Los Angeles
A Better LifeTuesday, 26 July 2011
A Better Life is Bicycle Thieves remodelled for modern LA. Vittorio De Sica’s iconic 1948 film about an Italian father and son living over a precipice of poverty sadly requires adjustment only in its details, the theft of a bicycle the father needs... Read more... |
Horrible BossesThursday, 21 July 2011
Wage-slave purgatory in three different flavours is the subject of Seth Gordon's comedy, as his trio of downtrodden leads decide that the only way to break free from remorseless professional abuse is by murdering their respective bosses. George... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Los Angeles: The Film Festival Without StarsSunday, 03 July 2011
In its second year under creative director David Ansen and in its new home at the LA Live complex, the Los Angeles Film Festival seems to have recovered from the slightly rocky start of its downtown debut last year. While one or two of the... Read more... |
CD: Stevie Nicks - In Your DreamsTuesday, 21 June 2011
It's been a decade since Stevie Nicks's last album of new songs, Trouble in Shangri-La, but In Your Dreams proves that there's creative life in the old girl yet. Fans of the wispy tunestrel will be pleased to hear that she hasn't strayed far from... Read more... |
Long-overdue recognition for Motown’s West Coast subsidiary MowestTuesday, 21 June 2011
The Motown label will forever be identified with its Detroit birthplace, even though it had a Los Angeles office in the Sixties. The shift west was completed in 1972 when founder Berry Gordy Jr moved the whole concern to California. Before that... Read more... |
DVD: Kiss Me DeadlyFriday, 10 June 2011
AI Bezzerides, who scripted Kiss Me Deadly (1955) for director Robert Aldrich, thought Mickey Spillane’s pulp novel was trash. Spillane, offended that Bezzerides changed so much, couldn’t understand why the film became a cult favorite in France; one... Read more... |
CD: Vetiver - The Errant CharmFriday, 10 June 2011
Early on, Vetiver were apparently a freak folk band. Associations and collaborations with Joanna Newsom and Devandra Banhardt helped that tag stick. But constraints don’t concern Vetiver main man Andy Cabac. Fifth album The Errant Charm is... Read more... |
Rigoletto, Grange Park OperaFriday, 03 June 2011
They say that old sins cast long shadows, but these are nothing compared to the shadows cast by old productions. To set Verdi’s Rigoletto in 1950s America inevitably courts comparison with that operatic patriarch, Jonathan Miller’s New York Mafia... Read more... |
CD: TV on the Radio - Nine Types of LightMonday, 04 April 2011
Brooklyn band TV on the Radio have been critical favourites since they first appeared almost a decade ago. Always an intriguing proposition, they also seemed from their inception to be shrewdly aware of their musical Catholicism, as if they'd... Read more... |
Passenger SideFriday, 01 April 2011
Matthew Bissonnette’s third feature Passenger Side is a mellow, honey-hued road movie which sees two discordant brothers combing the streets of Los Angeles with an initially mysterious purpose. A likeable diversion, for the most part it’s a nicely... Read more... |
DVD: The Kids Are All RightMonday, 21 March 2011
Hailed by swarms of critics for its wit, warmth, compassion and daring challenge to conventional notions of gender and matrimony, Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right strikes your correspondent as an exhaustingly solipsistic exercise in... Read more... |
The Lincoln LawyerThursday, 17 March 2011
Former Los Angeles Times crime reporter Michael Connelly struck gold with his books about LAPD detective Harry Bosch, before pulling a deft gear-change with the creation of criminal defence attorney Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer. The movie... Read more... |
