Attic

The extraterrestrial advance team in the kid-friendly adventure romp "Aliens in the Attic" qualifies as the most unthreatening bunch of cinematic space invaders since the waterlogged aliens in M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs." But then that's precisely the point, since adults have as much place in the movie's world as the grown-ups in the "Peanuts" comic strips.

David O. Russell rewrote "Silver Linings Playbook" more than 20 times, honing the material so it would feel completely real and natural, a vibe he values most in his filmmaking. In this excerpt from the Envelope Screening Series, Russell and lead actor Bradley Cooper talk about the work involved in achieving that authenticity of the everyday. "I wanted it to feel like we're almost spying on people," Russell says, "that we've captured them in mid-performance, so the performances are not teed-up like, 'Here is a performance.' It's more like you're just dropped into the middle of somebody's house.

David O. Russell rewrote "Silver Linings Playbook" more than 20 times, honing the material so it would feel completely real and natural, a vibe he values most in his filmmaking. In this excerpt from the Envelope Screening Series, Russell and lead actor Bradley Cooper talk about the work involved in achieving that authenticity of the everyday. "I wanted it to feel like we're almost spying on people," Russell says, "that we've captured them in mid-performance, so the performances are not teed-up like, 'Here is a performance.' It's more like you're just dropped into the middle of somebody's house.

Norma Shearer's silk sheets sat for years in a Los Angeles garage, with no one to admire the embroidered monogram: NST, for Norma Shearer Thalberg. The starlet's Louis Vuitton steamer trunks waited in vain to voyage. One was dedicated solely to protecting Shearer's shoes - some of its 30 leather-trimmed drawers still bearing hand-written labels like "silvered lizard sandal evening" and "gold kid sandal evening high heels. " This was Golden Age glamour. It was an auction house's dream.

When Paul Brachfeld took over as inspector general of the National Archives, guardian of the country's most beloved treasures, he discovered the American people were being stolen blind. The Wright Brothers 1903 Flying Machine patent application? Gone. A copy of the Dec. 8, 1941 "Day of Infamy" speech autographed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and tied with a purple ribbon? Gone. Target maps of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, war telegrams written by Abraham Lincoln and a scabbard and belt given to Harry S. Truman?

It looked, said one hapless resident, like "something out of a Hitchcock movie." When Robin Scott and her mother, Naomi, called in an extermination service to get rid of the bees stirred up during remodeling on their attic, they expected to uncover a hive "the size of a pickle jar." But, instead, when exterminators tore out the attic wall in their Boston home, they found a 4-by-8-foot honeycomb, dripping with about 500 pounds of honey and 100,000 bees.

When a Tennessee man played a tape he found in a family attic, what he heard was the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. Stephon Tull said he found the tape among dusty old boxes in the attic of his father's Chattanooga home, according to the Associated Press. It was a reel-to-reel audio tape labeled: "Dr. King interview, Dec. 21, 1960. " Tull said he was floored. "No words can describe," he told the AP.  He'd found a "lost part of history. " Tull said his father had done the interview for a book project that he never completed.

Each time I pass a garage sale, I am aware of our throwaway society and how much of our heritage is being discarded. It is then I shout loudly for the return of the attic. Not just a crawl space or a termite refuge, but a real, genuine, musty, cobwebby, dusty, creaky attic. Unfortunately, the attic in the West is as scarce as the front porch. Single-Story Houses And who gets the blame? Myopic architects and tight-fisted builders are the culprits.

In 1978 on a 1,600-acre farm in rural Washington, Don Emerson Sr., one of a long line of builders, loggers and sawmill workers whose livelihood was earned in the timber surrounding them, noticed that two of his teenage sons, Joe and Donnie, had taken a liking to music. He'd see them doing their chores while listening to radio from Spokane 70 miles to the southeast and encouraged them as they began writing and playing their own music. They even went into a studio to make a record but were disappointed with the experience.

A surprise discovery of Rudy Vallee memorabilia--including 5,000 neckties, a gold watch from actress Mary Pickford and a fedora from W. C. Fields--were found this week in a recently unlocked attic in the late crooner's Hollywood Hills home, Vallee's widow said Sunday.

A series in Sunday Calendar about what Times writers and contributors are listening to right now... Lee Hazlewood was an odd duck. Best known for his production and baritone harmonies with Nancy Sinatrain the 1960s, Hazlewood got his start recording guitarist Duane Eddyin the late 1950s and developed a grand, rich production style that he perfected over the course of a curiously constructed 40-year career. Hazlewood, who died in 2007, spent much of the latter half of his life in Sweden, where he continued to consistently work far removed from the gaze of his longtime L.A. home.

The stop-motion action is nonstop and deliriously bent in "Toys in the Attic," a 2009 Czech feature that has been retrofitted with an English-language voice cast led by Forest Whitaker, Joan Cusack and Cary Elwes. Jiri Barta's blend of live action and handmade and computer effects puts a "Toy Story" slant on "The Perils of Pauline" by way of "1984" and any number of dystopian nightmares. But the plot is the least of it in a film whose transporting aesthetic is a tattered brocade of industrial grunge and oldfangled whimsy.

Eleanor LaVove, a former fashion editor who co-founded Angels Attic, a museum devoted to antique and contemporary dollhouses, toys and miniatures, died Aug. 24 at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. She was 94. The cause was ovarian cancer, said her son Timothy. LaVove and longtime friend Jackie McMahan joined forces in 1974 to mount an exhibit of dolls and miniatures as a fundraiser for a school serving autistic children. The show was so popular, it outgrew McMahan's Brentwood backyard and within a few years moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, where 10,000 people viewed the exhibits over two days.

When a Tennessee man played a tape he found in a family attic, what he heard was the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. Stephon Tull said he found the tape among dusty old boxes in the attic of his father's Chattanooga home, according to the Associated Press. It was a reel-to-reel audio tape labeled: "Dr. King interview, Dec. 21, 1960. " Tull said he was floored. "No words can describe," he told the AP.  He'd found a "lost part of history. " Tull said his father had done the interview for a book project that he never completed.

In 1978 on a 1,600-acre farm in rural Washington, Don Emerson Sr., one of a long line of builders, loggers and sawmill workers whose livelihood was earned in the timber surrounding them, noticed that two of his teenage sons, Joe and Donnie, had taken a liking to music. He'd see them doing their chores while listening to radio from Spokane 70 miles to the southeast and encouraged them as they began writing and playing their own music. They even went into a studio to make a record but were disappointed with the experience.

Light in the Attic Records, the celebrated Seattle/L.A. reissue label whose new release, "Dreamin' Wild" by Donnie and Joe Emerson, is featured in a story in this Sunday's Times, will celebrate 10 years as a label with an anniversary show at the El Rey Theatre on Sept. 28. The bill includes three acclaimed artists who have been the focus of the label's reissues: Rodriguez, the folk rock singer, creator of the essential late '60s album "Cold Fact" and subject of the new documentary "Searching for Sugar Man"; South Korean guitarist Shin Joong Hyun, who will be performing his meditative guitar music in a rare appearance outside of Asia; and British folk guitarist Michael Chapman, whose underappreciated work has received new interest on the heels of Light in the Attic's series of reissues.

Curiosity didn't kill this cat, but it came awfully close. A cat was found alive after being trapped in the attic of a Sand Canyon house for more than two weeks with no food or water, despite several days of record-breaking heat. Apparently, the feline sneaked through a hole in roof made Aug. 5 while workers repaired earthquake damage to the house's chimney and was sealed inside.

The Pirate Captain, the lead swashbuckler voiced by Hugh Grant in the new stop-motion animated film"The Pirates! Band of Misfits," possesses an overweening sense of optimism and some spectacular facial hair. It was the latter - a dense nest of curlicues that the character repeatedly refers to as his "luxuriant beard" - that kept the filmmakers up at night. Model makers labored for months to find a natural way to animate the rubber whiskers, eventually fashioning a mechanism out of the tuning head of a guitar to make the beard spring to life.

Closing shortly after co-star Kevin McHale's nearby home purchase, "Glee's" Lea Michele has bought a bungalow in Hollywood for $1.4 million. The one-story house, built in 1920, sits behind tall hedges and has a gated driveway. The updated bungalow features French doors, an office, attic space, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. An outdoor dining pavilion includes a kitchen. Michele, 25, has played aspiring soprano Rachel Berry since 2009 on the television series. She will voice the part of Dorothy in the animated film "Dorothy of Oz," due out this year.