It’s a summery, late-afternoon Saturday on the backyard lawn of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, with the kind of warmth and variety of sounds, sights and smells that have defined weekends in many Los Angeles neighborhoods for generations. This one happens to be for a KCRW Summer Nights event headlined by East L.A. soul revivalists the Altons, but the blend of demographics, cultures and backgrounds on display gives it an authentically local feel that could be mistaken for an informal block party in any decade — except perhaps for the screen printer creating band merch and a design of Snoopy humping an ice cube with an expletive about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That same blend of history and cultures that has brought Los Angeles together across generations is also what’s given the Altons their signature sound and made them one of the city’s latest breakout stars. When they go on tour and bring their unique blend of soulful “oldies,” modern rock and bilingual R&B around the world, they aren’t just sharing their music but also their culture.
“On any given weekend, you can have some party down the street playing cumbia or music that your parents grew up on, their next door neighbor might have a punk rock show, and another guy down the street that’s just listening to oldies and Art Laboe,” vocalist and guitarist Bryan Ponce explains about the roots of the Altons’ diverse sound stemming from their collective Los Angeles childhoods. “We all grew up on all of this music that we’d hear in our neighborhoods, so all of our influences just came together and came out in our music.”
The Altons members Adriana Flores, Caitlin Moss, Bryan Ponce and Joseph Quinones perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes on June 28.
(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)
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For a band that started with modest expectations nearly a decade ago, the Altons now find themselves heading out on international tours and playing to thousands of people at a time — as they will Saturday when they rock the Oldies 2 Souldies show with Los Lonely Boys at the Greek Theatre. And while their rise has been more of a gradual incline than anything particularly stratospheric, they’ve carved their own path without compromise. They’re willing to fuse genres, languages, tempos and sounds as they see fit and based on what they feel will work best for the songs and messages they’re wanting to deliver instead of catering to what may be popular in the moment, a choice that’s made them the face of the “oldies revival” now that millennials and Gen Z are falling back in love with tunes from their grandparents’ day.
“It’s incredible to play a show where a grandmother’s there with her daughter and grandkids, and just have multiple generations of people come together,” vocalist Adriana Flores says. “There’s not a lot of shows that I would even take my dad to, so I think it makes the music even more special and I’d like to be one of the bands shedding the light on what’s been happening in L.A. We’ve been doing it for years and just sharing the types of music we like — which is the retro sound of soul mixed with other elements. We like to show people what’s been happening in L.A. that’s not just Hollywood.”
The Altons’ Adriana Flores and Bryan Ponce perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in late June.
(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)
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That desire to show the “real” L.A. that they know and love is a driving force for the Altons, particularly as they go further and further from home. All of them — Flores and Ponce along with Joseph Quinones on guitar/backup vocals, Chris Manjarrez on bass, Christian “Elyzr” Meraz on keyboards and drummer Caitlin Moss — are proud to represent their East L.A. roots for those who only see the California that gets presented on television. The group eagerly reminisces about a fan they met at a show in France who had never set foot in California but loved the culture so much that he dressed the part of a classic cholo. “He looked like he could have been related to me or went to school with me,” Ponce says with a laugh. “He was bald, he had the Locs on, the Pendleton on and he was screaming our neighborhoods.” They recall the times they’ve felt like cultural ambassadors bringing their hometown heritage to cities like Boston.
But the self-placed weight of representing and sharing their lifelong culture isn’t always all fun and games. Just a matter of weeks before they were walking through the halls of LA Plaza’s museum to see their brand-new exhibition on the importance of East L.A. musicians, they were on tour in the U.K. feeling helpless as they watched the ICE raids and protests flood the city.
Bryan Ponce and Adriana Flores onstage at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.
(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)
“You couldn’t really grasp what was going on,” Ponce says. “I would watch videos and see stuff online, but I didn’t really see it until we came home for a couple of days before we left again. [Manjarrez] and I live close to each other, and we started seeing videos of all these places and stores and people in our community. It was just devastating to have to leave again and see that they’re getting even closer to your house and seeing it happening on your street. You’re trying to go and play music to entertain people, but you’re also trying to find a balance. It’s like ‘Are we going to speak on what’s going on?’ Because some people thought that L.A. was burning down, and that’s not really the case.”
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“Watching the community go through something so heartbreaking while being away was really difficult,” Flores adds. “It was really tough seeing our community being targeted, but I’d like to believe that music and being creative and spreading joy is a form of resistance. I hope that people can come to our shows and escape. Even though this is way bigger than us, we have to use our platform to be vocal about what’s going on. It’s scary times, but another scary time was the ‘60s when the whole civil rights movement was happening, and some of the best music came out of that because people were finding that outlet and creating.”
You can call me one-track-minded or say that I focus on the wrong things, but do not include an element that I am then expected to forget. Especially if that “element” is an animal – and a dog, even.
In No More Time, we meet a couple, and it takes quite some time before we suddenly see that they have a dog with them. It appears in a scene suddenly, because their sweet little dog has a purpose: A “meet-cute” with a girl who wants to pet their dog.
After that, the dog is rarely in the movie or mentioned. Sure, we see it in the background once or twice, but when something strange (or noisy) happens, it’s never around. This completely ruins the illusion for me. Part of the brilliance of having an animal with you during an apocalyptic event is that it can help you.
And yet, in No More Time, this is never truly utilized. It feels like a strange afterthought for that one scene with the girl to work, but as a dog lover, I am now invested in the dog. Not unlike in I Am Legend or Darryl’s dog in The Walking Dead. As such, this completely ruined the overall experience for me.
If it were just me, I could (sort of) live with it. But there’s a reason why an entire website is named after people demanding to know whether the dog dies, before they’ll decide if they’ll watch a movie.
Scarlett Johansson wasn’t on the hunt for a feature film to direct when she was sent “Eleanor the Great,” about a 90-something woman who reminded Johansson of her own sparky grandmother. But Tory Kamen’s script arrived with a cover letter from Oscar nominee June Squibb.
“I was really interested in what, at this stage, June wanted to star in,” she says. “I was compelled to read it because of that.”
What Johansson also learned is that Squibb, star of last year’s acclaimed caper “Thelma” and the voice of Nostalgia in “Inside Out 2,” adds extra gloss to a project and is genre-adaptable. Since “Eleanor,” she’s wrapped shooting on an indie mockumentary called “The Making of Jesus Diabetes,” starring and produced by Bob Odenkirk. (“Bob and I know each other from ‘Nebraska,’” she says. “He asked and I did one scene.”) Currently, she’s in the play “Marjorie Prime,” her first appearance on Broadway since “Waitress” in 2018, when she stepped into the role of Old Joe, previously occupied by Al Roker. (“They made [the character] into a lady for me.”)
Recently, Johansson and Squibb got together via Zoom to discuss lurching process trailers, how Squibb bonded with co-star Erin Kellyman (who plays Nina, Eleanor’s college-age friend), and the trick to playing a character who tells a whopper at a Holocaust survivors’ support group based on her dead best friend’s experience.
Squibb, left, Erin Kellyman and Chiwetel Ejiofor in “Eleanor the Great.”
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(Jojo Whilden / Sony Pictures Cla)
What does a first-time director plan for Day One of a wintertime shoot in New York?
Johansson: The first thing we shot was [Eleanor and Nina] arriving at Coney Island. It wasn’t easy. We were outside. It was cold. It was a little hectic, but we figured it out. Then we had to do this thing in a car, and it was just miserable. Nobody wants to shoot a scene being towed in a car. There are all these stops and starts. You get nauseous. I felt terrible about that. But it was good for June and Erin.
Squibb: We had a lot of time that day together and we liked who each other was. It was just easy.
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June, you believe in showing up fully prepped, on script. Did you and Scarlett talk a lot about Eleanor?
Squibb: I’m sure we talked over that first two weeks, but I think we started delving when we started shooting. I can’t say this enough, but her being the actress she is? It just helped me tremendously. I felt so relaxed, like she knew what I was doing.
A less charismatic actor might have trouble pulling off this character. Eleanor can be so impertinent, yet the audience still has to like her.
Johansson: The tightrope June walks is that she’s able to be salty, inconsiderate and rude as the Eleanor character, then balance it out with quiet moments where you see the guard slip. You see the vulnerability of [Eleanor]. June plays that so beautifully.
June, in 1953, you converted to Judaism. Scarlett, how important was it to have Eleanor played by a Jewish actress?
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Johansson: It was definitely important to me, and it became important to the production too. We had tremendous support from the Jewish community. We brought the script to the Shoah Foundation and they helped us craft [Eleanor’s best friend] Bessie’s survivor story.
(The Tyler Times / For The Times)
Did they also help you find real-life Holocaust survivors — like Sami Steigmann —that you cast as support group members?
Johansson: It was a real group effort. Every time someone joined, it was a huge celebration. We got another one! At the time there were, like, 225,000 [survivors] worldwide. It gets less every year. I think only two of [the survivors in the group] knew each other previously. None of them had ever been on a film set before, and they were so patient with us.
Squibb: We just sort of passed the time of day. Sami, who was sitting next to me, and I chatted. It was all very relaxed. They were having a good time. They were interested in lunch. I remember that.
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Johansson: I talked to everyone individually. Quite a lot of them are public speakers and share their stories. It’s amazing. You’re talking to people in their 90s about an experience they had when they were 7. Their stories are so vivid in their minds. Sami told June that sharing the story is part of the healing.
June, for a bat mitzvah scene you memorized a complicated Torah portion. How did it go?
Squibb: It wasn’t easy to learn. I didn’t do it overnight. But we were in a beautiful synagogue, and it was great to stand there and do it. I enjoyed it.
Talk about finding out that it didn’t make the final cut.
Squibb: I think the first thing I asked [Scarlett was], [sounding peeved] “Where did my Torah portion go?” [laughs]
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Johannson: It was, like, “What the hell happened?” [laughs, then winces] I really struggled. But every way I cut it, it didn’t work so it just had to go. I was pretty nervous to show it [to June]. I said to Harry, my editor, “She worked so hard on it.”
How about that five-minute standing ovation when “Eleanor” has its world premiere at Cannes?
Squibb: It was just terribly exciting. We hugged each other a lot. And Erin was there, and she was in our hug too. I kept thinking, “We’re not even at a lovely theater in America. My God, this is an international audience here and they’re loving it.” And they did.
The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.
Surrounding Chalamet is “a supporting cast you’d swear was assembled via Mad Libs,” because it features Fran Drescher, Penn Jillette, Tyler the Creator, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and—as a faded movie star Marty sweet-talks into an affair—Gwyneth Paltrow, “reminding you how good she was before Goop became her full-time gig.” To me, it’s the story beneath the story that makes Safdie’s “nerve-jangling, utterly exhilarating” movie one of the best of the year, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “It’s about a Jewish kid who knows just what kind of antisemitism and finely stratified racial dynamics he’s up against in postwar America, and who is using every means at his disposal to smack back.”
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‘Is This Thing On?’
Directed by Bradley Cooper (R)
★★★
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“There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.”
The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going until hour two,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Until then, it’s “lethargic and listless,” slowed by long takes “that drag on and on.” Fortunately, Arnett and Dern have real chemistry that kicks in when Dern’s Tess accidentally catches Arnett’s Alex performing his bit about their sidelined marriage and sees him with new eyes. Good as Arnett is, “it’s Dern who’s the revelation as a woman who truly doesn’t know what she wants and is figuring it out in real time,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Cooper, playing a reprobate friend of Alex’s, gives himself the script’s biggest laughs. More importantly, he proves again to be a director with “a real flair for domestic drama.”
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