ENTERTAINMENT
April 15, 2014 | By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
The Coen brothers' 1996 comedy-noir masterpiece "Fargo" wasn't so much a movie as it was a cultural event - you remember where you were when you first saw it. That endless yet claustrophobic snow scape, the anxious narcissism of William H. Macy's scheming car salesman, the glory of Frances McDormand's pregnant police chief Marge. It blew out the wall between hilarity and horror to prove that both dwell in the same landscape. It showed that senseless violence was simply one more item on the spectrum of human behavior, alongside love and honor and courage.
BUSINESS
April 13, 2014 | By Hannah Kuchler
Biz Stone is the other Twitter founder. Not the one who first came up with the idea, not the one with the original investment, but the founder famous for donning a nutty professor costume to introduce the messaging platform to the world in a comic video. In the torrid tale of Twitter's foundation - complete with betrayals and counter-betrayals - he was neither a back-stabber nor the back-stabbed. His new book from Grand Central Publishing, "Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind," offers a clue about why: He seems to be quite a nice guy. Management books written by nice guys do not abound.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 10, 2014 | By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
Wonderfully animated and well-voiced, "Rio 2" is nevertheless too much. Too much plot, too many issues, too many characters. But not too much music. Yes, the musical numbers reach saturation levels, but the Latin-influenced jamming and singing are absolutely fabulous. "Rio 2's" music might even save the 3-D animated action-adventure about endangered South American blue macaws from the terrible 2s that affect so many sequels. The eclectic animal and human cast and respective star voices that "Rio" introduced in 2011 have all reconvened to continue the party.
SCIENCE
April 8, 2014 | By Deborah Netburn
Mars is in opposition tonight, and if you look up any time after nightfall, you can see the red planet shining brighter in the sky than it has in 6½ years. On April 8, the clockwork of our solar system places the Earth between Mars and the sun, so that Mars is positioned directly opposite the sun in our night sky. The red planet will rise in the eastern sky just as the sun sets in the west, and it will dip below the horizon just as...
SPORTS
April 5, 2014 | By Kevin Baxter
Juergen Klinsmann hasn't made many missteps in his 2 1/2 years of coach of the U.S. national team. Still it was hard not to question last week's decision to jettison Martin Vasquez, his longtime right-hand man, and replace him with Tab Ramos and former German national team coach Berti Vogts. Sacking your top assistant two months before the World Cup is a little like a presidential candidate dumping his running mate after the convention. So was it an act of panic or prescience? It's too early to tell.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 4, 2014 | By Richard S. Ginell
With some time to kill between performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor" at Los Angeles Opera (the last one is Sunday), the peripatetic James Conlon merely had to cross 1st Street in order to lead the first of three subscription concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday night. It's hardly news that Conlon seems to be everywhere these days, but it's still a phenomenon worth noting. Indeed, Conlon turned up at the pre-concert lecture and later spent several minutes talking to the audience in the main hall about one of his Recovered Voices subjects: the strange, sad and remarkable career of Erwin Schulhoff.