Entertainment
Angelica Garcia unpacks the 'strange cultural tug of war' behind her new album, 'Gemelo'
Angélica Garcia has been busy finding herself. Or, rather, her selves. The Los Angeles pop singer’s new record, “Gemelo” — twin in Spanish — is a rhythmic exploration of the spiritual world and our relationship to our inner, intuitive beings.
It also is a study of dualities, whether of culture, gender or language. For the first time, Garcia sings almost entirely in Spanish, something she first experimented with on 2020’s “Cha Cha Palace.” A move back to L.A. from Virginia in the spring of that year led her to reconnect with her Latin heritage, and with it her ancestry.
As a result, “Gemelo” is a fascinating mix of the mystical and the feminine, of self-love and grief, that glides effortlessly from synth-pop to cumbia to trip-hop. Songs like “Color de Dolor” or “Juanita” slink and shimmy infectiously, even as they channel generational trauma or commune with the dead.
“It really means a lot that I’m writing a song about intuition in Spanish and how it’s connected to our ancestry, and there are people in the audience that are like, ‘Yeah!’” Garcia says over a Zoom call, just after stepping offstage at a festival in Germany. “Maybe that’s my weirdo perspective, but that’s kind of what I do.”
On the heels of her album’s Friday release, Garcia discussed the upheaval that spawned the album, her difficulties writing in Spanish, and how creating the new songs helped her to know and assert herself better than ever before.
There are all these dualities on “Gemelo,” and so much self-discovery. What started that journey for you to explore those themes?
It’s kind of just what was coming out at the time, to be honest. There was a lot grief processing, different types of big life changes happening at the same time. The first song to come out was “Color de Dolor.” That kind of represents that, because when you’re asking, “What is the color of pain? What is the color of grief?” — it can have many forms.
What kinds of grief were you processing?
I was reconciling distance from people that I loved, but also realizing that, being close to them, I didn’t necessarily feel particularly good either. Because sometimes the people that raise you, although there’s love there, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re seen.
There was also this strange cultural tug of war that I was feeling within myself. I was working really hard at the time to educate myself about ancestors and generations past in the family. The more I started down that rabbit hole, the more I realized, wow, these are things that I’ve always felt in me, that I’m only discovering now. So there’s a weird sadness that comes with that too.
[And] also just being a woman and feeling like I was really tired of having people speak for me and on my behalf.
Was family history or ancestry part of your life growing up?
My family moved to Virginia when I was a teenager … so I went from having Latino, Mexican American, Chicano culture all around me to, suddenly, it was very hard to come by. That separation from my culture, I had to work hard to keep it alive within me.
With “Gemelo,” I really began to realize the severity of the grief I’d been given. There was a lot that I wanted to know that sometimes even my family themselves couldn’t answer, and I had to go deeper to figure out.
What sorts of things do you feel you’ve figured out?
Patterns, like questions of nature and nurture. For example, alcoholism. You look back and go, “Oh, this person had it. This person had it.” Or maybe I realized there are abandonment wounds in my family. And it’s very interesting, when you think back to the time in which people were born. For women, especially — my mom, my grandma couldn’t make choices that I can make now.
“I can just be. And just being is so much,” says Garcia.
(Shervin Lainez)
What did being in L.A., and presumably being around more family, add to that process?
It felt like I had a little more clarity, so when I came back I felt more of the things that I loved and wanted to preserve. And also the things that were like, “It’s time to abolish this. I’m over it.”
What made you decide to sing most of this album in Spanish?
My grandmother’s like a mother to me, and I realized, when I brought home the LP of “Cha Cha Palace,” that she didn’t understand anything. Over time, as I got better with my Spanish, I remember sitting with my grandmother and I was like, “Holy s—, you’re so funny.” And I had no idea, because I was so bad at Spanish.
How was it to trying to actually write in Spanish, then?
It was pretty brutal. Everybody that I showed it to had a problem with how I expressed myself. … I was also being stubborn in the sense I still wanted it to be in my voice, as a human and as a writer. A lot of people I showed it to wanted to rewrite the whole thing. So it was a pretty arduous process that almost took me out a few times.
Did you speak Spanish a lot at home as a kid, or was it mostly English?
The first thing I ever spoke were prayers that my grandmother taught me in Spanish, and we spoke it a lot at home. But then with public schooling and everything, it kind of disappeared. The older I got, the more conversations I had with other first-gen, second-gen kids like me, that was a common thing.
But yeah, I mean, the first music that I learned how to sing, as well, with my mom was mariachi music, because she was a mariachi singer, like ranchera music. As a child, she sang it at rodeos with the whole outfit and everything. So it was a thing we did at parties.
Does it feel risky at all, commercially, to sing mostly in Spanish, or does it feel like now’s a good moment in terms of how receptive general audiences would be?
I kind of don’t care. So many countries speak Spanish, and it’s such a poetic language. It’s beautiful. The more I started to express myself, the more I was like, “Oh, English kind of feels like a sword fight.” It’s very precise and very cunning. Spanish, it’s just very romantic. And Latino music always hits hard at parties.
Are you able to express yourself in certain ways in Spanish that you maybe couldn’t in English?
I got to be more philosophical. Like “El Que,” for example, is an inner monologue, my spirit watching over my flesh body going through something and guiding it, trying to wake up the person below. So I got to play with perspective. I don’t know, maybe it just felt more natural for me to do it in Spanish than it did in English because it was me doing something different than I normally do.
That goes back to that idea of dualities. Is there a particular duality that feels most central here?
The biggest one to me was body and spirit. I think our bodies get so in routine and focused on survival. But I’ve always been a spiritual person. I’ve always felt like when I’m able to step outside myself, there’s a spirit self that guides me. Some people call that intuition.
Some of those dualities could easily turn into a divided self. But you treat it more like a special perspective, like you can see things from different sides.
So many things went into that. In going back home, I’d been thinking, “Oh, if I just go back to L.A., I’ll be seen by my culture, my people.” And then it was like, no, that didn’t happen. These identities that we tie ourselves to, it’s bigger than that. Your people are the people that see you and understand you.
That being said, I am still Latina. I am still queer. I’m still these things. But it’s much bigger than I thought.
“On this record, I tapped into a very specific type of rage that comes from femininity. I also think I showed love and gentleness,” Garcia says of “Gemelo.”
(Shervin Lainez)
You mentioned the idea of being a woman and how other people were always speaking for you. How do you feel you were able to speak for yourself here?
On this record, I tapped into a very specific type of rage that comes from femininity. I also think I showed love and gentleness.
You have a song like “El Que” that talks about how sometimes people don’t understand how intelligent you are. … It happens to women all the time. We’re just used to that rage, the fact that we have to get used to that and have to navigate it.
Then there’s the mysticism and wonder I see in “Juanita.” And on the other end of the spectrum is “Paloma,” where I’m talking about the divine reflected in people, how that is beauty, that is love.
What do you feel making this album has done for you, more broadly, for where you are in life, as Angélica Garcia, right now?
I definitely feel way more like I just have to speak very loudly and clearly in my voice. I realized how much of my life I had felt conditioned to check on other people first. A lot of my Latina friends, we’ve talked about that, how we’re conditioned to take care of our families and the men in our family and the youth, and not feeling guilty about just doing my damn thing.
It’s been very affirming to see people support that. So I need to do that and not feel a pressure to make a certain kind of thing, or be more polite, or be more sexual, or be more anything. I can just be. And just being is so much.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘Scream 7’ – Catholic Review
NEW YORK (OSV News) – As its title suggests, “Scream 7” (Paramount) is the latest extension of a long-lived horror franchise, one that’s currently approaching its 30th anniversary on screen. Since each chapter of this slasher saga has been a bloodsoaked mess, the series’ longevity will strike moviegoers of sense as inexplicable.
Yet the slog continues. While the previous film in the sequence shifted the action from California to New York, this second installment, following a 2022 quasi-reboot, settles on a Midwestern locale and reintroduces us to the series’ original protagonist, Sidney Evans, nee Prescott (Neve Campbell).
Having aged out of the adolescent demographic on whom the various murderers who have donned the Ghostface mask that serves as these films’ dubious trademark over the years seem to prefer to prey, Sidney comes equipped with a teen daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). Will Tatum prove as resourceful in evading the unwanted attentions of Ghostface as Mom has?
On the way to answering that question, a clutch of colorless minor characters fall victim to the killer, who sometimes gets — according to his or her lights — creative. Thus one is quite literally made to spill her guts, while another ends up skewered on a barroom’s pointy beer tap.
Through it all, director Kevin Williamson and his co-writer Guy Busick try to peddle a theme of female empowerment in the face of mortal danger. They also take a stab, as it were, at constructing a plotline about intergenerational family tensions. When not jarring viewers with grisly images, however, they’re only likely to lull them into a stupor.
The film contains excessive gory violence, including disembowelment and impaling, underage drinking, mature topics, a couple of profanities, several milder oaths, pervasive rough and considerable crude language and occasional crass expressions. The OSV News classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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Copyright © 2026 OSV News
Entertainment
His underground puppet shows draw massive crowds to L.A. street corner — and fans don’t even know his name
The artist known as Jeffrey’s Human Persona has remained anonymous for nearly 25 years — the same length of time that he has staged guerrilla-style musical puppet shows titled “almighty Opp” on a gritty street corner in Koreatown on the last Saturday of each month. He missed only three shows in the first 19 years of what he refers to as his “services.” However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced him online in 2020 and a family tragedy kept him away from the corner for another few years.
In December he returned live in front of the used car dealership at Western and Elmwood for the first time since the pandemic-induced shutdown, drawing a crowd of several hundred devoted fans. In February he staged his first ticketed event called “Secret Somewhere Services,” which drew close to 50 guests who paid $100 each for the pop-up show at a private residence in the San Fernando Valley where Willie Nelson’s youngest son, Micah, served as the opening act with his art rock project Particle Kid.
The view of the stage from the back of the crowd during January’s “almighty Opp” puppet show, which has returned to Koreatown after a nearly five-year break due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a family tragedy.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“I missed funerals, I missed Christmases, I missed friends’ birthdays. I never took a vacation,” Jeffrey says of his devotion to his monthly performances during a recent phone interview after his late January show, which also drew a large, excitable crowd of supporters. “I treated it like a knife to my heart.”
“Almighty Opp” is truly about Jeffrey’s heart. Services take place in a specially designed black stage populated with a variety of custom fabricated puppets. These creations are not from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood of Make-Believe. At a recent show the ringleader wore a red dirndl with gray knee socks and black ankle boots. His angular head topped with a green felt crown; his toothy mouth a sinister, grimacing gash; his eyes blackened with what looks like charcoal. Other puppets cavorted around him: A tubby, clownish, snowman-like creature that spits water at the crowd; a tall, spindly clown that uses a miniature pump; a weird sock puppet made out of adhesive bandages; a discarded, disheveled baby doll on strings.
One of the main marionettes used in the “almighty Opp” street show. The puppets sing songs written by the show’s creator, an artist who goes by the name of Jeffrey’s Human Persona.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Music is the focal point of each service, with Jeffrey playing guitar and keyboards behind the curtain, singing in a wavering voice reminiscent of Jeff Mangum about the subjects, ideas and feelings that have occupied his mind at various stages of his life. To date, “almighty Opp” has put out 33 albums on Bandcamp featuring songs from services over the years with titles including “Every Day’s the Worst Day,” “Misbegotten Human Beings” and “Bubble Burster.”
“Pretending I had a choice, just as long as we said we did, but now it’s much worse than it seems five years later,” sings a puppet that looks like a bizarro Humpty Dumpty with a huge egg head on a body of red pants during January’s show. “Supporting someone else’s dreams because your good nature’s being used.”
“Almighty Opp” employs a variety of richly detailed, hand-crafted puppets. The show’s creator once worked as an assistant to sculptor Chris Burden.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
A common refrain, which almost everyone gathered on the gum-stained sidewalk sings in unison, is, “It’s OK to not be OK.”
Jeffrey loves the spontaneous possibilities of the street corner and what he calls the “stumble upon” nature of the services, but the core audience is a returning one. The nearly 200 people gathered on this January evening just past 9 p.m. stand on stools and chairs in the back and loll on the sidewalk on their elbows in the front. They scream and chant and sing along. They turn and hug one another or shake hands when Jeffrey encourages them to meet their neighbors at different points in the show.
Lars Adams attends an “almighty Opp” show on the last Saturday in January. During the show the crowd is encouraged to turn and greet their neighbors.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“Even though I’m performing, I don’t really consider myself a performer,” Jeffrey says. He also isn’t a busker, although his shows are free community events. And even though there are puppets, he doesn’t call “almighty Opp” a puppet show. He is, he says, “an obsessive maker.” The audience is “just coming along for the ride with me — life’s ride — of how I’m feeling at that time. It’s kind of like a Catholic Church service, where the sermon changes, but the structure of it remains the same.”
Unlike a church service, shows are rowdy and a bit untethered. A bus whooshes by, an unhoused man screams as he walks by with a shopping cart. Jeffrey’s wife, known as Shambles, operates the puppets from behind the curtain, while wearing their 5-year-old daughter, known as Crumbo, in a sling. Two other assistants, called DingDing and Cylo, can also be seen behind the black curtain — their faces hidden in knitted clown masks or shielded by makeup. Jeffrey comes before the crowd toward the end of the show — wearing a white mask and a red hoodie — and asks audience members to give testimonials. People stand up and talk about having been changed by the show over the years.
That’s what happened with Micah Nelson. He came when Jeffrey used to hold mirrors in front of people’s faces and have them watch themselves while the crowd watched them. The sessions were uncomfortably long. Nelson later contacted Jeffrey to say he was covering some of his songs, and that his experience with the mirror had a profound effect on him.
When Nelson introduced Jeffrey at the recent “Secret Somewhere” show, the things he said about Jeffrey made the performer blush. Life, Jeffrey said, has a funny way of coming full circle.
Jeffrey’s Human Persona, who created “almighty Opp” in the early aughts, asks audience members gathered on a Koreatown street corner to give testimonials about the show, which he calls a “service.”
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Jeffrey moved to L.A. from Pittsburgh in 1995 when he was 19. His father bought him the plane ticket after Jeffrey found himself in a bit of a boredom rut with friends and getting into the wrong kind of trouble. He wanted to work in the film industry — he thought L.A. would be like a 1970s Jim Morrison fever dream, but found it not as inspiring. The film business, in which he worked making fantasy art and other fabrications, was not a creative haven, but rather a soul-sucking void.
“I’m tired of making other people’s puppets,” he told a friend one day, and “almighty Opp” was born.
“If you just show up for a paycheck, what are you really doing?” asked Jeffrey during our interview. “I’d rather be a flop and believe in it.”
Children gather at the very front of the stage during January’s “almighty Opp” show, which features original songs on guitar and keyboard. A total of 33 “almighty Opp” albums are available on Bandcamp.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
He made the original puppets and wrote the first “almighty Opp” album in the second-floor apartment where he lived, just a stone’s throw from the corner where he still performs — the corner where he would propose to his wife during a particularly difficult period of his life. During all those years he worked in a variety of creative roles to support himself: for the toy industry; briefly for the Disney Imagineers; and for about eight years as an assistant to sculptor Chris Burden for whom he helped fabricate the whizzing future land “Metropolis II,” which resides in Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
Now that “almighty Opp” is live again, Jeffrey is benefiting from the therapeutic aspects of writing down his emotions and experiences. The “Secret Somewhere Services” will continue once a month, or maybe every two months. Guests can check Instagram for tips on how to score a coveted ticket, which comes with its own handcrafted entrance token and map to the ever-changing private venue. Jeffrey is making big puppets for these performances — one is 7 feet tall — and experimenting with the form of the event.
Still, the street corner will remain the soul of his operation — and the music at the heart of it all.
“It’s all about honesty, and the people who understand it and keep coming, they know that it’s something absolutely real,” he says.
Almighty Opp
Where: Corner of Western and Elmwood avenues, in Koreatown
When: The last Saturday of every month, 9 p.m.
Tickets: Free
Running time: Varies, but usually about an hour.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: “THE BRIDE!” – Assignment X
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: March 8th, 2026 / 08:00 PM
THE BRIDE movie poster | ©2026 Warner Bros.
Rating: R
Stars: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Penelope Cruz, Jeannie Berlin, Zlatko Burić
Writer: Maggie Gyllenhaal, based on characters created by Mary Shelley and William Hurlbut and John Balderston
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: March 6, 2026
“THE BRIDE!” (as with the recent “WUTHERING HEIGHTS,” the quotation marks are part of the title) is awash in homages, and not just the ones we might reasonably expect in a movie that takes its most obvious inspiration from 1935’s BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
There’s that, of course, plus its source, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel FRANKENSTEIN; OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, and its sober 1931 film adaptation FRANKENSTEIN. But there are also big nods to wilder takes on the legend, including YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and even movies that have nothing to do with FRANKENSTEIN, like BONNIE AND CLYDE.
Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal casts a wide net in metaphors and ideas and looks. Sometimes “THE BRIDE!” is a comedy, sometimes it’s a crime drama, sometimes it’s a love story, occasionally, it’s even a musical.
Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) narrates the tale to us from beyond the grave. She is haughty and naughty, intoxicated by verbiage and her own literary genius. She is going to tell us a story, she says, that she didn’t even dare imagine while alive.
We’re in 1930s Chicago, where a young escort (also Buckley) is having a really awful evening out at a fancy restaurant with some of her peers and a bunch of crass gangsters. Shelley dubs the woman “Ida” and takes possession of her, causing her to speak and act in ways that get her escorted outside. There she stumbles and takes a fatal fall.
The two goons who were with Ida are happy to describe her tumble as the result of their intentional actions to their horrible gangster boss (Zlatko Burić). Ida was suspected of talking to the cops.
Around the same time, Frankenstein’s creation (Christian Bale) – let’s just call him “Frank,” like everybody else does – comes to Chicago to seek out the groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), whose published works he has read.
Frank wants the doctor to create a companion for him. His appearance is unusual, but the most alarming injuries are covered by clothing, so he’s not as extreme-looking as, say, Boris Karloff in the role. This isn’t about sex, Frank explains when Euphronious asks why he doesn’t just hire a prostitute. After over a century of loneliness, he seeks a soulmate, and he is sure this can only be achieved by reviving a corpse.
So, Euphronious and Frank dig up the grave that turns out to belong to Ida (we never do learn how they know it belongs to a soulmate candidate as opposed to a shot-and-dumped male gangster). Euphronius revives her. Ida remembers how to walk and talk, but not who she is or what happened, so Frank and the doc tell her she’s been in an accident.
Even without Ida’s beauty, Frank is already devoted to the very notion of her. A more accommodating suitor would be hard to find. Frank has another passion, the musical films of Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal, the filmmaker’s brother), a Fred Astaire-like star. Frank imagines himself in the midst of those dance routines, and we get some more within “THE BRIDE!”’s “real” action.
One thing leads to another, Frank and Ida go on the run, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. They are pursued all over the country. Among those seeking them are sad-eyed police detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his secretary Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), who’s better at this whole crime-solving business than he is.
It’s all very kaleidoscopic and energetic, occasionally impressive and sometimes very funny. Bening as the frazzled, worldly Euphronious has some great moments. Buckley, currently and justifiably Oscar-nominated leading performance in HAMNET, juggles the very unalike personas of Mary and Ida with impact.
Oddly, Bale underplays Frank. We get that he is trying his hardest not to spook Ida (or anyone else), but it seems like he should have a bit more spark. Cruz, going for a snappy ‘30s working woman, has her own style that works.
But in addition to being entertaining and eye-catching, Gyllenhaal has a message that gets very muddled. This is less because it’s so familiar by now that it feels a little redundant, and more because a crucial part of the set-up collides head-on with the feminist slant.
Ida seeks to be her own person, but she is literally bodily controlled by Mary Shelley, who puts her creation in danger with her outbursts. This may help get Ida out of the clutches of the mob, but it is possession, the aftereffects of which the character understandably finds confusing and upsetting.
If Gyllenhaal wanted to discuss or dramatize the clash between what Mary, as a woman, is doing to this other woman, that would make sense, but it seems we’re just meant to somehow overlook this while being immersed in how men control women. The resulting cognitive dissonance adds another layer to a movie that already has more than it can comfortably service.
Additionally, when Mary has one of her outbursts while inhabiting Ida, the plot comes to a screeching halt until she’s finished. Many viewers will wish Mary would stop declaiming and just let Ida be herself.
“THE BRIDE!” succeeds in being trippy and some of it is memorable. By the end, though, it is more disjointed than even a movie about experiments and a character made up of multiple people’s body parts ought to be.
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