Strata Blaster

Jim Blair
The El Niño rains of a few days before, Rob Bronstein realized that February morning, had loosened the odd-looking rock from the hillside and sent it crashing to the edge of the old Mount Washington fire road, where his dog Keesha now sniffed it curiously. Although the dog quickly dismissed......
article placeholder

Days of Plunder

Charles Fleming
When film producer Don Simpson died of heart failure in 1996 at the age of 52, no one was particularly surprised. As one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers as well as its most notorious bad boy, Simpson lived a life that begged an early death. Stories of his exploits were......

Dog Fight

Bobbi Murray
The white hound dog with pale tan spots and a pink nose leaps joyfully against the fence in cage 27 of the East Valley Shelter. His excitement fills the narrow kennel, barking nonstop, ears flying, tail swinging. Each jump leaves a smear of pale brown paste on the mesh —......

Cinephobia

Manohla Dargis
  I have been trying to get a picture that is worth reviewing, for the last two weeks, and hereby throw in the towel. — Otis Ferguson The New Republic, 1935   The postwar renaissance of cinema, which reached its height roughly between 1958 and 1964, has in the past......

Parallel Lives

Ella Taylor
TWO GIRLS AND A GUY Written and directed by JAMES TOBACK Produced by EDWARD R. PRESSMAN and CHRIS HANLEY Starring NATASHA GREGSON WAGNER HEATHER GRAHAM and ROBERT DOWNEY JR. Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures Citywide SLIDING DOORS Written and directed by PETER HOWITT Produced by SYDNEY POLLACK PHILIPPA BRAITHWAITE and......
article placeholder

Left Behind

Harold Meyerson
ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America BY RICHARD RORTY Harvard University Press 144 pages $19 hardcover On behalf of countless readers whose reaction to most left academic writing over the past two decades has increasingly been not so much either agreement or disagreement as an overpowering sense......
article placeholder

The Gardiner Variety

Alan Rich
Several weeks ago I wrote off the symphonies of Robert Schumann as some of music’s "most honorable failures." Esa-Pekka Salonen had performed the "Rhenish" Symphony in an acceptable but hardly stirring manner — as he had the "Spring" Symphony a year before — and I came away convinced that, for......

Gambling on Disaster

Steven Mikulan
If a young Berkeley design firm has its way, a certain popular film combining romance, saltwater and tragic destiny will be expressed in stone and glass in the middle of Las Vegas. "The Titanic Casino and Iceberg Hotel," proclaims a press release issued by E Design, "will be the ultimate......
article placeholder

The Morning After

Libby Molyneaux
Inquiring ears want to know: What sort of presence — and, more pointedly, what sorts of sounds — will the new host of KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic bring to the airwaves when he takes over on Monday? Will he continue to refer to the time of day, as Chris Douridas......
article placeholder

P.D.Q. on the Q.T.

Alan Rich
Every year around this time, the excellent local ensemble called the Armadillo String Quartet puts on a concert of music by its anointed composer-in-nonresidence, Peter Schickele. Peter comes out from New York for the concert; sometimes — as a pretty good pianist — he mixes in with the string players,......