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December 25, 2010 | Sam Farmer
When the New York Giants play at Green Bay on Sunday, temperatures are expected to dip into the low teens. Surely, somebody will refer to the "frozen tundra" of Lambeau Field. Funny thing about that phrase, though, is that Vince Lombardi didn't like it, and didn't want it used in the Packers' highlight films. It was coined by Steve Sabol, now president of NFL Films, and he used it in his script for the "Ice Bowl," the 1967 NFL championship game between the Packers and Dallas Cowboys.
ARTICLES BY DATE
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 21, 2012 | By Claire Noland, Los Angeles Times
Robin Gibb, a singer and songwriter who joined two of his brothers in forming the Bee Gees pop group that helped define the sound of the disco era with the best-selling 1977 soundtrack to"Saturday Night Fever," has died. He was 62. Gibb died Sunday after battling cancer and while recuperating from intestinal surgery, family spokesman Doug Wright announced. This spring Gibb had been hospitalized in London with advanced colorectal cancer. He had intestinal surgery in March and, after contracting pneumonia, was unable to attend the April 10 premiere in London of "The Titanic Requiem," a classical composition he wrote with his son, Robin-John, to coincide with the 100th anniversary observance of the luxury ocean liner's sinking.
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IMAGE
February 7, 2010 | By Julie Neigher
To set eyes on a photo by Lillian Bassman is mesmerizing. The image, usually that of a striking woman, hits with the force of an epiphany. Suddenly those heroin chic ad campaigns of the '90s seem shopworn and flat. And the clunkily posed spread in this month's glossy feels oh-so-forced. In the '50s and '60s, when Bassman clicked her shutter, she created a visual time capsule. One wonders, eyeing the elegant angle of a gloved arm or the mysterious tilt of a hat, "If I stare long enough at this picture, will I hear the rustle of taffeta and tulle swaying?
ENTERTAINMENT
May 15, 2012 | By Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times
It would be impossible to count the number of automotive makes and models that have come and gone since the car was first invented - or the number of books that have been written about them. The inescapable ubiquity of the automobile has made them, for better or worse, a sort of cultural fodder that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Ingrassia inventively exploits in "Engines of Change. " The question at the center of his nonfiction treatise: Do cars shape the culture, or does culture shape the cars?
BUSINESS
December 2, 2010 | By Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times
It's long been said there are only seven basic story lines in all of literature. Increasingly, the same might be said about cars, whose styles are becoming more of a monoculture with each model year. Sedan or subcompact, each genre seems to be defined by a single, rather predictable silhouette. But not in Van Nuys, where Icon builds low-volume custom automobiles that take classic car shapes and updates them with modern, under-the-hood technologies and stylish in-the-cabin appointments pulled from aircraft, boats and fine watches.
OPINION
June 27, 2009
Re "King of Pop is dead at 50," June 26 For a great many years, people have been making all sorts of snide remarks and nasty jokes about Michael Jackson. But suddenly, now that he's shockingly dead, he's become a great icon -- showered with tears and flowers. The turmoil in Iran, and Farrah Fawcett too, have been quickly pushed offstage. What's going on here? What would Jackson think if he could look down on all this sentimental commotion that belies the apparent disrespect he received for so long?
IMAGE
March 23, 2011 | By Emili Vesilind, Special to the Los Angeles Times
It was a simple white slip ? an everyday undergarment for women in the 1960s. But in "Butterfield 8," one of Elizabeth Taylor's most memorable films, the violet-eyed actress ? playing the tragic, fiery Gloria Wandrous -- made the staple seem like the sexiest getup in the world. Making mundane clothes seem magnificent was one of Taylor's most potent onscreen powers. Her heyday on the big screen ? which spanned from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s -- is rife with such moments. The white Edith Head-designed debutante dress that showed off her impossibly tiny waist in "A Place in the Sun"; the rustic Western wear designed by Marjorie Best for "Giant"; and the Grecian-goddess-esque white dress designed by Helen Rose for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" are among Hollywood's least-complicated and most iconic looks.
ENTERTAINMENT
September 25, 2011 | By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
Felicia Day is a sort of famous person, by which I do not mean that she is moderately famous but that her fame is of a particular type. "People are very excited about meeting me, or they're absolutely confused," Day said one recent morning over breakfast by a pool at a hotel at which she was not a guest. "It's a very specific recognition factor. I actually like that. " Among other things, Day is an actress, a writer, a nerd world pin-up and an Internet icon. (The other things include, but are not limited to: violinist, singer, dancer, math major and college valedictorian — she is something of an overachiever.)
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.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 3, 2010 | By Tim Rutten
When I was a boy, my father took me to see my first live professional basketball game downtown at the Sports Arena. Good parochial school boy that I was, I spent most of the pregame trying to figure out where John F. Kennedy might have stood during the recent Democratic National Convention. Then, I saw the Lakers with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor play the Cincinnati Royals with Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas, and I became a fan for life. In retrospect, it's easy to understand why I did since, like the Boston Celtics' Tommy Heinsohn tells Roland Lazenby in his marvelous book "Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon," I had seen three of the five finest NBA players ever to take the floor.
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.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 7, 2008
Here's what readers had to say about Charlton Heston, Oscar-winning actor and unapologetic gun advocate, who died Saturday at 84: Another Hollywood great departs this world. I have always enjoyed his performances and especially his portrayal of Moses in "The Ten Commandments." God bless and comfort his family in their sorrow. -- Lee -- I did not agree with him politically, but he was a good mix of brass and class. This guy will never be replaced. Thanks for all your movies.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 17, 2008 | From Bloomberg News
A Faberge icon of Jesus Christ in a silver frame studded with rubies, sapphires, pearls and emeralds sold today for $780,000, more than five times its high estimate, at a Sotheby's auction in New York. A Moscow dealer in the room lost to a telephone bidder in a drawn-out, five-minute battle for the icon, made in about 1900. The icon was the most expensive lot in Wednesday's sale of Faberge items, imperial porcelain, icons, bronzes and enamels. On Tuesday, Sotheby's sold $36 million of Russian 19th and 20th century paintings.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 23, 2012 | By Matt Donnelly
Lindsay Lohan is all systems go for "Liz & Dick," the Lifetime TV movie that will see her playing icon Elizabeth Taylor during her whirlwind romance with actor Richard Burton.  As Lohan's probation for a 2007 DUI ended in late March, the actress was cleared for a work permit in Canada, where the film is set to shoot. And though the actress has been talking for a while now about preparing for the role, she and the Lifetime network on Monday shared the good news: She's officially ready to put on those white diamonds.
NATIONAL
April 19, 2012 | By Rene Lynch
Dick Clark might have been one of Hollywood's shrewdest businessmen, but for many Americans, his lesser-known role as a stroke survivor determined to live a normal life likely will be a more lasting legacy. Clark died Wednesday at age 82, suffering a massive heart attack after a medical procedure. He had had a debilitating stroke in 2004 and had to learn to walk and talk again -- often with difficulty. But Clark didn't give in to the symptoms of that stroke, which included slurred, slowed speech and partial paralysis.
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