Los Angeles
Kieron Tyler
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, all women were dressed by Frederick's of Hollywood and all men were a cross between David Lee Roth and Jon Bon Jovi. The Eighties-set Rock of Ages is so outlandish, it might as well be set on another planet. Instead, the all-singing, all-dancing action centres on a bar along LA’s Sunset Boulevard.There’s no doubt that Rock of Ages is absurd, but that hasn’t stopped it being reconfigured for a film that’s in production now. The high-octane cast includes Alec Baldwin, Mary J Blige, Tom Cruise, Paul Giamatti and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Its Broadway run Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Irene (Carey Mulligan) realises just how much the Driver (Ryan Gosling) loves her as his boot caves in a man’s face on the floor of her apartment building lift. They have just kissed for the first time, and she tumbles from him, shaken and repelled. But she can’t stay away, and neither can he, in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cannes prize-winning tragic action romance.As its nameless hero, Gosling doesn’t speak for Drive’s first 10 minutes, and is so still in one early scene he looks plastic, only a flick of a finger confirming he breathes, let alone sweats. We see him move smoothly between three Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A time-tested formula gets tantalisingly tweaked in Friends with Benefits, in which Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis attempt to confine their relationship to the purely sexual without the ick factor of emotions getting in the way. Here's a Hollywood film confident enough to poke fun at Hollywood conventions - take that, Katherine Heigl! Kunis lets cry at one point - while following a not hugely dissimilar path. The difference is that this one benefits from actually being sparky and entertaining. Can you imagine that?In fact, it's not hard to guess at the good will generated by the two leads, Read more ...
theartsdesk
It’s not the first time we have showcased the work of Will Robson-Scott. Nearly two years ago we published a set of images from Crack & Shine, a portfolio which documented the nocturnal habits of a set of London street artists. Crack & Shine International takes the story beyond the UK to watch artists at work in other centres of street art culture - New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam. A photographer who specialises in shooting street artists at work, Robson-Scott incurs many of the same risks as his subjects. Unlike them, his work is in no danger of being erased or Read more ...
Nick Hasted
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 to seek work here updated to a stolen truck. Director Chris Weitz has parlayed the success of his vampire franchise hit Twilight: New Moon into this virtual remake set in Latino LA, the often illegally present half of the city’s population its wealth depends on. Their status in Hollywood is shown by the endless movies dismissing them as Manuel- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
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 Cukor this ain't - in fact, Gordon has succeeded in making Carry On up the Khyber look like a revered art-house masterpiece - but as long as you leave your brain in "Park", there are just enough laughs to drag you to the closing credits.Jason Bateman plays Nick, a dogged corporate yes man at Comnidine Industries who deludes himself that his boss VP Read more ...
sarvenaz.sheybany
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 several hundred volunteers still seemed to be in it for the free T-shirt, most were clearly film enthusiasts themselves, eager to swap tips with patrons about screenings and potential sleeper hits.The primary venue itself, the luxurious Regal theatre complex in downtown Los Angeles, remains an odd choice for this sort of arts event. Its location in an Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
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 her familiar stomping grounds of melodious folk-rockism and tales of love and yearning, the focus (in fine Seventies style) fixing on the singer's emotional trials and torments. The voice that sang "Rhiannon" remains suitably ghostly, and even with an overlay of mild croakiness, it sounds pretty good for a 63-year-old.The disc is crammed with a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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 though, in 1971, Gordy had launched subsidiary imprint Mowest to ostensibly showcase Los Angeles acts and as a test run for the California move. This gold-chip compilation shows Mowest is worth remembering. Motown's Mowest Story 1971-1973: Our Lives are Shaped by What we Love is the first comp to dig into this all but lost imprint. It’s terrific.Mowest Read more ...
Graham Fuller
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 of its admirers was François Truffaut, who tracked down Bezzerides and congratulated him in a phonecall. Depicting the search of the bedroom peeper Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) for “the Great Whatsit” - narcotics in the book, a box of fissionable material on screen - Aldrich’s film is a Cold War masterpiece that deconstructed Spillane’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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 accessible and none too freaky. Although introspective and tinged with psychedelia, this is old-school West Coast pop.The Errant Charm is very tasteful. Shimmeringly produced, there’s a gloss that’s hard to get past. Cabac’s voice is softly resigned, close miked and often set back into the mix. The smoothness of The Errant Charm’s surface means that as it Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
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 reworking. That the setting here in Daniel Slater’s revived Grange Park production should be explicitly LA, his Mafiosi transformed into corrupt LAPD cops, should make more difference than it actually does. The result, however, looks and feels remarkably similar, struggling – unfairly – to claim its own turf and escape comparison.Grange Park has a Read more ...