James M. Cain

Best L.A. Novel Ever: L.A. Confidential vs. The Black Echo, Round 3

L.A. Weekly is determining the best L.A. novel ever by holding a tournament featuring 32 of our favorites in head-to-head matchups, until there's only one novel standing. For further reading: *Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament Brackets *Best L.A. Novel Ever: More Matchups The noir finals! There ... More >>

Best L.A. Novel Ever: L.A. Confidential vs. Double Indemnity, Round 2

L.A. Weekly is determining the best L.A. novel ever by holding a tournament featuring 32 of our favorites in head-to-head matchups, until there's only one novel standing. For further reading: *Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament Brackets *Best L.A. Novel Ever: More Matchups Double Indemnity, by Ja ... More >>

Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Sweet Sixteen

*Read all of first-round matchups in the Best L.A. Novel Ever tournament. *Read the essay kicking off the tournament and see the complete brackets. We read Evelyn Waugh and James M. Cain. We plowed through Dominick Dunne and gave the unjustly neglected Kate Braverman a chance. We learned What Make ... More >>

Eddy Up the Bar

Best L.A. Novel Ever: James M. Cain's Double Indemnity vs. Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, Round 1

L.A. Weekly is determining the best L.A. novel ever by holding a tournament featuring 32 of our favorites in head-to-head matchups, until there's only one novel standing. Check out the complete set of brackets here: Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament. With the right soundstage and set design, Los ... More >>

California Noir

LACMA's series The Sun Sets in the West

Is Musso & Frank the True Crossroads of Hollywood and Literature? Richard Schave Wants to Find Out

Simone PazRichard Schave with wife Kim Cooper at Musso & Frank​At Hollywood's Musso & Frank Grill, legend has it, giants of American literature -- Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, William Saroyan, Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Charles ... More >>

L.A. Weekly Critic J. Hoberman's Top 10 Movies of 2011

Neo-Realism at UCLA

... and the birth of the docu-fiction aesthetic

What To Eat During HBO's Mildred Pierce A Fried Chicken Recipe

Andrew Schwartz/HBOOn the set of Mildred Pierce​ If you watched last Sunday's installment of HBO's 5-part mini-series Mildred Pierce and you are human, you will have been drawn into this heart-wrenching melodrama about an ambitious single mother with superior culinary skills and you will have ... More >>

HBO'S Mildred Pierce: Bad Diner Pies, Depression-era Food What Kate Winslet Was Doing to Chicken at Tom Colicchio's House

Andrew Schwartz/HBOKate Winslet in Mildred Pierce​ Just like James M. Cain's 1941 novel Mildred Pierce and the Oscar-winning 1945 feature film based on the book, HBO's Mildred Pierce, a five-part mini-series which starts on March 27th, (and which hews more closely to Cain's book than the post- ... More >>

Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce Review

Uneasy Riders: Christian Petzold’s Postindustrialist Road Movies

Jerichow, the German director's latest, opens in L.A. this weekend

Jerichow: Snack Attack

Love is a battlefield in Christian Petzold's powerful Postman rethink

Stage Raw: Before Kirk Douglas Forgets

PURCHASE TICKETS TO THE 30TH ANNUAL L.A. WEEKLY THEATER AWARDS ON MARCH 30TH AT THE EL REY; HERE ARE THE NOMINEES. BEFORE I FORGETKirk Douglas in Before I Forget. Photo by Craig Schwartz The gift in Kirk Douglas' one-man show, Before I Forget,  that opened over the weekend in the theater name ... More >>

Stage Raw: Getting Physical

DRACULADracula is this week's Pick. See review by pressing the Continue Reading tab at the bottom of this section. (All New Reviews are embedded within the Comprehensive Theater Listings.) Photo by Michael Lamont GETTING PHYSICAL Two bills of physical comedy are being performed at Sacred Fool ... More >>

Stage Raw: Film

FILM is this week's Pick of the Week. Photo by Darrett Sanders Failing Better The Absurdists' convention Local playwright Patrick McGowan's new play, Film, has no right to be as good as it is. The central character is the late theater director Alan Schneider (Bill Robens) -- known for stagi ... More >>

Stage Raw: Candida

CANDIDA Candida at the Colony Theatre is this week's Pick. Photo by Michael Lamont. At your fingertips: The 30th Annual L.A. Weekly Theater Awards NOMINEES.Tickets for nominee's guests and for the general public can now be purchased via  http://tinyurl.com/theaterawardsReviewed this we ... More >>

L.A. Times to California: Drop Dead

The irony is too delicious: The L.A. Times, owned by an Illinois-based corporation and led by a man with little feel for newspapers or this state, is about to fold its storied California section into the front of its book. (Okay, many of us still call it "Metro," but that section covering local news ... More >>

So Long, Summer 2007, We Hardly Knew You

What to do in Los Angeles this week

Phil Noir: Like Watching Blood Dry

A slow trial suddenly goes ballistic

The Closing of the American Mouth

Hunter S. Thompson’s last laugh

Unholy Orders

Catholic damage in Almodóvar’s Bad Education, plus Conspiracy of Silence

Excess of Evil

Bloody couples and their fatal visions

Welcome to L.A. Los Angeles

Thom Andersen’s cracked valentine to the City of Angels

L. A. Flaw

The case against the city becomes its lore — and much of its charm. The evidence? Writing Los Angeles: A literary Anthology

Can I Get a Witness?

A Scary Abundance of Water

Growing up with the San Fernando Valley

Final Cut

Barbershop noir from the Coens

Bourne Free

A choreographer’s cinematic adventures in dance

Carmen Redux

Matthew Bourne tries to have his beefcake and eat it too

Leaf Blowers

New fiction from T.C. Boyle, first fiction from Tod Goldberg, City in Fiction from David Fine

Too Simple

Filmmakers Ethan and Joel Coen

Hollywood, Straight Up

The craps-shooting cop, the hungarian brawl and other stories from Steve Boardner's bar

Dystopia, Datopia

Southern California on film

Bad News

L.A.'s Low-Definition TV Journalism

Sex, Despair, Rock & Roll

Four novels by Leslie Schwartz, Gary Phillips, Donald Rawley and Mick Farren

Bloody Mama

A hard-boiled classic resurfaces

Helter Swelter

Blood, sand and the first temptation of Boston Teran

Guns and Roses

The Women of Noir