Critics’ Picks: May 31-June 6, 2013

'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

'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

'Mud'

"Do you love her?" The question comes early in "Mud" and will haunt the movie until the final frame. The answer — to what loving means, to how urgent it feels the first time, to how easily it can slip away — is wily and willful. With a sprawling cast anchored by Matthew McConaughey and young Tye Sheridan, "Mud" is filled with miscreants, mysteries, a scandalous hero and a couple of boys as headstrong as Huck Finn. It's one of the most creatively rich and emotionally rewarding movies so far this year. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more

'Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's'

A lively, clever, fast-moving documentary that goes behind the scenes at the legendary New York department store Bergdorf Goodman. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Star Trek Into Darkness'

“Star Trek Into Darkness,” bursting at the seams with enemies, wears its politics, its mettle, its moxie and its heart on its ginormous 3-D sleeve. Director J.J. Abrams and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise try to build a better sequel with action spectacles to get lost in, clever asides to amuse, emotional waves to ride and allusions to terrorism in general and 9/11 specifically. The crew is back and still firmly anchored by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as Kirk and Spock, respectively. There are new worlds, new villains and new emotions. “Into Darkness” doesn’t quite match Abrams’ 2009 reimagining, but it’s a great deal of fun and also intensely personal. It’s the best of the summer’s biggies so far. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more

'What Maisie Knew'

It is night in an upscale Manhattan apartment. A child, tucked safely into bed, drifts toward sleep to the sounds of her parents tearing each other apart in the next room. Her eyes close, the fighting rumbles on. We are in Maisie's world and about to find out in uncomfortable detail just “What Maisie Knew.” This smart — and smarting — film based on the Henry James novel brings into the modern age the 19th-century author’s unforgiving examination of the effect of a messy divorce on a child. For all the ugliness that suggests, and there is plenty provided by Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan as vengeful exes, this is a beautifully rendered film. Without slipping into melodrama, we watch the precocious six-year-old witness and weather the break-up of her family. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more

'Fast & Furious 6'

This is a popcorn pick. Like steroids on steroids, “Fast & Furious 6” roars down the streets of London with more action, and muscle, than ever. Vin Diesel’s Dom and crew are all there. And Letty’s back. Michelle Rodriguez’s return was teased at the end of “Fast Five,” but there was no clue how pivotal Letty would be. Unfortunately she’s working for the other side now — an international terror type named Shaw. Diesel and Rodriguez made a good pair so it’s a kick to see them back in the trenches even on opposite sides. Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson who signed on as Agent Hobbs in “Five” is back too, and I swear, bigger than ever. He and Dom have teamed up to bring down Shaw, and hopefully reclaim Letty. Plot points are not so important in the “Furious” universe. Action is, and in that “6” has outpaced all the rest. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more

'The Greatest Event in Television History #2'

A follow-up to last October's super-hyped, blink-and-you-missed-it (except it's also on the Internet) first "The Greatest Event in Television History," in which Adam Scott and Jon Hamm took over from Jameson Parker and Gerald McRaney in a shot-for-shot remake of the opening credits to "Simon & Simon." This unexpected adventure into the recesses of the medium -- it was, literally, "an event in television history" -- was preceded by a Jeff Probst-hosted "countdown" and making-of documentary that featured Paul Rudd as the director, though it was Lance Bangs' name on the slate, and Scott's project. Photographic evidence and Internet scuttlebutt indicates this week's sequel will feature Scott and "Parks & Recreation" costar Amy Poehler in forms resembling Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, in an appropriation (to use the high art term) of their "Hart to Hart." (Robert Lloyd) (Adult Swim, Thursday) Read more

'Orphan Black'

Another narrative that could have collapsed under the weight of its own gimmickry — clones, people, lots of clones — "Orphan Black" has stayed strong and gone deeper than a show in which the star plays a half dozen roles could reasonably be expected to do. Certainly Tatiana Maslany is a force to be reckoned with. A beautiful young performer with chameleon-like qualities, she has managed to make the four main clones — street smart Sarah, OCD Alison, science geek Cosima and crazy assassin Helena — all separate, believable and compelling. It helps that creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson appear to know precisely where they're going with a plot that involves these women attempting to determine their true nature while being tracked by at least two sets of threats. And Maslany has two equally talented wingmen — Jordan Garvaris as Sarah's foster brother Felix and the always wonderful Maria Doyle Kennedy as their foster mother Mrs. S. But in the end, the show rests on her shoulders and beyond all expectations, she continues to soar. Don't miss the season finale. (Mary McNamara) (BBC America, Saturday, 9 p.m.) Read more

'The First Churchills'

"The First Churchills" . The first series broadcast under the umbrella, or "brolly," of "Masterpiece Theatre," the Anglophile's paradise, this 1969 BBC period serial gets a video release this week. Set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, it follows the public affairs and intimate moments of John and Sarah Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough (a strong and sparky John Neville and Susan Hampshire), who -- in this telling at least, based on their descendant Winston Churchill's biographical account -- come off as equal partners, appealingly modern and unconventional. (Neville would go on to star in Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and play the Well-Manicured Man on "The X-Files"; Hampshire starred in seven seasons of "Monarch of the Glen.") Set in an age of intricate fabrics and big wigs (for men), it feels not a whit less sumptuous for being shot on video, and no less convincing for being shot on video on a soundstage. (And none of your high-def stuff, either.) The dialog, which has a faintly Shakespearean swing, makes the drama feel oddly contemporary -- and keeps the viewer entranced, even when the politics and personages evade him -- just as the bright, flat studio lighting makes the images feel more immediate. And it proceeds at a leisurely, almost sensual pace, finding time to spend on card games (with instruction), a long amateur theatrical on a classical theme, dances and the friendly group rituals of a 1677 wedding night. (Robert Lloyd) (Acorn Media DVD) Read more

'The Killing'

I didn't realize how relieved I was that this troubled series had been saved at the eleventh hour until I watched the two-hour third-season premiere and fell in love with it all over again. Complaints abounded when the first season did not end with the solution of the original crime, but frankly, I don't care if Seattle homicide detective Sarah Linden (Mirelle Enos) and her now former partner Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnamen) ever solve another case; it's just such a pleasure to watch them work. As season three opens, Linden has turned in her badge for ferry duty and Holder is working his way up the department ladder. But when a string of murders begins reminding Holder of the killer Sarah put away years before (played deliciously by Peter Sarsgaard, which is reason enough to watch), he calls on her for aid. It's nice to see Enos allowed to appear relaxed and even happy, if only for a few minutes, and the skies of Seattle likewise appear to have cleared up. But no matter what season three has in store, or how long "The Killing" lasts, Linden and Holder join the list of greatest police partners television has ever produced. (Mary McNamara) (AMC, Sunday, 8 p.m.) Read more

'The Fosters' and 'East Los High'

Jennifer Lopez is the celebrity executive producer of "The Fosters," about a blended family whose last name coincidentally reflects the status of some of its children. (Others are biological, adopted.) That the parents — Teri Polo's cop and Sherri Saum's high school principal — are lesbians, is barely adverted to. (That they're of different races is deemed to be not worth mentioning at all.) It's a new-century drama that, unlike some series that make a deal out of their modernity, lives comfortably in the new century, and gets on with the more important business of caring for children on the difficult verge of adulthood. "East Los High," a new teen serial streaming from Hulu, is the sort of drama one might see on ABC Family, were ABC Family inclined to greenlight a high school series set in East L.A. and made with a Latino cast, creators and crew. (It could happen one day — I'm not saying it won't.) As eventful as any other teen soap, it also feels down-to-earth and issue-oriented, in the manner of the old "Degrassis" and, indeed, was made with input from Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, Voto Latino and the California Family Health Council — none of which interferes with the flow. (Robert Lloyd) ("The Fosters"ABC Family, Mondays; "East Los High," Hulu) 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

'Annapurna'

Sharr White's remarkable two-person play about a dying poet's reunion with the wife who abandoned him 20 years previously stars husband-and-wife acting team Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, best known as comedic performers on “Will and Grace” and “Parks and Recreation,” respectively. Director Bart DeLorenzo elicits achingly slice-of-life turns from his superb performers in a play that builds masterfully from the hilarious to the tragic. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sunday) Read more

Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A.

'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

Antaeus Company, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hollywood.

'Heart of Darkness'

Actors' Gang stalwart Brian T. Finney invites us to venture deep into the interior of the African Congo in his adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic novella. This stripped-down production zooms in on Finney's intensely contained performance as Marlow, the seaman who tells the story of his obsessive pursuit of the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader who has come to symbolize, among other things, the insatiable greed of imperial conquest. Flanked by two performers, Finney gives himself over to Conrad's words, the production's true star. (Charles McNulty) (Ends Saturday) Read more

The Actors' Gang at the Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City

'The Fantasticks'

By some contrarian alchemy, director Amanda Dehnert's rethink of the world's longest-running musical refreshes this oftentimes cloying classic's evanescent charm. Set in an abandoned amusement park, the magical overlay generally supports the whimsical book and evergreen score, thanks to an ace technical effort and a dream cast. Purists may howl, but ultimately it's enchanting. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday) Read more

South Coast Repertory, Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

'Joe Turner's Come and Gone'

The setting for this August Wilson classic is a boardinghouse in 1911 Pittsburgh, but the spiritual location is a crossroads between the ghostly past and the forbidding future, slavery and freedom, despair and hope. This powerfully acted revival, directed by Phylicia Rashad, is a gift for audiences hungering for theatrical nourishment after being fed a steady diet of snacks. Fortified with history, politics and religion, the play bursts with the rituals of communal life. John Douglas Thompson’s profoundly moving performance as Herald Loomis, the wanderer searching for his wife after years of bondage, is key to this production's success. (Charles McNulty) (Ends Sunday) Read more

Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., 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

Edgemar Center for the Arts, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica

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

Album: 'Modern Vampires of the City'

At some point, every enduring musician has to prove his or her worth and silence the doubters. The Beatles first succeeded with "Revolver," the Beastie Boys with "Paul's Boutique," Wilco on "Summer Teeth." Talking Heads raised the bar with "Fear of Music," Lauryn Hill with "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." New York band Vampire Weekend's "Modern Vampires of the City" is one of those records, a brave, surprising third effort that's both challenging and confident, catchy but progressive, expertly imagined and executed. (Randall Roberts) Read more

Album: 'My Garden State'

A few months back at Sonos Studio in West Hollywood, guitarist Glenn Jones performed solo work in conjunction with a recently completed documentary on the late guitarist John Fahey. Fahey's ability at crafting what he called "American primitive" guitar music resulted in some of the great six-string compositions of the 1960s and '70s. Jones, best known for his Boston instrumental project Cul de Sac, his work with former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki and as the curator of the excellent Fahey box set, "Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You: The Fonotone Years," was stunning at Sonos, and during a pre-performance conversation suggested I keep an eye out for his new record, "My Garden State," put out by the respected Chicago label Thrill Jockey. [Disclosure: I served as an unpaid moderator during a Q&A session that evening.] The record's now out, and Pop & Hiss is premiering a humble clip that captures Jones on banjo performing "Across the Tappan Zee," a self-penned song that already has the feel of a standard. (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: 'Die Walküre'

May 22 marked Richard Wagner's 200th birthday, and Bayreuth’s big dude is bigger than ever, which is saying something. Record companies have been releasing and re-releasing Wagner recordings this year to an endlessly excessive extent. But the one that thus far stands out most, which is also really saying something, is a performance of Wagner’s most popular “Ring” cycle opera, “Die Walküre,” from the Mariinsky Orchestra in St. Petersburg and conducted by Valery Gergiev. This new recording, the first of a forthcoming “Ring” set from the Mariinsky was made as a concert performance over two occasions in the company’s concert hall and features a dream international cast. But what brings this all together with such moving eloquence is Gergiev’s deeply penetrating conducting. (Mark Swed) 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

Corazon y Miel, 6626 Atlantic Ave., Bell

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

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

Littlefork, 1600 Wilcox Ave., Hollywood

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

M.A.K.E., 395 Santa Monica Place, Santa Monica

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

Muddy Leek, 8631 Washington Blvd., Culver City

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

Tamarind of London, 7862 East Coast Highway, Newport Beach

Marco Breuer: Now and a Half

Breuer asserts, in the most exciting and expansive ways, the objecthood and materiality of the photograph. His enterprise is defiant and liberating. His work abounds in both beauty and bite. (Leah Ollman) (Ends Saturday) Read more

Diane Rosenstein Fine Art, 831 N. Highland, Los Angeles

'Ming Masterpieces From the Shanghai Museum'

A new exhibition of Chinese Ming dynasty paintings includes just 10 works, but it’s more absorbing than many shows two or three times its size. These 15th and early-16th century paintings are high-wire acts of aesthetic dexterity, fusing philosophical perception with formal persuasion. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Sunday) Read more

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

'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

Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades

Architecture: Dodger Stadium revamp

The new owners of the Dodgers didn’t just go on a spending spree to sign new players during the offseason; they also opened their wallets for a $100-million project to revamp 51-year-old Dodger Stadium. Many of the upgrades are invisible (such as improved wireless coverage), others buried into the hillside at the base of the stadium. The most noticeable changes, aside from new high-def scoreboards, have come near the entry gates, where several dozen parking spots have been replaced with new landscaping, souvenir shops, life-sized bobble-heads and even playgrounds. The goal is to make one of the most privatized stadiums in the majors, one designed near the height of L.A.’s love affair with the car, a little more public. (Christopher Hawthorne) Read more

Dodger Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave, Los Angeles

'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

'This Is Water'

May is graduation season, which makes it only fitting that the folks over at the Glossary should produce a video of the most resonant commencement speech in recent years, David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water," delivered at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 2005. "This Is Water" achieved viral fame in September 2008 after Wallace committed suicide; in it, he argues for remaining conscious, suggesting that our salvation (if such a thing exists) is a matter of empathy, of compassion, of making decisions every day about how we want to act and react. The video captures this precisely, using audio of Wallace's address, while dramatizing the mundane interactions — driving through traffic, waiting in a supermarket checkout line — he describes. 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

'Toki Tori 2'

Players are blessed with only two controls — jumping and singing — and this means tasks are nominally solved by stomping and chirping the young chicken known as Toki Tori around the screen. Toki Tori can at once scare a fuzzy bug into the mouth of a frog or sing a crab-like creature to its side to help the chick move across dangerous terrain. Plenty of time, however, will be spent alone in the dark, trying to find a way to lead a disinterested light-shining bug to a gaggle of scared-of-the-nighttime frogs. Navigating through the game, it felt as if Toki Tori was begging for help rather than singing for it. Read more

'Thomas Was Alone'

'Thomas Was Alone' Few of the people and places we’ve met via games this year have the ability to break your heart in the way that Chris and Laura can. They are boxes. They don’t ever speak — none of the main characters in “Thomas Was Alone” will do any typical communicating — and their thoughts are relayed to players via a narrator. It’s as if someone is reading aloud a book and player actions — in this case, moving a series of boxes around the innards of what is described as code for a computer program — dictate when a page is turned. Never before have tiny boxes felt so lonely. 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

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

Aviator Nation, 1224 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice

'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

Pearl Drop, 328 S. Lincoln Blvd., Venice

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

Celine, 319 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills