Maybe one of the most important things that we should hold onto from when we’re kids is our dreams. Sometimes as we get older, we loose sight of the things that we once held onto and guided us. As we get older, sometimes we let go, and we get lost.

Maybe it’s a lack of self confidence or maybe it’s just growing up – but we let go. We forget the things that made us who we are. Maybe the beauty of life is that we have people to remind us and we don’t become skeptics. We need someone to remind us what the beauty of dreams is.

Junebug is that movie for me.

For Juniper the road to remembering what she once wanted starts with her parents delivering her “wish box” that she’s forgotten about. Work is chaos, life is chaos, and she doesn’t think that she has time for anything in life that could bring her pure joy.

She’s lost the color in her world and is surviving in a world of neutral colors and routines.

Junebug has settled for the place that she is in her life. Ethan, her boyfriend, wants to give her a pen for her birthday. Her 40th milestone birthday. Luckily she was a best friend that reminds her that she deserves better. And then luckily she remembers that and eventually lets him see the door.

Reading her wishes that she’s left behind, she awakes to her younger self and thinks she’s lost her mind. But maybe the connection to her younger self is what she’s been missing. She doesn’t want to believe that she’s seeing herself and her younger self just wants to help.

I think that the beauty from the beginning of Junebug is the instant reminder that connecting with who we once were. Connecting with our inner child is a beautiful things if we just allow ourself to accept that just because you grow up, doesn’t mean that you have to let go.

When you are an adult, yes, you have to make compromises, but I don’t believe that you have to compromise ones soul.

Alex Ripley is also running from life. After a savage review of his art work, he’s not really been seen from since. He doesn’t want to illustrate. And he doesn’t want to say why. But Junipers younger self doesn’t want her to give up.

TBH only 28 minutes into Junebug, I was a mess. I was filled with tears. The moment that Autumn Reeser brings Junipers acceptance of seeing her younger self to life was something that broke me. It was such a simple moment, a simple facial expression, and yet it was everything. It was a moment that I had to press pause and wonder – what had I forgotten about being young? What had I forgotten about my dreams?

The way that Autumn Reeser brings the characters that she plays to life is something that you don’t see in a lot of actresses. She’s got this moment in all of her movies where you forget that it’s Autumn and you believe that she’s speaking to you and for you. You believe that this character somehow is everything that you want to be, that it understands all of the pain, anguish, joy, and laughter that you experience. And the way that Reeser brings her characters to life reminds you of just that.

Aaron O’Connell isn’t someone that I have watched in a lot of things, but quite frankly I enjoyed him and I believed in the chemistry that him and Reeser share on the screen. Their characters challenge each other and that is beautiful. The way that they make each other stop and take a second look at the hopes and dreams that each one has – one can only hope that you can find that kind of chemistry in real life.

I know that with all movies, there is going to be some part that is going to break you – that you’re going to have to make a choice. You’re going to have to decide who you are rooting for and what it means. You’re going to have to take a second to think about if your “ship” is worth fighting for. For me, it normally takes a second to get there, but instantly I was there. Together or apart I was fighting for Juniper and Alex. I wanted them to succeed in everything that they needed and wanted.

The subtle nuances in this movie – the way that there are a lot of little changes that you see when you are paying attention – you see that this movie is a break from the norm. But what I loved the most about this movie was that it wasn’t about just the romance or the dreams that one has or even the embracing ones inner child – it was about the beautiful moments where you realize are a cumulation of things.

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Life is a cumulation of things. You just have to take a second to believe in those things and yourself.

It’s if we take the time to see that all the moments can connect us to who we are, well, that’s the beauty in life. Life isn’t about settling, it’s about connecting and believing.

And may we all have the ability to reconnect with our inner child to guide the way.

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Side Note: Mila Jones, you are a light and a star. You really made this movie too.

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Harold and the Purple Crayon is probably a great movie, if you’re a pre-teen. I’m not sure kids much older than that will enjoy it too much. The characters and plot are all obvious and I didn’t get the feeling that the moral of the story really had any impact.

It’s difficult to really tell what the moral of the story is. There’s the “don’t be evil” aspect, but that’s fairly obvious. And there’s a little of the “believe in yourself” story, but that again isn’t well done in the movie. The main character only looses faith in himself for about two minutes of the story.

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There’s a little bit of the “parent’s should believe/support their children’s needs” but that too doesn’t really land. I think the story tries to have a few moral lessons and the result is that none of them really stand out.

Maybe the moral of the story is: writers should stick to only one moral of the story.

All of that aside, the antics and imagination of Harold’s drawing adventures are probably appealing to a very young five-to-ten year old children. The movie does have a 92% by the audience at RottenTomatoes, so someone enjoyed it. The critics however did not enjoy it.

Grade: B

About The Peetimes: This is a short movie, only about 80 minutes without the end credits. I would recommend the first Peetime. It’s the easiest to summarize. Neither of the Peetimes has any crazy antics that kids enjoy.

There are extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Plot
Inside of his book, adventurous Harold can make anything come to life simply by drawing it. After he grows up and draws himself off the book’s pages and into the physical world, Harold finds he has a lot to learn about real life.

Street photographer and artist Estevan Oriol, best known for his image of the “L.A. fingers,” remembers frequenting the corner of Fourth and Soto streets in Boyle Heights in the 1990s to pick up the latest issue Teen Angel, an art zine named after its creator that portrayed Chicano life. Oriol felt the magazine’s subject matter mirrored his own work — he was using his camera lens to capture Chicano life while Angel did it with his colorful, hand-drawn illustrations.

Now, the work of both artists is on display in “Dedicated to You,” a new exhibition at Melrose gallery Beyond the Streets.

Open until Sept. 15, the show explores the various intersections between two artists’ bodies of work while doubling as a window into L.A.’s youth Chicano culture of the 1990s and early 2000s. On display are photographs, drawings and artifacts that provide an often neglected history of the city that raised them. The exhibit allows for their work to come together in depicting a rich vignette of “the culture.”

Same time, same place

Oriol, 57, says he doesn’t consider himself to be inspired by Angel but someone who was experiencing the same city concurrently.

“It was cool because, at that time, I was shooting all that kind of stuff like the homies, the lowriders and the girls. I was right there side by side doing what was in the magazine,” said Oriol.

On the gallery’s opening night, a line of vintage lowriders and motorcycles lined La Brea Avenue. The show’s poster, a large black and white image of a young Chicano couple kissing, acted as a background to the impromptu car show.

Within the gallery’s glass walls are Oriol’s negative contact sheets. The film rolls depict old Echo Park gang graffiti, lowriders caught mid bounce, tattooed women, and shots of celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Danny Trejo.

Born in Santa Monica, Oriol says he got his first taste of Hollywood after he began working as a doorman for several L.A. nightclubs in the ‘80s The job allowed him to connect with hip-hop groups like Cypress Hill, Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. and Rhyme Syndicate.

“Everybody would mix at these clubs. You would see some break dancers here and some new wavers there,” he said. “There were cholos and rockers with crazy hairspray looks. We were all just starting. Everything was new and fresh.”

Oriol eventually landed a job as a tour manager for hip-hop group House of Pain. Around the same time, Oriol’s dad gave him a camera.

“My dad told me to start shooting all the stuff that you’re around,” Oriol said. “At that time, I was also building a lowrider and I was in a car club in East L.A. We used to have our meetings on Beverly and Atlantic at the Mobil gas station.”

Every Friday, Oriol would cruise all around Los Angeles, from Whittier Boulevard to Hollywood Boulevard — along the way he snapped photos.

“It wasn’t just showing up and taking pictures of something that I wasn’t a part of,” Oriol said. “I’m not an outsider. A lot of photographers who don’t come from the culture and take pictures of it say they want to do their own narrative. I’m not trying to do that. It is what it is. I just shoot what I see.”

Visitors of the gallery are met with several glass cases with relics from both Oriol and Angel’s lives — an arsenal of Oriol’s cameras fills the shelves, along with several pairs of Nike Cortez sneakers hanging from a wire, memorial candles and a hubcap from one of his first cars.

Angel’s display is centered on the very desk and chair where he created the magazine, complete with cigarette burns and paint splatters. Images of his workspace and home the day after his passing sit atop the desk. When Angel died in 2015, Oriol, despite never having met him, was invited to come take pictures of how he left everything. On both sides of the desk, more parts of his private life can be seen including his glasses, a model ship and several figurines of his popular drawings.

Estevan Oriol is embraced by OG Lepke, whom he took many photos of, during the opening day of the gallery exhibit.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

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The man behind the magazine

Born Dave Holland in Indiana, the reclusive Angel chased his obsession with old Chevys to Southern California in the 1970s, landing a job as an illustrator for Lowrider magazine. In 1980, he founded Teen Angel, which focused on publishing artwork by the incarcerated and putting a spotlight on what Chicano culture looked like at the time.

David De Baca, one of Angel’s closest friends who is now manager of his estate, helped curate the show at Beyond the Streets. He says seeing Oriol’s work paired with Angel’s is something that always made sense to him.

“Estevan sees beauty in these neighborhoods and he photographs it. And in the same sense, that’s the way Teen Angel was,” De Baca said. “He saw beauty in the neighborhood and through his magazine, you would see drawings of cholos and cholas and street scenes of a neighborhood where it was a little gritty and there’s graffiti on the wall. But, when it’s laid out appropriately in artwork, you see the beauty in it. He and Estevan always saw the same kind of beauty.”

A bookshelf, complete with every issue of Teen Angel, is positioned next to a wall featuring the magazine’s original cover art and other works. The complete collection belongs to Bryan Ray Turcotte, who has spent the last decade hunting down every issue. As a skater kid involved in the DIY scene, Turcotte says the publication was very meaningful in his adolescence.

“[Teen Angel] was so haphazard about his numbering system,” said Turcotte of amassing his collection. “There’s all these offshoots of magazines that popped up in the middle of the run, so I had to do massive amounts of research to figure out how many there actually were.”

Frankie Quinones poses in front of Oriol’s “L.A. Fingers.”

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

Rooted in dedication

One wall at the gallery is devoted to “Silent Signals,” a recurring series in the magazine that featured various hand signals meant to discreetly communicate with a romantic interest. His signature “Traviesa Twins,” reoccurring characters in the issues, hold up different signs that communicate the alphabet. Next to each of Angel’s drawings, Oriol puts a modern-day twist on the signals by taking photos of Latinas mirroring the twins. Together, the wall acts as a connection point between Teen Angel’s drawings from 43 years ago to today’s culture.

In the neighboring room, massive vinyl cutouts of Angel’s drawings fill the gaps between Oriol’s prints, including “L.A. Fingers.” To the photographer, the show is all about making the viewer feel something. But when he walks through the gallery himself, he gets “pissed off.”

“I start to think of all the pictures that I didn’t take,” Oriol said. “Or the days that I f—ing didn’t have my camera or I think about how I had my camera and I didn’t take a picture of something, like what a f—ing idiot.”

Despite never having met, dedication lies at the center of everything Angel created and Oriol continues to create.

“It’s dedicated to the West Coast,” Oriol said. “It’s dedicated to the homies that passed away. It’s dedicated to everyone who’s part of this or however you want to put it. For me, it’s dedicated to this city.”