Boras Classic: Wednesday’s scores, Thursday’s schedule

Scores from Wednesday’s games in the Boras Classic, and the schedule for Thursday’s games.

Wednesday’s games
Championship quarterfinals
Orange Lutheran 6, El Toro 5
Mira Costa 3, Vista Murrieta 0
Huntington Beach 8, Notre Dame/SO 2
Santiago/Corona 8, Mater Dei 4

Consolation quarterfinals
Corona 4, Gahr 3
Chatsworth 8, JSerra 7
Aliso Niguel 6, Damien 2
La Mirada 4, Bishop Amat 0

Champsionship semifinals
Thursday, 6 p.m.
Orange Lutheran vs. Mira Costa, at JSerra
Huntington Beach vs. Santiago/Corona, at Mater Dei

Championship game
Friday, at JSerra High, 6 p.m.

Consolation semifinals
Thursday, noon
Corona vs. Chatsworth, at JSerra
Aliso Niguel vs. La Mirada, at Mater Dei

Consolation bracket
Thursday, 9 a.m.
Gahr vs. JSerra, at JSerra
Bishop Amat vs. Damien, at Mater Dei

20.04.2017No comments
Ovations for April 23

YAGP FINALS

The Youth America Grand Prix is the largest international student ballet competition. Students must compete in semifinal rounds and place in the top 12 in their age category before moving to the final round in New York. Finals were held April 7-12, and the following students and ensemble from Orange County placed in their respective categories:

Jordan Coutts, V & T Classical Ballet and Dance Academy, Laguna Hills – JUNIOR WOMEN, 3rd place

Nicole Denney, Dmitri Kulev Classical Ballet Academy, Laguna Hills – JUNIOR WOMEN, top 12

Moorea Pike, Southland Ballet Academy, Irvine/Fountain Valley – SENIOR WOMEN, top 12

“Right/Wrong,” West Coast School of the Arts, Costa Mesa – ENSEMBLES, top 12

SCPA COMPETITIONS

The Southern California Percussion Alliance promotes the growth of percussive arts through performances, competitions and educational activities. Scores and rankings for Orange County high schools and independent groups participating in area competitions are listed below.

Championship Finals, April 15

Aliso Niguel High School, Aliso Viejo – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC A: 5th place (86.775)

Broken City, Costa Mesa – PERCUSSION INDEPENDENT WORLD: 1st place (94.538)

Canyon High School, Anaheim Hills – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC CONCERT OPEN: 1st place (94.225)

El Toro High School, Lake Forest – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC A: 10th place (83.775)

Fountain Valley High School, Fountain Valley – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC OPEN: 12th place (81.375);  PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC CONCERT OPEN: 2nd place (92.55)

La Quinta High School, Westminster – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC OPEN: 2nd place (92.15)

Los Alamitos High School, Los Alamitos – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC OPEN: 5th place (89.738)

Mission Viejo High School, Mission Viejo – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC OPEN: 8th place (84.525)

Odyssey Indoor Percussion, Costa Mesa – PERCUSSION INDEPENDENT OPEN: 2nd place (88.125)

Orange County Independent, Costa Mesa – PERCUSSION INDEPENDENT OPEN: 1st place (91.15)

Pacifica High School, Garden Grove – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC A: 4th place (88.888)

Pulse Percussion, Westminster – PERCUSSION INDEPENDENT WORLD: 2nd place (94.4)

Sunny Hills High School, Fullerton – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC CONCERT OPEN: 3rd place (91.55)

Trabuco Hills High School, Mission Viejo – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC A: 11th place (83.65)

Westminster High School, Westminster – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC A: 8th place (85.625)

Woodbridge High School, Irvine – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC CONCERT WORLD: 1st place (94.875)

Yorba Linda High School, Yorba Linda – PERCUSSION SCHOLASTIC CONCERT A: 5th place (82.7)

 

WGASC COMPETITIONS

Winter Guard Association of Southern California oversees a series of color guard and percussion ensemble competitions throughout the winter. Awards are given based on a points system. Competition grouping is based on the developmental level of the group. Scores and rankings for Orange County high schools are listed below. Complete information on the association’s competitions can be found at wgasc.org.

Competition at Woodbridge High School, April 14

Aliso Niguel High School, Aliso Viejo – SCHOLASTIC A: 1st place (79.98)

Capistrano Valley High School, Mission Viejo  – SCHOLASTIC AAA: 4th place (66.48)

Cypress High School, Cypress – SCHOLASTIC AA: 3rd place (73.13)

Dana Hills High School, Dana Point – HIGH SCHOOL A: 5th place (60.4)

El Toro High School, Lake Forest – SCHOLASTIC AAA: 2nd place (72.02)

Northwood High School, Irvine – HIGH SCHOOL A: 4th place (61.04)

Portola High School, Irvine – HIGH SCHOOL A: 6th place (60.28)

Santa Ana Valley High School, Santa Ana – HIGH SCHOOL A: 3rd place (65)

University High School, Irvine – SCHOLASTIC AAA: 1st place (75.48)

Woodbridge High School, Irvine – SCHOLASTIC A: 2nd place (79.82)

Competition at Arcadia High School, April 15

Edison High School, Huntington Beach – SCHOLASTIC AAA (round 2): 8th place (71.38)

Emerald Winterguard, Anaheim – INDEPENDENT A: 3rd place (77.43)

Fountain Valley High School, Fountain Valley – SCHOLASTIC A: 2nd place (85.8)

John F. Kennedy High School, La Palma – SCHOLASTIC AA: 6th place (75.17)

Los Alamitos High School, Los Alamitos – SCHOLASTIC AAA (round 3): 1st place (74.88)

Magnolia High School, Anaheim – SCHOLASTIC AA: 7th place (73.8)

Mater Dei High School, Santa Ana – SCHOLASTIC AAA (round 3): 2nd place (74.65)

Western High School, Anaheim – HIGH SCHOOL A (round 2): 5th place (82.41)

Competition at Chino High School, April 15

Aliso Niguel High School, Aliso Viejo – SCHOLASTIC A: 3rd place (79.16)

Arnold O. Beckman High School, Irvine – HIGH SCHOOL A (round 1): 1st place (81.66)

Canyon High School, Anaheim Hills – SCHOLASTIC AAA (round 2): 5th place (73.45)

Irvine High School, Irvine – HIGH SCHOOL AA (round 2): 3rd place (71.01)

Katella High School, Anaheim  – SCHOLASTIC AAA (round 1): 6th place (68.49)

John F. Kennedy High School, La Palma – HIGH SCHOOL A (round 1): 4th place (74.06)

Laguna Hills High School, Laguna Hills – HIGH SCHOOL AA (round 2): 6th place (68.91)

Villa Park High School, Villa Park – HIGH SCHOOL AA (round 1): 5th place (65.36)

University High School, Irvine – SCHOLASTIC AAA (round 2): 4th place (74.97)

 

CONTACT VARSITY ARTS: 714-796-2258 or varsityarts@ocregister.com

20.04.2017No comments
Whicker: Clayton Kershaw’s force field repels the bad vibes

LOS ANGELES >> This would be an example of what happens when vibes collide.

The Dodgers were starting Clayton Kershaw on Wednesday night. But they were also facing a left-handed pitcher, Colorado’s Tyler Anderson.

Those are equal and opposite forces. Would Dodger Stadium explode?

Not really. Matter defeated anti-matter, 4-2, which is to say Kershaw raised his record to 3-1 and lowered his ERA to 2.34.

Manager Dave Roberts found it important enough to use Kenley Jansen to get the final four outs, even though it’s April 19. The Dodgers had lost three consecutive games, felt they had a chance to win with Kershaw and didn’t want to put too much strut in the Rockies’ step. Colorado came into Wednesday with a 10-5 record.

“We know we can do it (against lefties),” Dodgers outfielder Scott Van Slyke said afterward. “We’ve taken our walks, put together some good at-bats, gotten people into scoring position. It was just nice to break through.

“As a team, well, every team has its struggles. I’m sure if you talk to the guys who won the World Series last year, they’d probably tell you there were some things they could do better. Every team has its thing. We just need to continue to stick with approach and our work ethic. Tonight when we got up 4-1, I got the feeling we were going to do everything we could to win this game.”

Van Slyke hammered Anderson’s 2-and-2 pitch to left field for a home run in the Dodgers’ second, his first since last June 15. That tied it 1-1 after Colorado had produced only one run out of a bases-loaded, no-out situation in its first inning.

With two on, Nolan Arenado singled to right. Third base coach Stu Cole, respectful of the Yasiel Puig factor, held up Charlie Blackmon. At that point you almost expected Kershaw to escape without a blemish, but after he struck out Carlos Gonzalez he gave up a one-out sacrifice fly to Mark Reynolds. Then Gerardo Parra struck out looking.

Chris Taylor, called up after Logan Forsythe went on the disabled list, led off the climactic fifth with a double, and Anderson threw poorly on Kershaw’s bunt to keep it going. Kike Hernandez’s double led to the three-run inning, and Jansen got a two-on, two-out fly ball from Reynolds in the eighth.

The Dodgers are hitting .218 against lefties, but four National League teams are worse. They hit .214 last year, and no NL team was worse. The reason you’re hearing rumors about Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun, other than the fact there’s a lot of rumormongers out there, is that Braun is a .337 hitter against lefties for his career with a 1.038 OPS.

And, yeah, most of the left-handed pitchers in the league are pretty good. You wouldn’t think this should be such a hole in the Dodgers’ game. But Justin Turner hits 50 points lower (.250 to .300) against lefties for his career, and Puig hits 20 points lower. It helps when the Dodgers throw a left-hander that nobody can hit.

Van Slyke was asked to describe the feeling of a Kershaw day, when the winds are a little softer, and nothing but good songs come on the radio, and the stoplights change when you pull up.

“I don’t really know what to compare it to,” he told a couple of writers. “I guess it would be like watching your favorite reporter ask a question of somebody. I mean, there’s an art to doing that.

“You have an appreciation for what he does. It heightens everybody’s focus. That’s why he is who he is. He brings out the best in everybody.”

Except Kershaw didn’t bring out the best in himself, not on the exacting scale that he has established. “I think he’d tell you he didn’t really have his rhythm consistently,” Roberts said. “He labored at times.”

Kershaw gave up two leadoff doubles in the middle innings, escaping one jam by striking out Blackmon on a curve, but giving up an RBI single to rookie Stephen Cardullo, who had come in when Gonzalez was hit by a pitch.

Kershaw offered no argument when Roberts removed him, after 97 pitches and three trips through the lineup. A lot of that was respect for the Rockies’ production, too.

“They’ve played well before in April and May,” Van Slyke said. “In recent years they’ve had some injuries, and it’s tough to play in that ballpark, but they’ve got a really good bullpen now and their starters are better.”

There will be other collisions between polar opposites, but baseball physics usually abides by Kershaw’s Law.

20.04.2017No comments
‘Free Fire’ takes aim at a whole warehouse of genre expectations

Stupid violence is sent up quite smartly in “Free Fire.”

It would be too much to call it a return to form for director Ben Wheatley and his frequent screenwriting collaborator, Amy Jump, but it is a nice move back to coherent storytelling. While the couple’s last two films, “High-Rise” and “A Field in England,” justifiably have their admirers, those projects’ cussed narrative incontinence felt like abstract detours from Wheatley’s sly, well-plotted earlier genre subversions, such as “Sightseers” and “Kill List.”

“Free Fire,” packed with chaos and surprises though it is, always makes a pulpy kind of sense while delivering barrages of mean-spirited entertainment and a consistent critique of thoughtless mayhem.

The real convention-challenging here resides in the visual plan – plan in this case being a word one is tempted to put quotation marks around or add “if you can call it that” to. Shouldn’t do that, though, because there really is a highly sophisticated shooting strategy that just happens to look like no one was sure where to point the camera.

More on that in a moment, but first the setup:

In 1970s Boston, a group of Irish Republican Army operatives arrange to buy a cache of automatic weapons from a South African arms merchant. The deal goes down in an abandoned waterfront warehouse that still has a lot of junk lying around.

The Irish group, composed of both Northern and Southy blokes, includes Cillian Murphy’s nice guy terrorist Chris, grumpy old Frank (Wheatley regular Michael Smiley) and junkie screw-up Stevo (Sam Riley). “District 9’s” Sharlto Copley – who else? – plays the South African Vernon, and his crew boasts the unfortunate membership of Harry (Jack Reynor), who easily loses control and has personal issues with a guy on the IRA team.

The American go-betweens are no-nonsense businesswoman Justine (Brie Larson) and sarcastic preppy Ord (Armie Hammer). When things head south and bullets start ricocheting around the large, enclosed space, each person takes a side on whichever faction seems most convenient for survival. Neither the terrorists nor the gun-runners can rely on Justine or Ord’s loyalty, of course. But as wounds proliferate and the firefight gets reduced to a game of crawling, then slithering, no one can be sure who on their team has their back – or might shoot them in it, either.

The viewer will be similarly disoriented. Usually, in primarily single set bloodbaths – “Reservoir Dogs” comes to mind – the cinematic rule is to carefully define everyone’s position and its relationship to others’ at all times. Wheatley’s go-to camera guy, Laurie Rose, doesn’t seem as concerned with that as he is with just prowling around to capture the coolest, most painful-looking mayhem, while Wheatley and Jump, who edited the film, deconstruct any notion of geographical consistency whenever they can.

Kind of amazingly, they prove that that stuff doesn’t matter. Especially when you’ve got strong, amusing characterizations and reams of nasty, clever dialogue to burn, but also by demonstrating there’s more than one way of making filmic space the star of a movie. It all plays much more smoothly than these aesthetic strategies, by any right, should. And by the end, “Free Fire” has spread out a wickedly entertaining takedown of idiot violence and challenged deeply embedded assumptions of how movie gunplay can be done (and I’ll use the ironic quotation marks here) “good.”

‘Free Fire’

/*/*/*1/2
Rated R: For violence, language, drug use
Starring: Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer, Sharlto Copley
Director: Ben Wheatley
Running time: 1 hr. 25 min.
Playing: In wide release

20.04.2017No comments