Critics’ Picks: Nov 14 - 20, 2014

'The Theory of Everything'

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are beautifully compatible as physicist Stephen Hawking and his then-wife Jane as they navigate the ebb and flow of 25 years of their relationship. A film that posits that the complexities of the universe are as nothing compared to the intricacies of the human heart. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Birdman'

In “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” Michael Keaton is something of a cross between an aging Icarus and the emperor with no clothes — metaphorical until the tighty-whitey Times Square streak. As a latter-day celluloid superhero come to Broadway's proving ground for a rebirth, the Burning Man histrionics are hysterically on point. Irony lurks in every shadow. Fittingly the film begins with a fiery object streaking toward Manhattan where the highly agitated life of the actor Riggan (Keaton) plays out. The city is the perfect spot for filmmaker Alejandro G. Inarritu to build his pyre. Exactly whose death is being celebrated or mourned — Hollywood? Theater? Society? A single shooting star? — well, that is the question. And oh, the flames that follow. Delicious. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more

'Citizenfour'

An advocacy documentary with a compelling You Are There quality. Director Laura Poitras puts us in the room when NSA leaker Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald conferred over eight days as they made decisions about what was to be published and why. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Fury'

If memorable war movies mean something to you, open that book to a new page and add "Fury" to the list. It belongs there. Even if you're not keeping a list, it's hard not to be impressed by what writer-director David Ayer, powerfully aided by star Brad Pitt and an exceptional below-the-line team, has accomplished with this bleak and savage story of a World War II tank crew operating in Germany during the last month of the European war. The advance spin on "Fury" has been, in the words of one of its producers, that it's "not your grandfather's war movie." Like most hype, that turns out to be only half true. In fact, what makes this film distinctive is the adroit way it both subverts and enhances old-school expectations, grafting a completely modern sensibility onto thoroughly traditional material. For though they don't necessarily act in expected ways, the five-person cross-section-of-humanity tank crew headed by Pitt's Sgt. Don Collier, a.k.a. Wardaddy, fits squarely into familiar Hollywood models involving men doing what men have to do because no one's going to do it but them. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Force Majeure'

A shrewd, bitingly comic and psychologically astute Swedish film, a prize winner at Cannes, in which the life of a picture-perfect family changes not because of any catastrophe but because of the threat of one. (Kenneth Turan) (In Swedish, French and English, with English subtitles.) Read more

'Gone Girl'

For so great has been the interest in this deliciously twisted David Fincher film starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as the couple from hell that reviews are appearing nationwide to coincide with its Friday-night world premiere as the prestigious opening event of the New York Film Festival. For once, however, all the fuss is justified. Superbly cast from the two at the top to the smallest speaking parts, impeccably directed by Fincher and crafted by his regular team to within an inch of its life, "Gone Girl" shows the remarkable things that can happen when filmmaker and material are this well matched. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Interstellar'

The newest Christopher Nolan film is the rarest beast in the Hollywood jungle: a mass audience picture that's intelligent as well as epic, with a sophisticated script that's as interested in emotional moments as immersive visuals. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Low Down'

A melancholy, evocative, beautifully made memory piece, unblinking and unromanticized, that pairs John Hawkes and Elle Fanning as legendary jazz pianist Joe Albany, a heroin addict living in the on-the-skids Hollywood of the 1970s, and his daughter Amy-Jo. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Nightcrawler'

A smart, engaged film about the dark side of local TV news powered by an altogether remarkable performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. This is melodrama grounded in a disturbing reality, an extreme scenario that is troubling because it cuts close to the bone. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'The Tale of the Princess Kaguya'

"The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" submerges us in a world of transporting beauty. A hand-drawn, painterly epic that looks like a watercolor sketchbook come to life, it is further proof that the wonders of Japanese animation truly never cease. Based on a 10th century folk tale about a magical creature who comes to live with a hard-working bamboo cutter and his wife, it is the first work in 14 years by venerable 78-year-old Isao Takahata, the co-founder, with the great Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. As animation intended for adults as much if not more so than for children, "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" was definitely worth the wait. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Whiplash'

With an amazing Miles Teller on drums and a terrifying J.K. Simmons setting the tempo, "Whiplash" is a movie you feel as much as you see, and what you see is both exquisite and excruciating. Writer-director Damien Chazelle draws on his nightmare memories of high school, an intense time when the aspiring jazz drummer was driven to excel by a merciless teacher who favored verbal torture and humiliation to mold young minds. The question Chazelle poses is whether psychological pain is the price of greatness. These sorts of stand-offs and power games have given us some truly great films — Duvall in "The Great Santini," De Niro in "This Boy's Life" come to mind. Now "Whiplash" will too. (Betsy Sharkey) Read more

DVD Sets

Whether they are obvious pairings or something cleverly put together, two recent examples make clear that there's something extremely satisfying about DVDs packaged as sets. Out from Shout Factory is "Herzog: The Collection," 16 films that the prolific German director Werner Herzog made between 1970 and 1999. Some of the most memorable, including "Aguierre, Wrath of God," "Fitzcarraldo" and "My Best Fiend" feature star and Herzog's personal nemesis Klaus Kinski. Arriving from Warner Bros. is the intriguing "World War I Centennial Commemorative Collection," a four-DVD set that includes two silent films ("The Big Parade" and "Wings") and two sound dramas ("The Dawn Patrol" and "Sergeant York") all dealing with "the war to end all wars." Except it didn't turn out that way. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'White Collar'

Butch and Sundance met "To Catch a Thief" under the blue skies of USA when FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) recruited the dashing criminal and general man about town Neil Caffrey (Matt Bomer) to help solve high-profile thefts and scams. Now, six seasons later, "White Collar" has entered its final, six-episode lap (and the sound you hear is the keening of Bomer/McKay fans everywhere.) Creator Jeff Eastin eschewed blood and gore for wit, style and a connoisseur's guide to the heist — what Neil doesn't know, his buddy Mozzie (Willie Garson) does — while, between them, his two leads covered most versions of the Ideal Man. (Mary McNamara) (USA, Thursdays) Read more

Amy Poehler's, 'Yes Please'

Currently ranked a "#1 Best Seller" in the category Movie Biographies by Amazon.com, Amy Poehler's "Yes Please" forms a virtual trilogy, with Tina Fey's "Bossypants," Mindy Kaling's "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)," of Funny Books By Smart Women of Comedy That Qualify as a Memoir But Also May Be Read as A Guide to Life, Even If You're a Guy. (That is not an Amazon category.) I haven't read Lena Dunham's "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned,'" or I might make it a tetralogy, though I'm not sure she exactly fits here, anyway: Poehler, Fey and Kaling have backgrounds in sketch comedy and stage work and worked their way through writers' rooms on network TV shows; Dunham is more like an indie filmmaker whose work is taking the form of a premium cable television series. (A very good television series, I should say.) The Poehler and Fey books are especially of a piece (though Amy's is the fancier production, with slick paper, color photographs and an embossed cover), and could be profitably paired as a holiday gift. (Robert Lloyd) (Dey Street Books) Read more

'Getting On' Second Season

From the team that brought us "Big Love," HBO's brutally funny hospice comedy shattered whatever rules remain in comedy: Death, dying and all their inevitable indignities can be not just funny but revelatory in an rigorously unsentimental way. The staff of the Billy Barnes geriatric facility could not be more dysfunctional. Nurse Dawn (Alex Borstein) is neurotic, narcissistic and completely oblivious; her supervisor Jenna (Laurie Metcalf) a morbidly ambitious doctor stunted by her complete inability to communicate well with anyone. Running interference, and actually caring for the patients is DiDi (Neicy Nash), a single mother who understands that the patients, not the staff, are the main concern. (Mary McNamara) (HBO, Sunday) Read more

'Banksy Does New York'

I have never thought much about Banksy, the invisible street artist, except to think that I would probably find him irritating if I ever thought about him much. Some of that is just distrust of popularity, I admit. But this short documentary about his monthlong "residency" in New York in October 2013 — during which he revealed a new work every day, putting its image online, but not its location, leaving that to the city to puzzle out — is utterly charming. Directed by Chris Moukarbel ("Meet Me at the Zoo," about that "Leave Britney alone" guy), it mixes crowd-sourced video with interviews conducted during and after the event with fans and art people as well as pages and sound files from the artist's website, self-mocking museum-tour narratives that "explained" the site-specific works. (Robert Lloyd) (HBO, Monday) Read more

'The Missing'

An excellent and involving eight-part human-mystery story about a missing child, and all that follows, told in interlocking streams set in 2006 and 2014. James Nesbitt and Frances O'Connor are the stricken parents; Tchéky Karyo the detective that joins forces with them. I have a review in Saturday's paper. (Robert Lloyd) (Starz, Saturdays) Read more

'Cold War Roadshow'

A good-humored documentary on Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's 1959 trip to America. We can laugh about it now, now that we're more likely to choke the Earth than to blow it up, but in those far away, fearful days, children were learning that the way to survive nuclear war was to hide beneath a desk, while the more nervous grownups above them built lead-lined rec rooms to wait out the fallout. Khruschev, a beaming bowling ball with legs, was the stuff of American nightmares. Yet in an early spirit of detente, he came to call, and his coast-to-coast tour was a bigger deal than Banksy's month in New York, even; the bear, it seemed, was a pussycat, and kind of a hit. It turned out to be a false spring — next year's U-2 crash would bring back the chill — but we're friends now. Aren't we? (Robert Lloyd) (PBS, Tuesday) Read more

'Broomstick'

New Orleans playwright John Biguenet's ripely poetic tale of an Appalachian crone who may or may not be a witch receives a striking West Coast premiere starring the redoubtable Jenny O'Hara. Director Stephen Sachs exerts taut control over tempo and effects. And O'Hara, always one of our best character actresses, here goes for the jugular. Tightly woven, richly detailed and fully enjoyable, this "Broomstick" sweeps away any resistance we might have to its ostensible slightness, leaving us with giggles, shivers and even a lump in our throat. (David C. Nichols) (Ends Sunday, Dec. 14) Read more

Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood.

'The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?'

Edward Albee's unlikely but brilliant play about one man's ill-fated love affair with a barnyard animal unfolds into a modern-day Greek tragedy all the more devastating for its sheer improbability. Director Ken Sawyer's staging is consummately well-realized, and the cast is superb, but it is Ann Noble who commands our awe as a modern-day Fury bent on a mission of righteous and appalling vengeance. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Sun., Nov. 23) Read more

Davidson/Valentini Theatre, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood

'The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord'

Imagining three great historical thinkers locked in a room to spend the afterlife debating philosophy, religion and personal morality provides an entertaining and informative engagement of ideas; if you like the notion of "Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds" crossed with Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit," this is the play for you. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sunday, Dec. 21) Read more

Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood

'Melissa Arctic'

Familiarity with Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" is not strictly needed to follow and enjoy Craig Wright's modern-day transposition, but it does help to appreciate the psychological depths and structural quirks in the Road Theatre's charming and hauntingly beautiful production; as with all resonant fables, emotional credibility matters more than literal realism here. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sat., Nov. 15) Read more

The Road on Magnolia at the NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood

'Smoke and Mirrors'

As actor and Magic Castle illusionist Albie Selznick’s superb theatrical magic show explores the connections between his life and art, perhaps his greatest feat is making any trace of boredom completely disappear. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sunday, March 15) Read more

Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles

‘Young Frankenstein’

After the success of his Broadway adaptation of "The Producers," Mel Brooks worked with book-writer Thomas Meehan to stage another of his beloved films, "Young Frankenstein." DOMA Theatre Company's exuberant revival of this musical horror spoof, which closely follows the movie but adds even more Borscht Belt gags and splashy song-and-dance numbers, is a thoroughly entertaining romp, starring Hector S. Quintana as the monster who really knows how to put on the Ritz. (Margaret Gray) (Ends Sunday, Nov. 30) Read more

The MET Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., L.A.

CD Set: 'The Basement Tapes Complete'

It's the most famous room in the annals of pop music, its history equal parts legend and truth. In the decades since its use as a rehearsal space, this subterranean refuge has become known as the birthplace of some of America's most examined (non-Paris-Hilton-sex, non-Watergate) tapes. The Basement Tapes. Many of a certain generation know the basics: In and around Woodstock, N.Y., Bob Dylan and his then-backing band, the Hawks, converged to create stripped-down, defiantly un-psychedelic artistic magic. As the story goes, while recuperating from a motorcycle crash and starting his life as a husband and father of two, Dylan and his compadres, who soon rechristened themselves the Band, crafted a mysterious vessel on more than 40 reels of tape that have since become sacred texts of sorts. The most famous of these works are well known: "This Wheel's on Fire," "I Shall Be Released," "Tears of Rage," "Sign on the Cross," "I'm Not There," "Lo and Behold." Many were traded on the underground circuit through the decades: as whispers on poorly mastered bootleg albums starting with the "Great White Wonder" from 1969, on hissy cassettes, duped CDs and voluminous megabytes. But until this week, the full set has never been officially issued. Nearly 50 years after Band keyboardist Garth Hudson started setting up recording gear, Columbia/Legacy's new six-CD set "The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11" gathers everything the team recorded from February through December 1967, more than 100 songs or fragments. A two-CD volume collects highlights. (Randall Roberts) Read more

Album: 'Too Bright'

Wearing a loose-knotted black sweater that revealed his carved torso beneath, the pianist, singer and songwriter known as Perfume Genius sat before a whisper-quiet sold-out crowd at the Roxy in West Hollywood and tried to explain the raw, full-throated wail he'd just unleashed. Dubbing it his "general horror movie scream," the artist born Mike Hadreas had just poured forth during "Grid," a highlight from his new album, "Too Bright," and devastating as performed live in a room with so much history. It was a harrowing cry amid a remarkable set, delivered from the thin membrane that separates singing and raging, a place expertly inhabited by artists including Jeff Buckley and his father, Tim, Fiona Apple and the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser. A realm that straddles an egoless display of creative emotion and uncontrollable onstage breakdown. (Randall Roberts) Read more

John Cage CDs

Classical music has a habit of burning out on birthdays. Two years ago, John Cage's music was everywhere, what with Los Angeles and the world celebrating the centennial of his birth on Sept. 5 at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown L.A. The party lingered. Last September, Gustavo Dudamel opened the Los Angeles Philharmonic season with a performance of Cage's famous so-called silent piece, "4'33"." This year, though, the pickings are slim for Cage's 102nd birthday. But three excellent ongoing Cage CD series have new releases to frost the Cage birthday cake. (Mark Swed) Read more

Best albums of 2014 -- so far

Summer offers ample time for the kind of concentrated listening that drives musical love affairs. Whether aboard a luxury liner headed for Alaska or in a hand-me-down Hyundai road-tripping to Joshua Tree, the season presents opportunities galore to catch up on hot records that plugged-in friends have had on repeat. Here are 10 records released this year that I've been recommending to friends. The "best" so far? Sure, but don't expect the same list at the end of the year — or even the end of next week. (Randall Roberts) Read more

Album: 'Manipulator' Ty Segall

By the time that Ty Segall hit age 26, he had already recorded and released six solo albums, appeared or collaborated on a dozen or so other albums of frantic guitar rock, issued 20 singles or extended-plays through various record labels, appeared on dozens of compilations and composed a few hundred songs. In that burst of inspiration, the Laguna Beach-born guitarist, singer, surfer, skater and songwriter toured nonstop, gigging hundreds of shows across the country. He produced similarly minded bands, played punk and indie festivals and tore through many wickedly searing guitar solos. The Memphis garage rock label Goner had already released the first Segall singles collection by the time he was 24. His titles for these records included "Sleeper," "Gemini," "Horn the Unicorn," "Lemons," "Melted," "Reverse Shark Attack," "Twins" and "Goodbye Bread." Each recorded with immediacy and on the cheap, they captured the uncontainable energy of a muse so busy both consuming and producing music that few but the most devoted could keep up. Before starting work on his new album, "Manipulator," Segall (pronounced like the bird) had accumulated a bulldozer's worth of distorted rock 'n' roll riffs, amassing ideas while sweating the proverbial 10,000 hours required of an expert craftsman. (Randall Roberts) Read more

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

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

Box set: The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records 1917-1932

The ambitious new set "The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records 1917-1932, Volume 1" comes packaged in a sturdy wooden suitcase dubbed "The Cabinet of Wonder," an apt title considering the awe-inducing sounds and history it resurrects. A label whose ragtag story stars two white Wisconsin business partners more concerned with record player sales than music, an A&R man whose race and history as a Chicago bootlegger (and ex-pro football player) allowed him access to the clubs where unrecorded talent gigged and a roster of artists with equally fascinating biographies, the Paramount and affiliated labels' output during its 15-year life comprises more than 1,600 songs. They were released through a subsidiary of a Port Washington, Wis.-born furniture company during the rise of the phonograph era. (Randall Roberts) Read more

Santa Rita, Jalisco

This taco truck, parked permanently deep in the Eastside, is famous for pescuezos, delicious deep-fried chicken necks The skin is pushed up the shaft of the neck before frying, which gives the effect of a tanned, meaty cylinder surmounted by an Elizabethan collar of pure crunch; hidden bits of chewy meat and a corona of pure, fatty pleasure. Because the truck has colonized a largish brick-and-mortar taqueria, there are plenty of tables to sit around, and you can always find parking. If pescuezos aren't your thing, the pork al pastor, sliced from its spit to order is decent. But really, you should try the necks. Tear off a bit of meat, and wrap it in a warm tortilla with a splash of peppery tomato salsa. At $2.25 for an order of four necks, it's about the cheapest happiness in town. And on weekends, Santa Rita is open until 3 a.m. Read more

Santa Rita, Jalisco,3900 E. First St., East Los Angeles

Commissary

Anybody can make a pork chop taste good. It takes dedication to cook a memorable carrot. Roy Choi is the Los Angeles chef who became famous selling Korean tacos from his Kogi truck. His takes on student rice bowls, Hawaiian beach food and Jamaican party eats at Chego, A-Frame and Sunny Spot are both intelligent and easy to eat. If he listened to venture capitalists, there would probably be Kogi stands in half the food courts in America. But as steeped as he is in L.A.'s working-class cuisine, Choi is part of world chef culture now — jetting off to conferences in New York, Copenhagen and Melbourne, where his ideas on food and community are taken seriously. He has a bestselling memoir and a show on CNN. He plans to collaborate on a chain of healthy fast-food restaurants with Patterson, who is perhaps the most cerebral chef working in the U.S. When Choi hinted that Commissary, his new restaurant in the Line Hotel in Koreatown, would be vegetable-focused, it made sense. Highbrow chefs concentrate on vegetables now. It is a given. Read more

Commissary, Line Hotel, 3515 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

Alimento

Alimento, a new Italian restaurant from Zach Pollack, has, in just a few months, established itself as one of the better small Italian restaurants in Los Angeles, a place so fantastically popular that the valet station occasionally backs up Silver Lake Boulevard and even TV stars content themselves with sitting at the bar. You may know Pollack from Sotto, where he has been cooking Southern Italian food with Steve Samson for the last few years, or from South Coast Plaza's Pizzeria Ortica before that. This is an era of solo acts, young chefs breaking away from the strictures imposed by serial restaurateurs and their pocketbooks, and Silver Lake may be an appropriate place for chefs as well as musicians to go indie. And Pollack is turning things upside down. Read more

Alimento, 1710 Silver Lake Blvd., Silver Lake

Petit Trois

When you are evaluating a sushi bar, you can tell a lot by looking at the tamago, the sweetened omelet often served as a last course. To casual customers, it may be a throwaway, but the consistency and texture reveal a lot about a chef's concentration and skill. In Hong Kong-style restaurants, I was surprised to learn last year, chefs may judge one another on the excellence of their sweet and sour pork, a plebeian dish that relies on superb technique. And in a new bistro, you can probably discover everything you want to know about a chef by his escargot, a dish that in the wrong restaurant can resemble nothing so much as chunks of black rubber in scented grease. Great escargot is earthy, a little tender, adding a distinct hit of umami to the garlic and herbs. In Los Angeles, you can get truly wonderful escargot at Church & State and at République. But there may be no better plate of escargot in town than at the new Petit Trois: six fat snails arranged on a custom metal plate, shells brimming with garlic, minced parsley and melted butter. Read more

Petit Trois, 718 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles

Sushi Tsujita

Since the day it opened, Tsujita has attracted mobs to Sawtelle's Little Osaka neighborhood; on sunny weekends, the wait for a table can last an hour or more. Tsujita, a spinoff of a well-respected Tokyo ramen restaurant, is small and accepts no reservations. It also happens to serve the best ramen in a ramen-crazed part of town, and only at lunch. Across the street, the newer Tsujita Annex serves an ultra-rich, somewhat different kind of ramen for lunch and dinner, soaked in a gravy-thick pork broth and garnished with what seems like double handfuls of chopped back fat. Tsujita Annex also has its lines. But when you discover the latest addition to the Tsujita empire up the block from the annex, hidden behind a patio festooned with a massive crystal chandelier, you will find that it does not serve noodles at all. L.A.'s Sushi Tsujita is the Tsujita-san's version of a classic edomae-style sushi bar, intimate and stunningly expensive, specializing in fish prepared using century-old techniques developed to preserve seafood as much as to flavor it: curing with seaweed, salting, pickling. Chef Shigeru Kato, as well as most of the seafood, is imported from Tokyo. As at Q Sushi downtown, the sushi can sometimes remind you less of fresh fish than of delicate, exquisitely scented Japanese charcuterie. The aim is sushi without compromise. Read more

Sushi Tsujita, 2006 Sawtelle Blvd., West Los Angeles

Shi Hai

If you are looking for a clue to Shi Hai, the new Hong Kong-style seafood restaurant in Alhambra, you might find it in the cold cucumber appetizer, a dish that appears at both dim sum breakfast and at dinner. If this is your first time at the restaurant, you might be anticipating the well-garlicked hacked cucumbers you find at Shandong-style delis, or possibly something in the vein of the lightly fermented pickles from Japan. But the cold cucumbers turn out to be just that — cucumbers cut into neat spears and jammed into crushed ice in a sort of vegetable Stonehenge. If the cucumbers are pickled, the cure is too subtle to taste, but they are cool and perfectly crunchy. A small saucer of soy sauce and wasabi is served alongside if you care to dip. The dish is plain. You will probably wonder why you ordered it. And then halfway through the meal, at the point when you are sated with new and unfamiliar flavors, you will be delighted to rediscover the cucumber, your chilly new friend. Occasionally, simplicity can be key. Read more

Shi Hai, 1412 S. Garfield Ave., Alhambra

Finest Foods for the Thinnest Wallets

Is it possible to spend more than $400 per person at some of the restaurants on this year's list of the best 101? Of course. Cuisine costs. But great cooking takes many different forms in Los Angeles, and some of the most exquisite flavors belong to us all. Read more

Szechuan Impression

If you have been following the Chinese-restaurant scene in the San Gabriel Valley in the last few years, you probably know about Chengdu Taste, the restaurant that showed California the world of Sichuan cuisine that lay beyond mapo tofu and twice-cooked pork — if only for the famous two-hour wait for a table on weekends. And if you had been driving along Valley Boulevard in Alhambra in the last couple of weeks, you might have noticed another enormous crowd outside a Sichuan restaurant: the brand-new Szechuan Impression, home to yet another brand of modern Sichuan cuisine. Read more

Szechuan Impression, 1900 W. Valley Blvd., Alhambra

Aqui Es Texcoco

The last time I went to Aqui Es Texcoco, the kitchen had run out of lamb. And while this might not have been a problem in most Mexican restaurants, where you'd shrug and move on to the roast pork or the mojarra, Aqui Es Texcoco is more or less a one-dish restaurant — that dish being barbacoa in the style of the Mexico City-adjacent Texcoco, an area as famous for pit-roasted lamb as it is for its Aztec ruins. When you see the word "Texcoco" on the sign of a restaurant or food stand, you know there is going to be pit-roasted lamb. When you get in your car and drive to the odd neighborhood of industrial parks in which you find Aqui Es Texcoco, you are not there for the Mexican craft beers, the promise of handmade pulque or the sturdy quesadillas, you are there for vast portions of lamb, chewy and gelatinous and touched with crunchy bits of char, piled on sheets of aluminum foil. You eat the lamb with stacks of hot tortillas, puddles of beans, freshly made guacamole and foam cups of consommé fashioned from the drippings of the lamb, served so hot that your flimsy plastic spoon is likely to curl up in its depths. Lamb barbacoa at Aqui Es Texcoco is a perfect supper on a hot Sunday afternoon, perhaps accompanied by a Cucapá pale ale or two. Read more

Aqui Es Texcoco, 5850 S. Eastern Ave., Commerce

Wexler's Deli

Micah Wexler first came to attention as the chef at Mezze, up in the old Sona space on La Cienega Boulevard, and in his stint at the short-lived restaurant he redefined what Middle Eastern food might be, garnishing braised tripe with nuggets of crunchy falafel, drizzling labneh onto foie gras and splashing manti with spiced almond milk. It was only after several months that a lot of people realized his inspiration was at least as deeply rooted in Jewish cooking as it was in the cuisines of Israel's neighbors, and his delicatessen Sundays, based on the food he grew up eating in Los Angeles, were sold out long in advance. So it perhaps makes sense that he opened Wexler's Deli in the newly revivified Grand Central Market downtown, a delicatessen reborn in a civic space that hasn't seen decent pastrami in years. The deli, which opened just this spring, looks as if it has been part of the market since the early 1950s, chubby neon sign, battered counter and all. Read more

Grand Central Market, 317 S Broadway, Los Angeles

Smoke.Oil.Salt.

Have you ever tasted real paella? And by "real," I should specify that I mean not the stuff you eat with sangria down by the beach or even the lovely yellow rice with seafood that you have to order a day in advance at Cuban restaurants, but the real thing, rare outside its birthplace in the mountains outside Valencia, which is less a vehicle for costly ingredients than it is a big, shallow pan of methodically toasted rice. An alarming percentage of the best paellas I have eaten have come from the well-seasoned steel pans of Perfecto Rocher, a third-generation paella chef now at the new Smoke.Oil.Salt. He is a fairly spectacular creative chef, fully conversant with the toys of the modernist kitchen and a master of the 62.5-degree egg, but what people still talk about are his Monday night paellas; traditionalist masterpieces of a sort we had never seen in Los Angeles. Read more

Smoke.Oil.Salt., 7274 W. Melrose Ave., Los Angeles,

At Pot in Koreatown

Roy Choi has gone through a lot in the last few years, and his journey — from a chef ingloriously fired from a high-profile restaurant to food truck pioneer to baron of a restaurant empire — has been much celebrated lately. His cookbook and memoir, "L.A. Son," is a bestseller. His talk on a chef's responsibility to his community moved René Redzepi's Mad conference ("mad" means "food" in Danish) in Copenhagen last fall. In the events surrounding the film "Chef" this spring, it is hard to know whether the bigger draw was Choi, a co-producer, or Jon Favreau, who directed and starred. Laid-back, a little surly and genuinely funny, Choi has become the current archetype of the L.A. chef, which is pretty good for a guy whose most famous dish is still a Korean taco served from a truck. But where you might expect Pot, his new restaurant in the Line hotel, to be a hipster joint, dishing out sleekly reimagined Korean fusion food to a generation whose first exposure to celebrity-cooked food may have been his Black Jack quesadillas, it is kind of a regular Korean place, home to bubbling tureens of crab soup and sizzling kimchi-fried rice, super-clean bowls of cold noodles with chile sauce and Korean pickles, and crisp potato pancakes like the ones you get at Kobawoo. He's still messing with expectations, but unless you happen to be a middle-aged Korean guy incensed at having to pay two bucks for kimchi and $3 for the wonderful pickled sea beans with sesame, the expectations that he's messing with are probably not your own. Read more

In the Line Hotel, 3515 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

'Floral Journey: Native North American Beadwork'

Unless one is Native American, getting a grasp of complex Native American spiritual cosmologies is not easy. And that distinction, which might be called a quality of profound otherness, is in essence what drives a fascinating show recently opened at the Autry National Center of the American West in Griffith Park. It's a story of survival, of a will to endure in the face of crushing opposition. And it is a story told through beads. (Christopher Knight) (Through April 26) Read more

Autry National Center of the American West, 700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles

Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley was one of the two greatest painters the United States produced in the artistically tumultuous first decades of the 20th century (the other was Arthur Dove), and there hasn't been an L.A. Hartley show since 1998. The show is deeply moving. The paintings Hartley made during a three-year European sojourn embody his startling artistic breakthrough: Call it modern public pageantry of private grief. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Sun., Nov. 30) Read more

LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles

Kathleen Henderson

Treacherous life, irrepressible life. Absurd, confounding life. The drawings of Kathleen Henderson take on nothing less. She chronicles banal, everyday debacles on up to shameful cultural crimes. Her recent work, at Rosamund Felsen, is tough as ever, searing and satirical, propelled by a variable mix of cynicism and wonder. (Leah Ollman) (Ends Saturday, Nov. 15) Read more

Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica

Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take

A measure of respect is due any artist who has the nerve to take on a revered masterpiece. That's what Hodges did in 2008 with a sculpture born of Albrecht Dürer's "The Great Piece of Turf" (1503). Hodges' take on it is one of 56 works in the 25-year retrospective of his career concluding its national tour at the Hammer Museum (Christopher Knight) (Through Jan. 18) Read more

Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles

'An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan and Their Circle'

The circle of artists and writers around Bay Area painter Jess Collins and his lifelong romantic partner, poet Robert Duncan, didn't have a memorable name or a specific program. But it was to San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s something of what the Bloomsbury group was to London in the first decades of the 20th century. The California crew was composed of exiles — not entirely refugees from the upper-middle professional class, as their British forebears were, but from the dull, often small-minded and oppressive American realities of the day. Like the Bloomsbury group, and not unlike the West Coast Beats with whom they overlapped, they were bohemians. Art for them was a self-created — and privileged — refuge. In true democratic style, anyone was welcome to join in, choosing the privilege for himself or herself, regardless of past social standing. The group did not produce a raft of major art, but overall the ethos is beguiling. At the Pasadena Museum of California Art, a thorough and impressive survey lays out the contours of their work. "An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan and Their Circle," organized by Michael Duncan (no relation to the poet) and Christopher Wagstaff for Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum, is completing a yearlong national tour. (Christopher Knight) (Ends Sun., Jan. 11) Read more

Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E Union St, Pasadena

Samurai: Japanese Armor

Samurai: Japanese Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection, the touring show comes from a private Dallas museum. In more than 140 objects of warrior regalia, it surveys often stunningly designed samurai suits of armor, face masks, swords, shin guards and breast plates, horse garments (including remarkable lacquered stirrups), helmets — even metal fans. (Christopher Knight) (Through Feb. 1) Read more

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

Untitled Group Sculpture Exhibition

The untitled group exhibition stands out as one of the best sculpture shows in recent memory. Making no big claims or overblown pronouncements, the nine-artist show demonstrates that unassuming idiosyncrasy is sculpture's strong suit (David Pagel) (Through Nov. 22) Read more

Marc Foxx Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

'This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate'

Naomi Klein has made a career critiquing the effects of global capital and consumerism. Her 2000 book "No Logo" looked at the exploitation of workers by large multinationals, including Nike; her follow-up, "The Shock Doctrine" (2007), examined the ways in which corporations benefit from disasters, wars and other upheavals, often with the assistance of policy initiatives. These books have led to the Canadian-born Klein being called "the most visible and influential figure on the American left." For Klein, the tensions between individual freedom, individual rights and the primacy of the political-corporate complex exist in something of a crisis state. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to climate change, the subject of her new book, "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate," which argues, in the starkest terms imaginable, that we as a culture have reached a tipping point. Read more

'Gabriel'

First, a few facts: Edward Hirsch's son, Gabriel, died on Aug. 27, 2011, at age 22. Hurricane Irene was making landfall in New York. The previous evening, he went to a party in New Jersey, where he took GHB (known in the vernacular as Grievous Bodily Harm). He had a seizure and went into cardiac arrest. It took Hirsch and his ex-wife four days to find out what had happened to their son. That is the back story, the bare-bones context for Hirsch's book-length poem "Gabriel," which is as raw, as relentless in its inconsolability, as anything I've read. But the real point here is that facts, that context, offer no comfort. What we most want — for things to work out differently — is what we cannot have. "I wish I could believe in the otherworld," Hirsch writes. "I wish I could believe in a place / Of reunions outside of memory." Read more

'Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage'

Haruki Murakami's "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" begins with a simple premise: A Tokyo railroad engineer, the Tsukuru Tazaki of the novel's title, finds himself borne back ceaselessly to the summer of his sophomore year in college, when, for no reason he can determine, he was cut off by his close-knit group of high school friends. The betrayal sent Tsukuru into a spiral. "It was as if," Murakami writes, "he were sleepwalking through life, as if he had already died but not yet noticed it." It's a condition that lingers into adulthood. There is a rawness, a vulnerability, to this situation, a sense that the surface of the world is thin. This is true even after Tsukuru reaches back across the years to make contact with his former friends. How do we connect, or reconnect, Murakami wants us to consider, not only to those around us, but also to the very essence of ourselves? Read more

'The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle'

Francisco Goldman's "The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle" is so sneakily brilliant, it's hard to put into words. Part travelogue, part memoir, part reportage on Mexican politics and the scourge of narcoterrorism, it is also, in the finest sense, a book that creates its own form. "I could use words as my compass to map the route I'd taken," Goldman tells us late in the first part of this journal-like accounting, "and give it a narrative order, a sequence of incident and meaning, and rescue it from being something other than just circumstantial and ephemeral. The stories one tells about oneself aren’t necessarily true, of course, but I wanted this one to be as true as I could make it. This didn’t mean that it all had to be factually true, but I decided that this story needed to be factually true too." Read more

'Ecstatic Cahoots' and 'Paper Lantern'

Stuart Dybek's stories occupy a territory somewhere between Vladimir Nabokov and Nelson Algren — beguiled by the play of language, but also gritty and specific, fundamentally urban at their core. And yet, to read him is to be reminded of the resonance of small moments, the connections that arise and dissipate with the passing power of a thought. "[T]he story might at first be no more than a scent," Dybek observes in "Fiction": "a measure of the time spent folded in a cedar drawer that's detectable on a silk camisole." What he's getting at is the power of inference, the longing implied, and inspired, by a gesture or a phrase. "Fiction" comes late in "Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories." It's a superlative collection and its appearance would be notable even if it weren't accompanied by a companion volume, "Paper Lantern: Love Stories," which has been published simultaneously. Read more

'My Struggle'

Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle” is the buzz book of the moment — or more accurately a certain kind of buzz book, for a certain kind of audience. It is also a provocation, sharing its title with one of the most notorious works of the 20th century (Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”) while seeking to break down everything we thought we knew about personal narrative. And yet, deep in the second book of this six-volume, 3,600-page autobiographical project, Knausgaard offers us an unexpected key. “A life is simple to understand,” he explains, “the elements that determine it are few. In mine there were two. My father and the fact that I had never belonged anywhere.” There you have it, “My Struggle” in a nutshell ... although how to get at this simplicity is something else again. Self-absorbed, expansive, constantly doubling back on itself, “My Struggle” is an attempt to make an epic of the banal facts of the author’s existence. This is what makes “My Struggle” so brilliant: the understanding that, in recalling, or re-creating, our history, we give it a meaning it would not otherwise possess. 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

'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

'The Vanishing of Ethan Carter'

“The Vanishing of Ethan Carter” is a ghost story. Or maybe it’s a game about the mind’s powerful ability to fool itself. In both execution and play, however, it’s a tale about what’s missing. It’s a search for a boy, one whose family appears to have a mysterious and murderous history, and it unravels with a patience and exploratory nature that will challenge players and test the narrative conventions of gaming. With traces of pulpish sci-fi and hints of hard-boiled noir, “The Vanishing of Ethan Carter” makes clever use of the interactive medium. There is no designated order to the game; its puzzles are random and need to be stumbled upon. Players are set free, dropped in a gorgeous, photorealistic world and told essentially nothing. Read more

'Sunset Overdrive'

The ridiculousness in “Sunset Overdrive” borders on anarchic. There are rules, like any game, but long before players discover a gun that fires a stuffed kitten — a plushy that’s used to send a robotic dog on a killing spree — “Sunset Overdrive” manages to excitedly toy with many of them. None of it should work. The look is cartoonishly crass (imagine a mash-up of every West Coast city, remade in the blunt architecture style of a rock festival), the music out of date (see the Warped Tour, circa 1995), the plot simple (humans consume too many energy drinks and turn into giant monsters) and the sociopolitical targets obvious (as for those sugary drink peddlers, yes, they’re probably insidious, but we learned that from Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”). There are also guns. Lots and lots of guns. Read more

'Fantasia: Music Evolved'

Walt Disney's 1940 film "Fantasia" opens with a series of bold, inventive proclamations. Audiences are welcomed to a "new form of entertainment," one in which the animation isn't afraid to veer toward the abstract and the music isn't concerned with what's on the charts. But as the British narrator early in the new "Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved" says, "Let's see how you handle something a little more contemporary." Words that sent a shiver down the spine of this stubborn "Fantasia" loyalist. Indeed, the first voice we hear in "Fantasia: Music Evolved," a just-released interactive interpretation of the experimental but venerable brand, is that of Lady Gaga. This is dangerous territory. Beethoven is timeless, but "Applause" is already dated, its glittery melodic tendrils firmly gripping 2013. Of course, those who own the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One are the target market here, not the millions of Americans priced out of symphony halls. Read more

'Alien: Isolation'

Though she's long considered one of the great cinematic heroes, Ellen Ripley has generally been a forgettable one when it comes to video games. Steely in her beliefs yet unafraid to show emotion and a friend to felines, the character made famous by Sigourney Weaver in the "Alien" films possesses as much thoughtfulness as action-star bullheadedness. It's a combustible cocktail of very human emotional traits that until recently were not easily translated into action video games. But is it any wonder the video game industry has struggled to turn "Alien," especially the 1979 sci-fi horror film of the same name from Ridley Scott, into a notable game? After all, it's a story in which firing a gun at the enemy, one that bleeds corrosive acid, is essentially suicide. So guns, the favored weapon for nearly all interactive heroes, are largely useless. "Alien: Isolation" is an attempt to strip things back, the video game equivalent of a venerable band returning to the basics. Read more

'Smarter Than You'

The very name of the game is like a glove slapped across the face. "Smarter Than You," released this week for Apple's mobile devices, is a taunt and a challenge. Bold words for a game that, on the surface, is essentially a virtual match of rock-paper-scissors. And yet "Smarter Than You," a free game with a minimalistic presentation that asks little of its players, manages to carve its way into a rather complex psychological head space. That's because it's partly a game about the little ways in which we casually lie — to strangers, friends and loved ones. So maybe, depending on your level of cynicism, "Smarter Than You" is also a game about the ways in which we communicate. "You don't have to tell the truth," the game tells us in its opening tutorial, spelling out what is already tacitly understood in any engagement of one-upsmanship. For what it's worth, "lie" may be too harsh a word. "Smarter Than You" is a game of bluffing, of tentatively revealing half-truths or nonsense to stay one step ahead of our sparring partners. Note: The ultra-competitive may need to be warned before playing with friends. Read more

'Destiny'

The opening moments of "Destiny" are mesmerizing. It's a Mars landing, complete with sparkling views of our galaxy and crystallized red space dust. It's a vision that looks lifted straight from photographs sent in by NASA's Curiosity rover. It's immediately inviting — optimistic, even. This is "present day" Mars, the game tells us, and considering that manned spaceflight isn't a top legislative priority anymore, watching an astronaut leave a footprint on the surface of Mars is a reminder that a venture into the unknown can be downright inspiring. Then out come the rifles. Read more

'80 Days'

This summer's "80 Days," based on the texts of Jules Verne and available for Apple's mobile devices, is a book that can be played. Or maybe it's more accurately described as a game that can be read. Regardless, the emphasis in "80 Days" is on the wonders of global exploration — and history, albeit with a twist of sci-fi. This combination has made "80 Days" a summer reading highlight. Or is that a summer gaming highlight? Created by small English studio Inkle, "80 Days" is a re-imagining of Verne's well-known "Around the World in Eighty Days," only here boats and rails are joined by all sorts of steampunk-inspired creations — mechanical horses, magnificent steel airships and practically magical bicycles — and prose is more important than any new railway. All of this serves to open up the world, the routes and the narrative options afforded to the player. Read more

'Hohokum'

There are times when even I feel embarrassed about my accruing games knowledge. It's the moment, for instance, when I'm reminded that the majority of my recent cultural references are more likely to be recognized by the children of co-workers than anyone in my actual peer group, or the realization that the 30 minutes I spent slicing fruit with a virtual ninja blade could have been spent with the new Jules Feiffer novel. Then along comes a game like "Hohokum," one that celebrates the sheer joy of play with an exquisite soundtrack and a dash of highbrow abstractness. There's no mission to complete or grand quest to conquer, as the end goal is the exploration. "Hohokum" could be called an art-house game, but it's too dastardly cute for niche status. Utilizing the bright, rounded and heartwarming work of artist Richard Hogg, "Hohokum" looks as if it belongs in a gallery — or at least in the outtakes from the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" film. Read more

'Road Not Taken'

Adulthood, and how it weighs on us, has been an obsession of late. It's at the core of Spry Fox's "Road Not Taken," a vexing puzzle game with magical overtones released this month for home computers and the PlayStation 4.The questions it raises linger long after a play session. The game has a message: You're not getting any younger. Or maybe it's saying you're running out of time. This is the emotional head space occupied by "Road Not Taken," a game where life is rough and the kittens are adorable. And thank heavens for the cats, furry little creatures that, in the words of "Road Not Taken," are "an adorable balm for this mortal coil." The story is simple and Grimm — play as a ranger who must rescue children trapped in a fantastical forest filled with dire wolves and tasty swine. But how it handles themes of aging is cause for reflection, as its characters are more meddlesome than deadly. Read more

'Revolution 60'

Giant Spacekat's "Revolution 60," released in late July for iPhones and iPads, is a pocket-sized game that dreams big, ambitiously attempting to marry a complex narrative and fully drawn characters with pick-up-and-play accessibility. That's not its only mission. Developed by a Boston-based team of four led by Giant Spacekat's head of development, Brianna Wu, the four female characters of "Revolution 60" also bring a little gender parity to video games, an entertainment medium in which the gruff male hero has long been the norm. But if it's no secret that the gun-driven mainstream game industry has over-emphasized testosterone, Wu says that during the three-year development period for "Revolution 60" she learned there may be some differences in the way men and women approach games. Read more

'Valiant Hearts: The Great War'

A tale of World War I, inspired partly by letters exchanged by soldiers and loved ones, "Valiant Hearts" is the rare video game in which military action evokes sympathy rather than aggression. Combat and the regrettable ways it touches the lives of a middle-aged farmer, a teenage student, a new father and an American widower make for the game's backdrop. The emotional torture of warfare is the game's center. Helping a bruised and battered soldier simply find a clean sock is treated as an act of heroism, and puzzles are fashioned out of the daily drudgery of a soldier's life on the supply-barren Western Front. "Valiant Hearts" can wring great drama from the task of helping a lonely heart snare a feather from a bird so he can write a letter to his daughter. No, you cannot shoot the bird, despite a decade and a half of video games that have told us the opposite. Read more

Barneys New York in Beverly Hills

Just in time for its 20th anniversary, celebrated on Oct. 15, Barneys New York in Beverly Hills has had a face-lift. The main floor, cosmetics floor and men's fifth floor have all been redesigned, and the store includes the first Freds restaurant on the West Coast, creating a new see-and-be-seen scene in Beverly Hills, complete with terrace tables with views of the Hollywood sign. Shoppers will notice the changes immediately. The store's curving Regency-style staircase remains the centerpiece, except now that curving motif is being carried throughout the design of the store and its fixtures, which have a soft but modern style that might be described as organic minimalism. Read more

Barneys Beverly Hills, 9570 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

'Hollywood Costume'

The new "Hollywood Costume" exhibition at the May Co. building — future home of the Academy Museum of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, opening in 2017 — is on view through March 2 and features more than 150 costumes from the golden era to the present, including pieces from "American Hustle," "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "The Great Gatsby," and the most famous shoes of all time, Dorothy's ruby-red slippers. The expansive show includes a soaring soundtrack composed especially for it by Julian Scott, and multimedia displays highlighting how costume designers work with directors and actors. Read more

The Wilshire May Company Building, 6067 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles

Elyse Walker's Online Boutique

For 15 years, Elyse Walker's Pacific Palisades boutique has been the destination for high-end designer fashion in a neighborhood where residents would rather cross the Gobi Desert than the 405. But it's what Walker has been doing outside the store, using technology to create an omni-channel experience, that's taking the tradition of the plugged-in L.A. retailer-to-the-stars into the future. Walker can sell a pair of $2,300 Saint Laurent boots without ever having to put them on the floor, just by sending a text message to a well-heeled client. She can blow out $4,600 Stella McCartney lace jumpsuits before they've even been unpacked from the box by posting a runway photo to her Instagram account with the hashtag #Everydayisarunway. Launched two years ago, her e-commerce site, ForwardByElyseWalker.com, is poised to hit $100 million in sales this year. Read more

Elyse Walker, 15306 Antioch St, Pacific Palisades

New York Fashion Week: Michael Kors

If there is one phrase that sums up the spring season at New York Fashion Week, Michael Kors has it: optimistic chic. His collection brought many of the week's trends together, including 1950s-inspired circle skirts and crop tops: garden florals and embroideries; natural hues; gingham checks; spare, simple accessories and shoes made for walking. Read more

The Emmys: The Best of the Red Carpet Looks

The Emmys' red carpet was one of the best displays of fashion and style in recent Hollywood history. The looks were modern and not overwhelming. These women wore the clothes; the clothes didn't wear them. Red was the hot color and the best red dresses had unusual details -- whimsical red crystal butterflies at the neckline of Claire Danes' Givenchy stunner, for example, and sexy burgundy patent leather strap details on Julia Louis-Dreyfus' raspberry red Carolina Herrera gown. Read more

Kendall Conrad

Accessories designer Kendall Conrad's face brightens on a recent morning in her sun-filled Abbot Kinney boutique as she flips through pages of playful owl sketches, images of black-and-white ceramic vessels with Minotaur faces and the color blue, Picasso blue. She's turned to the books "Picasso: The Mediterranean Years" and "Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953" to explain the arty inspiration for her spring Vallauris collection, which may be her best yet. Read more

Kendall Conrad, 1121 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Bldg. 3, Venice

Figue

This summer, the Abbot Kinney shopping scene is becoming even more boho-chic. Figue, the New York-based gypset-lifestyle collection founded in 2012 by fashion vet Stephanie von Watzdorf, has opened a pop-up shop on the famed retail stretch in Venice. The store features the spring/summer collection, including folkloric beaded tuxedo shirts, ikat-print tunic dresses and fringed bags, as well as limited-edition accessories sourced from the designer's travels, such as hand-embroidered kaftans and one-of-a-kind, hand-embellished military jackets. Von Watzdorf designed the 1,300-square-foot space herself, with Moorish arches, filigree lanterns, a hammock and Berber blankets that make you want to stay a while. Read more

Figue, 1301 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice

Mary-Kate, Ashley Olsen open first flagship for the Row

Marc Jacobs, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, meet the Row. Taking its rightful place on Melrose Place, one of L.A.'s toniest shopping streets, is the new American luxury brand created just eight years ago by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. The opening of the first retail store for the Row is a homecoming for the 27-year-old twin sisters, who were born in Sherman Oaks and made their fortune in Hollywood, starting at the age of 9 months, when they shared the role of Michelle Tanner on the TV series "Full House." Read more

The Row, 8440 Melrose Place, L.A. 90069

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

Desert Hills Premium Outlets, 48400 Seminole Drive, Cabazon

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

366 N. Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills

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