ENTERTAINMENT
May 14, 2012 | By Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times
James Franco is an actor-turned-artist-turned-author-turned-actor-playing-an-artist-named-Franco in the soap opera "General Hospital" — who has made a movie, "Francophrenia," that documents the experience. He's about as "meta" as it gets. Now Franco has brought his knack for melding pop culture and fine art in unorthodox ways to a new exhibition for Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. "Rebel," which opens Tuesday, is a high-concept group show that is a loose, interpretive ode to the 1955 James Dean film "Rebel Without a Cause.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 14, 2012 | By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times
My neighbor's Honda was stolen from our street — twice. The second time it was recovered, its rear windshield had been blown out in a gang shooting. It was time for a change, a drastic one. So my neighbor bought a Ford Crown Victoria with tinted windows, side spotlights and a metal plate on the trunk lid reading "Police Interceptor. " Now it sits, black and brutish, among the Camry Hybrids, Mini Coopers and Volvo station wagons in our Echo Park neighborhood. In September, the last of the iconic cop cars — a veteran of countless street chases, both actual and theatrical — rolled off Ford's production line in St. Thomas, Ontario.
NATIONAL
May 12, 2012 | By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times
LAS VEGAS - It sits along a stretch of median on the less-glamorous south end of this city's glitzy gambling Strip, a stubborn holdover from another era. Yet, as the days turn to night and back into day, it beckons as many tourists, human tumbleweeds and adventure-seekers as any newfangled casino. They come to see, touch and photograph the iconic "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada" sign, a 1959 scramble of colors, typefaces and flashing light bulbs. They come in droves, as if on some obligatory Vegas pilgrimage, arriving in taxis, rental cars, stretch limos, golf carts, pickup trucks, motorcycles, double-decker tour buses.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 4, 2012 | By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times
Charles Higham, a poet, critic and prolific celebrity biographer who found political and sexual intrigue in the lives of Hollywood icons such as Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich and, most controversially, Errol Flynn, died April 21 at his Los Angeles home. He was 81. The cause was apparently a heart attack, according to Todd McCarthy, a close friend. Higham was the author of two dozen biographies, many of which were so salacious that a book critic reviewing "Howard Hughes: The Secret Life" in 1993 quipped that the writer had "reached the point where most of his subjects have slept with one another.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 29, 2012 | By Nicole Sperling, Los Angeles Times
Rita Ryack spent several weeks tangling with Tom Cruise's leather pants. The costume designer for the upcoming 1980s musical "Rock of Ages" (opening June 15) was instrumental in Cruise's conversion into the fictional rock icon Stacee Jaxx, a self-involved guitar-playing idol in the vein of Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose. The coyote-fur jacket, the jewel-encrusted codpiece and the custom-made cowboy hat did wonders in transforming the normally strait-laced Cruise into a drug-addled performer with more in common with Mick Jagger than Ethan Hunt.
BUSINESS
April 25, 2012 | By Tiffany Hsu
J.C. Penney Co.'s effort to shake up its look isn't going entirely smoothly - the retailer is being sued for $40 million by lighting design and branding firm Hudson + Broad Inc. over its new Fair and Square icon. In a complaint filed with U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Hudson + Broad accused the department store chain of breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets. At stake, the large, square fixtures made with Plexiglas and LED lights that J.C. Penney is placing around its stores to mirror its new sharp-edged logo.