IT was one of those places that seemed like it would be there forever. But the Laemmle Sunset 5 -- which always seemed to me the key indie cinema in Los Angeles -- closed last month, largely because of competition from other theaters.The good news -- or some variation of that -- is that Sundance Cinemas will renovate and reopen the space, and the Laemmle family just opened a seven-screen arthouse … [Read more...]
Archives for 2011
2011 in Music
IT'S always a bit daunting to have to sum up an entire year's musical output -- even the best of it -- so I'm not gonna try to do that. But I'd like to mention a few unexpected highlights. First, I'm a surprised as anybody that Chapel Hill's '90s heroes, Archer of Loaf, reunited and managed to fill the Troubadour for not one but two nights. Those guys have not lost a bit of energy from the days … [Read more...]
Death of the Clerk
TODAY I've got a new story from my Salon series on the demise of the creative class. It looks at the humble store clerk and asks, What does it means that these people -- and the places they work, like Rocket Video, Tower Records, Dutton's Brentwood Books, and so on -- are disappearing?I spoke to a video store clerk, writers Jonathan Lethem and Dana Gioia, an MIT research scientist and others.Here … [Read more...]
Introducing the Best Burger Poll
THE LA Weekly has just announced a sure-to-be-controversial top-10 burgers list. Over here at the Misread City, we can occasionally lift our noses out of Faulkner (you'll see that one next week) and foreign film (next week also) to consume quantities of ground beef and carmelized onions. To inaugurate the poll, here is a short ode to the burger written by Wendy Fonarow, a UCLA-trained … [Read more...]
Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.
SOMETIMES even when you know something's coming, it knocks the wind out of you when it arrives. That's the way I felt this morning when I opened the paper and saw that Hitchens had succumbed to cancer that virtually every reader knew he had. (Here is the New York Times obit.)I've spent the last few mornings reading an essay or two in his latest collection, Arguably. I don't always, or even often, … [Read more...]
Author Chuck Palahniuk
ODDLY, it was a very pleasant evening the night I met with Chuck Palahniuk in Portland a few years back to discuss his then-new novel, Snuff, over dinner. (The book is not as appetizing.)The Fight Club author has a new novel, Damned. And HERE is my conversation with him.Here's part of my profile:Palahniuk's method is to sniff out such subjects, then pounce. "Things that last in the culture tend to … [Read more...]
The Classical Violin and Heavy Metal
RACHEL Barton Pine walks both sides of the fence -- a classical violinist who plays a 1740s instrument but also rocks out to Black Sabbath and Guns N Roses. I get into her wide range of musical passions in the latest of my Influences column in the Los Angeles Times.The violinist, by the way, plays this Sunday at one of the most amazing places I've ever seen chamber music -- UCLA's Clark Library in … [Read more...]
The Making of The Artist
SOMETIMES it takes the French to appreciate the best aspects of American culture. Whether it's jazz, detective novels or the films of Howard Hawks, the Gauls have often seen something in our own art that we've overlooked.The silent, black and white movie The Artist is the latest example. It's an homage to American cinema of the '20s and early '30s. I wrote an extensive feature HERE for the … [Read more...]
The Roots of Preservation Hall
THE latest installment for my Influences column is Ben Jaffe, son of the founders of Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans institution's current leader. (My story is here.)Jaffe, who marched in carnival parades as a 9-year-old and later attended Oberlin College, described classic Crescent City figures -- Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong -- as well as some lesser known musicians and a … [Read more...]
Kenny Burrell and The Future of Jazz
LAST week I wrote a story about the jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, who celebrates his 80th birthday with a concert at Royce Hall on Saturday. In the course of it, I corresponded with music historian Ted Gioia about Burrell and some related issues concerning the past and future of the art form.I've included here our exchange. Gioia's The History of Jazz, on Oxford University Press, was recently … [Read more...]