AltWeeklies Wire
'Avatar': On Top of a Distant Worldnew
As we sit in the darkened cinema (or, increasingly, in our living rooms), so much of what is clearly meant to dazzle us feels like a demonstration more than an application, an elaborate demo reel in search of meaning and purpose. James Cameron returns to bridge the gap.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
12-18-2009 |
Reviews
LAPD Audit: New Chief Releases a Report Showing Broad Mismanagementnew
The city may not be as safe as the 1950s like Bill Bratton often boasted, but apparently the bookkeeping by the Los Angeles Police Department is “stuck” in that decade, and a new and embarrassing audit is roiling City Hall—by explaining how bad things really are.
L.A. Weekly |
Patrick Range McDonald and Christine Pelisek |
12-18-2009 |
Economy
The New Gay Romance, By and For Straight Womennew
One evening, a small crowd gathers at the Hustler Hollywood store on Sunset Boulevard for a reading of James Buchanan’s new romance novel, Personal Demons. In the book, a gay FBI agent is about to make love to his boyfriend, an LAPD officer.
L.A. Weekly |
Gendy Alimurung |
12-18-2009 |
Books
Will Actor and Country Has-been Jeff Bridges Finally Snag the Elusive Oscar?new
Jeff Bridges is a physical presence who leads with his body in a way that often obscures the intelligence he lends his characters — a gallery of American manhood in all its compromised, destroyed or hopeful ambiguity.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
12-11-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Brentwood's Toxic Grave: Historic Dumping Grounds Finally Get Testednew
After years of promises to complete tests and determine what is really buried there, indications show that the historic Veteran's Administration property has not been well monitored. A disturbing collection of abandoned soldiers’ tombstones have sat for months.
L.A. Weekly |
Michael Collins |
12-11-2009 |
Environment
Eastwood on the Pitch: At 79, Clint tackles Mandela in 'Invictus'new
It’s the 24th day of filming on Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, the 30th film he has directed in a career that now spans more than a half-century — and, as usual on an Eastwood set, if you didn’t know they were shooting a major Hollywood movie here, you’d be none the wiser.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
12-11-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
'Frog' of the South: Disney's Song and Dance About a Black Princess Croaksnew
Six decades after unleashing persistent NAACP bugaboo Song of the South, and two after firmly suppressing it, that peculiar cultural institution known as the Walt Disney Company has made a symbolic reparation by creating its first African-American princess -- and plunking her down in the middle of Jim Crow–era Louisiana!
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
11-30-2009 |
Reviews
L.A.'s Medical-Weed Warsnew
Today Los Angeles stands as the nation's pot capital, a mecca for buying and selling the drug under the guise of the medicinal use initiative California voters approved 13 years ago. The conditions are testament to a breakdown in basic governance unseen in any other major California city.
L.A. Weekly |
Patrick Range McDonald and Christine Pelisek |
11-30-2009 |
Drugs
What's Wrong With Wes Anderson?new
A decade after Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Generation Y's anointed auteur tries for a comeback with Fantastic Mr. Fox.
L.A. Weekly |
Joe Donnelly |
11-20-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson
'Precious': The Sad Education of Precious Jonesnew
Hothouse melodrama one moment, kitchen-sink (and frying-pan-to-the-head) realism the next, with eruptions of incongruous slapstick throughout, this may be Lee Daniels' stab at finding a cinematic analog for the novel's inventive, naïf-art language -- a film style, like Precious' writing, seemingly being made up as it goes along.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
11-09-2009 |
Reviews
Tags: Precious, Lee Daniels
Chaos in the Casitas: Lawless Speakeasies Get a Grip on L.A.new
The casitas operate in what appear to be shuttered, recession-emptied storefronts or hollowed-out homes. But inside, patrons can get almost anything they want, in a one-stop shop: drugs, gambling, heisted cigarettes, after-hours booze and "B-girls" -- slang for "bar" girls, or prostitutes, who charge about $60 for sex.
L.A. Weekly |
Christine Pelisek |
11-09-2009 |
Crime & Justice
Dead Sexy: 'Girls and Corpses,' a Magazinenew
Girls and Corpses began online before also going to print, parodying Maxim, Cosmopolitan and other sexed-up lifestyle magazines. Instead of a pretty girl posing suggestively with a bottle of shampoo, you'll see her nuzzling a remarkably authentic fake corpse. It's transfixing. You don't know what to look at first, or whether to laugh or cry or vomit.
L.A. Weekly |
Gendy Alimurung |
10-30-2009 |
Media
All Sides In L.A.'s Pot Wars Agree: City Hall is Incompetentnew
The disparate groups in the pot debate agree on one thing: Los Angeles City Hall has been almost comically inept at complying with simple state deadlines for municipalities to create rules for medicinal marijuana.
L.A. Weekly |
Patrick Range McDonald and Jill Stewart |
10-23-2009 |
Drugs
Sebastian Silva Takes a Searing Look Inside the World of 'The Maid'new
Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but for the title character of the pitch-black Chilean comedy The Maid, it's closer to infernal torment.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
10-23-2009 |
Reviews
The Assassination of Deputy Abel Escalantenew
A young father had nothing to do with LAPD's killing of Danny Leon last year. The 27-year-old officer most likely heard about it on the news, like everyone else. But, federal prosecutors believe, Escalante died for it.
L.A. Weekly |
Christine Pelisek |
10-16-2009 |
Crime & Justice
