Jane

The past is a puzzle that resurfaces in bits and pieces for Robert Redford in "The Company You Keep. " The political potboiler's producer, director and star still leans left, but in telling this fable about 1970s radicals grown older and wiser, Redford's gotten nostalgic. The movie marks Redford's first time back in front of the camera since 2007's "Lions for Lambs," his preachy take on the government's handling of the war in Afghanistan. No doubt the character of former radical Jim Grant, a role that calls for an equal share of heart, quiet heroics and politics, influenced his decision to act again.

He sits in her front room like a shy vicar from a Jane Austen novel. She's a widow with sad eyes. He's a married man with a kindly look. He cannot stay away from her for long. She likes his soft politeness. He likes the neat room in her shack, with nearly everything veiled in white lace, hiding the battered surfaces beneath. They chat about small nothings. He comes to her house in Nairobi's Kibera slum first thing on waking and last thing before sleeping. But he's not here for love, even if it sometimes feels like it. He's here for the illegal moonshine she brews, changaa.

Transportation is a major problem for many frail, older adults and disabled people in Orange County. Based on 1987 projections by the Department of Finance, adults 60 and older will represent 314,207 of Orange County's 2,193,614 total population. In 1987-88, 52,420 elderly residents would be living alone. In 1978, the California Disability Survey reported the county's population at 1,191,000. Disabled individuals 16 to 64 years old represented 98,000, or 8.

Every once in a while, hard science has a cosmetic payoff. We use botulinum toxins to erase wrinkles, and lasers to remove unwanted hair. Now a company called Jane Beauty is promising to apply scientific principles for another purely cosmetic purpose: longer, thicker eyelashes.

The call came on the eve of his Los Angeles concert, just as he was leaving his home in Mexico. We have your son. Follow our instructions. Don't make trouble. It was a year ago, and Vicente Fernandez was about to headline four sold-out shows at the Pico Rivera Sports Arena, his annual Memorial Day pilgrimage to the Eastside suburbs of L.A. Now this voice, saying his 33-year-old son, his namesake, was being held for a ransom of millions.

Private Life A Novel Jane Smiley Alfred A. Knopf: 324 pp., $26.95 "O the wo that is in marriage," the Wife of Bath proclaimed while emerging, for all that, lusty and free. In her new novel, Jane Smiley stirs up marital woe as thick as mud, yet her female protagonist never manages to send up more than a rebellious bubble or two before sinking back under. The sardonically titled "Private Life" — the one that Margaret and Andrew Early construct is a fetid horror — loads the dice.

Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challenging President Obama's healthcare law because she was passionate about the issue. Brown "doesn't have insurance. She doesn't want to pay for it. And she doesn't want the government to tell her she has to have it," said Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business. Brown is a plaintiff in the federation's case, which the Supreme Court plans to hear later this month.

It's so easy to make fun of the 1980s. Ray-Bans, glam-rock hair, acid-washed jeans, the yuppie and Reaganomics, and all those regrettable images of women in power suits and tennis shoes. It seemed even as it was occurring an age of Culture Lite, a consumer-driven wasteland after the socially and politically transformative '60s and '70s. Even the title of National Geographic's new six-hour, three-part documentary "The '80s: The Decade That Made Us" seems, at first glance, a bit of a joke.

Home Box Office collected the most honors at Saturday's nighttime Emmy Awards presentation in Pasadena, including multiple statuettes for dramatic series "The Sopranos" and its movies "The Rat Pack" and "Winchell." Saturday's nontelevised event encompassed more than 50 categories, primarily in technical areas such as cinematography, editing and sound. An additional 27 awards, recognizing programs and performers, will be presented Sept. 12 and televised on Fox.

The 25 best L.A. films of the last 25 years "Los ANGELES isn't a real city," people have said, "it just plays one on camera." It was a clever line once upon a time, but all that has changed. Los Angeles is the most complicated community in America -- make no mistake, it is a community -- and over the last 25 years, it has been both celebrated and savaged on the big screen with amazing efficacy. Damaged souls and flawless weather, canyon love and beach city menace, homeboys and credit card girls, freeways and fedoras, power lines and palm trees . . . again and again, moviegoers all over the world have sat in the dark and stared up at our Los Angeles, even if it was one populated by corrupt cops or a jabbering cartoon rabbit.