Skyline

The new CW drama "The Carrie Diaries" -- a prequel to the HBO hit "Sex and the City" about a teenage Carrie Bradshaw -- goes out of its way to try to get 1980s New York City right. When Carrie hits the Big Apple, we see a graffiti-covered subway train and gritty neighborhoods. There are Checker cabs roaming the streets. We are taken back to the vibrant post-punk era night life. There's only one thing we don't see: The World Trade Center. VIDEO: Winter TV preview Despite lots of skyline shots of the city and a setting in downtown New York, where the law firm Carrie is interning at is located, the Twin Towers are nowhere to be found.

VALENCIA, Spain - A 2009 snapshot shows the president of Spain's Valencia region cruising along in a $200,000 Ferrari. It was Francisco Camps' victory lap, after presiding over the Formula One European Grand Prix and the America's Cup yacht race. Valencia was dubbed the "California of Spain" for its gorgeous coastline, modern architecture and mind-set. Construction of upscale homes and resorts was booming. Four years later, that Ferrari photo has become an embarrassing reminder of Valencia's heady growth years - and how much has gone awry since then.

'Skyline' MPAA rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, some language and brief sexual content Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes Playing: In general release

The new CW drama "The Carrie Diaries" -- a prequel to the HBO hit "Sex and the City" about a teenage Carrie Bradshaw -- goes out of its way to try to get 1980s New York City right. When Carrie hits the Big Apple, we see a graffiti-covered subway train and gritty neighborhoods. There are Checker cabs roaming the streets. We are taken back to the vibrant post-punk era night life. There's only one thing we don't see: The World Trade Center. VIDEO: Winter TV preview Despite lots of skyline shots of the city and a setting in downtown New York, where the law firm Carrie is interning at is located, the Twin Towers are nowhere to be found.

"Skyline," a PG-13 rated science-fiction thriller, opens in general release Friday, but distributor Universal did not screen the movie in advance for critics. A review will appear in Calendar and online at latimes.com/moviereviews as soon as it is available.

In "Skyline," which offers a few stray sights of enticing PG-13 grossness but not much of a movie, space aliens drop in on Los Angeles, luring the city's residents with mesmerizing shafts of unholy blue light. It's like a trip to a Kmart staffed by the ugliest beings imaginable. The poseurs littering the story, several of whom work in the special effects industry but act like millionaire gangstas, deliver each new straight line on cue. "Morning already?" wonders the visiting pregnant Brooklynite played by Scottie Thompson (best thing in the film)

As urban skylines go, few are more striking than Seattle's sharp, clean panorama of skyscrapers looming above the waterfront, the snowy peaks of the Cascade Mountains in the background. Starting next year, visitors may quickly become aware that the tall building near the center of the tableau is the corporate headquarters of Russell Investments ? a coup for the city's economic development team and a kick in the stomach to the legions of urban design aficionados who have long worked overtime to fashion Seattle as the gold standard for liberal urban cool.

Times reader "galkab" shot this sunset view of downtown Los Angeles near the corner of 9 th Street and Broadway. The photographer captures a hodgepodge of historic and modern buildings in this scene. On the right is the Eastern Columbia Building, once the headquarters of the Eastern Outfitting Co. and the Columbia Outfitting Co. Opened in 1930, it now houses condominiums. Just to left of that building is the 777 Tower at 777 S. Figueroa St. This 52-floor high-rise was completed in 1991.

Visual effects artists Colin and Greg Strause have toppled digital elephants in "300," aged Brad Pitt backward for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and cloned one actor into identical twins for "The Social Network. " The brothers' task on "Skyline" is perhaps more daunting: proving themselves as full-fledged independent filmmakers. Visual effects designers occasionally graduate into directing jobs ? Eric Brevig ("Journey to the Center of the Earth") and Stefen Fangmeier ("Eragon")

A few years before he died, photographer C.C. Pierce practically gave away his life's work - a vast collection of remarkable pictures focused on 40 years of explosive growth in Los Angeles, from bucolic outpost to bustling metropolis. The Huntington Library, then a young institution with little money for acquisitions, was finally able to come throughwith a small sum for Pierce, getting an incredible bargain for an archive that is now priceless. "As each year goes by, it seems to take two or three years off my effectiveness in carrying on the business," he wrote to the Huntington in 1939 in hopes that it would buy his more than 10,000 photos.

Wealth manager and restaurateur Kerry Moy is joining the live-in-downtown crowd at the Ritz-Carlton Residences. He has purchased a one-bedroom, two-bathroom unit with a den/study. The sales price is not yet available on the public record, but similar homes are listed in the $1-million range. The 1,303-square-foot condo takes in views of the swimming pool, the downtown skyline and L.A. Live. Moy, who owns and invests in restaurants as a sideline to his day job at Merrill Lynch, customized the place by opening up the office area to capture the views and moving walls so his dinner guests also can enjoy the vista.

MUSIC French composer Yann Tiersen may have first caught your ear as part of the soundtrack to the supernaturally twee 2001 movie "Amélie," but his recordings removed from the silver screen are equally deserving of notice. His new album "Skyline" features a lush mix of fuzzy electronics, echoing guitars and distant vocal echoes, sounding like a soundtrack for that exclusive film constantly screening between your ears. The Fonda Theatre, 6126 Hollywood Blvd. 8 p.m. Sat. $25 http://www.ticketmaster.com.

Hong Kong - India has the Taj Mahal. In France, of course, it's the Eiffel Tower. Russia has Red Square and South Africa has Cape Town's Table Mountain. Each a treasure, and each reason enough for a pilgrimage. In Hong Kong, the sight to see is not a single monument or even a majestic natural vista. It is the city's glittering homage to the modern skyscraper - a breathtaking skyline with verdant Victoria Peak as the picture-postcard backdrop. Still, when I arrived in Hong Kong for a long weekend last May, I was a bit worried that my first visit to the city of 7 million would be a disappointment.

Welcome home, space shuttle Enterprise. The NASA shuttle soared over the Statue of Liberty and the world's most famous skyline Friday morning before landing safely at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Hundreds were waiting to greet the aircraft, including NASA dignitaries, fidgety schoolchildren and Leonard Nimoy. "It feels like a reunion," Nimoy told CNN. Nimoy, who played Spock on the 1960s sci-fi series "Star Trek," recalled being photographed with the Enterprise when it was first unveiled as part of a politics-meets-pop culture moment.

After an extended lull brought on by the economic downturn, commercial real estate developers are building again. Some of the activity involves the revival of projects that stopped during the recession, but many others are new from the ground up and mark the return of construction cranes to the Southern California skyline along with the injection of billions of dollars into the local economy. An intense demand for apartments is the biggest driver of development, as the improving economy supports the formation of new households.

Please keep up the good columns, Sam Hall Kaplan. These monstrosities that have ruined our skyline just won't stop, but if everyone realizes we all hate it, maybe we can slow it down. Contemporary architecture is charmless and designed only with the pocket book in mind. Future generations will have a big task tearing down our international folly, and will wonder how we went so far astray. But for now, all we can do is decry and make up names for this "cereal-box" architecture.

Hong Kong - India has the Taj Mahal. In France, of course, it's the Eiffel Tower. Russia has Red Square and South Africa has Cape Town's Table Mountain. Each a treasure, and each reason enough for a pilgrimage. In Hong Kong, the sight to see is not a single monument or even a majestic natural vista. It is the city's glittering homage to the modern skyscraper - a breathtaking skyline with verdant Victoria Peak as the picture-postcard backdrop. Still, when I arrived in Hong Kong for a long weekend last May, I was a bit worried that my first visit to the city of 7 million would be a disappointment.

Anthony J. Lumsden, a prolific Southern California architect who helped develop new ways of wrapping buildings in smooth glass skins, accelerating a shift that reshaped skylines around the world, died Sept. 22 in Los Angeles. He was 83. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his son, John, a Hong Kong-based architect who had worked with his father in recent years. Anthony Lumsden, known as Tony, served as design director at Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall, the large architecture and engineering firm, from 1968 to 1993.

Reporting from San Diego -- Nothing about the family's life in their working-class neighborhood foretold of trouble, according to family and friends. Alfredo, 44, and Georgina Pimienta, 38, shared their single-story home in the Skyline area east of downtown with their daughters, Priscilla, 17, and Emily, 9. Alfredo was a tow truck operator who seemed to get along well with his wife, according to relatives. Emily liked to bike around the quiet streets with other children; Priscilla was a studious teenager who was looking forward to college.