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Media

Imlay Name Goes Hollywood in Battle:LA

Names and Faces

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but friends report that Battle:LA features a character named USMC Corporal Lee Imlay. (They also take great joy in telling me he’s a motor-mouth who gets blown to smithereens by aliens.)
Apparently, there’s also a newly released video game based on the movie in which players can take on the [...]

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Megastorm Watch 2011 and Beyond!

Local television news anchors and their producers must be salivating. Scientists are warning that the Mother of All Storm Seasons may soon be headed our way.
No, it’s not due to global cooling, global warming or climate change (whichever term is in vogue nowadays). Rather, like our region’s major earthquakes, such megastorms are natural phenomena that [...]

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RIP: John J. Ward, Bishop

Names and Faces

Sadly, this morning’s Los Angeles Times carried the obituary of John J. Ward, an archdiocesan auxiliary bishop and veteran of Vatican II.
Bishop Ward confirmed me. During my several years at St. John’s Seminary, I had the privilege of meeting and interacting with him on numerous occasions. “Modern Catholics” often took issue with his conservative ways, [...]

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Get Ready to Pay Through the Nose for Dumping Your “Illegal” Trash

Life in Angel City

Fines for dumping illegal garbage in Los Angeles have skyrocketed drastically, thanks to a new city ordinance. Yet, strangely, officials waited weeks to launch their public awareness campaign for the new regulations, which actually took effect last month.
Aimed primarily at businesses, the law allows trashy offenders to be charged “administrative” fines of $500, $750 and [...]

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Hollywood’s Legendary Bronson Caves Are Just a Stone’s Throw Away

Angeleno Sights

Recognize this gaping oriface in the Hollywood Hills? If you don’t, you obviously weren’t a fan of the 1960s Batman television series or numerous other Hollywood productions hearkening back to the Silent Era.
This is one of a handful of man-made excavations at the southwestern corner of Griffith Park known as the Bronson Caves. Featured prominently [...]

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Then and Now: Temple City’s Lost Theater

Angeleno Sights

Opened circa 1940 and named for land developer and Temple City founder Walter P. Temple, this proud single-screen theater once stood on the corner of Rosemead and Las Tunas Blvds. Seating 750, it was designed by S. Charles Lee, a prolific Southern California architect with more than 70 movie houses to his credit, almost all [...]

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Metropolis: A Must-See for Cinema Buffs!

Seeking 2 hours and 45 minutes of golden silence on the silver screen? You can’t do any better than Fritz Lang’s historic 1927 film masterpiece Metropolis, now playing on the Laemmle’s Theatre circuit.
Set in the 21st Century, the silent classic envisions a futuristic world in which a seductive female android goads subterranean proletariat workers to [...]

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Anonymous Billboard Urges Boycott of Los Feliz’s Vermont Hand Wash

Life in Angel City

At first I thought this new billboard along Sunset’s 4400 block might be the work of advertising amateurs — or possibly a lone disgruntled customer angry enough to splurge on an outdoor display. The slogan’s catchy enough, but there’s nothing to support the message or make us care. For all we know, the alleged “injustice” [...]

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Check Out Silver Lake’s Gleaming New Neutra-Inspired Library!

Life in Angel City

It was a long time in coming, but Silver Lake finally saw the much-anticipated opening of its new $12-million library this morning. The residents’ campaign for the building actually began in the mid-1990s, but considering how Silver Lake’s elite history dates to the early 1900s, you wonder why it even took that long.
In any event, [...]

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Angeleno Streets Rank a Fatal Third Most “Dangerous by Design”

Life in Angel City

As if you didn’t have reason enough, now there’s even more cause to fear the mean streets of Los Angeles.
The Transportation for America (TFA) advocacy group has released a report ranking Los Angeles as 27th in the nation for pedestrian accidents, but third in pedestrian fatalities.
In other words, your stroll along Main Street carries less [...]

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Everything Comes Up Roses With Capt. Sully

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s for Tournament of Roses officials to bring a trademark “rosy optimism” to each New Year’s celebration.
For a year overshadowed by malaise like 2010 promises to be, could they have done any better to lift our spirits than naming Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger as the parade’s Grand [...]

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Where Were You When the Eagle Landed?

I count myself fortunate to have been a young witness to one of humankind’s proudest achievements. Forty years ago I, like millions the world over, gazed in awe as the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle touched down at Tranquility Base.
A boy of seven, I was gathered with my brothers in our family living room along [...]

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Yet Another Ill-Fated Hollywood Dream?

Life in Angel City

Here we go again… Yet another attempt to “bring Hollywood back to Hollywood.”
Ever on the lookout for L.A. stories that might inspire me to blog more, my Atlanta-based writer pal, Hilda, alerted me to this New York Times piece about the new five-star hotel going up at Hollywood and Vine. The article details the plans [...]

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Taking in the Prose Parade

Now that I’ve come to the end of my documentary film class (more about that later), it’s time to play catch-up here at the ol’ blog. Let’s start with a new addition to the Dateline>City of Angels blogroll: Prose Parade.
Launched a few weeks ago by my friend Linnea Hunt-Stewart, Prose Parade’s focus is grammar and [...]

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Did Uncle Walt Leave Mickey in the Public Domain?

Names and Faces

They say turnabout is fair play…
Having argued for years that their company has legally appropriated characters in the public domain for its cartoons (i.e., Bambi and Peter Pan), Disney officials may soon be in the uncomfortable position of fending off challenges to their own copyright on none other than The Mouse himself.
According to an extensive [...]

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BlogoBuzz: The Word Around Town and Beyond…

Talk about art imitating life! When Echo Park’s famous lotus flowers mysteriously vanished from the lake this year, a local photographer came up with a quaint solution: replace them with pictures. Which also promptly began (gasp!) disappearing. Honestly, neighbors, what did you think would happen?
And in Other News…
… I may have been too hasty recently [...]

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Pop Quiz: Ready For Your Sunset Blvd. Close-Up Challenge?

Angeleno Sights

The Film: Sunset Blvd., the 1950 film noir classic co-written/directed by Billy Wilder and starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson.
The Scene: After leading two repo men on a high-speed car chase along a winding stretch of Sunset Blvd., down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (Holden) ditches them with a quick turn into [...]

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LA City Hall