The rambling metropolis of
Los Angeles sprawls across the thousand square miles of a
great desert basin, knitted together by an intricate
network of congested freeways between the ocean and the
snowcapped mountains. Its colorful melange of shopping
malls, palm trees and swimming pools is both mildly
surreal and startlingly familiar, thanks to the celluloid
self-image that it has spread all over the world.
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LA is a young city; in
the mid-19th century, it was a community of white American
immigrants, poor Chinese laborers and wealthy Mexican
ranchers, with a population of less than 50,000. Only on
completion of the transcontinental railroad in the 1880s
did it really begin to grow, as a national mecca for good
health, clean living, plentiful sunshine and endless acres
of citrus crops. The biggest group of transplants were
refugees from the Midwest, who created a new political
ruling class to replace the old Mexican elite. The old
ranchos were soon subdivided, the population grew rapidly,
and the enduring symbol of the city became the
family-sized suburban house (with swimming pool and
two-car garage). The biggest boom came after World War II
with the mushrooming of the aeronautics industry.
The first-time visitor
may well find Los Angeles thrilling and threatening in
equal proportions; it's a place that picks you up and
sweeps you along whether you want it to or not. While it
has its fine-art museums, California cuisine and a few
old-fashioned urban plazas, what people really come here
for is to experience the city that has come to epitomize
the American Dream the fantasy worlds of Disneyland and
Hollywood, as well as the gilded opulence of Beverly Hills
and Malibu.
With
only limited space between the desert, the mountains and
the ocean, LA has long since filled in the gaps between
what were once small and isolated towns. As a result,
it's a massive conglomeration of interconnected,
amorphous districts, often with little in common.
Los Angeles has had numerous Real Estate opportunities
over the years, with a high influx of population driven
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If LA has a heart,
however, it's downtown, in the center of the basin. It
offers a taste of almost everything you'll find
elsewhere around the city, from upscale avant-garde art
along Bunker Hill to the abject dereliction of Skid Row
in the Eastside, compressed into an area of small,
easily walkable blocks. The area around downtown
contains some decaying Victorian suburbs, 1920s Art Deco
buildings and the center of LA's enormous and growing
Hispanic population.
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Heading west from
downtown to the coast, the first major district you come
to, Hollywood, has streets caked with movie legend --
even if the genuine glamor is long gone. Adjoining West
LA is home to the city's newest money, shown off in
Beverly Hills and along the Sunset Strip. Santa Monica
and Venice to the west are the quintessential seafront
LA of palm trees, white sands and laid-back living,
while the coastline itself stretches another 20 miles
northwest to glamorous Malibu, home to the movieland
elite.
Suburban Orange County,
to the southeast, holds little of interest apart from
Disneyland and a handful of laid-back beach towns. On
the far side of the northern hills lie the San Gabriel
and San Fernando valleys, or simply "the Valley."
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Los Angeles News:4 Jul 2009 at 12:00am
Headlines from Los Angeles Times
•
'Cranford' actress stars in 'Masterpiece Mystery!'
Just as the James Bond franchise freshened its image three years ago with actor Daniel Craig, the popular "Masterpiece Mystery!" series "Miss Marple" is breathing new life into Agatha Christie's inquisitive spinster-turned-amateur-detective Sunday with the first of four new thrillers starring the diminutive Julia McKenzie. The 68-year-old has taken over the reins from Geraldine McEwan, who retired as Jane Marple after three seasons.
Los Angeles News:3 Jul 2009 at 12:00am
Headlines from calendarlive.com
• One of the seminal filmmakers of the French New Wave, Varda stood with Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais.
There is a street in the Pointe Courte neighborhood of Sète, a seaside village in Southern France, that is named for Agnès Varda, the French filmmaker who lived there in the '40s with her mother, brothers and sisters in a sailboat anchored to the quay while her father was off at war.
A funny thing happens during the ostensibly fizzy French import "The Girl From Monaco": It stops being funny. And fizzy. But that's not such a bad thing since, once this lightweight romantic farce seems to realize it has nowhere particularly unique to go, it digs deeper and turns into a more darkly interesting morality tale. Director Anne Fontaine ("How I Killed My Father") smoothly manages this unforeseen tonal shift, even if her script (co-written with Benoît Graffin) doesn't lay the most thorough groundwork for the film's eventual destination.
• This documentary is an exemplary look at the African superstar's life and the fallout over his album 'Egypt.'
Art that spans global divides often relies either on the loveliness of gauzy universals or the shock of gritty minutiae. Chronicling a tumultuous period in the career of an urbane internationalist, the African music superstar Youssou N'Dour, filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi tries to split the difference between these approaches in her documentary "Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love."
• 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding's' Nia Vardalos and John Corbett are awkward in their second pairing. Vardalos' directorial debut hampers the cliched romantic comedy.
The title implies a cheeky slap at sentiment, but "I Hate Valentine's Day" comes from Nia Vardalos, the plucky writer and star of the highest-grossing romantic comedy in film history, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Nobody should be too concerned that cornball lovey-doveyness is in for a trip to the woodshed.
Los Angeles News:1 Jul 2009 at 12:00am
Headlines from Los Angeles Times
•
The rustic Valley Village cafe serves up an array of multinational ethnic specialties in a relaxed, convivial setting.
Russian Dacha is walled off to the world, concealed behind a picket fence erected to quiet the crush of cars along Laurel Canyon Boulevard. It doesn't create a sense of isolation but, rather, one of solitude -- the restaurant is an hommage to the dacha , a class of sprawling estates in Russia's exurban forests that capture a kind of lost country living. And behind its fence, Dacha ably honors that tradition of leisure and ease.
Be prepared for big portions, big crowds and big noise at this Italian restaurant in the Brockman Building. It looks ritzy but is reasonably priced.
Passersby stand and stare at the spectacle inside the palatial Brockman Building at the corner of 7th and Grand. Floor-to-ceiling windows put the whole shebang that is Bottega Louie on full display: gray-veined marble floors, imposing pillars and a ceiling high enough that Cirque du Soleil trapeze artists could do their thing. Some of the more decorative touches look like a collaboration between Louis XV (Louie?)and Gianni Versace.
The brasserie cuts quite a Gallic figure along Culver City's restaurant row. Nothing fancy, just good, solid French cooking.
Get ready for a French invasion this summer. Of the many bistros and brasseries slated to open in the coming months, Le Saint Amour in Culver City leads the charge. Owners Florence and Bruno Herve-Commereuc used to have that adorable little Angelique Café in the Fashion District downtown where you could pop in (provided the parking gods were with you) at lunch for some house-made charcuterie and a salad, followed by a slice of tart and coffee. Very civilized. (They sold the café in 2006.)
At Long Beach 'shack,' the Southern-fried seafood is finger-licking good.
You might call Louisiana Best Seafood a seafood shack in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, but some of the local kids have a different term for it. "Welcome to the hood," say some kids out front. "How you like your hood fish?" The term "hood fish" is, apparently, in some urban circles, as common as "crab shack" or "seafood shack" is in the Northeast.
Govind Armstrong serves up wild boar burgers, designer cocktails and short rib grilled cheese sandwiches.
Kids who grew up on fast-food hamburgers probably can't remember the slow food variety -- ordering at the drugstore lunch counter or at a booth, your feet dangling while you read a comic or a library book and then, finally, savoring a hefty burger piled with classic fixings -- which, by the way, did not include caramelized onions or blue cheese, or chipotle mayonnaise.
