Critics’ Picks: May 9-15, 2014
Los Angeles Times entertainment, arts and culture critics choose the week’s most noteworthy openings, new releases, ongoing events and places to go in and around Southern California.
The action-drama “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” wraps its freshman season, the French comedy “Bicycling With Moliere” is rolling in local theaters, and the legendary Leslie Caron takes “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” at the Laguna Playhouse.
Click through to explore more and, where applicable, find directions to venues.
‘Bicycling With Moliere’
A polished character-driven French entertainment enlivened by flashes of droll humor. It deals lightly with topics like ego, friendship, rivalry and love, and it does so within the context of an exploration of the personal and professional lives of a pair of actors. In French and Italian, with English subtitles. Read more
Kenneth Turan
Film critic
‘Desert Riders’
Vic Sarin’s “Desert Riders” is haunting for its beauty — and its ugliness. The veteran cinematographer and documentary filmmaker takes us into the vast deserts of the Middle East to expose the human trafficking attached to camel racing, the so-called “sport of kings.” Sarin comes at his topic with a cinematographer’s appreciation for the power of imagery, for the most part letting the boys tell their story. It is a harrowing tale of being plucked out of the fields of rural Pakistan, some as young as 5. Dubai is one of the central feeder cities on the boys’ way to training camps, where they learn to ride. Read more
Betsy Sharkey
Film critic
Other recommendations:
'Ida'
Spare, haunting, uncompromising, this Polish film about a novitiate who discovers she is Jewish is a work of exceptional artistry whose emotions are as potent and persuasive as its images are indelibly beautiful. (Kenneth Turan) (In Polish with English subtitles) Read more
'Finding Vivian Maier'
Forget the tree that fell in the forest with no one around to hear it. What if someone took more than 100,000 photographs over decades of shooting and absolutely no one was around to see them? And what if they turned out to be really, really good? That in a nutshell is the stranger-than-fiction tale behind the gripping documentary "Finding Vivian Maier," a film that asks a pair of equally involving questions: Exactly who was this hidden master and how did her work and her life finally come to light. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'The Grand Budapest Hotel'
A playful yet poignant film, anchored by a knockout performance by Ralph Fiennes, that tells the Boys' Own Adventure yarn of how a celebrated hotel concierge and a lowly lobby boy team up to have the adventure of a lifetime. Writer-director Wes Anderson at his best. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'Locke'
Tom Hardy is the only actor who appears on screen in this real-time drama that unfolds inside a moving BMW during the 85 minutes it takes construction foreman Ivan Locke to make a nighttime drive from Birmingham to London. This may not sound like the formula for nail-biting tension, but it is. (Kenneth Turan) Read more
'The Lunchbox'
A warm and affectionate human comedy from India that is charming in a delicate and unforced way. Mixing a love of food with stronger emotions, it succeeds by leavening its simple story of mistaken identity with neo-realistic observations of ordinary middle class life in Mumbai and environs. (Kenneth Turan) (In Hindi and English, with English subtitles) Read more
Russell Crowe in 'Noah'
Whether or not you embrace director Darren Aronofsky's fierce biblical vision in "Noah," it's worth seeing the film for the remarkably moving performance by Russell Crowe in the title role. The actor seems to do his best work in period pieces, the more centuries away from the present the better. Crowe's very good Roman soldier in "Gladiator" won him an Oscar in 2001, and his swashbuckling ship captain in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" greatly buoyed that film. It's not that Crowe can't thrive in more contemporary eras — his other Oscar nominations were for portraying Nobel-winning mathematician John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind" and a big-tobacco whistle blower in Michael Mann's "The Insider." But somehow in "Noah" Crowe reaches higher ground, the actor embodying a soul-searching man torn between family and faith. Read more
'Under the Skin'
To truly get "Under the Skin," it's helpful to come in with no preconceptions, no expectations, and just give yourself over to the primal ooze of the experience filmmaker Jonathan Glazer has created and Scarlett Johansson has made brilliantly, unnervingly real. Watching this film feels like a genesis moment — of sci-fi fable, of filmmaking, of performance — with all the ambiguity and excitement that implies. It's as if director and star have gone into some alien space to discover what embodies a person, exposing the interior dynamic of psyche and soul and its relationship to the exterior. If that all sounds very abstract, not to mention bewildering, it is. Yet for all the esoteric notions floated, "Under the Skin" also affords concrete ways to see the world fresh through new eyes. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more
'Only Lovers Left Alive'
If you've dismissed "Only Lovers Left Alive" as merely another vampire movie, even with the Jim Jarmusch pedigree, reconsider before this exquisite contemplation of existence ceases to exist in theaters. The auteur of darkness was bound to get around to the undead sooner or later, and a cloistered vampire world clearly suits him. Inside it, the writer-director creates an exacting portrait of humankind. A thinking person's vampire film is the bonus. Read more
‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ (May)
In terms of genre-bending, few shows have been so fascinating to watch this season. Never before has a series been conceived as the connective tissue of a film franchise, and not just any film franchise — a star-studded, multimillion-dollar-grossing franchise. Starting with the obvious disadvantage of not being able to afford Robert Downey Jr. or Scarlett Johansson, “S.H.I.E.L.D.” wisely resurrected the scene-stealing Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and assembled its own team of skilled but not super-powered forces. ABC, Tuesdays Read more
Mary McNamara
Television critic
‘Penny Dreadful’
John Logan, the screenwriter of “Hugo,” “Skyfall,” “Gladiator” — and, just to confuse you, of the Tony-winning Mark Rothko play, “Red” — created this well-dressed and enacted, perversely inviting mad monster party in which figures and types from Victorian sensationalistic fiction (and sensational history) converge on London in 1891. There are ghosts and ghouls, the undead, the once-dead and the merely pale; Frankenstein is here and, more surprisingly, so is Dorian Gray, of portrait fame. The battle is not so much between the dark and the light, in the usual dichotomy, as between the dark and the less dark, or the dark and almost light. Although it is at times predictable in the way that all horror stories are by now predictable, it is splendid enough, in the making and the acting. Showtime, Sundays. Read more
Television critic
Other recommendations:
'The Blacklist'
Another season finale that will answer some big questions: Will Red (James Spader) be undone by whatever force is attempting to undo him? More important, will he regain Lizzy's trust. (Out on a limb with "no" and "yes.") (NBC, Monday, 10 p.m.) (Mary McNamara) Read more
'The Carbonaro Effect'
A sweet-tempered cousin to A&E's somewhat nastier prank-magic series "Don't Trust Andrew Mayne." Personable actor-illusionist Michael Carbonaro expands his hidden-camera "Magic Clerk" segments from "The Tonight Show" into a series I approached with middling interest and left with admiring delight. Magic on television is a strange thing, to be sure, since TV has the power to fool us easily, showing only the pictures it wants us to see. But magicians do the same thing, after all — in a room with witnesses — and the great ones remain astounding even when you know the trick. (TruTV, Thursdays) (Robert Lloyd) Read more
'Rosemary's Baby'
Any excuse to go to Paris, I say. That's the setting for this two-part, four-hour remake of Roman Polanski's classic film starring Zoe Saldana as the betrayed and satanically beleaguered Rosemary, here the wife of a self-absorbed writer on a year-long teaching gig at the Sorbonne. Even in the City of Light, hubby is unsatisfied, but he's quickly enthralled by an older, more sophisticated couple (Jason Isaacs and Carole Bouquet), who soon take the young couple under their wing. (Sunday and Thursday, NBC, 9 p.m.) (Mary McNamara) Read more
'Let the Fire Burn'
Jason Osder's masterfully directed — which is to say, edited — 2013 documentary comes to television as part of the PBS series "The Independent Lens." Composed entirely of archival footage, without explanatory or identifying titles, it tells the story of the long-fraught relations and final confrontation, in May 1985, between the city of Philadelphia and the people of MOVE, a (still extant, to some extent) back-to-the-Earth, mostly African American "revolutionary" group that established a fortified camp among the old wooden row houses of West Philadelphia — three square blocks of which would finally be burned to the ground in a deadly attempt to evict them. (PBS, Monday) (TruTV, Thursdays) (Robert Lloyd) Read more
'Penny Dreadful'
"They did the mash, they did the monster mash." It's tough not to bring the song to mind (where it will rattle endlessly for days) while watching Showtime's "Penny Dreadful," which takes any character that could even vaguely be considered Victorian gothic, rolls that into a ball and throws it against the wall, where it explodes with blood and guts and lots of stand-up sex featuring women in corsets. (Showtime, Sundays, 10 p.m.) (Mary McNamara) Read more
‘Water by the Spoonful’
Elliot, the central figure of Quiara Alegria Hudes’ deeply affecting “Water by the Spoonful,” has returned from Iraq with battle scars both visible and invisible. He has wires in his leg that make walking painful, and the ping of his own cellphone is enough to startle him. His story would normally be treated as a special interest report on the plight of returning vets. But Hudes, whose play won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, does something more radical: She sets Elliot’s precarious reintegration into civilian society within the larger context of fractured contemporary America, a place where one needn’t have firsthand experience of combat to know something about trauma and recovery. The play is finally getting its Southern California premiere, thanks to the Old Globe, which is presenting a top-notch production directed by Edward Torres. Ends Sunday, May 11. Read more
The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego
Charles McNulty
Theater critic
Other recommendations:
'A Delicate Balance'
Written at a time of unparalleled American prosperity, Edward Albee's play, which won the 1967 Pulitzer, concerns the somewhat self-indulgent travails of a well-heeled couple who are invaded by the needy and the entitled, much to their domestic upheaval. If you can weather the play's leisurely and indeterminate angst, you will be rewarded by Robin Larsen's emotionally astute staging and terrific performances, particularly those of David Selby and Susan Sullivan as an embattled couple forced to balance the obligations — and boundaries — of friendship. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sunday, June 15) Read more
'Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks'
By embracing rather than avoiding the conventional contours of Richard Alfieri's international hit two-hander, this elegant revival pulls the crowd-pleasing combination of sass and sentiment into surprisingly affecting bas-relief. Credit director Michael Arabian, a first-rate design team and absolutely screen legend Leslie Caron and local fixture David Engel. Their unforced interaction and investment trumps certain idiosyncrasies, elevating a boulevard bauble into a bona-fide event. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday, June 8) Read more
'Come Back, Little Sheba'
Playwright William Inge was part and parcel of the 1950s, a time of scenery-chomping melodrama in the American theater zeitgeist. If not delicately interpreted, his plays can seem positively sappy by modern standards. Fortunately, the current revival of Inge's 1950 drama "Come Back, Little Sheba" at A Noise Within largely steers clear of blatancy, thanks to the skillful co-direction of Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott. When the characters do veer into apparent superficiality, it's very much to a poignant and devastating point. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Through May 17) Read more
'Everything You Touch'
The Theatre at Boston Court's world premiere of a new play by Sheila Callaghan features a young woman with body-image issues (Kirsten Vangsness) who travels into her past with a histrionic 1970s fashion designer (Tyler Pierce) who may or may not be a figment of her imagination. Jessica Kubzansky's dazzling staging and the cast's vivid characterizations keep the action lucid and riveting. (Margaret Gray) (Ends Sunday, May 18) Read more
Boston Court Performing Arts Center, 70 North Mentor Ave., Pasadena.
'Henry V' (2014)
Guillermo Cienfuegos stages Shakespeare's great military play, in which the dissolute Prince Hal transforms himself into the triumphant commander of the Battle of Agincourt, in the Pacific Resident Theatre's black-box space, with no set, no costumes, one prop (a cheap crown), and one completely unexpected and magical special effect. The spare, stripped-down staging brings the thrilling story vividly to life. Joe McGovern, who co-adapted the text with Cienfuegos, stars as a charismatic, punk-rock Henry V; and the radiant Carole Weyers, in only her second Los Angeles stage role, lights up the whole room as his French princess, Katherine. (Margaret Gray) (Ends Sunday, July 20) Read more
'My Name Is Asher Lev'
"Every great artist has freed himself from something — his family, his nation, his race," warns the worldly mentor to an aspiring painter in Chaim Potok's semi-autobiographical novel, "My Name Is Asher Lev." As the Fountain Theatre's affecting L.A. premiere of Aaron Posner's three-actor stage adaptation eloquently illustrates, the greater the artist, the more painful sacrifices that separation entails. Posner's script skillfully retains the book's introspective narrative voice, philosophical insights and essential plot points, as its title character (played with convincing passion by Jason Karasev) wrestles with conflicted loyalties between his deeply-held Jewish faith and his artistic gift. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sunday, May 18) Read more
'Top Girls'
The Antaeus Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls," directed by Cameron Watson, brings us refreshingly back to the basics of great theater: a sharply intelligent, poetically daring play; a company of actors dedicated to serving both their characters and an author's unique dramatic style; and a director, unencumbered by lavish resources, able to concentrate our attention on what matters most. First produced at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1982, the play is a feminist classic. Ends Sunday, May 18 Read more
Album: ‘Let’s Fly a Kite’
A lovely record about the heart, children, commitment, joy and other Saturday afternoon-style pleasures, “Let’s Fly a Kite” presents Los Angeles singer-songwriter Eleni Mandell at her lyrically precise best. Nick Lowe’s backing band on the standard guitar, keyboards and drums employs a tasteful array of instruments — vibraphone, flugelhorn, violin and trumpet — to craft sophisticated but playful parlor music. “Little Joy” is one of the most loving songs to a child you’ll hear this season (Mandell is the mother of toddler twins). “Maybe Yes” takes a stand against ambivalence in a delicately expressed work that outlines reasons why “maybe” won’t cut it. Here and throughout “Kite,” Mandell’s wonderfully direct: “Maybe doesn’t turn me on/ Maybe’s not filet mignon/ If your answer’s ‘I don’t know’/ Maybe I will let you go.” Read more
Pop music critic
Other recommendations:
Album: 'The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint'
When trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire released his Blue Note debut three years ago, “When the Heart Emerges Glistening,” it felt as if his talents could take him anywhere. So it makes sense that in crafting his follow-up, Akinmusire nearly goes everywhere. Engrossing, elusive and packed to its literal limits with ideas at 79 minutes, “The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint” beautifully takes Akinmusire’s distinctive tone to new realms, including slow-burning orchestral swells and convention-defying vocal collaborations that attempt to translate his vision into words. (Chris Barton) Read more
Courtney Barnett
To describe this Australian artist's new release, "The Double EP: A Split of Peas," as the product of a "singer and songwriter" is to suggest something less menacing than she is. Barnett's got a great way with lyrics and hooks, packing a lot of information, for example, into "Canned Tomatoes (Whole)," about a former neighbor/lover. "David" takes a basic blues pattern and turns it into a bouncy, insistent piece on the many reasons why the titular ex-boyfriend is getting the boot. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'Blank Project'
"Good things come to those who wait," Neneh Cherry sings over stormy electronics and a skittering rhythm on her first solo album in 16 years. If there's a lingering take-away from "Blank Project," that's it. Cherry, whose breakout hit "Buffalo Stance" was practically inescapable in the late '80s, left music for years before reemerging with "The Cherry Thing" in 2012. A brash stab of skronky jazz-punk that paired Cherry's soulful vocals with a blustery Scandinavian saxophone trio, the record was one of the year's best. Here Cherry proves that comeback was no fluke. (Chris Barton) Read more
Album: 'Blue Film'
Lo-Fang is the pseudonym of Matthew Hemerlein, a singer and pop composer who wrote, recorded and played all the instruments on this debut. Drawing on digital R&B, modern pop, "Kid A"-era Radiohead and electronic music, he presents three- and four-minute song bursts that are tightly structured but labyrinthine in detail. "When We're Fine" floats on a digital loop, a tiny-but-mighty rhythm, backward-spinning bleeps and bloops and a catchy chorus. An early contender for debut of the year, "Blue Film" comes out Feb. 25. Lo-Fang goes on tour with his most famous fan, Lorde, this spring. Highly recommended. (Randall Roberts) Read more
Album: 'The Invention of Animals'
Looking back from the fragmented media landscape of 2014, it's hard to imagine someone like John Lurie was ever possible. An immediately recognizable character actor who appeared in landmark indie films including Jim Jarmusch's "Down by Law" and "Stranger Than Paradise," Lurie was also a brilliant saxophonist who helped push the boundaries of jazz in the '80s and '90s with his band, the Lounge Lizards. But Lurie was forced to give up music and acting after being stricken with advanced Lyme disease and has since switched to painting (his work has been exhibited numerous times and was collected in a 2007 book, "A Fine Example of Art"). Lurie's low profile in recent years is also because of significant trouble with a stalker — a situation that was examined in a 2010 New Yorker profile (the facts of which Lurie has vigorously disputed). Still, he recently ventured back into the public eye with "The Invention of Animals," a new set of live tracks and rarities by the John Lurie National Orchestra, his trio with drummers Calvin Weston and Billy Martin of Medeski Martin and Wood. (Chris Barton) Read more
Album: 'Gathering Call'
You can't talk about drummer Matt Wilson without talking about swing, that pulse of jazz that's been his specialty on more than 250 recordings as a sideman. Reconvening his longtime quartet, Wilson again shines with some unexpected help in keyboardist John Medeski. Often lumped into some jam-band ghetto for his ventures with the avant-funk trio Medeski Martin and Wood, Medeski's talents have long been harder to pigeonhole, including a contemplative solo record in 2013. Here, he's a precisely moving part on an album that should be mandatory listening for traditionalists and jazz-curious Phish-heads alike. (Chris Barton) Read more
Claudio Abbado Recordings
When Claudio Abbado, the revered Italian conductor who died Monday, turned 80 last summer, record companies celebrated with several super-sized box sets of his recordings and videos. It's not hard to find discs with which to spend the weekend remembering one of the greats. Abbado's career was a grand one, fairly well documented. He headed and/or recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic, with the London Symphony and Chicago Symphony, with the Vienna State Opera and La Scala. His interpretations of the 19th-century masters – Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Mahler, Verdi, Rossini – are exquisitely accomplished. Abbado was a polisher and took no note for granted. But sometimes his mid-career recordings can sound almost too reliable. It's the vibrant early and the masterly moving late performances that really shine, as well as the more offbeat. (Mark Swed) Read more
Q
It has never been easier to eat high-end sushi than it is now in Los Angeles — to surrender two hours and half a month’s rent to the choreographed roll of the waves. You can experience the masculine crispness of Mori or the postmodern wackiness of Wa; the gentle experimentation of Kiriko or the discofied modernism of Nobu Malibu; the gold leaf and truffle oil of Go’s Mart or the intellectual approach of Kiyokawa. The idea of purist edomae sushi, or at least its rigor, is well-established here. For years, unsuspecting diners have been booted from places like Hiko, Sasabune and Nozawa for the audacity of ordering the caterpillar roll they usually have for lunch down the street, and for the regulars, the walk of fame is part of the show. But until Q opened downtown last fall, there had been nothing like real edomae sushi in Los Angeles — plain-looking sushi that accentuates the flavor of the fish rather than of the rice or condiments, a universe of pickling and curing and aging whose culture may edge closer to a great charcuterie counter than to the sushi floor show at a place like Koi, but so subtly as to be almost imperceptible to a senior accountant stopping by for a quick expense-account lunch. Read more
Q, 521 W. 7th St., Los Angeles
Jonathan Gold
Restaurant critic
Other recommendations:
Scratch Bar
Hyper-intellectual cuisine has its place, but parody can be more fun. So in a Los Angeles restaurant scene dominated at the moment by extreme localism, modernist trickery and the marriage of European and Asian technique, Scratch Bar, a sleek, dim gastropub next to Matsuhisa on La Cienega's restaurant row, is a welcome bit of comic relief, the wiseguy telling jokes in the corner while the popular kids forage miner's lettuce and make buttermilk cheese with a centrifuge. At Scratch Bar, chef Phillip Frankland Lee and his band roast half-cylinders of sourdough bread, scoop out grooves in the center and fill them with bone marrow — trompe l'oeil marrow bones, garnished with ruddy bits of beet-marinated vegetables. They bake whole smelt inside crackers, so that the little fish appear to be emerging from the flat surface like nudes in a Robert Graham sculpture, and set them upright in blood-red smears of beet and beef marrow. Read more
Church & State
Most people with even a passing interest in local cooking have visited Church & State since it opened half a dozen years ago, a ground-level bistro on the ground floor of an old Nabisco factory, known for bringing dim lighting, expressive cocktails and Alsatian tarte flambée to a part of downtown then better known for illicit commerce than for kitchens serving blanquette de veau. Its first year or so saw a restaurant perhaps more centered on the cocktail trade than it was on the world of cuisine beyond steak-frites and chocolate mousse. Walter Manzke took over the stoves for a while, fresh from his term at Bastide, and he took the restaurant in the direction of southern France, inflecting his savory tarts with herbs and summery vegetables (or even Époisses cheese), cooking his deeply flavored short ribs sous-vide and plucking live spot prawns from a tank before sizzling them with garlic and burying them under drifts of diced cucumbers. Manzke had a pretty spectacular run for a guy whose signature dish was probably fried pig's ears. Read more
Settebello
Without putting too fine a point on it, the pizza at Settebello is closer to real Naples pizza than anyplace that has ever existed in Los Angeles: 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes, bufala mozzarella, olive oil from Campania, and a trip through the 900-degree domed wood-fired oven that typically lasts no more than a minute, minute and a half. Whether the soft, thin, sparingly topped pizza is your thing or not is a different question — a lot of people prefer heft and crunch — but the pizza from the Las Vegas-based chain might do fairly well if it were plunked down on Spaccanapoli. Read more
Maccheroni Republic
On a warm January night in Los Angeles, one of those evenings when we have trouble visualizing what the phrase "wind-chill factor" might even mean, the patio outside Maccheroni Republic is one of the most pleasant places downtown, a long, alley-narrow space, all greenery and soft air. The financial district's glass towers peeking out over the shrubbery is a distant part of the view. The restaurant is on Broadway but somehow not of Broadway, although Grand Central Market is right across the street. The downtown boom has seen a lot of Italian restaurants open in this part of the city, sleek dining rooms with wood-burning ovens, hot and cold running truffles, and rivers of expensive Super-Tuscan wine. In some parts of downtown you are never more than a few blocks from shade-grown coffee or a plate of wood-roasted pigeon. But Maccheroni Republic isn't a temple of cuisine, it's a trattoria — the kind of place where it is possible to go for both lunch and dinner on a single day, a restaurant where waitresses race down the aisle with four identical bowls of rigatoni with eggplant. Read more
Maccheroni Republic Restaurant, 332 S. Broadway, Los Angeles
Acabar
A lot of chefs in Los Angeles are associated with a favorite ingredient in ways that seem fairly indelible. It is hard to imagine Walter Manzke without his pig's ear, Nancy Silverton without her bread or Suzanne Goin without her short ribs. The lineage goes back at least as far as John Sedlar and tamales, Jonathan Waxman and roast chicken, and Wolfgang Puck and pizza. But until I visited Acabar, the grand neo-Moroccan lounge-restaurant in the space long occupied by Dar Maghreb, I had rarely seen a chef rub up against an ingredient with quite as much passion as Octavio Becerra shows a simple can of sardines. Read more
Little Sister
If a theme has emerged in Los Angeles restaurants over the last several years, from Picca and Spice Table to Lukshon, A-Frame, Rivera and Corazon y Miel, it is the idea of Asian American and Latin American chefs trained in classical European kitchens, driven to reinterpret the tastes they grew up on through rigorous French technique. This isn't fusion food, which tends largely to be the application of Asian flavors to non-Asian dishes; this is chopped-and-channeled cooking designed to heighten the original sensations, a kind of reverse colonialism of the plate. The latest anti-fusion hero on the block is Tin Vuong, chef and owner of the Manhattan Beach restaurant Little Sister, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, worked his way up through grand hotel kitchens and has spent the last couple of years as chef at the well-regarded Hermosa Beach gastropub Abigaile. Read more
Factory Kitchen
If you dine regularly in Los Angeles' Italian restaurants, you have probably lived through the fresh-pasta wars, the head cheese skirmishes and the incursion of the massive T-bones. We have not yet quite climbed out of the charred rubble of the wood-fired pizza moment, where the mozzarella comes from buffaloes and the thermostat is always set to 800 degrees. So you may be surprised to discover that the latest battleground may be the obscure Ligurian specialty called focaccia di Recco, a stuffed flatbread from a town 20 minutes outside Genoa. Like burrata, a cheese whose fame until recently was confined to a few square miles of central Puglia, focaccia di Recco is a food whose time has come. When prepared correctly, as it is at the Factory Kitchen in the arts district east of downtown (and also at chiSpacca on Melrose), focaccia di Recco is a marvelous thing, oiled dough stretched thin as filo and folded around milky, tart crescenza cheese. Read more
Colonia Taco Lounge
Are we living in the golden age of the California taco? We may be — or at least it can seem as if we are when your tummy's full late on a Saturday night. You can find tacos here from almost every region of Mexico, from Baja sting ray tacos to Zacatecas goat tacos; from Sinaloan marlin tacos to Yucatecan tacos made with pit-roasted pork. The Colonia Taco Lounge is the newest and possibly most consequential restaurant from Ricardo Diaz, in the southwest corner of La Puente, an area not previously noted for its fine cuisine. You may remember Diaz from Cooks Tortas in Monterey Park, which was dedicated to whimsically constructed Mexican sandwiches, or from Dorado's, his ceviche bar up the street. He was one of the people behind Guisados, which introduced the Eastside to a kind of stew-based taco popular in Mexico City; he is set to open the crunchy-taco house Duro in Silver Lake, and he continues to serve the region's best guacamole, aguachile and fried huauzontle at his Bizarra Capital in Uptown Whittier. So it may come as a surprise that, unlike his other restaurants, Colonia is basically a bar — a family-friendly bar perhaps, with plenty of kids crowded in on Sunday mornings when the soccer games are on the corner TVs, but a bar nonetheless, windowless, fragrant and gloomy even at noon. Read more
Girasol
If you have spent much time in L.A.'s farmers markets, you have probably run into C.J., Chris Jacobson, an affable chef, tall enough to be an NBA power forward, who seems to know every farmer in town. He worked on the line for a while at the old Campanile, where everybody called him Stretch, and he ran the Yard, a small gastropub in Santa Monica known for its beer list and fish tacos but which he managed to nudge toward fine dining at the end. As you might expect from a young Los Angeles chef, Jacobson did his time on TV, including "Top Chef." Girasol, really Jacobson's first restaurant of his own, in many ways resembles a typical Studio City place, located on a fast avenue lined with more condos than cafes, occupying a building that has been more restaurants than I can remember, in a neighborhood where the sidewalk is empty but the parking spaces are full. Read more
Willie Jane
If you follow the restaurant scene in Los Angeles, you have known about Govind Armstrong for years, possibly since he was a teenage cooking prodigy whose mom drove him to stints on the line at the original Spago the way that other moms drive their kids to Little League practice. Or perhaps you know him from his long collaboration with locavore Ben Ford, or from his solo gigs at Table 8 and 8 Oz. Burger Bar. You may have followed Armstrong's short-lived adventure in New York, which wasn't well-received, and his appearances on "Top Chef" and on the list of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. It is more likely that you noticed his restaurant Post & Beam, which he started a couple of years ago with business partner Brad Johnson and is the most ambitious restaurant ever to open in the Crenshaw District. At Willie Jane, the new restaurant he runs with Johnson on Abbot Kinney's restaurant row, Armstrong's style has become more refined yet — it's kind of a fantasy mash-up of Low Country cuisine with farm-driven California presentation, heavily reliant on the sharply tart notes that have become his trademark, and heavily reliant on Geri Miller's urban farm Cook's Garden next door. Read more
Allumette
How do you know you're in a serious restaurant at the moment — a place where the chef ferments his own turnips, keeps a copy of "Modernist Cuisine" by his bedside and dreams of visiting Spain's Mugaritz restaurant? There will probably be a seaweed or two on any given plate, for the color, the crunch and the occasional spark of brininess, and bits of citrus zest will make it into places where you have never tasted citrus before. You will see at least one slow-poached egg, cooked to a perfect near-runniness at 63 degrees Celsius; top-shelf boutique greens that disappear long before you straggle into the farmers market on Wednesday morning; and a couple of flavors snagged from the bartender's cache. The presentation will be modern French, but the dishes may well be inspired by Italy, China and especially Japan, because Japanese (and New Nordic) cooking are what young chefs are crushing out on these days. Read more
Los Angeles burgers
The eyes of the world were recently focused on what surely must be the most repulsive hamburger in the history of mankind: 10,000 bits of cloned cow stem-cell tissue formed into a patty, seared in foaming butter and served to three food scientists in front of a crowd of decidedly unhungry journalists. If you would rather eat a hamburger than grimace at what your great-grandchildren might be forced to consider lunch, you can do better. Read more
Francesco Vezzoli
A typical video by Francesco Vezzoli in his show at the Museum of Contemporary Art is a veritable cavalcade of stars, mostly women — Helen Mirren, Natalie Portman, Catherine Deneuve, Eva Mendez, Milla Jovovich, Michelle Williams, Lauren Bacall and many more, plus a few men (Helmut Berger, Benicio Del Toro) — whose movies have referred to art (“Dorian Gray,” “Basquiat”). Detractors of the often-controversial work complain that, celebrity-wise, it’s all just too much — as if the gross excess had not occurred to the artist. Well, it is all too much. And we should be glad for that. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Monday, Aug. 11) Read more
Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave.
Art critic
Other recommendations:
Mary Weatherford
Seven large recent paintings are marvelous excursions into territories of abstraction. Weatherford's work has been developing rapidly in the last several years, building complex momentum and self-assurance. These new paintings are the finest I've seen (Christopher Knight) (Ends Saturday, May 31) Read more
David Kordansky Gallery, 3143 S. La Cienega Blvd., Unit A, Los Angeles
'Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners'
Sizable if somewhat jumbled, "Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners at the Margins of the Americas" looks at a variety of mythic figures who fuse the sacred and the profane in areas that encompass parts of the southern and western United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina and Brazil. Fowler Museum curator Patrick A. Polk has brought together examples of folk, popular and fine art. The subjects defy simple, binary characterizations of good and evil. Forget god or devil, hero or villain. These saintly sinners (and vice versa) instead operate in a gray zone that incorporates both. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Sunday, July 27) Read more
Calder and Abstraction
If you like Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, you'll love the sculpture of Alexander Calder. And vice versa. As an artist Calder certainly wasn't in the business of illustrating difficult scientific postulates. (Born on the cusp of the 20th century, he died at 78 in 1976.) In fact, one frequent knock on him was the claim that, while charmingly whimsical, his sculpture is physically, emotionally and intellectually lightweight. After all, this is the guy who built an entire miniature circus out of cardboard, some buttons and a bunch of twisted wire. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Sunday, July 27) Read more
'John Divola: As Far As I Could Get'
Principally organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, this show is a collaborative endeavor with the Pomona College Museum of Art in Claremont and LACMA. Because of the trifurcation, few will see the entire show. And those who do will be deprived of some fundamental benefits of a museum retrospective. That's a shame. The good news is that, even seen in disordered chunks, Divola's photographs can provide immensely satisfying rewards. (Christopher Knight) (Emds Sunday, July 6) Read more
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
Jacob Hashimoto: Gas Giant
Hashimoto's installation is a lot like the weather: all around us and bigger than everyone. "Gas Giant" may be massive, but it's as gentle as a summer breeze and as intimate as a whisper, its simple shapes, basic colors and attractive patterns user-friendly. (David Pagel) (Ends Sunday, June 8) Read more
MOCA Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood
'Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections'
Think of Byzantium, and a color leaps to mind. That color is gold. Why gold? On the evidence, because of its capacity to serve two rulers: The exhibition's title and its 187 objects together demonstrate how gold can represent power that is both earthly and heavenly at once. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Monday, Aug. 25) Read more
The Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades
Elliott Hundley
The artist's 12 new paintings are dense. Their components — carved foam, collaged photos, oil paint and pins jammed all the way in — suggest that they are under immense pressure, like deep-diving submarines or visitors to Jupiter. (David Pagel) (Ends Saturday, May 17) Read more
Mike Kelley Retrospective
The sprawling Mike Kelley retrospective has the restless feel of a morbid fun house. The way it is installed generally conforms to the show's excellent catalog -- groupings determined not solely by date but according to discrete bodies of work. Kelley, for all his art's low-down sources in the ephemera of popular culture and the rag-tag crudeness of many of his materials, was a brilliantly well-read intellectual. He often returned to themes and revisited materials, deepening his explorations as he went and extrapolating among them. Seeing those bodies of work together helps to underscore his art's ricocheting resonance. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Monday, July 28) Read more
Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 125 N. Central Ave., Los Angeles
Gary Lang
Eleven big, circular paintings, each a candy-colored rainbow of concentric rings, fill the space with enough visual warp and woof to make repeat visits thrilling. (David Pagel) (Through May 10) Read more
Ace Gallery Beverly Hills, 9430 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg
In silvery middle tones, Schulz-Dornburg pictures passage of several sorts, from solidity to decay, exhaustion to utter depletion, from facticity to subtle mystery. (Leah Ollman) (Ends Saturday, May 17) Read more
Gallery Luisotti, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica
Jackson Pollock's 'Mural'
For the last 21 months, Jackson Pollock's landmark painting "Mural" (owned by the University of Iowa Museum of Art) underwent much-needed conservation in a project led by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute. The intensive study is laid out in a fascinating, clearly explained exhibition. (Christopher Knight) (Through June 1) Read more
'Take It or Leave It: Institutions, Image, Ideology'
With 118 works by 36 artists, many represented by large-scale installations, the galleries are jam-packed. Sometimes it's hard to tell where one work ends and another starts. But that mash-up seems intentional. The show charts the intersection of two genres that together gained considerable traction in the 1980s — appropriation art and institutional critique -- and undermining the usual museum conventions makes a point. (Christopher Knight) (Through May 18) Read more
‘The Days of Anna Madrigal’
The first time Armistead Maupin ended his “Tales of the City” serial — in 1989, with his sixth novel, “Sure of You” — he did it with a departure. Mary Ann Singleton, who had initiated the series by calling her mother in Cleveland to say she was staying in San Francisco, took a network TV job and left the Bay Area for New York. It was a sad if not unexpected outcome. In the 15 years since Maupin had first started writing about Mary Ann, her friends Michael, Mona, Brian and their irrepressible landlady, Anna Madrigal, a lot had happened: Anita Bryant, the People’s Temple, AIDS. Maupin was ready to move on. It was nearly two decades before he returned to these characters, first with the 2007 novel “Michael Tolliver Lives” and then with the follow-up, “Mary Ann in Autumn,” in 2010. What makes “Tales of the City” so resonant is Maupin’s ability to draw broad, human lessons from the particularity of his characters’ lives. This is why it has struck such a chord for close to 40 years now: adapted into three miniseries and an opera, the source of “Tales”-related San Francisco tours. Now, Maupin has chosen to end the series again with “The Days of Anna Madrigal,” a work that is less about departure than coming home. Featuring the full complement of “Tales” regulars (with the exception of Mona, who died in the 1984 novel “Babycakes”), the book is an elegy — for San Francisco, for its characters, for a way of life. Read more
David Ulin
Book critic
Other recommendations:
'Stories II'
T.C. Boyle's "Stories II" gathers all the short fiction he has published in the past 15 years — 58 stories, including 14 that have never appeared in book form. This is no mere collection, in other words, but an edifice intended, not unlike its equally massive predecessor "Stories" (1998), to define a legacy. To some extent, that's a sign of Boyle growing older; he will turn 65 in December. Death, or the threat of death, is all over these stories — or more accurately, a sense of mortality, of time zeroing in. But even more, it's a signifier that here, he is holding nothing back. In "Stories II" we stare down 15 years of fiction, and how does it add up? "All part of the questing impulse," Boyle suggests, "that has pushed me forward into territory I could never had dreamed of when I first set out to write — that is, to understand that there are no limits and everything that exists or existed or might exist in some other time or reality is fair game for exploration." Read more
'Salinger'
When news emerged three years ago that filmmaker Shane Salerno and writer David Shields were working on an oral biography (with accompanying documentary) about J.D. Salinger, I assumed it would be all smoke and no fire. Salinger, after all, had gone to ground after the publication of his novella “Hapworth 16, 1924” in June 1965; even in the wake of his death, in January 2010 at age 91, his estate had preserved the silence of his final 45 years. But if Salerno and Shields' book “Salinger” is, at nearly 700 pages, a bit of a shaggy monster, what may be most astonishing about it is its (largely) even tone. The idea is to present a portrait of Salinger as both his own savior and something considerably darker, and for the most part, the co-authors get the goods. Read more
Optic Nerve 13
Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve is one of my favorite alternative comics: smart, understated and with a subtle yet pointed bite. Merging straight realism with an impressionistic sense of narrative, his stories often seem to be offhanded when, in fact, they are highly structured and defined. As an example, look at "Winter 2012," one of three pieces in the newly released Optic Nerve 13, a one-pager, told by way of 20 small panels, in which Tomine portrays himself as a Luddite, distressed by the indignities of the electronic age. Optic Nerve 13's other stories include a long central piece, "Go Owls," in which a woman meets an older man in a 12-step program and winds up in a relationship that becomes increasingly abusive and fraught, and the exquisite "Translated, From the Japanese," a love letter from a mother to her baby that is among the most beautiful things Tomine has ever done. Read more
'Never Built Los Angeles'
When, in the 1920s, the pioneering Southern California social critic Louis Adamic called Los Angeles "the enormous village," he didn't mean it as a compliment. Rather, he was referring to L.A.'s insularity, its status as what Richard Meltzer would later label "the biggest HICK Town (per se) in all the hick land," a city of small-town values and narrow vision that "grew up suddenly, planlessly." A similar sensibility underpins "Never Built Los Angeles," a compendium of more than 100 architectural projects — master plans, skyscrapers, transportation hubs, parks and river walks — that never made it off the ground. Edited by former Los Angeles magazine architecture critic Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell, West Coast editor of the Architect's Newspaper, and accompanied by an exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum, it's a lavish counter-history of the city as it might have been: a literal L.A. of the mind. Read more
'The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey'
"He who makes a beast of himself," Samuel Johnson famously observed about inebriation, "gets rid of the pain of being a man." And yet, if Lawrence Osborne's new book, "The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey," has anything to tell us, it's that there is more to drinking than derangement, that it may lead to a transcendence more profound. "The Wet and the Dry" is a paean to drinking, but it is also a travelogue unfolding largely through the Islamic states of the Middle East and a memoir of sorts, in which Osborne's upbringing, in "a steadfast English suburb" during the 1970s, becomes a lens through which to read his life. "The drinker knows that life is not mental and not a matter of control and demarcation," he argues. "The teetotaler, on the other hand, knows full well how even a molecule of alcohol changes body and mind. The Muslim, the Protestant puritan, and the teetotaler are kin; they understand the world in a very similar way, despite all their enormous differences, while the drinkers know that the parameters that contain us are not all human, let alone divine." Read more
'Men in Miami Hotels'
Charlie Smith's terrific new novel, "Men in Miami Hotels," walks a line between genre and something considerably wilder, a fictional territory where a character might lose his or her soul. The story of a Miami hoodlum named Cotland Sims, on the run from a brutal mob boss, it is both existential thriller and a book of homecoming, as Cot returns to Key West, where he was born and raised, to confront the living ghosts of his past. These include his on-again-off-again girlfriend Marcella and her husband Ordell (the county prosecutor), as well as his mother and his oldest friend from high school, a drag queen named CJ. To this mix, Smith adds an army of hired killers out to wreak vengeance on Cot, although their violence, while pervasive, ends up seeming almost incidental. Read more
'Return to Oakpine'
Ron Carlson's new novel "Return to Oakpine" revolves around a group of high school friends 30 years after graduation, in the small Wyoming town where they were raised. The book begins with a simple errand: A man named Craig Ralston is called upon to refurbish a garage apartment for his old compatriot Jimmy Brand, who is coming home to die. The year is 1999 and Jimmy is nearing 50, a writer who left home after high school, in the wake of a family tragedy. And yet, Carlson wants us to understand, we never escape the past, not even a little bit of it. In a town such as Oakpine, that can't help but bleed into the present, reminding us of old hurts, old longings, of who we were and who we never will become. This is the tension that drives "Return to Oakpine," between what we want to do and what we need to do, between our dreams and our responsibilities. Or, as Carlson observes late in this elegant and moving novel, "There was a vague lump in his throat that he had thought was excitement but now felt like an urgent sadness; actually it felt like both." Read more
'Genius'
Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen’s haunting graphic novel “Genius” revolves around a physicist named Ted who was once a prodigy, before his priorities became realigned. Ted has two kids, and a wife who may be dying; do we need to say that he feels trapped, that his pressures have become too much for him? Still, Ted has one saving grace, which is his love for Einstein, who holds a place in his life akin to God. “I mean, I’m an atheist —” Ted explains, “most thinking people are — But Einstein is the pinnacle of a thinking man.” As “Genius” progresses, this relationship becomes increasingly prominent, until Einstein himself is animated in these pages, discussing the nature of the universe, the nature of discovery, and the essential notion that our lives are always in constant evolution, just waiting for that one idea, that one revelation, for everything to “start anew.” Read more
'The Faraway Nearby'
Rebecca Solnit's latest book, "The Faraway Nearby," began with a delivery of 100 pounds of apricots to her San Francisco home. The apricots came from her brother, who had collected them from a tree in their mother's yard. At the time, the older woman was in the throes of Alzheimer's; she had been moved into an assisted care facility, making the fruit a metaphor, an allegory, for everything that she had lost. First and foremost, this meant stories, which are at the center of "The Faraway Nearby," a book about narrative and empathy that moves between a dizzying array of tales — including "Frankenstein," the Arabian Nights and that of Solnit's own breast cancer scare — to look at the way stories bind us, allowing us to inhabit each other's lives with unexpected depth. Read more
'Science Fiction'
Joe Ollmann's graphic novel “Science Fiction” is a minutely observed account of a relationship in crisis, from which there is (or might be) no way out. The setup is simple: Mark, a high school science teacher, and his girlfriend Susan, who works in a convenience store, rent an alien abduction movie that triggers what Mark decides are repressed memories of his own abduction years before. If this is difficult for Mark, it’s even harder for Susan because she can’t believe what he is telling her. Here we see the central conflict of “Science Fiction”: What happens when a loved one goes through an experience that is, in every way that matters, life-changing, and yet, we can’t go along for the ride? Read more
'Joyland'
What makes Stephen King resonate for me is the way he can get inside the most mundane of situations and animate it, revealing in the process something of how we live. His new novel, "Joyland," operates very much from this territory: It's a drama that unfolds in miniature. The story of a college student named Devin Jones who spends the summer and fall of 1973 working at a North Carolina amusement park, "Joyland" is a thriller but it's also a homage to the disposable culture of the early 1970s, a time when "oil sold for eleven dollars a barrel." What King is getting at is what he's always getting at, that life is inexplicable, that joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy, are all bound up and can assert themselves at any time. Read more
‘Third Eye Crime’
The hand-held video game “Third Eye Crime” has all the trappings of a classic noir mystery. For starters, there’s a tough-talking, no-good gumshoe for hire with “Dick Tracy’s” eye for fashion. Then, of course, there’s a double-crossing femme fatale modeled after Jessica Rabbit. Mix in a jazz soundtrack marked by bourbon-stained brass notes and a plot full of unsavory characters, and it’s clear that the tales of the underworld here are rooted in vintage novels and black-and-white films. Yet “Third Eye Crime” also has a few thoroughly modern touches that James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler probably never foresaw. Take, for instance, a slick touch interface, one that brings a dash of “Angry Birds”-like movement to the hard-boiled genre. “Third Eye Crime,” released in late April for Apple’s mobile platforms, collects bits and pieces of familiar genres — the pick-up-and-play puzzle game, a pulpy comic style — and fuses them together for an interactive experience that has a new angle on tradition. Read more
Todd Martens
Video game critic
Other recommendations:
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
For the last three decades, one of the video game world's greatest antiheroes has been a barrel-throwing ape. He's arrogant, ornery and not nearly as dexterous as he thinks he is. A kidnapper whose jungles were construction sites, he'd steal your girlfriend and trap her atop a skeletal steel structure. But as males-behaving-badly became a pop-culture norm — and an unfortunate requirement of most video games — Donkey Kong softened up. The once attention-desperate gorilla shed his hostage-taking ways and settled into a more healthful lifestyle with the launch of "Donkey Kong Country" in 1994. Now five iterations of the game later, he's morphed into a rather lovable grump who just wants to enjoy a slice of cake with a frosted banana on top in peace. "Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze," released last weekend for Nintendo's home console the Wii U, finds the king of the jungle continuing the makeover from villain to reluctant hero. Arctic creatures are invading the lush isles he calls home, and Kong wants the polar beasts off his lawn. Read more
PlayStation 4 / Xbox One
The next-gen video game consoles are here, and so far the games look an awful lot like the ones from the generation coming to an end. But the presentation of the consoles — the arguments they put forth about how games can and should be integrated into our lives — varies greatly. Sony's PS4 takes a targeted approach by emphasizing games and the places players go to talk about those games. Microsoft's Xbox One has broader, non-gaming ambitions, relying heavily on voice controls (look ma, no remote!) to have viewers magically shifting among television, film, music and sports apps. Read more
'The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds'
Another long-standing Nintendo franchise gets spruced up. Like "Mario 3D," the look and controls are familiar, the tone is entirely new, as this action-adventure emphasizes smarts and exploration over tedious dungeon crawling. Read more
'Super Mario 3D World'
Nintendo's Italian brothers Mario and Luigi are the closest thing the video game world has to a Mickey and Minnie, and this Wii U-exclusive may be the freshest spin yet on a trustworthy gaming tradition. The secret? Cats. Mario and pals shape-shift into felines with the help of a little video game magic, allowing the characters to crawl, scratch, climb and meow in completely unexpected ways. Trust us. Read more
'Rain'
"Rain," Sony's download-only PlayStation 3 title, plays with an idea central to many fairy tales. What monsters come out to play when the lights are turned off? But ultimately, it ends up dealing with a far darker question — is there any monster quite so scary as loneliness? With such an emphasis on text and narration, this could be considered an interactive book more than a game but is, instead, a moderately paced exploration through a fantastically realized nighttime setting, where narrowly escaping the clutches of pursuers rewards players with more pieces of the narrative rather than larger battles. Read more
'Spaceteam'
"Spaceteam" is high-stress nonsense, but high-stress nonsense at its most absurd, addictive and ridiculous. Available now for iOS and Android, think of "Spaceteam" as a board game for mobile devices. The concept is simple, as players are crew members on a ship that's in danger of exploding and must shout technobabble at one another to prevent destruction. But each has a different view, so one player's Voltsock is another player's Newtonian Photomist. Read more
'Gone Home'
"Gone Home," out now as a PC download, will likely feel more personal than any game you'll play this year. Players explore it from the first-person perspective of a college-aged daughter, Katie, who has been studying abroad and is visiting her family's new home for the first time. Traverse just one house and discover untold secrets about a family, be it struggles with failed ambitions or the teenage unease that comes with discovering one's sexuality. Read more
'The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD'
A remake of an old Gamecube title is not the Zelda game Wii U fans have been clamoring for, but Nintendo has freshened up "Wind Waker" to the point that it feels a new experience. This early 2000s Zelda title still stands as one of the franchise's crowning moments, as it set its main character loose on the high seas and gave the universe a zippy, cartoonish makeover. The animated film look works even better in HD, and the subtle adoption of new control techniques offered by the Wii U makes it one of the more accessible adventure role playing games around. Read more
'The Last of Us'
"The Last of Us" is not your typical doomsday narrative. Zombie-like attacks aside, tension here comes from an underutilized game-play tactic: conversation. Dialogue is almost as plentiful as weapons in this patiently cinematic tale of a smuggler and the reluctant bond he forms with the 14-year-old girl he's hired to protect. Developed by Sony-owned Naughty Dog, responsible for the hit "Indiana Jones"-inspired "Uncharted" series, "The Last of Us" acknowledges gaming clichés and then skillfully avoids them by keeping its focus on the relationship between Joel (the smuggler) and Ellie (the teen he watches over). It's an action game, but one with characters worth fighting for. Read more
‘The Dark Sorcerer’
A short film and not a game, but one designed to show what next-gen console the PS4 may be capable of. Quanitic Dream, the Paris-based developer working on the patient narrative "Beyond Two Souls," concocted this fantasy-comedy as a way to illustrate that character depth and detail can be sustained over long scenes filled with gameplay. But forget the technical stuff — it's a cute little video about a film shoot gone wrong, with goblins. Though there are no plans to turn "The Dark Sorcerer" into a game, director David Cage said fan response may inspire him to change his mind. Read more
'Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move'
The minis are diminutive, wind-up figurines that represent well-known Nintendo characters. They walk forward, they don't stop and it's up to the player to control and tinker with the cubic paths in front of them. That about covers the basics, but not the details. Every couple of puzzles a new element is added, be it cubes that rotate, bombs that can blow up cubes, cubes that come equipped with springs that will send the characters flying over spikes, cubes with hammers or cubes that can generate all-purpose, multi-use cubes. With 240 stages, there are a lot cubes. Read more
‘Guacamelee!’
Games are wonderful at creating crazy, colorful universes full of whip-cracking vampire killers and interstellar space pirates, but they are less good at crafting ones inspired by more earth-bound cultural traditions. "Guacamelee!” is an exception. Perhaps not since LucasArts’ 1998 “Day of the Dead” noir title “Grim Fandango” has a game so lovingly draped itself in Mexican folklore. "Guacamelee!” is a colorfully humorous game centered almost entirely on the customs surrounding Day of the Dead. It’s a simple stylistic conceit that seems so obvious that it’s almost confusing it hasn’t been done with any regularity. Who needs zombies and vampires when there’s an entire holiday steeped in calavera imagery? Read more
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala
When Kim Kardashian, in a draped petrol blue Lanvin gown, is one of the best dressed, you know it was a crazy night. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala for the fashion exhibition “Charles James: Beyond Fashion” was beyond fashion indeed. James, who is often called “America’s first couturier,” was at his height from the 1930s to the 1950s, when he revolutionized fashion from the inside out. A sculptor of cloth, he championed strapless dresses, the figure-eight skirt and spiral cuts. His work was the antithesis of today’s disposable fast-fashion. Each piece was painstakingly constructed, hand-sculpted to the client’s measurements, took hundreds of hours to complete, and only available to the super-wealthy. Read more
Booth Moore
Fashion critic
Other recommendations:
Lou & Grey
Ann Taylor and Loft have a new, free-spirited sibling. The American retailer has launched a brand called Lou & Grey that's a tomboyish fusion of active and street wear, or "lifewear" as its being positioned. Available in Loft stores, on LouandGrey.com, and in the first Lou & Grey freestanding store recently opened in Westport, Conn., the brand features sporty and loungey soft-dressing pieces in a pale color palette, including mélange knit moto jackets, slouchy linen T-shirts, textural oatmeal knit sweaters, sweat-shirt dresses and lace sweat pants from $30 to $100. I caught up with Austyn Zung, creative director of Loft and Lou & Grey, and a veteran of Loft, Gap's Fourth & Towne, and Oscar de la Renta before that, to chat about the new brand under the ANN Inc. umbrella, its roots in California ease, and the key building blocks of the collection. Read more
Sandro
Like Vince, Joie and A.L.C.? Meet their French cousins Sandro, Maje and Iro. Los Angeles, birthplace of some of America's most successful contemporary fashion labels, is seeing a new wave of brands from Paris opening stores with their own French take on affordable luxury. One such brand is Sandro, which made its presence known in Los Angeles last week by hosting a star-studded bash at the Chateau Marmont on Thursday night to celebrate two new stores, one on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, and the other in the Beverly Center. Read more
Dries Van Noten: 'Inspirations'
"I feel a bit like a spoiled child with all these beautiful things around me," says Belgian designer Dries Van Noten, giving a tour of the spectacular new exhibition chronicling his nearly 30-year career, which opens Saturday at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. He's referring to the wealth of artworks from the Renaissance to the present day on view as part of "Dries Van Noten: Inspirations." The show is a tour of his creative mind, placing his runway collections in context of his many cultural reference points. In the galleries, works by Yves Klein, Francis Bacon, Elizabeth Peyton and more are shown alongside vintage fashions ranging from Christian Dior's famous 1947 New Look, to a funky 1967 jacket that belonged to Jimi Hendrix. (In the run up to the exhibition, Van Noten found the flowery jacket that inspired one of his men's wear collections for sale on EBay and was able to score it with the help of a generous donor.) The romance of dance partners Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire seen in a clip from the 1935 film "Top Hat" was the starting point for the swaying ostrich feather dresses in the fall 2013 collection, and lightscapes by British photographer James Reeves inspired city lights prints in the spring 2012 collection. (Ends Sun., Aug. 31) Read more
Decorative Arts Museum, 107 Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, France
Tory Burch
Tory Burch celebrated the opening of her Rodeo Drive boutique with a star-studded party Jan. 21 and the release of the limited edition Rodeo Drive collection inspired by the flowers of Southern California and the glamour of Old Hollywood. The capsule collection includes resort-ready pieces embellished with coral flowers and embroidery, including the gladiator sandals above and the caftan-style dress. The capsule collection includes resort-ready pieces embellished with coral flowers and embroidery, including the gladiator sandals above and the caftan-style dress and flower-drop earrings Burch is wearing. There are also several styles in guipere lace, such as the shorts above. L.A. style maven and artist Lisa Eisner shot a dreamy short film featuring the collection in the gardens at Lotusland near Santa Barbara. You can see it here. Burch's website includes several other L.A.-centric editorial features geared to the opening, including Kaling, Hailee Steinfeld and other celebs discussing why they love L.A. Read more
10 Fashionable Things
As we all try to get back into the swing of work after the holidays, here are 10 stylish things on my to-do list for the next few months. 1) Celebrate the dress that started it all. 2014 marks the 40th anniversary of Diane von Furstenberg's iconic wrap dress, which will be celebrated with "Journey of a Dress" on Jan. 11 to April 1 at the Wilshire May Co. building in Los Angeles, a retrospective exhibition of vintage and contemporary wrap designs — from the first sample to what has become a symbol of power and freedom for generations of women. 2) Pick up some cold-weather style inspiration... Read more
Acne Studios
The coolest store now open in downtown L.A. is called Acne Studios. That's right. Get over it. If you don't know, Acne (an acronym for Ambition to Create Novel Expression) was founded in 1996 in Stockholm by musician-turned-fashion designer Jonny Johansson. In seven years, it has grown into a $120-million brand with 40 stores around the world, men's and women's fashion collections, runway shows in Paris, as well as a publishing wing that has collaborated on projects with the likes of photographers Lord Snowden and William Wegman. Which is why when you walk into the new 5,000-square-foot boutique in the historic Art Deco Eastern Columbia Building on Broadway, it's appropriate that you first lay eyes on "Giant Triple Mushroom," a trippy toadstool of an installation by Belgian artist Carsten Holler that seems to symbolize the curious rise of a brand that is known for doing things differently. Read more
Acne Studios, Eastern Columbia Building, 855 S. Broadway, Los Angeles
Standout Books on American Design
Several new style books focus on great American jewelry design. Here we zero in on two of the standout volumes of the season. 'David Webb: The Quintessential American Jeweler' and 'Jewels by JAR' have an eye for the dazzling. "David Webb: The Quintessential American Jeweler" American jewelry designer David Webb was a fixture on New York's social scene during the 1960s and '70s, beloved by Diana Vreeland, Nan Kempner, Doris Duke, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand and many other style-setters. Webb is perhaps best known for his animal bracelets, more fierce than cute, featuring lions, tigers and dragons, which were part of the ladies-who-lunch uniform of the day. "Jewels by JAR," the catalog for the exhibition of the same name that runs through March 9 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a jewel of a book with 69 photographs of incredible pieces by Joel Arthur Rosenthal, today's preeminent American jewelry designer, who has been working in Paris since the late 1970s for a small group of in-the-know clientele. Designing under his initials, JAR, Rosenthal creates works of art using colorful gemstones, pearls and other materials such as beetle wings. Each piece is unique and "set in metals that are sometimes subject to a degree of alchemy," art dealer Adrian Sassoon writes in the introductory essay. Read more
Isabel and Ruben Toledo
Ignored by mainstream fashion designers for years, the plus-size market got a boost with the announcement that Isabel and Ruben Toledo would be designing a collection for size 14-plus retailer Lane Bryant. Isabel Toledo famously made the lemongrass yellow coat and dress that First Lady Michelle Obama wore to President Obama's first inauguration in 2009. Speaking about the collaboration with Lane Bryant, Isabel Toledo told Women's Wear Daily that she and her husband "were intellectually on board from the first moment." That statement to me is key. The excuse so many designers use for ignoring the plus-size market, and showing their clothes on increasingly skinny models, is that clothes just look better on bodies resembling bony hangers. But any designer worth his or her salt should look at designing for a different size or shape as an intellectual challenge. Read more
Cynthia Vincent
"Bohemian isn't a trend; it's a lifestyle." That's the motto upon which L.A. designer Cynthia Vincent has staked her decade-old brand, Twelfth Street, named after the street she grew up on in La Verne. The brand is known for its tribal print maxi-dresses and rompers, serape-stripe cardigans, rugged short Western boots and gladiator wedge sandals, all with a multi-culti, beach-and-canyon vibe. In a city where designers can come and go in a few seasons, Vincent is a fashion success story. She attended L.A.'s Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, winning the Silver Thimble Award while she was there. In 1993, she started her first line, St. Vincent. She also opened a retail store, Aero & Co. in Los Feliz, to feature local independent designers. Read more
Natalie Martin
Designer Natalie Martin has mastered the art of gypset dressing, L.A.-style. In two years, the Aussie transplant has emerged as a go-to for boho-chic styles, including breezy kurtas, tunics, wrap skirts and maxi dresses, all priced under $300, and all crafted out of colorful, Balinese block print silks. Martin has a background in fashion marketing, putting in years at Italian leather goods brands Tod's and Hogan. Her namesake collection, which is sold at Barneys New York, Calypso St. Barth and other boutiques, as well and on her own website, brings a touch of Bali to L.A. Read more
Charlotte Olympia opens in Beverly Hills
London-based accessories designer extraordinaire Charlotte Dellal has opened her first L.A. Charlotte Olympia store, a glamorous, Art Deco-feeling boutique at the top of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The decor is an ode to Old Hollywood glamour from the moment you step inside the door, where Dellal (who has the curves and finger-wave blond hairstyle of a 1940s starlet herself) has her own pink marble Hollywood Walk of Fame star set into the ground, with "Charlotte Olympia" etched inside. "It's celebrating Los Angeles from an outsider's point of view," said Dellal, who launched her whimsical line in 2006. "I guess it's not all about Hollywood and film, but I'm a nostalgic person and I have always loved Old Hollywood." Read more
Malibu Barbie gets a makeover
With her beach blond hair, cheeky tan lines and chic shades, Malibu Barbie has been a style icon for many a young girl, including this one. Now, more than 40 years after she first hit the pop culture wave, Malibu Barbie is getting a makeover, from Los Angeles designer Trina Turk. The mythical Malibu icon is the perfect canvas for Turk’s cheerful 1960s and '70s-inspired SoCal aesthetic. Turk dresses the doll in a printed bandeau bikini and hexagon white lace cover-up and accessorizes her head-to-toe with a beach tote, pink shades, short-shorts, a peasant blouse, floppy sun hat and white wedge sandals. She’s even got a chunky cocktail ring, pink cuff bracelet and a bottle of sunscreen. To add to the fun, Turk’s June 2013 fashion collection, titled “Malibu Summer,” features the same items for women, so life-size Barbies can dress like their miniature muses. Read more