Archive for May, 2010
Lieutenant Governor of Paper Clips
On a recent afternoon in West Hollywood, at a candidates’ forum in a half-filled conference room at the Pacific Design Center, Janice Hahn, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor and one of the most perky members of the Escorts in Los Angeles City Council, faced what for her was a r…
Sticky Situation at the Tar Pits
With apologies to Raymond Chandler, L.A.’s most compelling murder mystery might be the Page Museum’s 9,000-year-old remains known as “La Brea Woman.” Pulled out of the gooey tar almost a century ago, the oldest known Californian is considered by many to have been a homicide victi…
Proposition 14, the Open Primary
State Democratic and Republican leaders were undoubtedly disturbed and annoyed last week, but it had nothing to do with California’s $20 billion budget deficit. Instead, the politicians faced a different kind of bad news: On Tuesday, June 8, voters of every ideological stripe &md…
Regard From Cannes
Midway through the 63rd Cannes Film Festival it was clear that the action this year (even more than in the past) was to be found in the main event’s less prestigious shadow, the section with the untranslatable moniker, “Un Certain Regard.”
The main competition was largely…
Breathless: The Dying Animal
While critics at Cannes break their heads trying to parse Jean-Luc Godard’s latest enigma, Film socialisme (not to mention the 80-year-old filmmaker’s ostentatious no-show for a press conference on the Croisette), Godard’s first feature returns to remind us that this inc…
Paul Abramson: The Sexpert
Maybe you are a Catholic priest who strung young boys up on a cross, naked except for a loincloth. Or maybe you are Michael Jackson, accused of molesting a 13-year-old. Or maybe you are a policewoman who let her boyfriend repeatedly rape her 6-year-old daughter. If you are caught…
Hadrian Belove: Pathologically Idiosyncratic Programming
In the lobby of the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax, a set of stairs leads to the hidden headquarters of Cinefamily, the outfit that has programmed and managed the theater for the past three years. Upstairs, two walls are lined with dry-erase boards bearing non sequitur lists, th…
Ivy Bottini: The Beauty of Seeking Justice
Ivy Bottini, the 83-year-old gay-rights activist who’s been fighting social injustice for five decades, has lately found herself in a “floral phase.” Dressed in blue jeans, sneakers and a white “I [heart] WeHo Dykes” T-shirt, she sits next to an easel in her sunlit studio jammed …
Mark Bradford: Hometown Hero
An artist commonly regarded in the contemporary-art circuit as being as smart, pleasant and talented as he is tall, Mark Bradford got a late start given the art world’s preoccupation with youth. Born in 1961, he attended CalArts, where he completed both his BFA and MFA, in his 30…
Mark Casanova: The Rescuer
Mark Casanova, parent, tells a harrowing story about one of his sons. In late 2001, 23-year-old Daniel Casanova traveled to Bangladesh, where he and two friends built a traditional sailboat, then set a course for Australia. The vessel began to sink off the coast of Burma. Help di…