Critics’ Picks: June 28-July 4, 2013
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.
This week’s picks include a thriller and a comedy — “A Hijacking” and “I’m So Excited!” — at the movies, as well as conductor/composer Matthias Pintscher at the Music Academy of the West. A new graphic novel examines the nature of genius. And in Fashion, Charlotte Dellal opens a new boutique on Rodeo Drive.
Click through to explore more and, where applicable, find directions to venues.
‘I’m So Excited!’
I can’t remember when, if ever, Pedro Almodóvar has had as much flamboyant fun as he does in the high-flying comedy “I’m So Excited!” The sex and death, musically infused airline disaster farce is staged at 30,000 feet. Much of the story unfolds in the plane’s crowded cockpit — just one of the many entendres the Spanish writer-director doubles to take an imperiled Mexico City flight to heights of lunacy. The film is so off-the-wall, so raw, so risqué, so gay, that it may come as a shock even to Almodóvar fans used to his boundary-pushing ways. Though “I’m So Excited!” may not stand as one of the director’s defining works, for some completely frivolous, naughty nonsense, it may be just the ticket. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
Betsy Sharkey
Film critic
‘A Hijacking’
“A Hijacking” is as lean, focused and to the point as its title. A cargo ship is hijacked in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and this expertly done, ultra-tense Danish thriller places you in the middle of the action in the most intense way. Gripping from first frame to last, “A Hijacking” is written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, best known as the co-writer on Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Hunt” as well as the crack Danish TV series “Borgen.” (Kenneth Turan) In Danish and English, with English subtitles. Read more
Kenneth Turan
Film critic
Other recommendations:
'Before Midnight'
It was a risk for director Richard Linklater to go so dark in “Before Midnight,” the latest round of the romantic musings he began with his stars, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, nearly 20 years ago. The illusions of a young couple’s more pristine love so captivating in “Before Sunrise” have been shelved so that the tipping point in their relationship can be laid bare. A devastating fight is the centerpiece now, the teasing flirtations a distant memory. Though the gauzy beauty of the earlier films remain, as does a sun-drenched European setting, this time Greece, what you will remember, what you will feel compelled to talk about long after, is the fight. It sears with an intensity that rivals another classic battle between the sexes, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
'The East'
Starring Brit Marling and Alexandar Skarsgard,"The East" is a provocative industrial espionage thriller. It pits counterculture revolutionaries intent on exposing corporate villainy against the undercover intelligence specialists paid exceedingly well to keep their compromised clientele clean. By spicing up a complex morality tale marked by sophisticated themes with down and dirty back stabbing and betrayals, the movie turns corporate malfeasance into a spy game that is entertaining without being dumbed down. (Besty Sharkey) Read more
'Fill the Void'
"Fill the Void" is a transfixing, emotionally complex Israeli drama about arranged marriage in the ultra-Orthodox community that won the Venice Film Festival's lead actress prize for star Hadas Yaron. Back home the film was nominated for 13 Ophirs, the Israeli Academy Awards, and won seven, including best picture and director. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'Frances Ha'
Effortless and effervescent, "Frances Ha" is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true. It's both a timeless story of the joys and sorrows of youth and a dead-on portrait of how things are right now for a New York woman who, try as she might, can't quite get her life together. That would be the Frances of the title (the Ha isn't explained until the film's charming final frame), a joint creation of and career high point for both star Greta Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach, who met on the director's "Greenberg" and co-wrote the script. Together they have created an American independent film that feels off the cuff but is in fact exactly made by a filmmaker in total control of his resources. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'Stories We Tell'
Don't be fooled by its deceptively simple title or the hesitant, unassuming way it begins. Writer-director Sarah Polley's "Stories We Tell" ends up an invigorating powerhouse of a personal documentary, adventurous and absolutely fascinating. Unexpectedly moving in unanticipated ways, this unusual film is a look at the complexities of one specific family's story as well as a broad examination of the interlocking nature of truth, secrecy and memory, not to mention the endless intricacies of human relationships. Five years in the making, "Stories We Tell" reveals its secrets slowly, like an onion being unpeeled layer by unexpected layer, not unlike the way Polley herself discovered what she did about her own background. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'This Is the End'
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s apocalyptic comedy considers many burning questions. Does movie-star cred automatically put one on the A-list of the blessed? Can last-minute goodness buy salvation? Is James Franco really that effete? The filmmakers get by with little help from their friends — half of Hollywood drops in for the “after” party. The movie is stupidly hysterical, smartly heretical and earns its R rating. It’s basically funny as hell. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
'20 Feet From Stardom'
This irresistible effort has just become this year's top-grossing documentary, and if you haven't seen it yet, this might be a good time to catch up before the deluge of fall films hits. Veteran director Morgan Neville has made a moving and joyous behind-the-scenes film about the world of rock 'n' roll backup singers. It's a universe filled with big, bold personalities and the music they make: When you say names like Darlene Love, Merry Clayton and Lisa Fischer, you are conjuring up entire universes of sound. These women sing in a way that is transformative for us, and, it turns out, for them as well. Director Neville has made that rare endeavor that pretty much everyone is guaranteed to enjoy. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
‘Siberia’
It may not have the built-in fan base of “Under the Dome,” but NBC’s “Siberia” could be just as much fun. Sixteen contestants are dropped in the middle of a Siberian forest with a camera crew and not much else. The goal: to survive long enough to claim the $500,000 prize. The pilot sets up a convincing reality show, except that’s not what’s happening here. Created by newcomer Matthew Arnold, “Siberia” is a horror-drama, with creepy-woods top notes of “Blair Witch Project” and the production value of the short-lived monster mess “The River.” Although bloody horror abounds on television these days, there aren’t too many shows that provide good old-fashioned scare tactics. “Siberia” may wind up going bloody and gross (I hope not), but the pilot leans heavily on things that rustle and howl in the dark. NBC, Mondays, 10 p.m. Read more
Mary McNamara
Television critic
‘Ray Donovan’
There are many things built into the bones of this new series starring Liev Schrieber that would tend to raise red flags and set off warning sirens in my brain. Another tale of the bad people of Hollywood, their egos and appetites and the stunning lack of self-awareness they mistake for a stunning degree of self-awareness; another messed-up Irish American family, sporting accents that inevitably make me think of Jack Donaghy of “30 Rock” — another handsome anti-hero for the ranks. Still, once you cross the mountains of exposition its overexplanatory pilot contains, this is very good. Created by Ann Biderman (“Southland”), it stars Schrieber as the eponymous Ray, a calmly efficient high-end private eye and “fixer” whose days and nights are dedicated to smoothing the lives of the feckless powerful — to making bad things go away (a dead girl in a hotel room, say), sometimes by doing bad things. The irony is that his very own Bad Thing, in the toxic person of his father (Jon Voight) will not be gotten rid of so easily. Showtime, Sunday. Read more
Television critic
Other recommendations:
'Annie: It's the Hard Knock Life, From Script to Stage'
The ongoing 2012 Broadway revival of the 1977 Broadway musical/worldwide phenomenon/venerated cult object is viewed, from open casting to opening night, through the lens of a single song (see title, above), its analysis, arrangement, choreography, rehearsal, mounting and performance. Creators Thomas Meehan (book), Charles Strouse (music) and Martin Charnin (lyrics) are here to tell what they remember and know, but the heart of the film belongs to three members of the new production team (Susan Hilferty, costumes; David Korins, sets; Andy Blankenbuehler, choreography) and a fresh crop of orphans — eight gifted, self-possessed little girls with eyes as big as Annie's (but with pupils). Unlike NBC's late "Smash," Joshua Seftel's lump-in-throat documentary pictures a cooperative effort in which things are continually corrected but all inclines toward making something good. That is my kind of excitement.(PBS, Friday) (Robert Lloyd) Read more
Ray Donovan
Showtime battles back to the big leagues with a dark and astonishingly multifaceted drama about an L.A.-based super fixer and all the very broken people that he loves. As the tough but essentially decent guy who A-listers call when a hooker overdoses in their bed, Liev Schreiber's Ray Donovan is, unarguably, the latest in a long line of complicated heroes. But for all its voyeuristic pleasures, "Ray Donovan" is a family drama. Ray is not only devoted to his wife and kids, he's still playing big brother to Terry (Eddie Marsan), a former boxer now battling Parkinsons, and Bunchy (Dash Minok), whose childhood abuse at the hands of a priest left him a constantly slipping addict. Always complicated, Ray's life threatens to boil over when his father (Jon Voight) is released early from prison. A story that could easily collapse under its own weight is held aloft by both great writing and absorbing performances from the entire cast (though you do get the feeling that Schreiber, Voight and Marsan could sit together and read Get This Look lists aloud and it would be worth watching.) (Showtime, Sundays) (Mary McNamara) Read more
'Carson on TCM'
Turner Classic Movies has taken 25 film-related interviews from the Johnny Carson years of "The Tonight Show" and packaged them into five programs to run Monday nights throughout July. Specifically, the clips date from 1972 to 1992, the year of Carson's retirement, the first decade of his shows having been almost entirely erased by NBC. Still, 20 good years remain to be mined, and the series will include conversations with Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda, Doris Day, Bette Davis, Fred Astaire and Goldie Hawn for the youngsters. Carson was a jocular, jovial host, but also a thoughtful and curious man who worked within the moment; his interviews are not promotional boilerplate. This week's five-pack comprises Kirk Douglas, Mary Tyler Moore, Neil Simon, George Burns and little Drew Barrymore (from way back in '82) and will be followed by screenings of the Simon-penned "The Sunshine Boys" (starring Burns), "The Goodbye Girl" and "California Suite"; similarly linked films will follow each subsequent episode. Conan O'Brien, himself briefly the host of "The Tonight Show," will present. (Mondays in July) (Robert Lloyd) Read more
'Endeavor'
"Endeavor" is back on Masterpiece and that's a good thing, especially for the many "Inspector Morse" fans. A prequel to the beloved television adaptations of the Colin Dextor novels, the pilot, starring Shaun Evans as iconic British police detective Endeavor Morse in his early days, debuted last year. Now there are four more mysteries to solve, four more chances to watch a great detective evolve, and a second season in the offing. (PBS, Sundays) (Mary McNamara) Read more
'Special Flight'
Fernand Melgar's second film about Swiss immigration (after "The Fortress" in 2008) focuses on a Geneva detention center, where two dozen men sans papers wait, for as long as 18 months and without trial, to be deported. Some have been in Switzerland a long time, some have families there; many fear what will happen on their return, all feel their situation to be unjust. The authorities, with a bureaucratic benevolence strictly limited by rules and regulations, come off as both kindly and clueless, concerned with their charges but more concerned with doing their job. Most of the time — but not always — this means handing them over to the police to be shipped home, on the "special flight" of the title, bound and chained. "I've heard what you said," one tells a protesting inmate, "but I can't resolve all the problems in the world." The fly-on-the-wall style of the film, and the relatively long scenes and disinclination to judge any of the individuals, the worst of whom seem only human, recall the institutional documentaries of Frederick Wiseman (and there are no finer documentaries to recall). Does it have something to say to an American audience? You bet. (PBS, Monday) (Robert Lloyd) Read more
Keep watching 'The Killing'
And keep watching 'The Killing,' which has a poignant and powerful story line about the plight of street kids in Seattle, Washington, in addition to the best detective team since Sculley and Mulder. (AMC, Sundays, 9 p.m.) (Mary McNamara) Read more
‘The Scottsboro Boys’
Catch one of the most inventive American musicals to come around in a long while. This Kander & Ebb show, which mixes minstrelsy with Brechtian theatrics in an irony-whipping postmodern manner, is a sophisticated knockout, a musical for those who like their razzle-dazzle with a radical, unsentimental edge. “The Scottsboro Boys” reminds us that remembrance can be a kind of redress, that not letting evil escape into oblivion can be a partial victory. Tony-nominated Joshua Henry’s powerhouse performance as one of nine black youths unjustly accused of raping two white Southern women who happened to be passengers on the same Memphis-bound train gives this dazzling, envelope-pushing show a beautiful gravity. Ends Sunday. Read more
Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles
Charles McNulty
Theater critic
Other recommendations:
'The Crucible'
The Crucible Co-directors Armin Shimerman and Geoffrey Wade's risky, even outlandish staging works beautifully with the polemical nature of Arthur Miller's arguably over-produced masterwork, a denunciation of the McCarthy hearings set during the Salem witch trials. By having the characters address the audience, preacher-like, the proceedings take on the immediacy of a Chautauqua tent revival. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sunday) Read more
'Dying City'
Christopher Shinn's psychologically acute drama, now having its Los Angeles premiere courtesy of Rogue Machine, offers an intriguing tussle between Kelly, a psychotherapist, and the memory of her husband, Craig, who was killed in the Iraq War under circumstances that leave open the possibility of suicide. This past is brought back in all its anguish and bitterness by the unexpected visit of Peter, Craig's identical twin brother. The acting is as meticulously observed as it is emotionally tense. And though confined to a cramped room, the staging fluidly handles the shifts of time and situation. (Charles McNulty) (Ends Monday, August 5) Read more
Rogue Machine at Theatre Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
'Falling for Make Believe'
A grand cast and 21 classic songs propel Mark Saltzman's musical study of Lorenz Hart and his struggles with Richard Rodgers, the bottle and the closet. To move beyond this elegant chamber staging, some clashes between form and content will have to be addressed, best left to archivists, quibblers and future producers. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday) Read more
'Hungry Woman'
Food, family and post-feminist freedom are the thematic ingredients of Josefina López’s witty, compelling fantasia, and though still refining, it’s perhaps her richest work yet. This nonlinear account of an Angeleno journalist (bravura Rachel Gonzalez) on a Parisian journey of self-discovery finds tasty universality both inside and outside of the Chicano perspective, which director Corky Dominguez’s capable forces devour with gusto. (David D. Nichols) (Ends Sunday) Read more
'A Midsummer Saturday Night’s Fever Dream'
Even by the Troubadour Theater Company’s typically reliable comic standards, this commedia dell’arte-infused mash-up of classic Shakespeare and 1970s disco culture is an exceptionally hilarious and energetic romp. (Philip Brandes) (Ends July 7) Read more
'One Night in Miami...'
Although this well-appointed dramedy about what might have gone down in the Hampton House the night Cassius Clay became world heavyweight champion slightly overdoes the 20/20 hindsight, that doesn’t stop it from grabbing our imaginations. Director Carl Cofield keeps the action tautly entertaining, and his actors, who express rather than mimic their real-life counterparts, are first-rate. (David C. Nichols) (Ends September 15) Read more
Rogue Machine at Theatre Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
'The Rainmaker'
N. Richard Nash’s 1950s-era chestnut about a “spinster” swept up in romance by a dazzling con man can be laughably archaic. However, director Jack Heller crafts a striking, specific portrait of a bygone time. As for the pitch-perfect performances, they should all be distilled, bottled and preserved for posterity. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sunday, Dec. 22) Read more
'revolver'
In the final production at its longtime venue, LA's flagship gay theater scores a profoundly affecting bulls-eye with Chris Phillips' incisive study of violence and forgiveness in societal, personal and even eternal terms. Directed by Ryan Bergmann with one eye firmly trained on the present day, graced by a sterling cast, this trenchant watershed may well reach far beyond its certain Purple Circuit demographic. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday) Read more
'The Taming of the Shrew'
This rip-roaring take on William Shakespeare's romantic comedy opens the 40th anniversary season at Theatricum Botanicum with marvelous forward momentum. Shrewdly trimming text without losing clarity or hilarity, director Ellen Geer achieves a gratifyingly straightforward triumph, and the fearless players embrace some merry passion at every turn, starting with inspired leads Willow Geer and Aaron Hendry. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sept. 29) Read more
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga
Album: Serengeti’s ‘Kenny Dennis LP’
Who is Kenny Dennis? He’s a 53-year-old, Mike Ditka-loving, mustachioed Chicago lunkhead and rapper who formerly starred in a fictional hip-hop trio. A project that began as a character invented by rapper Serengeti in 2008, Kenny’s got an opinion about everything: A man who’ll shush loudmouths on the El, who rips up traffic tickets but whose code dictates he pull over to help a stranded motorist. The fictional Kenny rules this album with an iron fist, and Serengeti conveys a Chicago-accented persona with the skill of an actor while producer Odd Nosdam offers left-field beats that buzz with accomplishment. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Pop music critic
Matthias Pintscher
Last summer the New York Philharmonic attempted Stockhausen’s devilishly difficult “Gruppen” for three orchestras. Each orchestra has its own conductor. Only for the third orchestra did the conductor seem in his element and the music pop out with the arresting immediacy that demonstrated why “Gruppen” is a landmark of the 1950s avant garde. That conductor was the 42-year-old German composer Matthias Pintscher, who will be featured as both conductor and composer at the Music Academy of the West at Hahn Hall in Santa Barbara on Monday night. Read more
Mark Swed
Music critic
Other recommendations:
Album: 'Yeezus'
One of the many striking and often shocking metaphors within "Yeezus," the new album from rapper Kanye West, arrives halfway into the 10-song release, during a song called "I'm In It." It involves a quote by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: "Thank God almighty, free at last," raps West, referencing a phrase from 50 years ago that the civil-rights leader used in relation to the plight of African Americans. In West's song, those that are "free at last" aren’t enslaved humans but a woman's breasts, released from the bondage of a bra during a bathroom tryst. The song, which could be called bawdy were it not so lyrically dark, is one of many on West's sixth solo studio album that reference sex, ethnicity and/or power. "Yeezus" is the most musically adventurous album West has ever released. It's also his most narcissistic, defiant, abrasive and unforgiving. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Random Access Memories'
For a sense of the random oddities that dot Daft Punk's strange, funky, cosmic new album, "Random Access Memories," consider a partial discography of the musicians employed by the two Frenchmen in service of its creation. The duo, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, are best known for their use of robot helmets to mask their physical identities but employed prominent men whose résumé includes work for, among others, Michael Jackson, Jim Henson and Miles Davis. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Mixtape: 'Acid Rap'
An infinite jest, Chicago lyricist Chance the Rapper's stellar new mixtape "Acid Rap" begins with a woman's seductive voice -- chanteuse Lili K. -- uttering, "Even better than I was the last time, baby, ooh oooh oooh, we back, we back, we back." Over the following 13 songs the assured voice of Chance runs through a surreal tale of pills, rap, a Chicago high school for gifted students, cigarette stink, "chauffeurs with road rage," cocoa butter kisses, Chuck E. Cheese and LSD. "I think we're all addicted," he sings on "Cocoa Butter Kisses," adding that "if I sip any Henny my belly might just be outie." (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Magnetic'
Although it's been almost four years since Terence Blanchard's last album, it's not as if the trumpeter hasn't kept busy. In addition to the Poncho Sanchez collaboration "Chano y Dizzy," he's remained a first-call film composer (with Spike Lee's "If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise" and George Lucas' "Red Tails" among his latest), and in his spare time wrote an opera, which debuts in St. Louis next month. Though Blanchard has no shortage of outlets, he still sounds overflowing with inspiration. Again surrounded by top-tier young talent, Blanchard is equally at home with the unsettled atmospherics of "Hallucinations" as with the hard-swinging "Don't Run," which features stirring guest-turns from Ravi Coltrane on soprano saxophone and bassist Ron Carter. (Chris Barton) 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
Jonathan Gold
Restaurant critic
Other recommendations:
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
Muddy Leek
A former underground dining club from Julie Retzlaff and her husband, chef Whitney Flood, Muddy Leek is less an edgy pop-up than a comfortable place to drop in for a glass of grenache and a snack on a Tuesday night. There may be the occasional tiny rabbit kidney garnishing a plate of rabbit hash, a little dish of rillettes made with the shredded remnants of duck confit, or a smear of chicken liver mousse on toast, but you are not here to be challenged, you are here because you want to eat nicely composed small plates, and it is nice. Read more
Tamarind of London
Is it easy to mistake Tamarind’s careful spicing for blandness or the mild juiciness of its chicken tikka for timidity? Could it be a good thing that the parade of grilled-mushroom salads, coconut-scented vegetable korma, chickpea dal, smoky eggplant curry and hot nan stuffed with coconut and dates tends to complement the scent of a pretty Sonoma Chardonnay? Tamarind, the Newport Beach sibling of the first London Indian restaurant to earn a Michelin star, is Southern California’s most luxurious Indian restaurant. Read more
Littlefork
The new restaurant from Jason Travi, whose Mediterranean-style cooking you may have tried at the late Fraiche in Culver City, is a really good bar with high-concept eats – channeling a 1950s New England seafood joint crossed with grungy Montreal bistro, and almost inexpensive unless you let the cocktails, the maple syrup eggs and the crunchy oyster sliders add up. You would be surprised how quickly you can inhale a plate of chilled oysters, nostalgia-flavored fish sticks or even a half dozen clams casino, whose blanket of crisp, bacony bread crumbs in no way slows you down. And there are freshly fried apple-cider doughnuts for dessert. Read more
‘Arena’
Boxing isn’t what it used to be. What it used to be was a hugely popular, organized form of violent theater that crystallized the tensions among working class youth of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds in polyglot America. “Arena,” Gary Simmons’ wistfully beautiful exhibition of recent mixed-media paintings at Regen Projects, recalls that storied and controversial past, while shifting the social competition from sports to art. The most imposing work features scores of vintage fight posters printed on paper and affixed directly to the wall, stretching 40-feet across and rising 12 feet high, becoming virtually environmental. Painted and smeared black stars, large and small, cascade down the surface – a shower that is at once celebratory and elegiac. Through June 22. Read more
Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood
Art critic
Other recommendations:
Woodcuts and more by Orit Hofshi
Israeli artist Orit Hofshi, in her first substantial L.A. show, at Shulamit, extends herself ambitiously in multiple directions, but what proves most memorable about her work is its most irreducible element, the mark of her hand. Hofshi is primarily a printmaker, working in woodcut. Her deftly carved strokes resonate beautifully with the rugged texture of the landscapes she depicts — rocky places, partially glimpsed, sometimes with a lone figure gazing or sketching, sometimes bearing signs of habitation or construction. (Leah Ollman) (Through July 27) Read more
'Sicily: Art and Invention' at the Getty Villa
There are at least three great reasons to see “Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome” at the Getty Villa. Chronologically, the first is a straightforward male torso, his finely chiseled marble body quietly brimming with latent energy. Second comes a preening charioteer, physically just larger than life but expressively very much so. And third is a depiction of a minor god with major fertility on his mind, his powerful physicality an embodiment of the contortions of carnal lust, both corporeal and psychological. These major sculptures together tell an accelerating story of artistic and social power on the ancient Mediterranean island. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Monday, August 19) 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
David Ulin
Book critic
Other recommendations:
'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
'Appointment in Samarra'
Fran Lebowitz has called him “the real F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Ernest Hemingway said he was “a man who knows exactly what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well.” But mention John O’Hara today — 43 years after his death — and you’re likely to draw a look as blank as an unwritten book. Why? In part, perhaps, it’s because he was, by all accounts, difficult to get along with, a social climber, a bully, a vicious drunk. And yet, he also wrote three of the finest novels of the 1930s — “Appointment in Samarra,” “BUtterfield 8” and “Hope of Heaven.” Now, the first of these books is back in print: a tale of social success and social failure observed in precise miniature. Originally published in 1934, it unfolds over two days during Christmas 1930 and involves a socialite named Julian English, who is caught in a death spiral of alcoholism and bad behavior, as he loses everything he has ever held dear. Read more
'Little Green'
When last we saw Walter Mosley’s detective Easy Rawlins, he had just lost control of a car he was driving on the Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu. This was in the closing pages of the 11th (and seemingly final) Rawlins book, “Blonde Faith,” published in 2007. Yet six years later, Easy is back, narrating a new novel, “Little Green” that picks up where “Blonde Faith” left off. It's 1967, and Easy must navigate a Los Angeles he barely recognizes in the wake of both the Watts riots and the Summer of Love. Read more
'Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers'
Janet Malcolm may end up best known for the line that opens her 1990 book “The Journalist and the Murderer”: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” The indictment is more powerful because Malcolm never renders herself immune. This sense — of the moral ambiguity of journalism — weaves through Malcolm’s new “Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers,” a collection of pieces, most originally published in the New York Review of Books or the New Yorker, that looks at both art and how art is received in the culture, which, in Malcolm’s view, is often less a matter of aesthetics than of style. Read more
'Fox 8'
"Fox 8" offers an unexpected twist on George Saunders’ darkly comic sensibility. Narrated by a fox who has learned human language, it’s a taut little tale in which the protagonist and other members of his skulk are driven away from their habitat by the construction of a new shopping mall. Saunders writes in an idiosyncratic dialect full of phonetic misspellings (“First may I say, sorry for any werds I spel rong. Because I am a fox! So don’t rite or spel perfect. But here is how I learned to rite and spel as gud as I do!”), structuring the story as a letter to the reader (or “Reeder”) that turns increasingly pointed and bleak. Originally, Saunders intended "Fox 8" for his collection "Tenth of December," but he felt it was an outlier, even for him. So he decided to release it as an e-book original, his first. Read more
'The Best of the Best American Poetry'
Normally, I’m wary of “best of” designations, but the annual “Best American Poetry” collections recognize the limitations of the game they’re playing, the idea that any group of poems can encapsulate the breadth of poetry written in America in a given year. “The Best of the Best American Poetry” features 100 poems of the 1,875 that have thus far been published in the series. My favorite stuff here is the most direct, or, maybe, the most interior: Margaret Atwood’s “Bored,” which traces how childhood ennui can lead to adult curiosity; the long excerpt from A.R. Ammons’ “Garbage”; and Denise Duhamel’s magnificent “How It Will End,” in which a husband and wife watch another couple fighting, only to take sides themselves. Read more
'The Flamethrowers'
Rachel Kushner’s second novel, “The Flamethrowers,” is a white-hot ember of a book. Taking place in Manhattan and Italy in the late 1970s, a time when each was awash in turmoil, the novel traces the experience of one woman, a young conceptual artist, as she navigates these disparate landscapes, a part of the action and yet always on the outside. For Kushner, the point is displacement – that, and the way art is, or should be, a provocation, with even the most abstract expression existing in (sometimes) violent reaction to the world. The result is a work of fiction that illustrates both character and culture, as well as the uneasy ways they intersect. Read more
'The Book of My Lives'
There’s a tendency to look askance at essay collections, to see them as incidental, as if they had no urgency of their own. I defy anyone to make such an argument after reading Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Book of My Lives.” Ranging from his youth in Sarajevo to his present-day life in Chicago, this suite of 15 essays never looks away or pulls its punches — portraying if not a life exactly, then a life in collage. Particularly affecting is the heartbreaking “The Aquarium,” originally published in the New Yorker in 2011, which details the death of Hemon’s 1-year-old daughter Isabel from a rare cancer of the brain. Read more
'A Tale for the Time Being'
Ozeki’s third novel is constructed around a pair of interlocking narratives — the first that of Nao, a 16-year-old Japanese girl, and the second that of Ruth, a novelist who finds Nao’s diary when it washes up on the beach in Vancouver Island. Together, they make for a stunning meditation on meaning, narrative and our place in the universe. Written from something of a Buddhist perspective (the author is, among other things, a Zen priest), “A Tale for the Time Being” covers everything from the vagaries of love to the paradox of quantum physics, finding its resolution in an unflinching resistance to being resolved. 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
Todd Martens
Video game critic
Other recommendations:
‘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
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
Charlotte Olympia, 474 North Rodeo Dr., Beverly Hills
Booth Moore
Fashion critic
Other recommendations:
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
'The Great Gatsby'
Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" is the fashion film of the year. The big-screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic book features stellar costumes by Catherine Martin, who collaborated with Miuccia Prada on chandelier crystal cocktail dresses adapted from her runway archives, Tiffany & Co. on Art Deco-inspired jewelry and Brooks Bros. on striped regatta blazers and suits. It adds up to a dazzling slice of the high life in the Roaring Twenties, "a period in which fashion itself became the fashion we know today," Luhrmann told my colleague Adam Tschorn in his must-read story about the look of the film. 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
Paloma Picasso
Style icon Paloma Picasso has been creating jewelry for Tiffany & Co. since 1980, famously reinterpreting Xs and O’s in bold silver and gold and celebrating the raw beauty of colorful stones in her modern-looking Sugar Stacks rings. Her newest collection for the jeweler, Olive Leaf, is more naturalistic than what has come before, with prices ranging from $150 for a thin silver ring band to $975 for a silver cuff to $100,000 for a diamond and white-gold bib. Picasso, 64, is married to French osteopathic doctor Eric Thevenet and splits her time between Lausanne, Switzerland, and Marrakech, Morocco. Read more
Jennifer Nicholson
Designer, retailer and Hollywood royalty Jennifer Nicholson, who once headlined Los Angeles Fashion Week and showed her collections in New York and Paris, has returned to fashion after a nearly five-year hiatus. Her new venture is Pearl Drop, a Venice boutique with a “boho goddess festival vibe,” opened just in time to dress customers for this month’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival, one of Nicholson’s favorite springtime excursions. Read more
Celine
The Rodeo Drive shopping scene heats up with the opening of the new boutique from Celine, the LVMH-owned brand that helped usher minimalism back into style under the direction of designer Phoebe Philo. What can you find inside? We'll start with Celine’s spring runway collection and tailored classics, must-have handbags, and the fur-lined, Birkenstock-like sandals and fur-covered high heels that have fashion followers buzzing. Read more