015.
INFO:
Charivari i…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 02:56PMTuesday, June 16, 2015
Our latest Exit Review is a guest report from critic Kurt Gardner. Kurt is reviewing The Load-In, which is now playing at the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2015.
INFO:
The Load-In.
Now playing…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:54PMNo Traveler: A Comedy About Suicide
Playwright/performer Penny Pollak debuts her one-woman show at this year’s Fringe, and it’s an event that was well worth the wait.
A disturbed young w…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:40PMMonday, June 15, 2015
Here follows the newest Exit Review for ArtsBeatLA — it’s a guest report from critic Kurt Gardner of DOMA Theatre’s production of the musical American Idiot which is now playing at…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:12PMSunday, June 14, 2015
NOTE: Different material and different performers are scheduled for each show. This review is for the Thursday, June 11th performance.
The famous but deceased kiddie show host, Uncle Impossi…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 02:46PMMonday, May 18, 2015
Pure action films are definitely a tricky business. If you hurl machines, bodies, and buildings at your audience for two hours without rhyme or reason, accompanied by a relentlessly crashing…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:46PMTuesday, May 5, 2015
The Classic Theatre finishes off its 2014-15 season with a well-mounted production of Christopher Durang’s Tony-winning comedy, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.
Vanya (John O’Nei…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:30PMMonday, February 9, 2015
What a long, strange trip Hairspray has taken. Beginning as a shockingly wholesome PG-rated film from Pink Flamingos filmmaker John Waters — the master of trash and camp — Hairspray tr…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 08:26PMMonday, February 2, 2015
The year writer/director J.C. Chandor refers to in the title of his excellent new film is 1981, a time when New York City was literally awash in crime. But in A Most Violent Year, the filmma…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:56PMFriday, January 30, 2015
Sam Shepard’s iconic tragicomedy is brought to explosive life in AtticRep’s gripping new production.
Part of a trilogy of confrontational works that AtticRep has staged this season here …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:00PMTuesday, December 30, 2014
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony award-winning musical comes to the screen in a lavish and beautifully mounted version.
Sondheim purists always wince when a film adaptation …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:05PMWednesday, December 3, 2014
Anchored by a superb central performance, The Theory of Everything is a well-executed and moving portrait of Stephen Hawking, a man who refused to let a debilitating disease stop him from fi…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:19PMTuesday, December 2, 2014
Ah, L.A. in the mid-1980s — what a magical place. The punk rock scene was going strong, KROQ ruled the radio dial, Elvira’s “Movie Macabre” was a Saturday night must-see on KHJ-T…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:33PMMonday, November 17, 2014
In the 1970s and early ’80s, Michael Keaton worked his way up the showbiz ladder, paying his dues in such now-forgotten television shows as Working Stiffs and Report to Murphy before soari…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:18PMMonday, November 3, 2014
Jake Gyllenhaal is mesmerizing in this entertaining noir about the sleazy underbelly of the L.A. news business.
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a small-time thief who drives a junkhe…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 10:30PMSaturday, November 1, 2014
ArtsBeat LA contributor Kurt Gardner recently exchanged the wilds of Hollywood for the wide open spaces of Texas, and he has generously offered to provide us with a taste of the cultu…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:26PMWednesday, August 13, 2014
Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making cinematic gamble pays off in spades, delivering a unique and profoundly moving experience. Requiring an impressive long-term commitment from …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:17PM 
