With a motto of “Jobs not Jails,” Father Boyle built this successful non-profit institution from scratch. Though it faces enormous financial challenges each month, Homeboy Industries and its thriving Homegirl Café offer not only a refuge but a life-changing environment that puts young people on a new path in life. And it has become a global model for turning kids away from gang life and toward a future of hope. Father Boyle’s book “Tattoos on the Heart” is a New York Times Bestseller and PEN USA Winner for Best Creative Nonfiction.

“G-DOG” was voted one of the Audience Favorites in the People’s Choice Awards at its world premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs International Festival, the Aspen Film Festival and the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. The film had its U.S. premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival. “G-DOG” was selected by the U.S. State Department as one of 25 films for its American Film Showcase this year to tour U.S. Embassies around the world for cultural diplomacy.

“G-DOG” will screen at the following Los Angeles-area locations on Thursday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 27, at 11 a.m.: Laemmle Claremont, Laemmle Monica, Laemmle NoHo, Laemmle Playhouse in Pasadena and Laemmle Town Center in Encino. “G-DOG” will also be opening at two additional Southern California locations in Palm Desert and San Diego.

Every screening begins with a three-minute short film from GE FOCUS FORWARD and is followed by a pre-taped Q&A with Mock. Father Boyle will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 p.m. premiere screening on Thursday, April 25, at Laemmle Santa Monica.

For more information, visit http://gdogthemovie.com and http://www.newvideo.com/docurama/g-dog/.

UPDATE: “G-DOG” will continue with screenings at 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 11, and Sunday, May 12, in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle Claremont and Laemmle Monica and in Pasadena at Laemmle Playhouse. Filmmaker Freida Mock and/or film subjects will participate in a Q&A following every screening.

This 165-minute film begins with interviews with Lloyd Webber and various members of his incredibly talented cast and crew.  As Lloyd Webber explains, the camera brings the audience much closer to the actors than a small theater could ever accomplish. Seeing the finished results of his musical’s recording while housed in Melbourne’s Regent Theatre last year made Lloyd Webber wish he could have videoed all his previous productions for posterity.

The gorgeous, elaborate sets evoking Coney Island’s funhouse horror and roller coaster thrills, complemented by the colorful 1907 period costumes, spring from the brilliantly creative mind of designer Gabriela Tylesova. The most memorable eye-poppers include the deco hotel room where Christine initially reunites with the Phantom and the stage backdrop of peacock feathers for her New York solo debut.  Director Simon Philips (of the stage production) keeps the pacing fast and furious, slowing down most effectively for the love duets between the angelic-voiced Anna O’Byrne as Christine Daaé and the soaring vocals of Ben Lewis’ Phantom, as well as for the tender moments between Daaé and her 10-year-old son Gustave, sung most winningly by the young Jack Lyall. Director Brett Sullivan (of the film) keeps the camera close and intimate on his performers, allowing the audience to fully witness the subtle facial expressions of the attractive (and the masked) performers.

Simon Gleeson revels in achieving the audience’s tsk-tsk-ing disapproval as Raoul, Christine’s husband in this tragic love triangle.  His ultimate face-off duet with Lewis’ Phantom impresses brutally.

Two other standouts in this cast are Maria Mercedes as Madame Giry, the director of the Phantom’s Coney Island burlesque show (Her final note of her first solo kills!), and Sharon Millerchip as her daughter and lead burlesque performer Meg (a very fun and risqué “Bathing Beauties” number for that time!).

For those theater-goers who find seating nearer than row 10, be ready to be frustrated. The ensemble dance numbers and the overall set will not be totally viewable or fully appreciated as the camera too infrequently pulls back to reveal anything other than a tight two shot.

—Gil Kaan, Culture Spot LA

For more information, visit http://www.fathomevents.com/performingarts/event/loveneverdies.aspx. Check your local movie theater listings for the encore screening on Wednesday, March 7, at 7:30 p.m. Or win free tickets at Culture Spot.

Read our review of the movie at http://culturespotla.com/2012/03/movie-review-andrew-lloyd-webber’s-‘love-never-dies’/.

For more information about “Love Never Dies,” visit http://www.fathomevents.com/performingarts/event/loveneverdies.aspx.

The movie is a fully staged pre-recorded performance of “Love Never Dies,” captured from The Regent Theatre in Melbourne, Australia. This mesmerizing follow-up to the multi-award-winning “The Phantom of the Opera” features a 21-piece orchestra and an impressive cast of 36, including actors Ben Lewis as Phantom and Anna O’Byrne as Christine Daaé. The production promises to bring audiences into a world of passion, obsession and romance. Based on a book by Ben Elton, the captivating love story of the Phantom and Christine continues in New York’s playground, Coney Island. After his disappearance from the Paris Opera house, the Phantom begins a new life in New York amongst the freaks and sideshows. The only thing missing is his musical protégée Christine. In an effort to win her back, the Phantom lures Christine and her family to this strange new world.

The film includes an introduction from Lloyd Webber discussing the creative process and stumbling blocks of developing “Love Never Dies” and behind-the-scenes content that follows Lloyd Webber on set as he provides his creative insight and direction to the cast and crew.

Culture Spot readers interested in attending the Feb. 28 screening in Century City should email editor@CultureSpotLA.com with their answer to the following trivia question:

When did “The Phantom of the Opera” debut in New York City?

One winner will be selected at random from entries received by Wednesday at noon and will be notified by email to obtain a mailing address for the pair of ticket vouchers. Good luck!

For more information, visit http://www.fathomevents.com/performingarts/event/loveneverdies.aspx.

Ray and Charles Eames photographing an early model of the exhibition "Mathematica: A World of Numbers and Beyond," 1960 / ©2011 Eames Office, LLC

You may not know it, but most people are informally aware of Charles and Bernice “Ray” Eames’ aesthetic impact on the world. In “Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” producers Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey recount the lives and creative output of the Eameses, who are best known for their modern furniture (such as the molded plywood Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman) and their ventures into film (most notably “Powers of Ten,” where a couple is seen picnicking at regular scale, and perspective then zooms out to a view from the far universe and finally zooms back in and through to the atomic level).

The film (written by Cohn and narrated by James Franco) follows the collaborative couple’s career as it moves from furniture design and manufacturing to the postindustrial communication of ideas and information. Their work had ties to political, economic, and technological development (some of their clients were the U.S. government, furniture retailer Herman Miller, and IBM) and their work subsequently tracked the complex changes in culture. This mix of partnerships revealed an unsettling relationship between art, commerce, and culture that appeared to catch the Eameses between modern and postmodern sensibilities.

The irony in the title of the film is the fact that Ray rarely painted, even though she was highly capable (she studied under Hans Hoffman), and the fact that Charles dropped out of architecture school and was never a licensed architect. The irony in the film is how the subjects of the documentary are disturbingly tarnished by abrupt emphasis on infidelity issues and by the questioning of Charles’ authorship (former office staff members in the film claimed he took full credit for collaborative efforts). After getting to “know” the Eameses, the infidelity segment at the end of the film made me feel sorry for a neglected Ray. The issues with authorship similarly followed the film’s building up of the Eameses in a very positive light, and then unexpectedly tearing them down by unraveling the documentary’s carefully crafted personas.

The infusing of these negative aspects into the film was troubling, especially if they were inserted for dramatic subjectivity in the documentary format. It was disturbing to see the film’s subjects besmirched after presenting them in such a delicately admirable way. It could possibly be that the Eameses had been rendered too likable for their flaws to be exposed, but for the first film to be made about them since their deaths (Charles in 1978 and Ray in 1988), I think the positive aspects of their lives would be more appropriate for a lasting, historical preservation of their significance. After all, this film seems to fulfill a need to solidify their influence and positive accomplishments in the historical record, not their shortcomings.

“Eames: The Architect and the Painter” presents a documentary that reveals the limitations of imposing a (cinematic) form upon a collaborative couple who were endlessly dynamic and complex. By trying to compress a chaotic expanse of creative output into a tidy historical narrative, the resulting message regarding Charles and Ray can be appropriately ambiguous and disconnected. The chronicled accelerating change in their work’s media and messages captures the disjointed, experimental approach of the Eameses, which is interestingly mirrored by the splintering and clouding of the film’s message as it tries to contain the voluminous chaos of their production. Like “Powers of Ten,” the film tries to view something dauntingly large and diverse; unlike “Powers of Ten,” the film doesn’t maintain a distinct, linear progression and becomes unfocused by a diffused detail overload.

But it seems the Eameses weren’t concise, and the entangled layering of information appeared similarly unfocused. If intentional, this defocusing not only is an effective and clever means of understanding the atmosphere created by their quirky and experimental collaboration, but it poetically captures the essence of the Eames epoch.

I struggled with the desire to see clearly organized and objective historical information, but by taking a distanced perspective after viewing the film, the blur came into focus and I was able to appreciate the Eameses in a fully personal, subjective way. The oddly convincing point of view used in this documentary conveys the unusual beauty of the Eameses’ insatiably creative, inquisitive, and progressive process, which left an enduring impact on aesthetics and design. “Eames: The Architect and the Painter” is a great chance to get to know formally, or be reacquainted with, the artists and their legacy.

“Eames: The Architect and the Painter” opened in Los Angeles in November and is available on DVD from First Run Features.

—Bryan Kent, Culture Spot LA

Guest contributor Bryan Kent is an artist working in New York City.

Art Films? We Got ‘Em

Alex Ago fills the screens at Cinematic Arts with new releases each week, all free and open to the public.

By Diane Krieger

Drowning in a sea of suburban megaplexes teeming with Hollywood blockbusters, where’s an esoteric film buff to go for succor? For the past year or so, the answer – at least among cineastes in and around downtown L.A. – has been USC. More specifically, the School of Cinematic Arts, where a new film series has, in effect, turned the three theatres of the brand spanking-new George Lucas Building into the city center’s premier art house.

Since its debut in January, the Outside the Box Office series has given free sneak previews of more than 50 new releases in world cinema, documentary and independent film, with one or more of the filmmakers usually in attendance. The series has featured exotic fare from Canada, China, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Palestine, the Philippines, Russia, Thailand and the United Kingdom, not to mention from all around the United States.

The brainchild of SCA special events coordinator Alex Ago, the screenings happen Wednesday nights, and frequently on Fridays and Sundays, too. Sometimes Ago squeezes in a double feature in which, he admits, the films can be extremely mismatched, “but there are so many wonderful movies coming out, and they have to be screened before they open commercially, and I have limited space.”

Ago got the idea for the series while booking screenings for film critic Leonard Maltin’s popular “Theatrical Film Symposium” class, which spotlights a new release each week.

“I’d been getting all sorts of interesting film screening invitations from the distributors I work with,” says Ago, who is himself an ardent film lover. “And I thought it was a shame not to take advantage of this stuff.” Many of the films and filmmakers didn’t fit with Maltin’s course schedule. So, Ago decided to book them anyway, as a public service to the USC community.

His efforts mean that USC students no longer have to trek to the Westside or Hollywood, where L.A.’s major art houses are located, to see first-run documentaries, foreign films and indie projects.

“In fact, a lot of this screening series came from the fact that I don’t like to drive to West Hollywood to go to the Sunset 5, but I still want to see these movies,” says Ago. “And it’s so hard to keep track of when they’re coming out, how long they’ll be in theatres – it’s just ridiculous how limited the releases are – and what theatres they’ll be playing in. I wanted to remove all the guesswork and all the travel involved with getting to see these wonderful movies.”

Recent screenings have included Lee Daniels’ Precious, a double-prizewinner at Sundance; Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, Chinese director John Woo’s Red Cliff, and Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore’s Baaria.

Outside the Box Office is only possible because of the new SCA complex, which boasts three theatres: the 200-seat Ray Stark Family Theatre which is “35mm capable,” a 106-seat theatre unpretentiously known as “Room 112” and a 70-seat theatre that goes by “Room 110.”

The beauty of the series is that it is cost-neutral.

“It doesn’t cost me anything to run these films, because they’re promotional screenings or sneak previews that the studios and distributors give to us for free,” he explains. Ago doesn’t even require the services of a projectionist. “I started this as something I could manage personally with my staff and not have to overburden the rest of the school by taking projectionists away from other things. The campus had an opportunity to benefit from something with just a little extra effort on our parts.”

Publicizing the screenings isn’t easy, however. Because release dates can change, distributors usually only commit to a preview on short notice. Ago scrupulously maintains the Out of the Box Office Web site (cinema.usc.edu/outsidetheboxoffice) to accurately reflect future engagements, and he encourages cinema buffs to check it regularly. He also sends out weekly “eblasts” announcing upcoming screenings to a list of 10,000 film enthusiasts. To join the list, send a request to aago@cinema.usc.edu.

Courtesy of USC Trojan Family Magazine

Writer, director and producer René Féret has conceived a fictional account of the young Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, a poignant tale inspired by a heartbreaking reality: despite being a musical prodigy in her own right, Nannerl will forever be known simply as Mozart’s sister. At a young age, she is essentially forced to give up her musical endeavors when her father Leopold, who is, in Nannerl’s words, “hungry for glory” and the favor of the courts, finds his best hope in the precocious genius of Wolfgang.

But it’s also clear that because she was born a girl in the 18th century, Nannerl could never have become as famous as her brother. As a teenager, Nannerl (played by the director’s daughter, Marie Féret) is forbidden to play the violin or compose by a father — and a society — that believed those activities were inappropriate for women. When she asks her father to include her in his composition lessons with Wolfgang, he adamantly refuses, saying that such skills and knowledge of harmony and counterpoint are beyond the comprehension of most people, but especially women.

The 14-year-old reminds her father that she helped with one of Mozart’s compositions when he was 5 and had written sonatas, but Leopold dismisses them as “absurd notes lumped together.” Nannerl’s mother would like to encourage her daughter’s obvious talent, but it is the son of Louis XV in Féret’s story that does so by commissioning work from her.

Since there are no surviving compositions by the real Nannerl, Féret asked pianist/composer Marie-Jeanne Séréro to create music befitting the famous musical family — a monumental creative exercise. The music is lovely, equally a character in the film, but don’t expect any famous compositions from Wolfgang — he’s only 10 in the movie.

Féret was inspired by Leopold Mozart’s letters and narrative accounts of a three-year journey visiting the courts of Europe where his children performed. Féret said in his director’s statement, “I discovered and fell in love with Nannerl. … I remembered other female characters such as Camille Claudel and Adele [Hugo], doomed to a footnote in history due to their gender and family of origin. I knew that I wanted to make a film.”

The film follows these years of concerts, focusing on Paris, in which Nannerl played harpsichord and sang while Wolfgang played violin. The imagined relationships with the daughter (Féret’s second daughter Lisa) and son of Louis XV help Féret move the story along and bring emotional intensity. Louise de France, whom Nannerl befriends in an abbey, and the Dauphin Louis de France, who falls in love with Nannerl, are both clever characters who reveal much about their private lives. Nannerl’s relationships with them provide a superb device for exploring the gender roles of the time and the sometimes-cruel ways convention altered her future.

“Mozart’s Sister” is indeed a beautiful composition, sure to delight classical music lovers… and help them imagine what could have been had the female Mozart been given an equal chance.

—Julie Riggott, Culture Spot LA

From Music Box Films. In French with English subtitles (that are thoughtful and often poetic, not oversimplified as can often be the case in translations). Official Selection in six film festivals. “Mozart’s Sister” opens Friday, Aug. 19, at Laemmle’s Royal Theatre in West LA, Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, and Town Center 5 in Encino.