Critics’ Picks: Feb. 7-13, 2014
Los Angeles Times entertainment, arts and culture critics choose the week’s most noteworthy openings, new releases, ongoing events and places to go in and around Southern California.
Two new American operas launch the new season, and PBS observes Black History Month with a profile of Alice Walker. Click through to explore more and, where applicable, find directions to venues.
‘Her’
If you haven’t yet caught the captivating “Her,” consider fitting it in before the Academy Awards show March 2. This novel film from writer-director Spike Jonze is deservedly one of the best picture nominees. Though its star, Joaquin Phoenix, didn’t get an Oscar nomination — it is a very competitive year — his performance most certainly helped put “Her” into the race. If you step back and consider the premise, it gives you a deeper appreciation for what Phoenix managed. Nearly all of his scenes are spent as the only human on screen, and he’s usually having a conversation with a computer, more specifically an operating system named Samantha. Sam is brilliantly voiced by Scarlett Johansson, but for now focus on Phoenix. His challenge was to create a plausible and engaging emotional life for Theodore Twombly, a man whose job it is writing Hallmark-esque personal letters for other people. The actor’s performance is a master class in subtlety. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
Betsy Sharkey
Film critic
‘Like Father, Like Son’
“Like Father, Like Son” is a deceptively simple title for a film of considerable emotional complexity. Its children-switched-at-birth story sounds schematic, but what we see on screen is both meaningful and deeply moving. If you are familiar with the work of writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, none of this will come as a surprise. As one of Japan’s most respected filmmakers (his earlier films include “After Life,” “Nobody Knows” and “Still Walking”), there is a gentleness and delicacy of touch about his work that almost defies belief. Stories like this one, which would run the risk of being overdone in other hands, become quite the opposite in his. A film that quietly but deftly examines what defines a family, “Like Father, Like Son” began with Kore-eda’s own thoughts (“all of my quandaries and questions and, indeed, regrets,” he says in a director’s statement) on becoming a father himself. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
Kenneth Turan
Film critic
Other recommendations:
'Stranger by the Lake'
Despite the sunshine, gentle breezes and placid waters, something wicked this way comes in French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie's tantalizingly erotic fable of love, passion and death. Starring Pierre Deladonchamps and Christophe Paou as lovers and strangers, the film is also a Class-A thriller — murders, mysteries and fear mingle alongside the men. Though Guiraudie's work often circles around the complexities of sexual urges among gay men, he's never gotten as close to reality as he does here, creating something menacing, magnetic, impossible to resist. (Betsy Sharkey) (In French with English subtitles) Read more
'12 Years a Slave'
When a director who never ever blinks takes on a horrific subject, a nightmare in broad daylight is the inevitable result. Welcome, if that is the right word, to the world of "12 Years a Slave." Based on an 1853 memoir detailing the appalling experiences of Solomon Northup, a free man of color who was brazenly abducted and sold into slavery, this film intends to do more than tell us a story. It wants to immerse us in an experience, and it does. Obviously, no film can re-create the unspeakable degradation of one human being owning another, but in making the attempt "12 Years" insists we feel things in a particularly oppressive way. This is impressive filmmaking, but it is not easy to take in. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'American Hustle'
David O. Russell is a director on a hot streak, an audacious original with an affinity for edgy American madness. His dizzying, outlandishly entertaining "American Hustle" is a 21st century screwball farce about 20th century con men, scam artists and those who dream of living large, a film that is big-hearted and off the wall in equal measure. As he demonstrated in his previous two pictures, "Silver Linings Playbook" and "The Fighter," out of control people are Russell's specialty. Like a cowboy working in the biggest of corrals, he lets his characters roam as far and wide as they please before reining them in with perfect control at the close. In this film, Russell has surrounded himself with actors he's worked with before — Christian Bale and Amy Adams from "The Fighter" and Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper from "Silver Linings" — and gone for broke. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'Blue Jasmine'
If you haven't seen 'Blue Jasmine," you've missed one of the summer's best performances. Fortunately there is still time to catch Woody Allen's bleakest drama ever. "She's Come Undone." The title of one of my favorite Wally Lamb novels about a woman over the edge kept running through my mind as I watched Woody Allen's new film, "Blue Jasmine." There's just no better way to put it. Jasmine, in such a paralyzing state of denial and played with such broken vulnerability by Cate Blanchett, is coming completely undone. Jasmine's unraveling becomes the conduit for a stinging ironic jab at the Bernie Madoffs of the world and their particular brand of greed. Jasmine was married to one of them, and the question of how much she knew is significant. Yet for all of "Blue Jasmine's" darkness, the movie is among the filmmaker's most emotionally affecting. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
'Frozen'
With a cool, contemporary spin on a fairy-tale classic, a dramatic Nordic landscape animated in splendid storybook style and Broadway vets belting out power ballads, “Frozen” is an icy blast of fun from the very first flake. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel star in this sisterhood saga loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.” Filled with heart and heart-stopping action, it also has a playful sense of humor. The 3-D effects are killer, the music soaring. In fact, there are so many good reasons to see “Frozen” that I can’t begin to count them all. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
'Gloria'
There is a naturalistic charm to the truth-telling going on in "Gloria," Chilean director Sebastian Lelio's near-perfect film about the very imperfect world of a divorced woman of a certain age. Starring the incomparable Paulina Garcia in every scene — every single one, no exaggeration — the film settles comfortably between romantic comedy and drama. Perhaps the better way to characterize it is affectionately ironic love story. A quick series of scenes set the pace for a film that keeps moving its characters through various emotional phases. It doesn't take long to get a sense of Gloria and what she's up against. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
'Gravity'
Words can do little to convey the visual astonishment this space opera creates. Directed by Alfonso Cuaron and starring Sandra Bullock as an astronaut in trouble, this is a film whose impact must be experienced in 3-D on a theatrical screen to be fully understood. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'The Great Beauty'
As its name promises, this is drop-dead gorgeous moviemaking, a film that is luxuriously, seductively, stunningly cinematic. But with the great actor Toni Servillo on his team, larger questions of meaning in life turn out to be on director Paolo Sorrentino’s mind. In Italian with English subtitles. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'Nebraska'
It's the letter everyone's received. The one that gets your attention by saying you've won a million dollars but is actually all about selling magazine subscriptions. But what if someone truly believed they'd won that million? And what if that individual was your crabby, cranky and cantankerous father and he insisted on going to prize headquarters to collect his money? In person. That, in a nutshell, is the premise of Alexander Payne's poignant and ruefully funny "Nebraska." But summations can't convey the filmmaking delicacy that marries tart-tongued comedy with unexpected warmth in a story that touches on family, memory, getting old and staying alive. Plus allowing 77-year-old Bruce Dern the opportunity to give the performance of a lifetime. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'Tim's Vermeer'
If you missed the very fine, fine-art documentary "Tim's Vermeer" during its brief stop last month, it is back in town for its official run. Director Teller (better known as the droller half of the ironic comedy/magic team Penn & Teller) follows inventor Tim Jenison's journey to understand how the 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer tripped the light so fantastically. A tale of art and obsession unfolds as Jenison experiments with various optical techniques Vermeer might have used to achieve his luminous interplay of light and shadow. As intriguing as the question is the way Jenison — an engaging, curious, brainy fellow — answers it, meticulously replicating everything from the brush strokes Vermeer took to the room in which he worked. Teller captures artistic creation, and appreciation, in such dynamic, beautiful detail it begs to be seen on the big screen. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
'The Wolf of Wall Street'
Think you already hate those Wall Street high rollers who took so many investors for a ride in the '90s? Just wait until Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and "The Wolf of Wall Street" are through with you. Man, does this movie have a savage bite. Yet it is such a kick to watch the filmmaker and the star in their fifth collaboration. They go at the black-hearted comedy full throttle, fully tanked and, for DiCaprio, full monty — almost. The script by Terence Winter stays close to Jordan Belfort's audacious 2007 memoir of his highly leveraged life. Scorsese adopts the former stockbroker's irreverent tone, then amps it up so that the film fairly crackles with electricity from beginning to end. A very fast three hours, "Wolf" is a fascinating, revolting, outlandish, uproarious, exhilarating and exhausting master work on immorality. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
‘American Masters — Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth’
A lovely and lyrical tribute to the great American novelist, poet, essayist and activist airs just two days before she turns 70 and helps kick off Black History Month. Obviously, it shouldn’t require an African American-themed event to warrant a tribute to Walker, and “Beauty in Truth” reminds us how singular and extraordinary Walker’s life and work remain. Best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Color Purple,” she is a woman who speaks softly, writes beautifully, draws strength from nature and refuses to follow conventions of any sort. Giving voice to black women at a time when they were often marginalized in both the feminist and civil rights movement, Walker has infuriated as many people as she has empowered, which is, of course, the mark of both a true artist and activist. PBS, Friday. Read more
Mary McNamara
Television critic
‘Annie and a Side of Fries’
Just before she was a person with a TV show (Comedy Central’s “Broad City,” in which she co-stars with her longtime stage partner, Ilana Glazer, and which you should be watching), Abbi Jacobson created this splendid, bittersweet Web series. Posted on YouTube in 10 episodes of two or three minutes apiece, it purports to be the video blog — I will not say “vlog” — of an 11-year-old girl, recorded on the weekends she spends with her divorced father. (Annie would say vlog, however.) Very much in the spirit of Lily Tomlin’s Edith Ann and Gilda Radner’s Judy Miller, Jacobson’s Annie Leonard also might be the younger self of the adult character Jacobson plays on “Broad City” — serious, optimistic, moral, observant, emotional, a little anxious. On an “official guided tour” of her room, she shows the places (all in the same shot) where she does sit ups (“You’ve got to be careful, you’re never too young to let yourself go”), where she goes to cry (“If I had a dollar for every time I cried just thinking about when Nate dies at the end of ‘Six Feet Under,’ I would have enough money to find a cure for arteriovenous malformation, otherwise known as AVN, which is what kills him in the first place”), and where she dances: “I dance when I’m nervous. I dance a lot. I dance before a big soccer game or before I’m going to a movie with a cute boy or before I record ‘Annie and a Side of Fries’ or before I switch houses. I will even dance before I go to a dance; dancing makes me nervous.” (Robert Lloyd) (YouTube, anytime) Read more
Television critic
Other recommendations:
'The Walking Dead' Mid-season premiere
The Governor (David Morrissey) is dead (or is he?), baby Judith is dead (or is she?), Hershel (Scott Wilson) is dead (alas, that seems irrevocable) and the briefly thriving group of survivors is on the move again in a landscape we have been promised will more closely resemble the graphic novel on which the show is based than any previous season. Other rumors include the return of a "major" character (we hope it's Melissa McBride's Carol, though perhaps she hasn't been gone long enough for her return to warrant a rumor), new "pets" for Michonne (Danai Gurira) and an increasing emphasis on Carl (Chandler Riggs). Plagued by a built-in "ante issue" — when zombies become commonplace, how do the writers continually up the ante? — "The Walking Dead" needs to take a breath and allow its characters to do the same. But I wouldn't expect that to happen in the midseason premiere, or until we find out what happened to Judith. (Mary McNamara) (AMC, Sundays) Read more
'Spies of Mississippi'
"There's America, there's the South and then there's Mississippi," Lyndon B. Johnson is quoted as saying in Dawn Porter's documentary realization of Rick Bower's book on the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an instrument of domestic "intelligence" that sought to derail the anti-segregation and voting rights movement, with sometimes murderous results: The commission, which grew from a couple of operatives to "the Stasi of Mississippi," gave information to the police, many of whose officers belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. It may seem like old news to some, but only 50 years after the fact, it is worth recalling that there existed in Mississippi, under the protection of local laws and the indifference of much of the rest of the nation, a great apparatus dedicated to maintaining white supremacy — or "preserving a way of life," as its beneficiaries liked to say. An astonishing bit of contemporary propaganda, "Message from Mississippi," tells the world that all is well in the Magnolia State: "Out of the statewide pattern of segregation, mutual respect and cooperation among the races has arisen a productive, law-abiding way of life."(Robert Lloyd) (PBS, Monday) Read more
'Transparent' Pilot
Up for voting by the Prime subscribers, one of Amazon's first comedy pilots comes from "Six Feet Under" writer Jill Soloway and stars Jeffrey Tambor as Mort, the father of three grown children as he transitions from a man to a woman. Firmly set in Los Angeles, "Transparent" follows a family already broken by divorce — Judith Light is "Mom" — and the narcissistic nature of the three children, played by Gaby Hoffman, Amy Landecker and Jay Duplass. The pilot is, as many pilots are, a little anxious and over-thought, but there are far more moments of grace than contrivance, Tambor is amazing and, by gosh, it's good to see Los Angeles evoked by someone who actually knows it. (Mary McNamara) (Amazon Prime, Anytime) Read more
'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'
This "American Experience" documentary shares a title with the 1969 Paul Newman/Robert Redford/George Roy Hill/William Goldman film, though not the artisanal banter or, happily, "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." Otherwise, it's pretty close in spirit, event and narrative arc to the story that Hollywood told, including the destruction of a railroad car through the application of too much dynamite — from which caper the bandits departed with the equivalent of more than a million dollars in current currency. While factual, it is also however something of a romance — in part because historians tend to fall in love with their subjects, and in part because there is something sympathetic in the subjects themselves, free spirits — or spirits who at any rate took things freely — at the end of the West called wild, hunted down with Javert remorselessness by corporate interests (railroads, banks) and the technologically advanced Pinkerton detectives they employed. (Indeed, the talking heads in the documentary can sound as if they're pitching a movie: "The Flyer is coming down the tracks … and we see a couple of guys with a lantern shaking it back and forth to stop the train.") (Robert Lloyd) (Tuesday, PBS) Read more
'House of Cards'
Season 2 dumps on Netflix on Valentine's Day (what says "I love you" more than a dark 'n' treacherous binge-watch?). This gives you a week to catch up with Season 1 of Beau Willimon's remake of the British political drama (and/or the British original, also available on Netflix.) Anchored by Kevin Spacey, making a five-course meal of his role as scheming House Whip Frank Underwood, and an icily luminous Robin Wright as his wife, Claire, "House of Cards" was designed to plant the Netflixian flag on the high ground of the television landscape. Which it most certainly did. (Mary McNamara) (Netflix, anytime) Read more
‘A Word or Two’
If you’ve ever said to yourself after being wowed by an actor of Christopher Plummer’s caliber, “They sure don’t make ‘em like that anymore,” then you won’t want to miss Plummer’s one-man show, “A Word or Two,” at the Ahmanson Theatre. He more or less explains why. This 80-minute star vehicle, directed with elegant finesse by Des McAnuff, is less an autobiographical tour of an illustrious thespian’s career than an anatomy of a sensibility. It is a love letter to reading and the written word, the building blocks of a classical actor’s talent. The incubation of a great Shakespearean interpreter — and Plummer, renowned for his Iago, Hamlet and King Lear, is incontestably one of the best — starts early. For Plummer it began as far back as his first encounter with Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” the memory of which causes this impossibly dashing and vigorous 84-year-old to erupt in childlike excitement: “Damn it! I was hooked! Hooked on words, I mean … the color, the music, the intoxication of words.” Ends Sunday, Feb. 9. Read more
Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.
Charles McNulty
Theater critic
Other recommendations:
'Aspirin & Elephants'
Despite some formulaic aspects, this smooth 25th anniversary revival of Jerry Mayer's boulevard comedy about inter-generational marital issues on a cruise ship is a surefire date show, high-end sitcom with flashes of emotional heft. Original director Chris DeCarlo adroitly revisits the old-school material, which his accomplished cast deftly puts over. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday, March 16) Read more
The Other Space at Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4th St., Santa Monica
'The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord'
Imagining three great historical thinkers locked in a room to spend the afterlife debating philosophy, religion and personal morality provides an entertaining and informative engagement of ideas; if you like the notion of "Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds" crossed with Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit," this is the play for you. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sunday, Dec. 21) Read more
Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood
'I'll Go On'
Irish actor Barry McGovern is once again gracing our shores with his Beckettian virtuosity. In 2012, he and Alan Mandell starred in a luminous revival of "Waiting for Godot" at the Mark Taper Forum. Now he's performing "I'll Go On," his solo show composed of selections of Samuel Beckett's trilogy of novels, "Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable." The stronger pre-intermission half of this barely 90-minute piece, directed by Colm O Briain, concentrates on the first part of "Molloy," in which an old cantankerous wretch lies in what was his mother's deathbed recounting the journey in which he was reunited with the woman he never forgave for giving birth to him. The post-intermission section revolving around "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable" is commandingly performed but severely truncated. The books are meant to be savored, sentence by diabolical sentence, in private. But an actor as absurdistly adroit as McGovern will whet the appetite for the full reading experience of these landmark novels. (Charles McNulty) (Ends Sunday, Feb. 9.) Read more
'Totem'
This latest entry from the matchless Quebec-based franchise nominally concerns the evolution of mankind. Yet in the masterful hands of writer-director Robert Lepage, a mesmeric creative team and 46 Olympic-worthy athletic artistes, it's really about transformation in totum, not to mention humanity's determination to achieve superhuman feats. It's why we love Cirque du Soleil, and always will. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday, March 16) Read more
'The Twilight of Schlomo'
Timothy McNeil's maturation into one of our most original playwrights continues with this compelling study of a former stand-up (the excellent Jonathan Goldstein) at the crossroads, possibly his best work yet. Few directors are as perceptively simpatico with the author's intent as David Fofi, who pulls his estimable cast into taut seriocomic cohesion. (David C. Nichols) (Extended through Friday, Feb. 14) Read more
American Operas: ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and ‘The Tale of Lady Thi Kíhn’
Charles Wuorinen’s “Brokeback Mountain,” which had its world premiere last week at the Teatro Real in Madrid, is thus far the opera story of the year. It’s a long story, how a cerebral American composer has taken the tragic love story of two cowboys in Wyoming away from Ang Lee’s film version back to the raw, harsh, un-romanticized roots in Annie Proulx’s original New Yorker short story. Friday’s performance will be live streamed at 11 a.m. West Coast time on the Teatro Real website, as well as on Medici TV, which will then make the webcast available on demand for 90 days. A DVD is promised later this year. The next major opera premiere will be Friday when P.Q. Phan’s “The Tale of Lady Thi Kính” is produced by Indiana University Opera Theater. Based on the ancient Vietnamese folk tale, “Our Benevolent Buddha Thi Kính,” it is said to be the first opera set in Vietnam. “Lady Thi Kính,” too, will have a live webcast of the Friday and Saturday evening performances, both at 6 p.m. West Coast time. Read more
Mark Swed
Music critic
Album: ‘The Invention of Animals’
Looking back from the fragmented media landscape of 2014, it’s hard to imagine someone like John Lurie was ever possible. An immediately recognizable character actor who appeared in landmark indie films including Jim Jarmusch’s “Down by Law” and “Stranger Than Paradise,” Lurie was also a brilliant saxophonist who helped push the boundaries of jazz in the ‘80s and ‘90s with his band, the Lounge Lizards. But Lurie was forced to give up music and acting after being stricken with advanced Lyme disease and has since switched to painting (his work has been exhibited numerous times and was collected in a 2007 book, “A Fine Example of Art”). Lurie’s low profile in recent years is also because of significant trouble with a stalker — a situation that was examined in a 2010 New Yorker profile (the facts of which Lurie has vigorously disputed). Still, he recently ventured back into the public eye with “The Invention of Animals,” a new set of live tracks and rarities by the John Lurie National Orchestra, his trio with drummers Calvin Weston and Billy Martin of Medeski Martin and Wood. (Chris Barton) Read more
Jazz critic
Album: ‘Beyoncé’
Though she certainly doesn’t need the press, Beyoncé’s self-titled new album is a daring, and notable, pop album. Through 14 tracks and 17 accompanying music videos, the Houston-raised singer proves that she still rules not just pop but R&B — and that she might be absorbing husband Jay Z’s way around a rhymed stanza. At times it’s progressive: “Haunted” during a break feels like Madonna’s “Ray of Light” sessions, chopped-and-screwed Houston-style. She’s brash on “Partition” — “I sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker” — and syrupy on “Flawless,” a bass-heavy crawl through Southern bounce. “Superpower” channels doo-wop and features a gem of a hook by Frank Ocean. Best, the star proves she’s as uninterested in coasting as she is with expectations. Read more
Pop music critic
Other recommendations:
Album: 'Gathering Call'
You can't talk about drummer Matt Wilson without talking about swing, that pulse of jazz that's been his specialty on more than 250 recordings as a sideman. Reconvening his longtime quartet, Wilson again shines with some unexpected help in keyboardist John Medeski. Often lumped into some jam-band ghetto for his ventures with the avant-funk trio Medeski Martin and Wood, Medeski's talents have long been harder to pigeonhole, including a contemplative solo record in 2013. Here, he's a precisely moving part on an album that should be mandatory listening for traditionalists and jazz-curious Phish-heads alike. (Chris Barton) Read more
Claudio Abbado Recordings
When Claudio Abbado, the revered Italian conductor who died Monday, turned 80 last summer, record companies celebrated with several super-sized box sets of his recordings and videos. It's not hard to find discs with which to spend the weekend remembering one of the greats. Abbado's career was a grand one, fairly well documented. He headed and/or recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic, with the London Symphony and Chicago Symphony, with the Vienna State Opera and La Scala. His interpretations of the 19th-century masters – Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Mahler, Verdi, Rossini – are exquisitely accomplished. Abbado was a polisher and took no note for granted. But sometimes his mid-career recordings can sound almost too reliable. It's the vibrant early and the masterly moving late performances that really shine, as well as the more offbeat. (Mark Swed) Read more
Album: 'Have Fun With God'
A companion to last year's acclaimed "Dream River," Bill Callahan's new "Have Fun With God" is a remix record that reimagines each of the eight tracks as though channeled through Kingston, Jamaica. This is Bill Callahan in dub: bass-heavy, echoed examinations of "Dream River" songs that have been stripped of much of their structure to create something else altogether. The practice was common in 1970s reggae, when artists such as Burning Spear and Peter Tosh offered both studio recordings and "versions" of the same song. The most influential producers, most notably King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry, helped give birth to remix culture. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Box set: The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records 1917-1932
The ambitious new set "The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records 1917-1932, Volume 1" comes packaged in a sturdy wooden suitcase dubbed "The Cabinet of Wonder," an apt title considering the awe-inducing sounds and history it resurrects. A label whose ragtag story stars two white Wisconsin business partners more concerned with record player sales than music, an A&R man whose race and history as a Chicago bootlegger (and ex-pro football player) allowed him access to the clubs where unrecorded talent gigged and a roster of artists with equally fascinating biographies, the Paramount and affiliated labels' output during its 15-year life comprises more than 1,600 songs. They were released through a subsidiary of a Port Washington, Wis.-born furniture company during the rise of the phonograph era. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile'
Matana Roberts does not make easy listening music. Although in mainstream culture jazz is frequently relegated to an awards show backdrop or an oh-so-spooky bit of shading for pay-cable political dramas, the music remains a springboard into avant-garde expression for this Chicago-born saxophonist, who explores both personal and social history on "Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile." A challenging, engrossing listen that follows her ambitious "Chapter One" from 2011, this 49-minute piece (broken into 18 seamless tracks) continues Roberts' synthesis of free improvisation and spoken word into a unique, shape-shifting compositional voice that she calls "panoramic sound quilting." Where Roberts' last record could be tumultuous with passages of fiery blowing offset by a big band drive, "Mississippi Moonchile" is a swirling celebration of smaller-ensemble free jazz. (Chris Barton) Read more
Album: 'Inside Llewyn Davis' Soundtrack
A single song bookends "Inside Llewyn Davis," the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen about a week in the life of a struggling singer in the New York folk scene of the early 1960s. It's a gentle guitar ballad starring a dangling noose called "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me," and its best-known version is by the late Dave Van Ronk, a towering singer whose recollections of Greenwich Village during the folk boom informed the narrative. In its opening scene, the movie focuses on the song as performed by the titular Davis, played by actor and musician Oscar Isaac. Shot in intimate close-up as he sings and picks on an acoustic guitar in a Village coffeehouse, the rendition introduces the character through lyrics about a man staring across an abyss. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Holding It Down'
If there's any one thread running through today's pop music, it's the amazing ability for most songs to be about absolutely nothing. Despite scores of crises around the world, the biggest hits of the summer (i.e. "Get Lucky" and "Blurred Lines") are party-ready, escapist marshmallow fluff. The year's revolving door of package music festivals — events once at least peppered with voter registration and social outreach booths — mostly exist as target marketing efforts and a means of giving music fans the sunny feeling of how wonderful it is to attend a music festival. At their best, hip-hop and jazz remain most adept at breaking the mold, and the footprints of both genres can be heard on Vijay Iyer's and Mike Ladd's inspiring new album. An ambitious collaboration between one of the most celebrated jazz pianists today in Iyer and poet-MC Ladd, who has worked with a host of underground rap acts including El-P's Company Flow and Saul Williams, "Holding It Down" is the duo's third in a series of unclassifiable blends of music, theater and spoken word that paint a vivid oral history of post-9/11 America. (Chris Barton) Read more
Album: '12 Stories'
This has been a great year for women's voices in contemporary country music, starting with the auspicious debut album from Kacey Musgraves in March and ramping up now with an even bolder new arrival, Brandy Clark. The question out of the gate is whether she'll be heard amid the parade of frat boy country dominating the airwaves with cliche-ridden songs of tailgate parties by the swimming hole populated with sexy babes in their Daisy Duke shorts. Never mind that — find this record and listen to a dozen dazzlingly witty and insightful takes on the struggles of the working class ("Pray to Jesus"), neglected and/or mistreated women ("Crazy Women," "The Day She Got Divorced"), the battle between right and wrong ("What'll Keep Me Out of Heaven") and the pros and cons of chemical mood enhancers ("Hungover," "Get High"). (Randy Lewis) Read more
Album: 'Psychic Temple'
As has been thoroughly documented, the past decade or so has not been easy for independent musicians, particularly for those with a taste for venturing outside typical bounds of rock and pop. Consider producer-musician Chris Schlarb, who at 36 years old has a wife, two kids and a full-time job as a short-haul truck driver that carries him around Southern California. “I’ve been working there off and on for about 10 years and what I’ve found is it ... allows me to think about music all day,” Schlarb said, speaking by phone while driving home in Long Beach. “Because I could -- and often do -- just turn the radio off and if a melody comes to me I can sing it into my phone. It allows me the freedom of thought, which is so important to me because my mind is always going.” In between job and family obligations, Schlarb also ran the indie label Sounds Are Active (which has released albums from local explorers Nels Cline and Anthony Shadduck), wrote the music for the Nintendo 3DS game “NightSky” and as well as recording on his own and as part of the experimental-jazz duo I Heart Lung. (Chris Barton) Read more
Album: 'World Boogie Is Coming'
Brothers Cody and Luther Dickinson were raised on Memphis blues, soul, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. Their late father, Jim, is an unsung hero of rock ‘n’ roll who worked with, among others Big Star, the Rolling Stones and the Replacements. For nearly two decades his Grammy-winning sons have explored similar musical terrain while expanding the conversation — no small feat for a music born in these same woods nearly a century earlier. Teamed with longtime bassist Chris Chew, the brothers' eighth studio album as the North Mississippi Allstars gathers many styles of primal American music, including Southern boogie, rural blues and electrified foot-stomping guitar music. (Randal Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Dawn of Midi'
How, exactly, does one define Dawn of Midi? Composed of bassist Aakaash Israni, drummer Qasim Naqvi and pianist Amino Belyamani who have roots in Morocco, India, Pakistan and the fertile music program at CalArts, the group that is superficially a piano trio is far from anyone's definition of jazz with this album, which has a single, locked-groove composition that spirals through nine tracks and 47 engrossing minutes. The closest analogue may be the Necks, a category-defying Australian trio who built a following around long-form improvised sets. But where the Necks' sound features an in-the-moment ebb and flow, Dawn of Midi is dedicated to perpetual forward motion, a rigorously composed blend of minimalism and trance music. (Chris Barton) Read more
Maccheroni Republic
On a warm January night in Los Angeles, one of those evenings when we have trouble visualizing what the phrase “wind-chill factor” might even mean, the patio outside Maccheroni Republic is one of the most pleasant places downtown, a long, alley-narrow space, all greenery and soft air. The financial district’s glass towers peeking out over the shrubbery is a distant part of the view. The restaurant is on Broadway but somehow not of Broadway, although Grand Central Market is right across the street. The downtown boom has seen a lot of Italian restaurants open in this part of the city, sleek dining rooms with wood-burning ovens, hot and cold running truffles, and rivers of expensive Super-Tuscan wine. In some parts of downtown you are never more than a few blocks from shade-grown coffee or a plate of wood-roasted pigeon. But Maccheroni Republic isn’t a temple of cuisine, it’s a trattoria — the kind of place where it is possible to go for both lunch and dinner on a single day, a restaurant where waitresses race down the aisle with four identical bowls of rigatoni with eggplant. Read more
Maccheroni Republic Restaurant, 332 S. Broadway, Los Angeles
Jonathan Gold
Restaurant critic
Other recommendations:
Acabar
A lot of chefs in Los Angeles are associated with a favorite ingredient in ways that seem fairly indelible. It is hard to imagine Walter Manzke without his pig's ear, Nancy Silverton without her bread or Suzanne Goin without her short ribs. The lineage goes back at least as far as John Sedlar and tamales, Jonathan Waxman and roast chicken, and Wolfgang Puck and pizza. But until I visited Acabar, the grand neo-Moroccan lounge-restaurant in the space long occupied by Dar Maghreb, I had rarely seen a chef rub up against an ingredient with quite as much passion as Octavio Becerra shows a simple can of sardines. Read more
Little Sister
If a theme has emerged in Los Angeles restaurants over the last several years, from Picca and Spice Table to Lukshon, A-Frame, Rivera and Corazon y Miel, it is the idea of Asian American and Latin American chefs trained in classical European kitchens, driven to reinterpret the tastes they grew up on through rigorous French technique. This isn't fusion food, which tends largely to be the application of Asian flavors to non-Asian dishes; this is chopped-and-channeled cooking designed to heighten the original sensations, a kind of reverse colonialism of the plate. The latest anti-fusion hero on the block is Tin Vuong, chef and owner of the Manhattan Beach restaurant Little Sister, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, worked his way up through grand hotel kitchens and has spent the last couple of years as chef at the well-regarded Hermosa Beach gastropub Abigaile. Read more
Factory Kitchen
If you dine regularly in Los Angeles' Italian restaurants, you have probably lived through the fresh-pasta wars, the head cheese skirmishes and the incursion of the massive T-bones. We have not yet quite climbed out of the charred rubble of the wood-fired pizza moment, where the mozzarella comes from buffaloes and the thermostat is always set to 800 degrees. So you may be surprised to discover that the latest battleground may be the obscure Ligurian specialty called focaccia di Recco, a stuffed flatbread from a town 20 minutes outside Genoa. Like burrata, a cheese whose fame until recently was confined to a few square miles of central Puglia, focaccia di Recco is a food whose time has come. When prepared correctly, as it is at the Factory Kitchen in the arts district east of downtown (and also at chiSpacca on Melrose), focaccia di Recco is a marvelous thing, oiled dough stretched thin as filo and folded around milky, tart crescenza cheese. Read more
Colonia Taco Lounge
Are we living in the golden age of the California taco? We may be — or at least it can seem as if we are when your tummy's full late on a Saturday night. You can find tacos here from almost every region of Mexico, from Baja sting ray tacos to Zacatecas goat tacos; from Sinaloan marlin tacos to Yucatecan tacos made with pit-roasted pork. The Colonia Taco Lounge is the newest and possibly most consequential restaurant from Ricardo Diaz, in the southwest corner of La Puente, an area not previously noted for its fine cuisine. You may remember Diaz from Cooks Tortas in Monterey Park, which was dedicated to whimsically constructed Mexican sandwiches, or from Dorado's, his ceviche bar up the street. He was one of the people behind Guisados, which introduced the Eastside to a kind of stew-based taco popular in Mexico City; he is set to open the crunchy-taco house Duro in Silver Lake, and he continues to serve the region's best guacamole, aguachile and fried huauzontle at his Bizarra Capital in Uptown Whittier. So it may come as a surprise that, unlike his other restaurants, Colonia is basically a bar — a family-friendly bar perhaps, with plenty of kids crowded in on Sunday mornings when the soccer games are on the corner TVs, but a bar nonetheless, windowless, fragrant and gloomy even at noon. Read more
Girasol
If you have spent much time in L.A.'s farmers markets, you have probably run into C.J., Chris Jacobson, an affable chef, tall enough to be an NBA power forward, who seems to know every farmer in town. He worked on the line for a while at the old Campanile, where everybody called him Stretch, and he ran the Yard, a small gastropub in Santa Monica known for its beer list and fish tacos but which he managed to nudge toward fine dining at the end. As you might expect from a young Los Angeles chef, Jacobson did his time on TV, including "Top Chef." Girasol, really Jacobson's first restaurant of his own, in many ways resembles a typical Studio City place, located on a fast avenue lined with more condos than cafes, occupying a building that has been more restaurants than I can remember, in a neighborhood where the sidewalk is empty but the parking spaces are full. Read more
Willie Jane
If you follow the restaurant scene in Los Angeles, you have known about Govind Armstrong for years, possibly since he was a teenage cooking prodigy whose mom drove him to stints on the line at the original Spago the way that other moms drive their kids to Little League practice. Or perhaps you know him from his long collaboration with locavore Ben Ford, or from his solo gigs at Table 8 and 8 Oz. Burger Bar. You may have followed Armstrong's short-lived adventure in New York, which wasn't well-received, and his appearances on "Top Chef" and on the list of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. It is more likely that you noticed his restaurant Post & Beam, which he started a couple of years ago with business partner Brad Johnson and is the most ambitious restaurant ever to open in the Crenshaw District. At Willie Jane, the new restaurant he runs with Johnson on Abbot Kinney's restaurant row, Armstrong's style has become more refined yet — it's kind of a fantasy mash-up of Low Country cuisine with farm-driven California presentation, heavily reliant on the sharply tart notes that have become his trademark, and heavily reliant on Geri Miller's urban farm Cook's Garden next door. Read more
Allumette
How do you know you're in a serious restaurant at the moment — a place where the chef ferments his own turnips, keeps a copy of "Modernist Cuisine" by his bedside and dreams of visiting Spain's Mugaritz restaurant? There will probably be a seaweed or two on any given plate, for the color, the crunch and the occasional spark of brininess, and bits of citrus zest will make it into places where you have never tasted citrus before. You will see at least one slow-poached egg, cooked to a perfect near-runniness at 63 degrees Celsius; top-shelf boutique greens that disappear long before you straggle into the farmers market on Wednesday morning; and a couple of flavors snagged from the bartender's cache. The presentation will be modern French, but the dishes may well be inspired by Italy, China and especially Japan, because Japanese (and New Nordic) cooking are what young chefs are crushing out on these days. Read more
Los Angeles burgers
The eyes of the world were recently focused on what surely must be the most repulsive hamburger in the history of mankind: 10,000 bits of cloned cow stem-cell tissue formed into a patty, seared in foaming butter and served to three food scientists in front of a crowd of decidedly unhungry journalists. If you would rather eat a hamburger than grimace at what your great-grandchildren might be forced to consider lunch, you can do better. Read more
101 Best Restaurants
If you take into account Los Angeles’ superb produce, its breathtaking diversity and its imagination, it can be one of the most pleasurable places to eat on Earth. What follows is a ranking of the best restaurants. How many have you tried? Where would you like to go? Create a list and share it with your friends. Read more
14 great Mexican restaurants
No places matches the breadth and depth of Mexican restaurants we have in Southern California, except Mexico City itself – and maybe not even there. You can find the cooking of almost every region in the country here, crafted at street-corner taco trucks as well as cutting-edge places like the new Corazon y Miel and Bizarra Capital. Here are Los Angles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold’s choices for 14 of the most essential places to try. 1. Babita: One of the most serious Mexican restaurants on the Eastside, a casual corner joint whose service is burnished to a white-tablecloth sheen. Chef-owner Roberto Berrelleza is especially gifted at the cuisine of his hometown of Los Mochis on the Sinaloa coast. Read more
Corazon y Miel
"Corazón y miel," your waitress wants it to be known, is the signature dish of Corazón y Miel. Corazón y miel, hearts and honey, is a small bowl of warm, seared chicken hearts in a sweet, honeyed vinaigrette, tossed with a few slivers of onion, like a chicken heart escabeche. The grayish hearts look a little gnarly, organy, probably more than you want to be dealing with before your third margarita. The bowl travels around the table twice. Someone finally spears a heart. She chases it with a shot of tequila. She spears another. She corrals the bowl for herself. Like the restaurant, a dim tuck 'n' roll gastropub in the working-class suburb of Bell, the hearts are an unlikely source of deliciousness. The hearts have won again. Read more
M.A.K.E.
If you are the kind of restaurant-goer who gets hung up on first impressions, M.A.K.E., Matthew Kenney’s raw-vegan restaurant in Santa Monica Place, may not be for you. But Kenney, who was a renowned New York chef well before he adopted the raw-food thing, is solidly a creature of the food world, and a lot of his techniques are also found in the famous modernist kitchens where dehydrators and Vege-Mixes are as commonly used as pots and pans. The spray of thinly sliced carrots erupting from a base of cumin-scented nut butter is a dish you might see in any modernist dining room. And if the lasagna, sushi rolls and kimchi dumplings are more raw-vegan riffs than the things themselves, it’s just the way the juice-cleanse generation wishes things to be. Read more
Morgan Fisher
Found art, or paintings and sculptures not originally made by an artist or even with art in mind, is a modern phenomenon heading toward its formal centennial anniversary next year. But that doesn’t mean it’s moribund. At China Art Objects Galleries, Morgan Fisher has made two suites of paintings based on paint chips commercially produced in 1935 to help American consumers decorate their homes. He invented neither the colors nor the compositions. Yet, marvelously conceived and exquisitely crafted, Fisher’s “Exterior and Interior Color Beauty” is an exceptionally compelling show. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Saturday, March 1) Read more
China Art Objects Galleries, 6086 Comey Ave., Culver City
Art critic
Other recommendations:
Calder and Abstraction
If you like Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, you'll love the sculpture of Alexander Calder. And vice versa. As an artist Calder certainly wasn't in the business of illustrating difficult scientific postulates. (Born on the cusp of the 20th century, he died at 78 in 1976.) In fact, one frequent knock on him was the claim that, while charmingly whimsical, his sculpture is physically, emotionally and intellectually lightweight. After all, this is the guy who built an entire miniature circus out of cardboard, some buttons and a bunch of twisted wire. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Sunday, July 27) Read more
Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966
The exhibition charts the extensive give and take between total abstraction and representational painting that characterized Diebenkorn's productive years in the Bay Area. It has been slightly trimmed from its June debut in San Francisco; but, with roughly 100 works almost evenly divided between paintings and drawings, the Palm Springs version offers a reasonably full accounting of his development. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Sunday, Feb. 16) Read more
'John Divola: As Far As I Could Get'
Principally organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, this show is a collaborative endeavor with the Pomona College Museum of Art in Claremont and LACMA. Because of the trifurcation, few will see the entire show. And those who do will be deprived of some fundamental benefits of a museum retrospective. That's a shame. The good news is that, even seen in disordered chunks, Divola's photographs can provide immensely satisfying rewards. (Christopher Knight) (Emds Sunday, July 6) Read more
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
Jean Lowe
Jean Lowe is not an illusionist in the conventional sense of the term. Her painted images and papier-mache sculptures don't typically fool the eye by closely resembling the things they represent. Maybe a better term for her would be delusionist, for she stabs satirically at broad-scale practices of deception, as well as personal patterns of self-deception. Her work is hilarious and cutting. (Leah Ollman) (Ends Saturday, Feb. 8) Read more
Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica
Rembrandt at the Getty
When is a portrait not a portrait? (Or, to be more precise, not exactly a portrait?) The answer: When it's a tronie, the theatrical 17th century Dutch invention in which artists weren't after a specific person's likeness but, instead, examined facial expressions as characteristic types of human emotion. Rembrandt van Rijn was good at it. When he was young and starting out, he looked into a mirror and used his own face to produce a tronie of laughter — and the result is now on view in the Getty's permanent collection galleries as the museum's newest acquisition. (Christopher Knight) Read more
James Turrell: A Retrospective
Light, the essential ingredient for sight, is Turrell's principal medium. Spiritual perception is his art's aim. The ancient metaphor of light as the engine of enlightenment is conjured in a modern way. (Christopher Knight) (Through April 6) Read more
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
The new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, designed by Zoltan Pali and the firm Studio Pali Fekete, is a work of architecture that arrives with a long list of storylines attached. In mixing historic preservation with unapologetically contemporary architecture, the $75-million complex, known as "The Wallis," marks a step forward for Beverly Hills, a city that has not always treated its aging landmarks thoughtfully. It's a clear example of how tricky it can be in Southern California to design a new building that's architecturally sympathetic to its neighbors. (Christopher Hawthorne) Read more
The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills
‘The Days of Anna Madrigal’
The first time Armistead Maupin ended his “Tales of the City” serial — in 1989, with his sixth novel, “Sure of You” — he did it with a departure. Mary Ann Singleton, who had initiated the series by calling her mother in Cleveland to say she was staying in San Francisco, took a network TV job and left the Bay Area for New York. It was a sad if not unexpected outcome. In the 15 years since Maupin had first started writing about Mary Ann, her friends Michael, Mona, Brian and their irrepressible landlady, Anna Madrigal, a lot had happened: Anita Bryant, the People’s Temple, AIDS. Maupin was ready to move on. It was nearly two decades before he returned to these characters, first with the 2007 novel “Michael Tolliver Lives” and then with the follow-up, “Mary Ann in Autumn,” in 2010. What makes “Tales of the City” so resonant is Maupin’s ability to draw broad, human lessons from the particularity of his characters’ lives. This is why it has struck such a chord for close to 40 years now: adapted into three miniseries and an opera, the source of “Tales”-related San Francisco tours. Now, Maupin has chosen to end the series again with “The Days of Anna Madrigal,” a work that is less about departure than coming home. Featuring the full complement of “Tales” regulars (with the exception of Mona, who died in the 1984 novel “Babycakes”), the book is an elegy — for San Francisco, for its characters, for a way of life. Read more
David Ulin
Book critic
Other recommendations:
'Stories II'
T.C. Boyle's "Stories II" gathers all the short fiction he has published in the past 15 years — 58 stories, including 14 that have never appeared in book form. This is no mere collection, in other words, but an edifice intended, not unlike its equally massive predecessor "Stories" (1998), to define a legacy. To some extent, that's a sign of Boyle growing older; he will turn 65 in December. Death, or the threat of death, is all over these stories — or more accurately, a sense of mortality, of time zeroing in. But even more, it's a signifier that here, he is holding nothing back. In "Stories II" we stare down 15 years of fiction, and how does it add up? "All part of the questing impulse," Boyle suggests, "that has pushed me forward into territory I could never had dreamed of when I first set out to write — that is, to understand that there are no limits and everything that exists or existed or might exist in some other time or reality is fair game for exploration." Read more
'Salinger'
When news emerged three years ago that filmmaker Shane Salerno and writer David Shields were working on an oral biography (with accompanying documentary) about J.D. Salinger, I assumed it would be all smoke and no fire. Salinger, after all, had gone to ground after the publication of his novella “Hapworth 16, 1924” in June 1965; even in the wake of his death, in January 2010 at age 91, his estate had preserved the silence of his final 45 years. But if Salerno and Shields' book “Salinger” is, at nearly 700 pages, a bit of a shaggy monster, what may be most astonishing about it is its (largely) even tone. The idea is to present a portrait of Salinger as both his own savior and something considerably darker, and for the most part, the co-authors get the goods. Read more
Optic Nerve 13
Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve is one of my favorite alternative comics: smart, understated and with a subtle yet pointed bite. Merging straight realism with an impressionistic sense of narrative, his stories often seem to be offhanded when, in fact, they are highly structured and defined. As an example, look at "Winter 2012," one of three pieces in the newly released Optic Nerve 13, a one-pager, told by way of 20 small panels, in which Tomine portrays himself as a Luddite, distressed by the indignities of the electronic age. Optic Nerve 13's other stories include a long central piece, "Go Owls," in which a woman meets an older man in a 12-step program and winds up in a relationship that becomes increasingly abusive and fraught, and the exquisite "Translated, From the Japanese," a love letter from a mother to her baby that is among the most beautiful things Tomine has ever done. Read more
'Never Built Los Angeles'
When, in the 1920s, the pioneering Southern California social critic Louis Adamic called Los Angeles "the enormous village," he didn't mean it as a compliment. Rather, he was referring to L.A.'s insularity, its status as what Richard Meltzer would later label "the biggest HICK Town (per se) in all the hick land," a city of small-town values and narrow vision that "grew up suddenly, planlessly." A similar sensibility underpins "Never Built Los Angeles," a compendium of more than 100 architectural projects — master plans, skyscrapers, transportation hubs, parks and river walks — that never made it off the ground. Edited by former Los Angeles magazine architecture critic Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell, West Coast editor of the Architect's Newspaper, and accompanied by an exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum, it's a lavish counter-history of the city as it might have been: a literal L.A. of the mind. Read more
'The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey'
"He who makes a beast of himself," Samuel Johnson famously observed about inebriation, "gets rid of the pain of being a man." And yet, if Lawrence Osborne's new book, "The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey," has anything to tell us, it's that there is more to drinking than derangement, that it may lead to a transcendence more profound. "The Wet and the Dry" is a paean to drinking, but it is also a travelogue unfolding largely through the Islamic states of the Middle East and a memoir of sorts, in which Osborne's upbringing, in "a steadfast English suburb" during the 1970s, becomes a lens through which to read his life. "The drinker knows that life is not mental and not a matter of control and demarcation," he argues. "The teetotaler, on the other hand, knows full well how even a molecule of alcohol changes body and mind. The Muslim, the Protestant puritan, and the teetotaler are kin; they understand the world in a very similar way, despite all their enormous differences, while the drinkers know that the parameters that contain us are not all human, let alone divine." Read more
'Men in Miami Hotels'
Charlie Smith's terrific new novel, "Men in Miami Hotels," walks a line between genre and something considerably wilder, a fictional territory where a character might lose his or her soul. The story of a Miami hoodlum named Cotland Sims, on the run from a brutal mob boss, it is both existential thriller and a book of homecoming, as Cot returns to Key West, where he was born and raised, to confront the living ghosts of his past. These include his on-again-off-again girlfriend Marcella and her husband Ordell (the county prosecutor), as well as his mother and his oldest friend from high school, a drag queen named CJ. To this mix, Smith adds an army of hired killers out to wreak vengeance on Cot, although their violence, while pervasive, ends up seeming almost incidental. Read more
'Return to Oakpine'
Ron Carlson's new novel "Return to Oakpine" revolves around a group of high school friends 30 years after graduation, in the small Wyoming town where they were raised. The book begins with a simple errand: A man named Craig Ralston is called upon to refurbish a garage apartment for his old compatriot Jimmy Brand, who is coming home to die. The year is 1999 and Jimmy is nearing 50, a writer who left home after high school, in the wake of a family tragedy. And yet, Carlson wants us to understand, we never escape the past, not even a little bit of it. In a town such as Oakpine, that can't help but bleed into the present, reminding us of old hurts, old longings, of who we were and who we never will become. This is the tension that drives "Return to Oakpine," between what we want to do and what we need to do, between our dreams and our responsibilities. Or, as Carlson observes late in this elegant and moving novel, "There was a vague lump in his throat that he had thought was excitement but now felt like an urgent sadness; actually it felt like both." Read more
'Genius'
Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen’s haunting graphic novel “Genius” revolves around a physicist named Ted who was once a prodigy, before his priorities became realigned. Ted has two kids, and a wife who may be dying; do we need to say that he feels trapped, that his pressures have become too much for him? Still, Ted has one saving grace, which is his love for Einstein, who holds a place in his life akin to God. “I mean, I’m an atheist —” Ted explains, “most thinking people are — But Einstein is the pinnacle of a thinking man.” As “Genius” progresses, this relationship becomes increasingly prominent, until Einstein himself is animated in these pages, discussing the nature of the universe, the nature of discovery, and the essential notion that our lives are always in constant evolution, just waiting for that one idea, that one revelation, for everything to “start anew.” Read more
'The Faraway Nearby'
Rebecca Solnit's latest book, "The Faraway Nearby," began with a delivery of 100 pounds of apricots to her San Francisco home. The apricots came from her brother, who had collected them from a tree in their mother's yard. At the time, the older woman was in the throes of Alzheimer's; she had been moved into an assisted care facility, making the fruit a metaphor, an allegory, for everything that she had lost. First and foremost, this meant stories, which are at the center of "The Faraway Nearby," a book about narrative and empathy that moves between a dizzying array of tales — including "Frankenstein," the Arabian Nights and that of Solnit's own breast cancer scare — to look at the way stories bind us, allowing us to inhabit each other's lives with unexpected depth. Read more
'Science Fiction'
Joe Ollmann's graphic novel “Science Fiction” is a minutely observed account of a relationship in crisis, from which there is (or might be) no way out. The setup is simple: Mark, a high school science teacher, and his girlfriend Susan, who works in a convenience store, rent an alien abduction movie that triggers what Mark decides are repressed memories of his own abduction years before. If this is difficult for Mark, it’s even harder for Susan because she can’t believe what he is telling her. Here we see the central conflict of “Science Fiction”: What happens when a loved one goes through an experience that is, in every way that matters, life-changing, and yet, we can’t go along for the ride? Read more
'Joyland'
What makes Stephen King resonate for me is the way he can get inside the most mundane of situations and animate it, revealing in the process something of how we live. His new novel, "Joyland," operates very much from this territory: It's a drama that unfolds in miniature. The story of a college student named Devin Jones who spends the summer and fall of 1973 working at a North Carolina amusement park, "Joyland" is a thriller but it's also a homage to the disposable culture of the early 1970s, a time when "oil sold for eleven dollars a barrel." What King is getting at is what he's always getting at, that life is inexplicable, that joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy, are all bound up and can assert themselves at any time. Read more
'Angel Baby'
Richard Lange's third book, "Angel Baby," is a thriller that makes its own terms. Beautifully paced, deftly written, it's a novel of moral compromise, in which we have empathy for everyone (or almost everyone) and no one at once. The story of Luz, who runs away from her husband, a Mexican drug cartel leader, and heads for Los Angeles, "Angel Baby" takes us into uncomfortable territory -- only partly because of its brutality. Rather, Lange effectively upends our sympathies by drawing us close to not just Luz but also Jerónimo, the reluctant enforcer sent to find her, as well as Malone, a San Diego County burnout who makes his money ferrying illegals across the border, and Thacker, a corrupt border cop. Read more
PlayStation 4 / Xbox One
The next-gen video game consoles are here, and so far the games look an awful lot like the ones from the generation coming to an end. But the presentation of the consoles — the arguments they put forth about how games can and should be integrated into our lives — varies greatly. Sony’s PS4 takes a targeted approach by emphasizing games and the places players go to talk about those games. Microsoft’s Xbox One has broader, non-gaming ambitions, relying heavily on voice controls (look ma, no remote!) to have viewers magically shifting among television, film, music and sports apps. Read more
Todd Martens
Video game critic
Other recommendations:
'The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds'
Another long-standing Nintendo franchise gets spruced up. Like "Mario 3D," the look and controls are familiar, the tone is entirely new, as this action-adventure emphasizes smarts and exploration over tedious dungeon crawling. Read more
'Super Mario 3D World'
Nintendo's Italian brothers Mario and Luigi are the closest thing the video game world has to a Mickey and Minnie, and this Wii U-exclusive may be the freshest spin yet on a trustworthy gaming tradition. The secret? Cats. Mario and pals shape-shift into felines with the help of a little video game magic, allowing the characters to crawl, scratch, climb and meow in completely unexpected ways. Trust us. Read more
'Rain'
"Rain," Sony's download-only PlayStation 3 title, plays with an idea central to many fairy tales. What monsters come out to play when the lights are turned off? But ultimately, it ends up dealing with a far darker question — is there any monster quite so scary as loneliness? With such an emphasis on text and narration, this could be considered an interactive book more than a game but is, instead, a moderately paced exploration through a fantastically realized nighttime setting, where narrowly escaping the clutches of pursuers rewards players with more pieces of the narrative rather than larger battles. Read more
'Spaceteam'
"Spaceteam" is high-stress nonsense, but high-stress nonsense at its most absurd, addictive and ridiculous. Available now for iOS and Android, think of "Spaceteam" as a board game for mobile devices. The concept is simple, as players are crew members on a ship that's in danger of exploding and must shout technobabble at one another to prevent destruction. But each has a different view, so one player's Voltsock is another player's Newtonian Photomist. Read more
'Gone Home'
"Gone Home," out now as a PC download, will likely feel more personal than any game you'll play this year. Players explore it from the first-person perspective of a college-aged daughter, Katie, who has been studying abroad and is visiting her family's new home for the first time. Traverse just one house and discover untold secrets about a family, be it struggles with failed ambitions or the teenage unease that comes with discovering one's sexuality. Read more
'The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD'
A remake of an old Gamecube title is not the Zelda game Wii U fans have been clamoring for, but Nintendo has freshened up "Wind Waker" to the point that it feels a new experience. This early 2000s Zelda title still stands as one of the franchise's crowning moments, as it set its main character loose on the high seas and gave the universe a zippy, cartoonish makeover. The animated film look works even better in HD, and the subtle adoption of new control techniques offered by the Wii U makes it one of the more accessible adventure role playing games around. Read more
'The Last of Us'
"The Last of Us" is not your typical doomsday narrative. Zombie-like attacks aside, tension here comes from an underutilized game-play tactic: conversation. Dialogue is almost as plentiful as weapons in this patiently cinematic tale of a smuggler and the reluctant bond he forms with the 14-year-old girl he's hired to protect. Developed by Sony-owned Naughty Dog, responsible for the hit "Indiana Jones"-inspired "Uncharted" series, "The Last of Us" acknowledges gaming clichés and then skillfully avoids them by keeping its focus on the relationship between Joel (the smuggler) and Ellie (the teen he watches over). It's an action game, but one with characters worth fighting for. Read more
‘The Dark Sorcerer’
A short film and not a game, but one designed to show what next-gen console the PS4 may be capable of. Quanitic Dream, the Paris-based developer working on the patient narrative "Beyond Two Souls," concocted this fantasy-comedy as a way to illustrate that character depth and detail can be sustained over long scenes filled with gameplay. But forget the technical stuff — it's a cute little video about a film shoot gone wrong, with goblins. Though there are no plans to turn "The Dark Sorcerer" into a game, director David Cage said fan response may inspire him to change his mind. Read more
'Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move'
The minis are diminutive, wind-up figurines that represent well-known Nintendo characters. They walk forward, they don't stop and it's up to the player to control and tinker with the cubic paths in front of them. That about covers the basics, but not the details. Every couple of puzzles a new element is added, be it cubes that rotate, bombs that can blow up cubes, cubes that come equipped with springs that will send the characters flying over spikes, cubes with hammers or cubes that can generate all-purpose, multi-use cubes. With 240 stages, there are a lot cubes. Read more
‘Guacamelee!’
Games are wonderful at creating crazy, colorful universes full of whip-cracking vampire killers and interstellar space pirates, but they are less good at crafting ones inspired by more earth-bound cultural traditions. "Guacamelee!” is an exception. Perhaps not since LucasArts’ 1998 “Day of the Dead” noir title “Grim Fandango” has a game so lovingly draped itself in Mexican folklore. "Guacamelee!” is a colorfully humorous game centered almost entirely on the customs surrounding Day of the Dead. It’s a simple stylistic conceit that seems so obvious that it’s almost confusing it hasn’t been done with any regularity. Who needs zombies and vampires when there’s an entire holiday steeped in calavera imagery? Read more
‘Journey of a Dress’
Diane von Furstenberg’s wrap-dress army is a force to be reckoned with in the 20,000-square-foot gallery of the historic May Co. department store building in Los Angeles, where her “Journey of a Dress” exhibition opens Saturday with 200 vintage and contemporary interpretations of the iconic design. There they are, 200 mannequins strong, standing in formation and ready to conquer the world. And conquer the world is exactly what this dress did. The show, which was put together for the 40th anniversary of Von Furstenberg’s brand, celebrates her singular contribution to fashion history: the wrap dress, which is on par with the T-shirt and blue jeans when it comes to its cultural impact. The dress — which wraps in front and ties at the waist and was originally made in drip-dry, cotton jersey — became part of the zeitgeist of the 1970s, when women started to enter the workforce en masse, a symbol not only of women’s liberation but of sexual liberation, too. (Ends Thursday, May 1) Read more
Wilshire May Co. Building, 6767 Wilshire, Los Angeles
Booth Moore
Fashion critic
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Tory Burch
Tory Burch celebrated the opening of her Rodeo Drive boutique with a star-studded party Jan. 21 and the release of the limited edition Rodeo Drive collection inspired by the flowers of Southern California and the glamour of Old Hollywood. The capsule collection includes resort-ready pieces embellished with coral flowers and embroidery, including the gladiator sandals above and the caftan-style dress. The capsule collection includes resort-ready pieces embellished with coral flowers and embroidery, including the gladiator sandals above and the caftan-style dress and flower-drop earrings Burch is wearing. There are also several styles in guipere lace, such as the shorts above. L.A. style maven and artist Lisa Eisner shot a dreamy short film featuring the collection in the gardens at Lotusland near Santa Barbara. You can see it here. Burch's website includes several other L.A.-centric editorial features geared to the opening, including Kaling, Hailee Steinfeld and other celebs discussing why they love L.A. Read more
10 Fashionable Things
As we all try to get back into the swing of work after the holidays, here are 10 stylish things on my to-do list for the next few months. 1) Celebrate the dress that started it all. 2014 marks the 40th anniversary of Diane von Furstenberg's iconic wrap dress, which will be celebrated with "Journey of a Dress" on Jan. 11 to April 1 at the Wilshire May Co. building in Los Angeles, a retrospective exhibition of vintage and contemporary wrap designs — from the first sample to what has become a symbol of power and freedom for generations of women. 2) Pick up some cold-weather style inspiration... Read more
Acne Studios
The coolest store now open in downtown L.A. is called Acne Studios. That's right. Get over it. If you don't know, Acne (an acronym for Ambition to Create Novel Expression) was founded in 1996 in Stockholm by musician-turned-fashion designer Jonny Johansson. In seven years, it has grown into a $120-million brand with 40 stores around the world, men's and women's fashion collections, runway shows in Paris, as well as a publishing wing that has collaborated on projects with the likes of photographers Lord Snowden and William Wegman. Which is why when you walk into the new 5,000-square-foot boutique in the historic Art Deco Eastern Columbia Building on Broadway, it's appropriate that you first lay eyes on "Giant Triple Mushroom," a trippy toadstool of an installation by Belgian artist Carsten Holler that seems to symbolize the curious rise of a brand that is known for doing things differently. Read more
Acne Studios, Eastern Columbia Building, 855 S. Broadway, Los Angeles
Standout Books on American Design
Several new style books focus on great American jewelry design. Here we zero in on two of the standout volumes of the season. 'David Webb: The Quintessential American Jeweler' and 'Jewels by JAR' have an eye for the dazzling. "David Webb: The Quintessential American Jeweler" American jewelry designer David Webb was a fixture on New York's social scene during the 1960s and '70s, beloved by Diana Vreeland, Nan Kempner, Doris Duke, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand and many other style-setters. Webb is perhaps best known for his animal bracelets, more fierce than cute, featuring lions, tigers and dragons, which were part of the ladies-who-lunch uniform of the day. "Jewels by JAR," the catalog for the exhibition of the same name that runs through March 9 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a jewel of a book with 69 photographs of incredible pieces by Joel Arthur Rosenthal, today's preeminent American jewelry designer, who has been working in Paris since the late 1970s for a small group of in-the-know clientele. Designing under his initials, JAR, Rosenthal creates works of art using colorful gemstones, pearls and other materials such as beetle wings. Each piece is unique and "set in metals that are sometimes subject to a degree of alchemy," art dealer Adrian Sassoon writes in the introductory essay. Read more
Isabel and Ruben Toledo
Ignored by mainstream fashion designers for years, the plus-size market got a boost with the announcement that Isabel and Ruben Toledo would be designing a collection for size 14-plus retailer Lane Bryant. Isabel Toledo famously made the lemongrass yellow coat and dress that First Lady Michelle Obama wore to President Obama's first inauguration in 2009. Speaking about the collaboration with Lane Bryant, Isabel Toledo told Women's Wear Daily that she and her husband "were intellectually on board from the first moment." That statement to me is key. The excuse so many designers use for ignoring the plus-size market, and showing their clothes on increasingly skinny models, is that clothes just look better on bodies resembling bony hangers. But any designer worth his or her salt should look at designing for a different size or shape as an intellectual challenge. Read more
Cynthia Vincent
"Bohemian isn't a trend; it's a lifestyle." That's the motto upon which L.A. designer Cynthia Vincent has staked her decade-old brand, Twelfth Street, named after the street she grew up on in La Verne. The brand is known for its tribal print maxi-dresses and rompers, serape-stripe cardigans, rugged short Western boots and gladiator wedge sandals, all with a multi-culti, beach-and-canyon vibe. In a city where designers can come and go in a few seasons, Vincent is a fashion success story. She attended L.A.'s Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, winning the Silver Thimble Award while she was there. In 1993, she started her first line, St. Vincent. She also opened a retail store, Aero & Co. in Los Feliz, to feature local independent designers. Read more
Natalie Martin
Designer Natalie Martin has mastered the art of gypset dressing, L.A.-style. In two years, the Aussie transplant has emerged as a go-to for boho-chic styles, including breezy kurtas, tunics, wrap skirts and maxi dresses, all priced under $300, and all crafted out of colorful, Balinese block print silks. Martin has a background in fashion marketing, putting in years at Italian leather goods brands Tod's and Hogan. Her namesake collection, which is sold at Barneys New York, Calypso St. Barth and other boutiques, as well and on her own website, brings a touch of Bali to L.A. Read more
Charlotte Olympia opens in Beverly Hills
London-based accessories designer extraordinaire Charlotte Dellal has opened her first L.A. Charlotte Olympia store, a glamorous, Art Deco-feeling boutique at the top of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The decor is an ode to Old Hollywood glamour from the moment you step inside the door, where Dellal (who has the curves and finger-wave blond hairstyle of a 1940s starlet herself) has her own pink marble Hollywood Walk of Fame star set into the ground, with "Charlotte Olympia" etched inside. "It's celebrating Los Angeles from an outsider's point of view," said Dellal, who launched her whimsical line in 2006. "I guess it's not all about Hollywood and film, but I'm a nostalgic person and I have always loved Old Hollywood." Read more
Malibu Barbie gets a makeover
With her beach blond hair, cheeky tan lines and chic shades, Malibu Barbie has been a style icon for many a young girl, including this one. Now, more than 40 years after she first hit the pop culture wave, Malibu Barbie is getting a makeover, from Los Angeles designer Trina Turk. The mythical Malibu icon is the perfect canvas for Turk’s cheerful 1960s and '70s-inspired SoCal aesthetic. Turk dresses the doll in a printed bandeau bikini and hexagon white lace cover-up and accessorizes her head-to-toe with a beach tote, pink shades, short-shorts, a peasant blouse, floppy sun hat and white wedge sandals. She’s even got a chunky cocktail ring, pink cuff bracelet and a bottle of sunscreen. To add to the fun, Turk’s June 2013 fashion collection, titled “Malibu Summer,” features the same items for women, so life-size Barbies can dress like their miniature muses. Read more
Tadashi Shoji
2013 marks 30 years that L.A.-based designer Tadashi Shoji has been making elegant formal wear for the rest of us. He got his start in the glitzy world of Hollywood, creating costumes for Stevie Wonder and Elton John, and more elaborate gowns for the red carpet for Florence Welch and Octavia Spencer. But the bulk of Shoji's $50-million namesake business is in department store sales of tasteful, figure-flattering and wallet-friendly cocktail dresses and evening gowns ranging in price from $198 to $508 for women who want to feel like celebrities in their own lives -- prom queens, mothers of the bride and the brides themselves. I recently sat down with the designer to discuss his favorite career moments, his new focus on selling in Asia, and what's next.n with the designer to discuss his favorite career moments, his new focus on selling in Asia, and what’s next. Read more
Aviator Nation
In just seven years, Paige Mycoskie has turned a passion for 1970s nostalgia into the next California lifestyle brand. Walking into her Aviator Nation store on Abbot Kinney in Venice is like stumbling into a frat house with a feminine influence. Steely Dan, Doors and Grateful Dead album covers and vintage skate decks nailed to the walls, a record player spinning Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion," a 720 Degrees arcade game in the corner, stacks and stacks of foam trucker hats, T-shirts and hoodies spreading good vibes like "Pray for Surf" and "California Is for Lovers."... It's such a sensory experience, you half expect your shoes to be sticking to the floor from last night's kegger. Read more
Wear LACMA
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has released its second Wear LACMA collection of fashion accessories created by local designers and inspired by the museum’s permanent collection. Custom perfumier Haley Alexander van Oosten of L’Oeil du Vert, accessories mavens Maryam and Marjan Malakpour of NewbarK and women’s clothing designer Juan Carlos Obando were tapped for the collection, which is for sale at the LACMA store and online, with all proceeds benefiting the museum. They had the run of the museum and could choose any piece as a starting point. What they came up with offers insight into who they are as designers and a chance to see a distinct part of their brand vision distilled. Read more
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles