Critics’ Picks: July 15 - July 21, 2016
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.
On stage, three critics’ favorites return, and in music the best of the best in this year’s pop is featured.
TV picks include two favorite on-line offerings.
Click through to explore more and, where applicable, find directions to venues.
‘Our Little Sister’
A delicate, unforced meditation on the joy and wonder of ordinary life, this film’s ability to move audiences without apparent effort must be experienced to be fully appreciated and understood. Read more
Kenneth Turan
Film critic
‘Les Cowboys’
The strength in Thomas Bidegain’s restless and emotionally bruising directorial debut lies in the way it continually collapses the distance between people and cultures, forcing its characters to reckon with what they perceive as strange and unfamiliar. Read more
Los Angeles Times Movie Critic
Other recommendations:
'Hunt for the Wilderpeople'
This wonderful New Zealand film has a gently absurdist quality, a simultaneously sweet and subversive sensibility all its own, mixing warmth, adventure and comedy in ways that consistently surprise. Don’t miss it. Read more
'A Bigger Splash'
Luca Guadagnino's movie is a swooning cinematic appeal to the senses — two hours of al fresco lovemaking, gorgeous scenery and simmering erotic warfare with Ralph Fiennes' acting on glorious, supremely uninhibited display. (Justin Chang) Read more
'The Innocents'
Anne Fontaine's post-World War II drama involving a Polish convent and a French female doctor proves yet again that though moral and spiritual questions may not sound spellbinding, they often provide the most absorbing movie experiences. Read more
'The Jungle Book'
By turns sweetly amusing and scarily unnerving, crammed with story, song and computer-generated visual splendors, this revisiting of the old Rudyard Kipling tales aims to be a model of modern crowd-pleasing entertainment. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'Life, Animated'
A remarkable documentary about how Disney animated features changed the life of a young autistic boy in a deep and profound way. Read more
'The Lobster'
Yorgos Lanthimos' hypnotically strange and suggestive new movie is very much its own brand of horror movie as well as a deranged thought experiment, a stealth love story, and a witty dismantling of the usual barriers separating man from beast. (Justin Chang) Read more
'The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble'
It was a given that this Morgan Neville documentary would feature fine music, but it’s as concerned with emotion as it is with performance, investigating how so much joyous music was able to come out of exploration, disturbance, even pain. Read more
'The Neon Demon'
A Helmut Newton fever dream by way of a Dario Argento splatter flick, Nicolas Winding Refn's hypnotically beautiful thriller stars Elle Fanning as a young woman trapped in a murderously deranged corner of the Los Angeles fashion industry. Read more
‘The Chris Gethard Show’
Both seasons of “The Chris Gethard Show” are now online, along with episodes of his cable access series, and they’re worth looking up; they are ambitious in a way all their own. As in “Beautiful/Anonymous,” Gethard is out to change the world of whoever’s tuned in. With his Ed Grimley hair and Clark Kent glasses, Gethard is a talk show host in the way that Scott Pilgrim is a superhero, a Mister Rogers for millennials, pitched to outsiders, underdogs and weirdos. At 36, which puts him just out of, or barely inside of, that demographic, he considers himself the old guy in the room. The series — which includes, along with co-host Shannon O’Neill and communications facilitator Bethany Hall, characters including the Human Fish and Gethard’s nemesis Vacation Jason — is a mix of skits and bits of the sketched out and the unforeseeable. It has a sweet party vibe — the audience surrounds the action — and a dark, good heart. Fusion, YouTube. Read more
Television critic
Binge watching options
Life in the digital age means it’s never too late to catch up on all those shows you’ve been hearing so much about, and there’s no better time than summer. To aid in this endeavor, I have compiled a shortlist, which is (a) completely, and even randomly, subjective, and (b) specific to the notion of the beach-binge, i.e., at least two seasons are or soon will be available. As often as possible, I have chosen series that transport American viewers to another place and/or time. So in no particular order, a list that is limited, subjective, specific and not to be confused with a list of the best TV shows of all time. Just the ones you might want to consider hanging out with this summer. Read more
Mary McNamara
Television critic
Other recommendations:
'Capital'
A miniseries adapted by Peter Bowker ("Blackpool," "The A Word") from John Lanchester's 2012 novel, "Capital" is set on a street in a South London district to which change has been and will be coming. The title, I suppose, refers both to its geographical setting and to wealth — specifically to the rapidly rising property values, shown in cartoon inserts that also mark the passing months, and make an old neighborhood attractive to new residents with money as well as a tenuous foothold for longtime ones with less. In addition to novel-writing, Lanchester is a journalist with a specialty in finance. One is reminded fleetingly of such nobly intentioned race-and-class films as Lawrence Kasdan's "Grand Canyon" and Paul Haggis' "Crash" (also a TV series). Living or working on Pepys Road: a white British banker (Toby Jones), his spendthrift wife (Rachael Stirling) and their children, representing the well-heeled new guard; Gemma Jones, representing the getting-by old; a Zimbabwean traffic warden seeking political asylum (Wunmi Mosaku); a Pakistani family living over the corner shop they run (Adheel Akhtar as Ahmed is the father whose mother knows best); Polish construction workers (Radoslaw Kaim as Bogdan, who likes the ladies, and Krystian Godlewski, who disapproves); and a Hungarian nanny (Zrinka Cvitesic). But if the diversity is perhaps a little too clearly signposted and the themes stapled right to the dialogue at times like fliers on a telephone pole, real characters overcome whatever is didactic or obvious in the storytelling. And though their lives intersect, their stories run as neighboring narratives rather than as strands tied into a single big one. (Pivot, Monday through Thursday) Read more
Brett Gelman
If you watch much television at all you have probably seen Brett Gelman; he gets around. From fairly conventional network sitcoms to small-batch cable weirdness, as a series regular ("Go On," "Married," "Eagleheart"), recurring character ("Love," “Another Period,” “Blunt Talk"), utility player ("Drunk History," "Comedy Bang! Bang!"), to just-passing-through guest shot ("The Odd Couple," "Fresh Off the Boat," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Mad Men"), the list goes on and on. (Possibly you recall his appearance as "Annoying Hipster" on "Californication.") With director and co-writer Jason Woliner ("Human Giant," "Eagleheart), he has created his own series of tragicomic specials for Adult Swim, that circus of humorous oddities: "Dinner with Friends with Brett Gelman and Friends" (2014), "Dinner with Family with Brett Gelman and Brett Gelman's Family" (2015) and now "Dinner in America," which purports to be an investigation into race. But nothing here is exactly what it purports to be. "Brett Gelman's Dinner in America" (Adult Swim, Friday); "Dinner with Friends with Brett Gelman and Friends," "Dinner with Family with Brett Gelman and Brett Gelman's Family" (AdultSwim.com). Read more
'Chef's Table'
Created, produced and sometimes directed by David Gelb, director of the film "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," this dreamy, creamy, often heartbreakingly beautiful documentary series, which tracks chefs in their natural habitats, returns for a second season. The restaurants tend to rank high on lists that themselves tend to rank high — Michelin and such. The food tends to be fantastically conceived and presented, sensual and intellectual, traditional and innovative and, in the way of modern fine food, to come in small portions, the better to concentrate the mind. And though the women and men responsible are very different in their background, bearing, circumstances and specialties, all think like artists; all are ambitious not just for (or even for) success, but for satisfaction; all seek, each in their own fashion, a kind of spiritual communion through food. "Love" is a word they all use. Netflix, Anytime. Read more
'Boxed In' and 'Little Horribles'
I am rather in love with these two Web comedies, written, directed and starring Amy York Rubin. "Boxed In," presented under the flag of IFC, is new; "Little Horribles," posted on Rubin's own Barnacle Studios YouTube channel, dates from 2013. "Little Horribles" finds her in a variety of asymmetrical social situations in which intelligence is no guarantee of success. "Boxed In" is more specifically about questions of identity and self-presentation, the roles we assign others and the roles we take on ourselves; it deals in restrictive certainties, promising ambiguities, missed cues and mixed signals. ("Boxed In," IFC.com); ("Little Horribles," YouTube). Read more
'Bajillion Dollar Properties'
This spot-on mocking of a Bravo-style serve-the-rich workplace reality series comes to you from Seeso, NBCUniversal's relatively new all-comedy subscription service. Here, Paul F. Tompkins plays a high-end Los Angeles real estate mogul who declares to his brokers that he has decided to make one of them a partner, precipitating aggressive competition among an already aggressively competitive staff. Created by Kulap Vilaysack (Nurse Kulap on "Childrens Hospital"), the show is semi-scripted — like reality television itself, one might say — which works or it doesn't from moment to moment and line to line but lends the series an authentic air of uncertainty, of its characters not knowing exactly what they're going to say. The performances run from the as-good-as-real to Tompkins' lordly, velvet-jacketed chairman, who seems to believe that he has invented real estate — "The idea of buying and selling bits of the earth, can you imagine the hubris? And yet, here we will stand." Seeso, anytime. Read more
'Funny or Die Presents Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie'
Former "Onion" Editor Joe Randazzo wrote this hour-long sketch about the future Republican front-runner's younger days. It stars a prosthetically altered, barely recognizable Johnny Depp as Donald Trump in what purports to be Trump's own TV-movie adaptation of his memoir "The Art of the Deal," supposedly preempted from its original scheduled airing by a football game and subsequently — in the words of Ron Howard, who introduces it — "thought to be lost in the Cybill Shepherd blouse fire of 1989." (It later "turned up at a yard sale in Phoenix, Arizona," says Howard. "I had to physically wrestle it from a nice woman named Jennie.") Director Jeremy Konner, who also directs "Drunk History," knows some things about re-creating a past world on a budget. It is not meant to be a perfect pastiche — the characters use words that could not be spoken on television then, they exhibit a knowledge of future events; Trump, who sometimes doesn't understand references in a script he supposedly wrote himself, assesses his own performance, as himself, as Oscar worthy. Funny or Die. Read more
Prince on YouTube
Oh, Prince, Prince the unpronounceable, the artist, "The Artist," the Artist Formerly and Always Known as Prince, the Purple One, the man of many names and not-names, of many hairstyles and high heels, who wore his influences on his billowing sleeves yet made them all his own. He is gone, unbelievably, awfullly, and the world turns to the Internet to find — not much. Under the quite accurate claim that the Internet routinely deprives artists of income, encouraging a wider culture of digital shoplifting, Prince and his representatives kept and apparently will continue to keep a close watch on his intellectual property, with the result that the global video-sharing that constitutes how we grieve now has been short-circuited; besides having no officially available video of "When Doves Cry" or "Thieves in the Temple" to repost, you may also find that that low-res clip you linked to last night of Prince performing "Purple Rain" at First Avenue, has been blocked by the morning. But Prince was an internationally famous performer in an age of television, and he left traces in the ether; you can't erase them all. Here are some (as of this writing) surviving clips, not all of them musical, to get you through the sad days between denial and acceptance. YouTube, anytime. Read more
'Detectorists' Season 2
The second season of Mackenzie Crook's brilliant and beautiful pastoral comedy is now available on Acorn TV, almost your one-stop shopping center for British television, and it is just as well-wrought, funny, touching and lovely to behold as the first (which is now available via Netflix and Hulu). Crook, who was Gareth on the original British "The Office," Ragetti in "Pirates of the Caribbean" and Orell on "Game of Thrones," writes, directs and stars as Andy, a change-averse fellow who spends much of his free time, of which he has a lot, having no regular employment, with his friend Lance (Toby Jones), walking the fields and meadows with metal detectors in search of Saxon gold but pulling up mostly pull tabs and musket balls. Acorn TV, anytime. Read more
‘Disgraced’
After the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., the calls for banning Muslim immigrants and the heated dispute over the term “radical Islam,” the debate at the heart of Ayhad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama has only grown more urgent. This elegantly structured play centers on a dinner party in an upscale New York apartment, where two couples engage a gift box of assorted radioactive topics concerning religion, terrorism and multicultural identity. The pitch-perfect cast keeps the drama from becoming abstract. This is an intelligent, gripping and necessary production. Ends Sunday, July 17. Read more
Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.
Charles McNulty
Theater critic
Other recommendations:
'Ajax in Iraq'
Ellen McLaughlin's potent assault on sexual abuse in the military by way of the legendary Greek warrior scores a dead-on triumph — raw, provocative, poetic and indelible. Director John Farmanesh-Bocca rallies his stalwart Not Man Apart forces into breathtaking kinetic cohesion, the sparely resourceful design scheme and utterly fearless ensemble conjoining to illuminate the text and land its vital topical discourse into our brainpans. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday, Aug. 14) Read more
‘A Chorus Line’
This game-changing musical about Broadway dancers stirred the sort of frenzy for tickets in 1975 that we’re seeing today for “Hamilton.” Still revelatory after all these years, the show is at the Chance Theater in a staging by director Oanh Nguyen and choreographer Hazel Clarke that evokes enough of the Michael Bennett original to satisfy those longing to reconnect with an old friend and enough new ideas to tantalize those looking to be surprised. (Daryl H. Miller) (Ends Sunday, Aug. 7) Read more
‘Richard III’
Shakespeare’s history rollicks under the stars in Melissa Chalsma’s deliciously over-the-top staging, which features David Melville in the title role. Melville gleans every ounce of nefarious gusto from his role in a surprisingly comical turn that elicits hoots and hisses from an appreciative audience as testimony to his skill. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sunday, July 24) Read more
The Old Zoo at Griffith Park, 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, L.A.
'The Boy From Oz'
Celebration Theatre lands a significant coup with this West Coast premiere of the 2004 Tony winner about legendary singer-songwriter Peter Allen, and what a festive party it is. Director Michael A. Shepperd, a crackerjack creative team and a triple-threat cast surrounding Andrew Bongiorno’s stellar turn as Allen give us first-rate theater from top to bottom. It’s a joyous, sensitive, electrifying company benchmark. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday, Aug. 21) Read more
Celebration Theatre @ the Lex, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood
‘The Eccentricities of a Nightingale’
Tennessee Williams preferred his 1951 revision of “Summer and Smoke” to its predecessor, and the delicate amalgam of pathos and poetry mined by director Dana Jackson and her proficient cast raises a persuasive argument for Williams’ viewpoint, with the transcendent Ginna Carter beyond praise as spinster Alma Winemiller. A richly atmospheric, emotionally rewarding revival. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Saturday, Oct. 29) Read more
‘The Engine of Our Ruin’
One wouldn’t expect a play about the clash between Western and Middle Eastern cultures to yield consistent belly laughs, but Jason Wells’ sophisticated new comedy about the miscommunications that result during an American diplomatic mission to a totalitarian Middle Eastern regime is consistently hilarious. Director Maria Gobetti helms a superlative cast in a perfectly paced production that is as intellectually provocative as it is side-splitting. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Friday, Aug. 26) Read more
‘Hedda Gabler’
Steven Robman’s staging for Antaeus of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 domestic drama cracks open the text to reveal details you hadn’t fully noticed before. Intriguingly, he moves the action ahead to the 1920s to show that the social constraints tormenting Hedda remain relevant even in times we associate with expanded freedom. Surprises abound in the performances and designs. (Daryl H. Miller) (Ends Sunday, July 17) Read more
The Antaeus Theatre Company, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood
‘Honky’
Deftly skewering platitudes and self-delusions surrounding racial identity in our advertising-driven society, this sharply written, smartly performed satire manages to be simultaneously thoughtful and laugh-out-loud-funny. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sunday, July 17) Read more
'John is a father'
Observed with the economy and grace of a latter-day Horton Foote play, Julie Marie Myatt’s naturalistic portrait of a troubled man’s late-in-life attempt to reconnect with his estranged family is capped by Sam Anderson’s moving performance. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Saturday, July 16) Read more
The Road on Lankershim, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood
'Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin'
That indefatigable purveyor of composers Hershey Felder applies his singular blend of musical biography, character study and piano virtuosity toward the iconic American songwriter. Although the richly entertaining, ultimately touching result could stand a few trims and affords less concert fireworks than previous excursions, the empathy, showmanship and craft on tap may just be the best match of historical figure and performing artist yet in this franchise, wholly attuned to a gratefully participating audience. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday, Aug. 7) Read more
The Best Pop Music of 2016 (so far)
So much about the first few months of pop in 2016 has been about mourning. David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Merle Haggard, Paul Kantner, George Martin, Prince, Scotty Moore, Maurice White, Bernie Worrell and the just-starting-out Christina Grimmie are among those who have left us. But while the music community has been dealt serious blows, the first six months of 2016 have also given us much to celebrate. What follows is a look at some of the most notable albums and singles of 2016, as picked by the pop staff of the Times. Happy listening. Read more
Los Angeles Times Pop Music Staff
Album: ‘Stranger to Stranger’
“Sound is the theme of this album,” Paul Simon writes in the press notes accompanying this new album, “as much as it’s about the subjects of the individual songs. If people get that, I’ll be pleased.” True to his word, the visceral sonic qualities of the 11 tracks on the collection are as commanding as his ever-literate lyrics and consistently inviting melodies. Yet this is nothing new for one of the premiere singers and songwriters of the rock era. At 74, Simon reaches ever further for new textures, musically and sonically, to help him say what he wants to say, making “Stranger to Stranger” a distinguished and captivating extension of, rather than a dramatic departure from, his rich body of work. It’s a work reflective of an artist still hungry for exploration. Read more
Reporter
Album: ‘Take Me to the Alley’
Last year Gregory Porter told me that “Holding On,” his sleek, skittering collaboration with the British dance duo Disclosure, started out as a bare-bones piano ballad. Given how much I’d thought of Porter’s fine 2013 album, “Liquid Spirit,” this was something I had to hear. Now I can: A handsome, slow-and-low rendition of “Holding On” — not merely unplugged, but with different chords that alter the vibe of the song — opens Porter’s new record, “Take Me to the Alley,” due Friday. The tune’s placement on the album speaks to the importance of “Holding On” in Porter’s career, the way it put this Southern California native in front of unfamiliar listeners after years of hard work in jazz clubs and on Broadway. Read more
Pop Music Writer
Other recommendations:
Album: 'Everything You've Come to Expect'
In the music video for "Aviation," the first song on their new album as the Last Shadow Puppets, Alex Turner and Miles Kane play two men forced to dig what look like their own graves by a suave but sadistic crime-boss type. There's a woman too, weeping in the back seat of a vintage Rolls-Royce, and we seem meant to understand that she's been caught carrying on with one of these guys; now her wicked husband is punishing the whole lot. Whatever the specifics, Turner and Kane — both Jason Statham-soulful in their grimy undershirts — are clearly identified as the noble victims in this little drama. Yet that's rarely what they look like on "Everything You've Come to Expect," the second full-length from this British orchestral-pop duo. Due Friday, the album comes nearly a decade after the Last Shadow Puppets' swooning 2008 debut, "The Age of the Understatement." Read more
Album: 'Mind of Mine'
A year after Zayn Malik quit One Direction (which likely led to the remaining four band members hitting pause), this 23-year-old singer has become the first of the bunch to release a solo record. And listening to "Mind of Mine," due Friday, it seems clear that Zayn left not because he couldn't handle the pressure of global stardom, as he intimated at the time, but because he wanted to get serious — really serious — about music. Read more
Album: 'This Is What the Truth Feels Like'
Sixteen years ago, Gwen Stefani of No Doubt sang about wanting "a simple kind of life." That's not how things turned out. Sure, No Doubt — the Anaheim ska-pop band that blasted off in 1995 with the zillion-selling album "Tragic Kingdom" — continued its straightforward ascent for a few more years, racking up hit songs with impressive efficiency through the mid-2000s. But then Stefani launched a solo career that added new wrinkles to her sound and persona. She went into fashion and starting having children, which she's said made a mess of her schedule. Following two huge solo records, she returned to No Doubt for a reunion album, 2012's "Push and Shove," which quickly fizzled, disrupting a narrative neatly defined to that point by success. Then last year, her life got really screwy: Stefani's marriage to Gavin Rossdale, frontman of the band Bush, fell apart (reportedly because of his affair with the couple's nanny), and she began dating Blake Shelton, the country star with whom she recently appeared on NBC's "The Voice." "Never thought this would happen ... Don't know what I'm feeling," she sings in "Used to Love You," a moody, down-tempo single released only months after she filed for divorce. Stefani dives deeply into those complications on her first solo album in a decade. Due Friday, "This Is What the Truth Feels Like" has songs about betrayal and disappointment, and songs about moving on from a broken relationship and falling in love again. Read more
Album: 'Anti'
You can't name your album "Anti" without inviting your audience to think about what you oppose. So what is Rihanna standing against on her eighth studio record? A smoothly choreographed product rollout, for one. After repeated delays, "Anti" finally appeared online Wednesday night, first in an apparently unauthorized leak, then as an exclusive on the streaming service Tidal; Samsung also gave away a limited number of free downloads through a complicated promotion. By Friday, the album was available for sale through iTunes (where it quickly topped the chart) and Tidal, though it hasn't yet shown up on other streaming services such as Spotify, and a physical release date has yet to be announced. (Mikael Wood) Read more
Album: 'Blackstar'
There's something delightfully perverse that David Bowie waited until he was 69 to release what's being described as his first jazz album. It was at that age too when veteran rock stars who include Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney took up with big bands or reached for the Great American Songbook to demonstrate their taste and hard-won stature. Even Bob Dylan got in on the act last year with "Shadows in the Night," his lovely (if desolate) tribute to Frank Sinatra. So when you hear that Bowie hooked up with a New York saxophonist and his crew for “Blackstar,” out Friday (just two days before his death from cancer), you think perhaps that Bowie has joined the club — that after cycling through countless styles and personas over his half-century career, he’s finally become a finger-snapping crooner with Count Basie on his mind. Ah, no. (Mikael Wood) Read more
Album: 'HitNRun Phase Two'
Is this becoming a habit? That's the question Prince raised Saturday morning when without warning he released a new album, "HitNRun Phase Two," on the streaming-music service Tidal. As its title suggests, the 12-track set follows an earlier album, "HitNRun Phase One," which Prince had made available in similar fashion in September — proof, it would seem, that this legendary control freak has shed his once-famous disdain for the unruly Internet. Maybe this double-shot system is how Prince, as prolific as he's ever been, intends to roll from here on out. Works for me. A proudly organic companion to the EDM-inflected "Phase One," Prince's latest album shows that he hasn't lost his interest in (or his knack for) the creeping funk and lush R&B balladry he was making in the early 1990s on records like the great "Diamonds and Pearls." Read more
Album: '25'
When Adele sings on her new album, "25," about an emotional experience so vivid that "It was just like a movie / It was just like a song," she's probably thinking of a tune by one of her idols: Roberta Flack, say, or Stevie Nicks. But for fans of this 27-year-old British singer, such a moment could only be captured by one thing: an Adele song. With her big hair and bigger voice, Adele broke out in 2008 as part of the British retro-soul craze that also included Duffy and Amy Winehouse. Her debut album, "19," spawned a hit single in "Chasing Pavements" and led to a Grammy Award for best new artist. Yet she outgrew any style or scene with the smash follow-up, "21," which presented Adele as a great crystallizer of complicated feelings, an artist writing intimately about her own life (in this case about a devastating breakup) in a way that somehow made the music feel universal. Clearly, the pressure is on to duplicate that commercial success with "25," which comes after a long period of public quiet in which Adele recovered from throat surgery and gave birth to a son (and tweeted no more than a few dozen times). "Hello," the record's brooding lead single, set a record when it was released last month, racking up 1.1 million downloads in a week. But the song's enthusiastic embrace only underscored the other, more pressing demand on the singer as she returns: that her music still provide its trademark catharsis. Put another way, Adele's fans have been waiting for years for new Adele songs to explain their experiences to them. And they get a worthy batch on "25." (Mikael Wood) Read more
Album: 'Bob Dylan — The Cutting Edge'
Among the many things Thomas Edison famously said, he remarked that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," and he also insisted that "I have not failed once. I have simply found 10,000 ways that do not work." Both precepts are clearly evident in "1965-1966: Bootleg Series Vol. 12," the revelatory latest release of Dylan archival recordings that comes out Nov. 6. Culling a mind- and ear-boggling wealth of outtakes, alternate versions and rehearsal snippets during sessions over the 14 months of an astonishingly fertile period for Dylan, which yielded three of the most influential albums in rock history — "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde" — the new set throws open a panoramic window into the creative process of one of the 20th century's greatest artists. (Randy Lewis) Read more
Album: 'Crosseyed Heart'
On Keith Richards' first solo album in more than 20 years the Rolling Stones co-founder crafts songs using the same tools and templates he's employed throughout his creative life: blues, early rock 'n' roll, classic country & western and a pinch of reggae. You will not find a Diplo production credit or guest verse from Chance the Rapper anywhere on this album. But as Richards' reflexes suggest, the guitarist still possesses the skills to whittle a stick into a rock song if so inclined. That's a diplomatic way of saying that our hero is a creature of habit who knows what he does and doesn't like. Recent interviews suggest he's as dismissive of contemporary music as Frank Sinatra was to the sound of the Stones. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Hall of Records'
Lionel Williams, who makes music and visual art as Vinyl Williams, crafts sparkly electronic beat music that exists in its own curious realm. "Hall of Records" is one of 14 tracks on his new album, "Into," and makes for a good portal. Tinted with the sonic tone of an overused Maxell cassette, rich with humming frequencies that recall German Krautrock and dense with muffle-tone beats suggestive of 1990s label Too Pure, the track swirls with synthesizers and waves of untethered noise. Williams is less skilled as a vocalist, though. He quivers in pitchy falsetto throughout "Into." It hardly matters, though. The stuff is mesmerizing. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Heaven's Room'
Guitarist Matt Mondanile is perhaps best known for his work with New Jersey guitar pop band Real Estate, but his solo project Ducktails has generated equally sublime tracks across four albums. The fifth, "St. Catherine," is filled with many languid, jangled guitar lines. Among the best is "Heaven's Room," which features Los Angeles musician Julia Holter. Mondanile, who relocated to Los Angeles, is a master of smooth, shimmering guitar tones, but "Heaven's Room" blossoms through masterful arrangements and a sonic depth courtesy of producer Rob Schnapf. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Favorite Asian fried chicken joints
Does Los Angeles live by Nashville hot chicken alone? No — not as long as there’s a universe of Asian fried chicken too. Read more
Jonathan Gold
Restaurant critic
Other recommendations:
Nersses Vanak
It is cold in Los Angeles. Rain is in the air. What you want to be eating is dizi, an Iranian lamb and chickpea stew, flavored with turmeric and dried lime — a popular street food dish from Tehran that seems to have a tonic effect against the chill. And for dizi, you should probably be at Nersses Vanak, a slightly faded restaurant in an industrial district of Glendale, where dizi, served with long-pickled garlic, platters of fresh herbs, and hot slabs of flatbread snatched smoking from the grill, is always the thing. Read more
10 best dishes of 2015
A decade or two from now, when line-caught sea bass will seem as rare and unobtainable as sturgeon caviar is now, drive-through windows sell more lentil bowls than cheeseburgers and we have gotten used to the idea of Taylor Swift as the governor of Pennsylvania, 2015 may well seem in retrospect a fairly important year in Los Angeles restaurants. Menus just seemed to be mostly vegetarian without anybody talking about it much, and even French chefs began to talk among themselves about the primacy of Mexican cooking. The differences between high and low cuisine, which had started to crumble as far back as the 1980s, were utterly annihilated. Exotic fermentation techniques began to creep out of the lab. The idea of abolishing the practice of tipping took hold. And as always, there were 10 dishes that attempted to encapsulate it all. Read more
Jonathan Gold's 101 Best Restaurants, 2015
Your next great meal in Southern California is as likely to come from that tiny storefront next to the 7-Eleven as it is from a Beverly Hills gastronomic palace. Los Angeles, which is both where American ideas about food tend to be formulated and where they come back eventually to die, can be a spectacular place to eat. Read more
Pok Pok
Is it possible to become converted in a single bite? Because with a single fried chicken wing at the original Portland Pok Pok in 2007, I dropped my prejudices about non-European cooking in Oregon, the crossover potential of extreme Asian funk, and the ability of a non-Thai to prepare anything like upcountry Thai food. So eight years, many affiliated restaurants, a James Beard award, a Michelin star and a Chinatown noodle stand later, here we are at Pok Pok Los Angeles, an enormous restaurant in the old Fu Ling space in the Mandarin Plaza at the relatively deserted north end of Chinatown. Chef Andy Ricker's gift is the ability to make Thai food seem new again, to take it out of that comfortable place in the suburban strip mall, where it has become the default takeout comfort food for a huge chunk of Los Angeles, and put it back into the roadside stands and rural villages of Northern Thailand. Read more
Five of the tastiest Chinese restaurants in the SGV with the name 'Tasty'
In last week's column, I alluded to the flood of San Gabriel Valley Chinese restaurants with the word "Tasty'" tucked somewhere into their English-language names. Depending on whether you count doughnut shops, burger stands or branches of the same restaurant as Tasty, Not-Tasty or Tasty in their own right – well, there are a lot of them. Here are five of the tastiest. Read more
Federico Solmi: The Brotherhood
Eight LED monitors and a room-size installation for a suite of five more monitors transform paintings into disturbing video-pageants. The artist frames the moving imagery with piles of debris painted on the screens, heavy on the logos of consumer trash. What is on the televisions is rubbish made remarkable. Ends Sat., July 30. Read more
Luis De Jesus Gallery, 2685 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles
Art critic
Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium
Without classic 1960s Pop art, especially Andy Warhol’s, there would be no Robert Mapplethorpe photographs as we know them from the 1970s and 1980s. That’s the big takeaway from a visit to this impressive two-museum exhibition (The Getty Center and Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Ends Sun., July 31. Read more
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles
Art critic
Other recommendations:
Nancy Evans
Evans, based in Los Angeles, is adept at marrying matter, metaphor and myth. With 40 sculptures and paintings spanning the past 15 years, this show plays to the artist's breadth at the expense of consistent strength. The bronzes alone, cast from plant casings, driftwood and stone, provide the largest share of heft and visceral appeal, but paintings of trees as well feel expansive (Leah Ollman) (Through July 24) Read more
Jane Hugentober
Deeply influenced by process-driven art of the '60s and feminist-centered work of the '70s, Hugentober creates richly textural meditations on the female body as it exists in time. Delicacy and tenacity come together in the work the way her identities as mother, daughter and maker fuse into a single self — more through simultaneity and multiplicity than balance (Leah Ollman) (Through Aug. 13) Read more
Susan Silas: The Self-Portrait Sessions
The stripped-down aesthetic of 1970s feminist art governs the exhibition, and Silas’ acts of self-regard are more evocative for it. (Sharon Mizota) (Ends Sun., July 17) Read more
Ecaterina Vrana
The Romanian artist’s paintings are striking in their idiosyncrasy. The world they inhabit is by turns humorous and dark but wonderfully mysterious. (Sharon Mizota) (Ends Sat., July 23) Read more
Sam Gilliam: Green April
A revelation. The artist's originality is on bare-naked display. So is the shape-shifting mutability of the materials he uses: acrylic paint, canvas and stretcher bars. In Gilliam's hands, these elements come together in ways that make you think differently about what art does in the world and what we mean when we say an artist is a genius. (David Pagel) (Ends Sat., July 16) Read more
David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Place, Los Angeles
Agnes Martin
Want to clear your mind? Get a pickup truck, then spend a couple years driving across and around the continent — alone. That's the first lesson of this lovely retrospective of abstract paintings. The show is divided in two, early work and late work, and the separation between them was launched by her decision to make an extended cross-country sojourn. In stripped-down canvases, Martin created an entirely distinct, largely unprecedented artistic vocabulary for spiritual consciousness. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Monday, Sept. 12) Read more
Fred Reichman and Eleanor Ray
Both painters in this fine show make work that is deeply thoughtful, attentive to the beauty of the quotidian and humble, paced to the slow reveal. (Leah Ollman) (Through July 16) Read more
'Roman Mosaics Across the Empire'
Combat. Conflict. Life or death skirmishes. Brawling. Judging from the admittedly small sample of nearly a dozen fragments of floor mosaics, several quite large, in a new exhibition at the Getty Villa, ancient Romans across the sprawling empire were pretty obsessed with the bloody violence necessary to sustaining their imperial position around the vast expanse of the Mediterranean. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Monday, Sept. 12) Read more
'Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women'
Sometimes the seemingly simple act of occupying space can be a radical, profoundly political act. Space invasion is the savvy artistic subject of the fine inaugural exhibition at the sixth outpost for the Zurich-based Hauser & Wirth, which also has powerhouse galleries in London and New York. (Ends Sun. Sept. 4. Read more
State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda
The show is almost entirely text printed on pallid photo-reproductions of posters, newspapers and cartoons. But nothing compares to coming upon an actual Nazi banner under glass, its black swastika screen-printed on a white cloth circle neatly stitched to a blood-red field. The banner’s astute graphic punch startles. And that is what one wants from a show on this critically important topic. Actual artifacts pull the past into the present in ways no reproduction can. (Christopher Knight) (Through Aug. 21) Read more
Getty Gallery at the Central Library, 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles
‘Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices From the Afghanistan War’
“I perceive the world through the medium of human voices,” Svetlana Alexievich declares near the end of “Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices From the Afghanistan War,” explaining both her method and her point of view. For Alexievich — who in October became just the third nonfiction writer and 14th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature — testimony may be as close as one can get to faith. “We’ve worshipped many gods,” she writes in this slender but vivid account, told in the voices of survivors of the Soviet Afghan war. “Some have been consigned to the scrapheap, others to museums. Let us make Truth into a god! A god before whom each of us shall answer according to his own conscience, and not as a class, or a university year, or a collective, or a people….” Read more
David Ulin
Book critic
Other recommendations:
'The Bazaar of Bad Dreams'
Stephen King, I've come to think, is at his most adept when writing in the midlength range. His big novels — "The Stand," "It," "11/22/63" — have always felt a little baggy to me, while his shortest work (he has published more than 200 stories, gathered in a number of collections) can feel sketchy, more idea than nuanced narrative. That middle zone, however: His finest efforts emerge from this territory, shorter novels "Misery," "Joyland" and "The Shining," novellas such as "The Body" or the chilling "A Good Marriage." In this material, King has the breadth to do what he does best, which is to evoke the very human underpinnings of terror, while also remaining constrained by certain limitations of space. As he explains in "The Bazaar of Bad Dreams," which gathers 20 pieces of fiction, along with brief reflections on their composition, "Only through fiction can we think about the unthinkable, and perhaps obtain some sort of closure." The key word there is not the unthinkable in which King traffics but "closure," the closure of the midrange form. Read more
'Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink'
New wave rocker, country crooner, balladeer, collaborator and showman: Elvis Costello has been all of these and more in the course of what is now a 40-year run. Of all the first-generation punkers, he remains (with Patti Smith and possibly David Byrne) among the few who can claim the longevity and diversity of, say, Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell, both of whom appear in this book. Like minds, perhaps, or water seeking its level. Either way, this is the company to which Costello belongs. And yet, if "Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink" has anything to tell us, it is that its author remains a fan. Here he is, for instance, on his first experience singing with Paul McCartney, a rehearsal duet on "All My Loving": "I locked on to the vocal harmony the second time around, as I'd done a thousand times before while singing along to the record. It never really occurred to me that learning to sing either vocal part on a Beatles record was any kind of musical education. I was just a kid singing along with the radio in our front room." Or this, recalling a good-natured cutting contest, trading lyrics with Bob Dylan: "It was just fun to be in the ring with the champ for a minute or two." Read more
'City on Fire'
A long book represents an act of faith. On the writer's part, to be sure: The faith that he or she has something to say that's worth all the hours it will take for us to hear it, that it won't dissolve in ephemera and flash. But on the reader's part, also: The faith that we can trust the writer, that there will be a payoff, that it will add up. Certainly, this is the challenge faced by Garth Risk Hallberg's first novel, "City on Fire," which, clocking in at more than 900 pages, seeks to re-create, in panoramic fashion, the New York City of the late 1970s. Hallberg's book, of course, is much anticipated, for its length, its scope and its deal (he sold the book for $2 million) — but all of that is beside the point. The only criteria worth considering is whether, or how, the narrative works, the extent to which it draws us in. Read more
'M-Train'
First, let's clear up a misconception: Patti Smith's "M Train" is not a sequel to her 2010 National Book Award-winning memoir "Just Kids." In fact, "M Train" is not a memoir at all, except in the loosest sense — a book of days, a year in the life, a series of reflections, more vignettes than sustained narrative. By saying that, I don't mean to be critical, for vignettes are what Smith does best. Read more
'So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood'
Patrick Modiano opens his most recent novel, "So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood," with an epigraph from Stendhal: "I cannot provide the reality of events, I can only convey their shadow." It's an almost perfect evocation of the book, not to mention Modiano's career. The French writer, who won the Nobel Prize last year for a body of work as deft and beautiful as any in postwar European literature, is an excavator of memory — not only his own or those of his characters (many of whom bear, as J.D. Salinger once observed of his fictional alter ego Seymour Glass, "a striking resemblance to — alley oop, I'm afraid — myself"), but also that of Paris. That's why his fiction resonates so deeply; it occupies an elusive middle ground between place and personality. Read more
'Bad Sex'
Among my favorite aspects of Clancy Martin's second novel, "Bad Sex," is that it is not about bad sex; in fact, the sex is relentless, passionate. Rather, it is about all the bad stuff sex — or sexual obsession — can make us do. Narrated by Brett, a recovering alcoholic who betrays her sobriety, and her marriage, for a yearlong affair with her husband's banker Eduard, the book records the spiral, the ripple effect, of transgressive behavior, the way that once we slip the bounds of propriety, it can be ever more difficult to find a passage back. Read more
‘Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’
Imagine if the world were filtered through the home screen of a smartphone. Picture opening your eyes to an image overloaded with headlines and messages. Notifications no longer buzz, they flash before you. “Warning,” the display blinks in the lower right, “your bank balance is low.” This is the view of Faith, early in “Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.” Having just been released from prison, Faith may not be happy with her financial prospects, but she definitely isn’t too keen with the sensory overload of this futuristic, uncomfortably modern society. “Is this what the employees see all the time?” she wonders. In the world of “Mirror’s Edge Catalyst,” there aren’t citizens so much as employees — workers for one of a handful of conglomerates that controls the world. You are identified not by your ethnicity or your interests but your job. Read more
Todd Martens
Video game critic
‘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
Todd Martens
Video game critic
Other recommendations:
'Severed'
Early in the game "Severed," one of the more striking images you'll see this year in a video game appears. A woman of mixed-race descent stands before a mirror, her yellow dress bloody, her arm a stub and her eyes wide in shock. The world is bright and blocky — a handcrafted-looking universe that seems constructed of paper, but immediately the tone drifts toward melancholic. The art almost appears lifted from a Día de los Muertos display, and though this is the beginning of the journey for young Sasha, it also feels like the beginning of an end. Read more
'Late Shift'
Early in the film "Late Shift," Matt, a student on his way to a night job, faces an easily relatable dilemma: help a lost tourist with directions and risk being late to work or ignore the man and hop on a waiting subway train. Here is where you would expect director Tobias Weber to show the audience the outcome of Matt's decision as the story unfolds. Matt's choice, however, is up to you, the viewer. In fact, you control every major plot turn in the film. "Late Shift," created by CtrlMovie, a small studio in Switzerland, and written by Weber and Michael Robert Johnson, best known for Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes," may be the world's first fully realized choose-your-own-adventure film. Read more
Wizarding World of Harry Potter Hollywood
The opening of Universal Studios' new Wizarding World of Harry Potter Hollywood brings to the West Coast what many consider the grandest theme park attraction in North America. A mix of fully realized sets — including a steamy, fire-breathing dragon — as well as screens interspersed with actors from the "Harry Potter" films, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is a highly kinetic motion simulator that aims to re-create the sense of flying. Guests sit on what appears to be a bench, pull down an over-the-shoulder harness and are soon whisked into the air, gliding in and out of filmed moments and elaborately constructed scenes. Read more
Universal Studios Hollywood, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City
A Few New Mobile Video Games
There are a lot of mobile games out there — last year more than 100,000 iOS games were released in North America. Here are a few recent mobile games worthy of exploration: "Love You to Bits" (Alike/Pati). Breakups stink. They're worse when your girlfriend is scattered around the galaxy. In this iOS game a young boy tries to put back together his first love, a female robot, and learns to live on his own along the way. "Story Warriors: Fairy Tales" (Below the Game). Tales such as "Snow White," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella" and more get remixed in this text-driven puzzler about a young woman who gets trapped in folklore. Tap on words to bring them to life, and piece together nouns and adjectives as if they're math problems, the right solution inspiring a cutesy animated sequence. "SPL-T" (Simogo). Swedish studio Simogo is one of the most adventurous companies out there, specializing in head-scratching, text-heavy games such as "Device 6" and "The Sailor's Dream." "SPL-T" is a back-to-basics puzzle game. In the black and white game, players place a horizontal line and then a vertical one, trying to create as many splits as possible. "Super Phantom Cat" (Veewo). Cats! Robots! "Super Phantom Cat" takes the weirdness of "Super Mario Bros.," gives it a zany feline-meets-sci-fi makeover, and uses slick touch controls to create a freshly retro experience. It's all delivered with a gooey feel-good message and some rainbow-hued prettiness. "The Swords." (Sunhead Games). Imagine a scene in an action movie, one in which one swordsman is surrounded by an army on all sides. Now imagine all the action is presented in a minimal ink wash art style. By zeroing in on the blades, "The Swords" emphasizes the chaos of battle. Swipe fast, and do so with precision. Read more
'Rocket League'
Dave Hagewood didn't set out to create the next big thing in electronic sports. Ten years ago he simply envisioned a game in which cars did crazy things. Cars with rockets on them. The result was the breakout independent game of 2015, "Rocket League." The key to its success was one simple addition to Hagewood's original vision: a giant, bouncy soccer ball. Thus, a zany game in which cars crashed into one another became something else entirely, a madcap sport. "Rocket League" has now reached more than 12 million players, with revenue topping $70 million. In late February, the game — already a hit on Sony's PlayStation 4 and computing platform Steam — arrived on Microsoft's Xbox One, where in less than a month it attracted more than 1 million players. Read more
'Fire Emblem Fates'
In my first 25 hours with Nintendo 3DS' "Fire Emblem Fates," families argued, attempts at flirting were rebuffed and relatives threw a fit over poorly cooked meals. Were it not for the swords and the spells and the half-fox/half-human, the game wouldn't be all that different from the last month or so of my life. Though there is sword and sorcery here, including a main character who has the ability to turn into a dragon, "Fire Emblem Fates" is really about family drama. In this case, it's about the pull of one's blood family versus the connection with an adopted one. Do you help the stepbrothers and stepsisters who always supported you, or the brothers and sisters you've only just met? The player's avatar, which can be male or female, was kidnapped at a young age and raised as a warrior prince/princess. Her (I chose a female avatar and named her Kes) adopted-but-criminal family took good care of her, and it's clear she's tight with her siblings. But her father — a.k.a. the king — is a monster. Read more
'Firewatch'
"Firewatch," set in the quiet Wyoming wilderness, is a game in which its main character does little more than walk. Yet at its heart this is a game about running. It's about running from our pasts, running from our emotional trials and running from the unknown. It's about how avoidance often makes things worse and how the road to conquering our fears can be downright frightening. And things get pretty bad in "Firewatch." Read more
'Leo's Red Carpet Rampage'
Winning an Academy Award, it proves, can be nearly an impossible task, at least according to the lighthearted Web game "Leo's Red Carpet Rampage." The game puts players in control of a mini, vintage-style Leonardo DiCaprio in a quest for an Oscar. And while the game is pure goofiness when it starts — simply mash a couple of buttons to run the red carpet and dodge photographers — it goes dark, and quickly. Read more
Reservoir
Just in time for the holiday shopping season, a new boutique has opened on Robertson Boulevard marrying East and West Coast style. Reservoir is the concept of New York City transplants Aliza Neidich and Alissa Jacob and features a well-edited mix of clothing, accessories and home goods with an easy sophistication made for L.A., including Ryan Roche hand-knit sweaters, Denis Colomb ponchos, Ellery sleek crepe dresses and tops, Solid and Striped denim jumpsuits, Madeworn tees, Newbark shearling slides, Dosa patchwork totes and Wendy Nichol fringed leather bucket bags. Read more
Reservoir, 154 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles
Booth Moore
Fashion critic
Other recommendations:
'Sporting Guide: Los Angeles, 1897'
With famed film mogul Sam Goldwyn as her grandfather, Liz Goldwyn's family name is practically synonymous with old-school Hollywood glamour. But it's Los Angeles before it became the capital of the motion picture industry that's the subject of the style maven's new book, "Sporting Guide: Los Angeles, 1897" (Regan Arts). The work of historical fiction looks back on the city's seedier past, with loosely connected stories about the madams, prostitutes, orphans, hustlers and tramps who roamed Alameda, Los Angeles and Spring streets. I chatted with Goldwyn about what drew her to this time period in L.A., her impressions of the book's rough characters, and what role women had in a culture where prostitution was tolerated. Read more
'Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe'
Ladies, the next time you are teetering on high heels, you can blame men. But not for the reason you think. In Western fashion, high heels were popularized by men, starting in the court of Louis XIV where a talon rouge (red heel), identified a member of the privileged class centuries before Christian Louboutin made red soles the calling card of his luxury shoe brand. That's just one of the tasty tidbits in "Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe," an exhibition scheduled to run through Dec. 13 at the Palm Springs Art Museum that examines the fashion accessory we all love to hate, including its history, its relation to gender identity, sex appeal and power. Read more