Switzerland

Why Holy Motors's Denis Lavant Should Be Nominated for the Best Actor Oscar

We'd Like to Help the Academy is our Oscar column highlighting the outliers that should be nominated (but probably won't be). In February of this year, the Academy gave their Best Actor award to a Frenchman whose film was both a celebration of cinema and a lamentation if its bygone days (Jean Dujar ... More >>

Ha Tien Quan: Vietnamese Gumbo in the SGV

It begins innocently enough: You have your first taste of pho somewhere like Golden Deli, the noodle shop on the outer reaches of San Gabriel, where the fragrant, stunningly clear broth is as famous as the crunchy egg rolls. Like any proper gateway drug, you soon begin to run the gamut of chintzy p ... More >>

Eat More Chocolate, Win a Nobel Prize

What is the secret to winning a Nobel prize? A genius IQ? Long, lonely hours in the lab or library? An unfaltering commitment to establishing peace in the Middle East (good luck with that)? Actually, it turns out that Nobel prizes are within reach for all of us, because the secret may be eating a ... More >>

Artist Chris Burden's Quasi-Legal Skyscraper Rises Again

In 1991, Los Angeles-based artist Chris Burden decided to add a studio structure on his own property, but he wanted to make it as big as he could without a building permit. After pouring over the building code, he found he could build a detached structure as long as it was under 400 square feet and ... More >>

The Gaslamp Killer Confronts Tragedy and Finds His Way Forward

Mitt Romney Cast as Tax Cheat in Ashley Madison Dating Site Billboards

Ashley Madison, the cheaters' dating site that recently clowned North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un with a billboard near LAX, is at it again. This time the target is none other than Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whom the site notes could also be a cheater of sorts. No, he hasn't ta ... More >>

Dan Goods: Thinking Outside the Lab

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here. Standing in his studio at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Dan Goods places a small cube of gel in a visitor's hand. He looks the visitor in the eye. Then he gets o ... More >>

Henry Rollins: The Column! Alone in My Man Box, Listening to Al Green

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.] I came back to Los Angeles a few days ago with 32 shows behind me on this tour, in England, Ir ... More >>

Gangrene Get High, So High

Alchemist and Oh No's label gave them a weed budget

The FBI Knocks Eater Offline: Back Tomorrow, Presumably

​If you've been trying in vain to find out what Los Angeles restaurant is closing tomorrow, maybe, or which chef is revving up his new Roadstoves food truck or where Scarlett Johansson is eating dinner tonight, your efforts stymied by the fact that Eater has been down all afternoon, blame the ... More >>

EXCLUSIVE Interview: Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull Talks About Aqualung, His Duet with an Astronaut and Why He Doesn't Attend Concerts

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.​In 1967, Ian Anderson traded a Fender Stratocaster that previously belonged to Lemmy from Motorhead for a flute, since he felt he would never be as good of a guitar player as Eric Clapton. The rest is history. We caught up with Anderson to chat about the album Aq ... More >>

Kofi Annan to Weigh in on Climate Change and Wine

Kofi Annan used to preside over the mass of bickering poker buddies known as the U.N. Back then, he worried about an AIDS epidemic and that retro scourge "weapons of mass destruction." Nowadays, Annan is a travelling sage, collecting causes the way Hiltons collect boyfriends: namely, those relat ... More >>

Bookworms

White-nationalist reads in the United States and Europe reflect anti-migrant hatred in a grim economy

From Russia, With Fuzz

Meet Moscow's L.A.-Inspired Beat Scene

FREE MP3 and Interview with Sean Lennon's New Band Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger: "We are like two Serge Gainsbourgs"

Terry Richardson for Purple MagazineDoes this pose look familiar? (full NSFW picture below)​Sean Lennon has been collaborating with girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl on a set of "surrealistic psychedelic pop songs," which they will be unveiling under the collective project name Ghost of a Saber T ... More >>

Jon Spencer, Extra Wide

Blues Explosion revisited onstage and in recordings

Polanski Alleged To Have Raped Another Woman At Jack Nicholson's House

RadarOnlinePolanski and the self-proclaimed victim.​Another woman has come forward to allege that director Roman Polanski raped her in the 1970s. The victim says she was 21 at the time that Polanski allegedly raped her at the home of Jack Nicholson in 1974, three years before he had sex with a ... More >>

LAPD Det. Philip Vannatter Angry That Roman Polanski Won't Face Music In L.A.

​Following this week's news that Swiss authorities won't extradite Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing in Los Angeles for his 1977 sex-with-a-minor conviction, the detective who originally arrested the director expressed anger over the 33-year-old case's apparent end. "He s ... More >>

Polanski Asks Appeals Court To Probe Alleged Prosecutorial Misconduct

​Roman Polanski's lawyers filed papers this week asking the state's 2nd District appeals court to order an investigation into alleged misconduct involving a prosecutor and a judge during the 1977 Los Angeles trial in which the director was convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The ... More >>

Ghosts of a Filmmaker's Past

Why the film Roman Polanski finished from jail is his best in years

Squid Ink Food Fight: Valentine's Day Chocolates

This Sunday is a holiday, though not an ideal one for cynics, pessimists, depressives or alcoholics (that's what St. Patrick's Day is for). It is, however, a day to spend money on sinful indulgences, and when you do, we encourage you to shop locally. So rather than importing your chocolates from far ... More >>

Polanski Could Be Behind Bars In L.A. In Time For Valentine's Day

​Roman Polanski must be biting his nails this month. In fact, we'd be surprised if he had any left. His freedom, or lack thereof, is coming down the wire. On Wednesday a Los Angeles judge scheduled a hearing for Jan. 22 on whether the fugitive director could be sentenced from afar -- and possi ... More >>

Polanski's Lawyers Could Be Fishing For Deal

​Lawyers for Roman Polanski requested Wednesday's much-anticipated court hearing in Los Angeles, the District Attorney's office indicated, and they might ask that their client be sentenced in absentia. The move comes in the wake of a state appeals court ruling in December that opened the door ... More >>

Polanski Lawyers Ask For Director To Be Sentenced While He's Still Out Of The Country

​Director Roman Polanski's lawyers on Wednesday made the move we anticipated by asking a judge to sentence the film auteur "in absentia" for his 1977 conviction of having sex with a minor. A hearing regarding the request was set for Jan. 22. An appeals court last month suggested that the dire ... More >>

Top Cheeses To Start Eating in 2010: The LA Cheese Pros Weigh In On Their Wheels

The Spanish greats at The Cheese Store of Silver Lake​Another year, another chance to take a new bite out of life. For motivated foodies looking for the latest and greatest edibles to sink their teeth into, this approach translates literally. The food lover is ready already to start planning t ... More >>

Romero, Fellow Politicians Support Polanski Extradition

Los Angeles state Sen. Gloria Romero and several Sacramento colleagues signed a letter supporting county District Attorney Steve Cooley's efforts to extradite Roman Polanski, who admitted to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old before fleeing to France in 1978.State Sen. Gloria Rome ... More >>

LA People 2009: Never-Married Woman — Susan Mogul

We Are Scientists, Morning Benders, The Blood Arm, El Rey, 7/1/08

We Are Scientists with Morning Benders and The Blood Arm, El Rey, July 1, 2008 Photos by Timothy Norris Last night The Blood Arm performed the first truly excellent theme song for the economic recession of 2008. Dedicated to Jay-Z, referencing Wesley Snipes' three-year jail sentence for tax evasi ... More >>

Stuff and Dough Makes Its Belated L.A. Debut

The birth of Mr. Puiu, three years after its director's star rose at Cannes

Metrolink Tries to Censor Bloggers

A paranoid transit agency spends public money threatening critical Web sites

Sex and the Globe: Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman

Boarding Gate's Olivier Assayas on Getting Carried Away ...

... and the strange logic of the modern world

Martha Argerich: Maximum Force

Pianist worth the wait

American Idolatry

The L.A. Opera’s Porgy and Bess at the Music Center and making music with Morton Subotnick

Old Is the New New

UCLA fest shows why some films should never be forgotten

Theater Reviews

Leaving Home

In defense of secession

At the Museums

Selected highlights of the fall and winter season

Onscreen at Outfest

Baby Love

The hippie-capitalist wisdom of CD Baby founder Derek Sivers, hero to 93,000 indie musicians and counting

Misspeak No Evil

Leaving Home

In defense of secession

A Small New Future

ALEC HANLEY BEMIS on the casualties and survivors in the war between the Cynics and the True Believers

The Real Thing

Bush Inc. could learn a truth or two from Lula

Outside in L.A.

Good works — and good prices — at the ECF Art Center

Angelic Angélique

Come as You Are

“Hyped to Death”: DIY’s cutout classics

In Defense of Steiner and Waldorf Education

Twisted Sister

The strange world of Patricia Highsmith

Prize Packages