FRIDAY
Pink Martini is back with energetic sound
Pink Martini returns to Hawaii today with its energetic, multicultural pop sound.
The Portland, Ore.-based “small orchestra” mixes big-band-style tunes with chansons, torch songs, Latin dance tunes, even Asian pop tunes. In their 2015 appearance at Hawaii Theatre, they performed the Japanese tune “Zundoko-bushi.”
Band founder Thomas Lauderdale is a Harvard-educated, classically trained pianist who occasionally solos with symphony orchestras. He started the band to provide music for his campaign for mayor of Portland, finding out in the process that a career in music would be “more fabulous” than politics. Lead vocalist China Forbes has proved equal to the demands he’s put on her, singing in around 20 languages, some of them phonetically.
Pink Martini has produced eight studio albums to international acclaim — its first, “Sympathique,” earned the band nominations to the French equivalent of the Grammys. The group’s latest album, 2014’s “Dream a Little Dream,” features descendants of the Von Trapp family, of “Sound of Music” fame.
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Don’t worry if you’re puzzled by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and can’t understand her lyrics. The Japanese pop music star, fashion trendsetter and internet sensation, who is responsible for some of the strangest music videos on YouTube, admits to some confusion about her message herself.
“Even in Japanese my lyrics don’t make any sense and have a kind of mystery,” she told The Fader, a New York music and art magazine.
How does one explain the video of her breakout hit, “PonPonPon,” which is set in a child’s bedroom decorated in over-the-top cuteness but at one point has disembodied eyeballs and pink tanks — yes, military tanks — floating through the screen? The video earned a tweet from Katy Perry, mention on “The Simpsons” and some English adaptations. Kyary has been selling out tours in Europe and the U.S. ever since.
Kyary appears at the Royal Hawaiian Theater as part of her worldwide tour celebrating five years at the forefront of Japanese pop culture. She’ll undoubtedly feature some of the outlandish Harajuku Girl fashions that have made her famous and dance her artfully unslick choreography. Expect a candy-coated sound, reminiscent of a pubescent Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Exhibits take First Friday back to its artistic roots
First Friday, which in recent years has become more pub crawl than art event, returns to its artistic roots this month, with several galleries hosting new shows.
The ARTS at Marks Garage, 1159 Nuuanu Ave., hosts a 5:30-8:30 p.m. reception today for “Dinner Party at Marks,” a collaborative art show featuring 10 artists creating works around the idea of a dinner party.
One of those artists, Mariko Merritt, made a set of tiny ceramic dishes with animals in them, using themes she often uses in her ceramics and greeting card business. “I went to Japan this summer, and they always present everything so carefully arranged on tiny little dishes, and there’s a million of them on the table, so that was my inspiration for this tiny setup,” she said.
“Some people took it literally and made dining sets, and one other artist made giant ceramic dogs that are carrying up a dining table,” said Merrit, describing the “Dinner Party”: “It’s all over the place.”
The Louis Pohl Gallery, 1142 Bethel St., features “Whimsical Gardens & Energizing Spirits,” an exhibit of clay and plant creations by Jack Lewin, Karen Kim, Lori Nakatsuka, Pablo Tello and Jon Rawlings, and painters Arlene Woo and Frances Hill offer a show titled “Dames, Delectables and Dogs.” An artists’ reception is 6-9 p.m. today.
At the Artists Lofts, 1109 Maunakea St., photographer James Anschutz exhibits “All Over the Map,” a show based on his trip through Southeast Asia which uses an augmented reality app to bring his images to life.
Take in some music at the Hawai‘i State Art Museum, 250 S. Hotel St., where the great slack-key guitarist Ledward Kaapana will perform at 6 p.m. Enjoy his fleet finger-work outdoors in the museum’s second-floor courtyard.
SATURDAY- Sept. 17
Sleeper hits join escapist fare at Korean Cinema
A Korean father urges his college-bound son to study medicine. When the son replies he plans to major in literature, the father explodes in anger.
While this scene sounds contemporary, it is actually set in Korea during World War II, in “Dongju: Portrait of a Poet,”a deeply moving black-and-white film directed by Lee Joon-ik. It screens at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 1 p.m. Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 11 and 1 p.m. Sept 15 as part the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Korean Cinema program.
The son is poet Yun Dong-ju, who is arrested, tortured and interrogated about a friend’s actions in the independence movement against the Japanese occupation. His poetry is viewed as subversive, and his jailers’ ham-fisted interpretations of his lines would be comical if this weren’t a matter of life and death.
The beautiful 2016 film is one of a pair of sleeper hits featured in the museum’s program, which starts Saturday at the Doris Duke Theatre. The other hit is “Spirits’ Homecoming,” pictured, another microbudget World War II saga, which tells the horrific chronicle of two teenage friends forced into sexual slavery as “comfort women” by Japanese troops.
Directed by Cho Chung-rae, “Spirits” was in “production limbo for almost a decade,” said Taylour Chang, theater manager, due to a “long-standing hesitancy to examine the grim realities of the past.”
“Spirits” opened this year at the top of the box office, indicating that after “assuming that audiences didn’t want to confront that tension (between Korea and Japan), the industry is now realizing there is a hunger for it,” Chang said. The film screens at 1 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, 4 p.m. Sept. 11 and 1 p.m. Sept. 14.
The Korean Cinema program also offers plenty for fans of escapist fare, including the zombie apocalypse hit “The Train to Busan,” the supernatural thriller “The Wailing” and the social media rom-com “Like for Likes.” Check honolulumuseum.org for a full schedule.
— Mindy Pennybacker
