About a decade ago I was tipped off to an odd, inscrutable film by a budding English director living in LA. Christopher Nolan's Memento, which starred Guy Pearce in an ill-fitting pale suit and bleached hair, knocked me out, and I spent an afternoon talking about movies, memory and fragmented narrative with the 30-year old director at his apartment near the LACMA while he played Radiohead's Kid A … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2010
Villainous New Role for Ian McShane
IT was a real blast to meet Ian McShane recently to talk about his acting career, growing up in Manchester the son of a Man U player, and his new role as a scheming 12th century bishop on the miniseries "The Pillars of the Earth." Here is my interview for the LA Times.Pillars does not compare to Deadwood, the program from which McShane is best known to Americans for his foul-mouthed saloon-keeper … [Read more...]
She & Him vs. The Swell Season at the Hollywood Bowl
Because seasonal change tends to be pretty subtle in Southern California, summer doesn't officially begin for me until the first show at the Hollywood Bowl. Last night's performance was dedicated to retro-minded guy-girl duos: The Bird and the Bee, She & Him, and the Swell Season. The evening, at the end of what was by far the hottest weekend of the year, was very fine without being especially … [Read more...]
The Wide World of David Mitchell
If there's a more inventive, most linguistically alive mid-career writer than David Mitchell, I've not read him. Best known as the author of the century-jumping, continent-hopping cult novel Cloud Atlas, he'll be appearing at Skylight Books on July 23 to read from his new novel, set mostly in the late 18th c., The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I was able to speak to the English-born, … [Read more...]
California Vs. The Great Plains
The writer and urbanist Joel Kotkin has a fascinating piece in a recent Newsweek called "The Great Great Plains," which looks at the way cities like Fargo and Bismarck -- as well as most of Texas -- are booming while much of the rest of the country languishes in a dead economy.It got us here at the Misread City wondering: What are Omaha and Dallas doing right that Los Angeles and other West Coast … [Read more...]
Ozu’s Films vs. Adrian Tomine
It's one of the best and most natural aesthetic marriages imaginable: The nuanced, meditative Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu and the nuanced, meditative comics Adrian Tomine, best known for the Optic Nerve series.Tomine has designed some covers for Ozu's lesser known films, The Only Son and There Was a Father. Here is more info on the films, which the Criterion Collection will release next week. … [Read more...]
Slake Tells LA’s Stories
PORN, celebrity, poetry and sharp graphic design: It’s got a little of everything, just like the city it chronicles. I’D heard enough good things about the new LA-centric quarterly, Slake, to have high hopes for it. But so far, to my initial assessment, Slake – a publication of fiction, art, photography and journalism -- has exceeded he high expectations I had for it.Part of the reason for my high … [Read more...]