Film Review: In "Amrum," Innocence Meets Fascist Ideology - The Arts Fuse

Art by Ivan Ehlers, Pulitzer finalist and cartoonist behind L. A. TACO's "Sunday Taquitos" series. Before anyone else says it, yes, there ain’t no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, blah blah blah. Major league sports owners have basically always been hella rich foos with questionable ambitions, to say the least. The current moment feels different, however. Today, there are many plausible arguments being made about the insane frequency of professional sports teams and leagues being converted into tax havens, additional tools for hedge funds, venture capital, and private equity, and instruments of political soft power. The year-long, public bromance between FIFA president Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump was the icing on the FIFA Peace Prize-shaped cake of it all. Locally, the Dodgers have taken the worst of all criticisms—and for plenty of legitimate reasons. However, they aren’t the only guilty parties in town. Whether you root for the Dodgers, Lakers, Kings, Clippers, Galaxy, LAFC, or Angel City, we’ve got some receipts on your L. A. team of choice.

More than sixty artists explore migration, memory, and identity in this survey of Puerto Rican abstraction across and beyond the archipelago. Left: Raphael Collazo, “Arcana Mundi (Mysteries of the World)", 1985; Top right: Olga Albizu, “Blue Oil”, 1974; Bottom right: Raphael Montañez Ortíz, “Archaeological Find #22: The Aftermath”, 1961

The Los Angeles-based photographer, who was raised in a conservative Catholic environment, is reclaiming the divinity of queer and trans identity through religious imagery. The First Gathering (2024), with Smiles Meyer as creative director; Kaley Azambuja as stylist; Scout Nankin as intimacy coordinator/movement director; @hot_at_the_party as makeup artist; Betty Connolly as photo/lighting assistant; and models from left to right: Alena, Teague, Joey, JA, Mia, Jules, Annalise, Kat, Bamby, Mars, Chloe, Zaphir, and Lena (all images courtesy Smiles Meyer)

Protesters blocked the Louvre Monday as fallout from a weekend of unrest continues to shake France.

Name: The best reviewed film in history. Age: Not even out yet, except in the US and Canada. Appearance: Coming soon to a screen near you. How exciting! What is it? It’s called You Can See Everything. Who’s in it? DiCaprio? De Niro? Both? It’s not that kind of film. What’s it about, then? The subject of the documentary is Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of … Did you say documentary? No thanks. But reviews of this particular documentary have been overwhelmingly favourable! I don’t go to the cinema to learn things. Critics have been unstinting in their praise for Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s unflinching three-hour examination of the Theranos scandal’s architect and … Three hours? Are you kidding? I know that seems long, but the Guardian’s critic called it “a stupefying and gloriously destabilising hall of psychological mirrors, a thrilling once-in-a-lifetime collision of director and subject”. And audiences have so far been undaunted by the long run time – it logged a phenomenal $15m at the box office in its opening weekend in the US and Canada. Meh. And the film has earned an unprecedented Metacritic score of 99/100. Unprecedented?