Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010
Dennis Hopper and I only briefly shared a table one morning at a film festival four years ago, but we hadn’t talked more than five minutes before he alluded to the death of James Dean. Hopper’s brief friendship with his co-star and mentor on the sets of Rebel Without a Cause<…
The Crazy World of Ariel Pink
Ariel Pink is hot on the trail of something. He’s got his hands buried in his pockets and his shoulders maintain a permanent slouch, but he’s circling the room at a manic pace, sniffing at the air like a hound dog that’s caught the scent of a fox. He pauses by a tall bookshelf.</…
Schoenberg and Zappa in Shangri-La
Scanning the schedule of this year’s Ojai Festival, one sees a typically atypical medley of vanguardish works in classical, contemporary classical and new music. The venerable festival’s lithely bendable (but unbowing) aesthetic owes to the continued inspired vision of Artistic D…
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…