Transformers

LAS VEGAS - Double Down Saloon owner P Moss sits at the corner of the bar across from a skinny, sad-eyed man with a cascading white ZZ Top beard. "Let's go over to a table," Moss instructs a visitor, eyeing the old barfly named Wade, who continued to toss out disconnected thoughts. "This one can often be quite a handful. " Wade's a military veteran who, since his son died a few years back, spends his waking hours at this dark, profane, scribbled-upon dive bar in the shadow of the Strip.

Driving along Pacific Coast Highway, you can see the successive layers of earth and rock that have piled up over millions of years to create California's coastal landscape. You can see a similar but less attractive phenomenon if you look at the way California funds its public K-12 schools. Over the last several decades, Sacramento has piled up layer upon layer of funding requirements in education, adding new regulations to the pile while leaving old ones in place. These "categorical" programs send money to school districts to support specific activities, and each comes with its own set of rules and obligations.

Shia LaBeouf was working hard to discover to his character for "The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman" - but it turns out he couldn't quite get there without taking an acid trip along the way. LaBeouf first sought advice from costar Evan Rachel Wood, someone he said he's always looked up to as an actor. "I remember sending Evan tapes," he said in an interview with MTV News at Sundance. "I remember trying to conjure this [character] and sending tapes and Evan being like, 'Yeah, that's good, but that's not, but this is, but that ain't.'" PHOTOS: Celebrties by The Times (Not that she's any kind of drug expert, she chimed in.)

PARK CITY, Utah - Come to the Sundance Film Festival and there's a good chance you may never make it into a theater, because there's plenty of drama to keep one entertained elsewhere, most of it along this mountain town's Main Street. A camel strutted up the thoroughfare Friday, joining the usual caravan of black Cadillac Escalades that ferry celebrities to and fro. The dromedary was part of a publicity stunt for a movie that wasn't even playing in the festival, and police promptly showed up to move the ship of the desert off the main drag.

This review has been updated. The sound of two women singing in close harmony can give a special feeling of pleasure and even exhilaration. It is a sound not restricted to French art song, but the French especially cultivated it during the belle époque era, 1880 to World War I. This was the era lovingly mined by soprano Renée Fleming and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in a joint recital Saturday at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The quintessential example would be the "Duo des fleurs" from Delibes' "Lakmé," appropriated as an ad by British Airways for its sense of classy uplift.

Badly matched foundation can look downright scary: too gray, too goopy, too mask-like. This is an area where one size does not fit all. And now the diversifying face of America, the rise of high-definition image technology and a photo-happy population has translated to consumer demand for foundation that's natural looking, full of skin-healthy ingredients and color-customized for the fairest through the deepest complexions. Beauty companies, rising up to meet the demand, have steadily expanded their offerings - and it seems to be paying off. According to market researcher NPD Group, in the 12-month period ending in October, total U.S. foundation sales generated $965 million, up 7% in dollars from the same time last year.

Since she made her solo debut at age 11 in 1982, violinist Midori has grown up - and grown middle-aged - under the full glare of the media. Reporters dubbed her a child prodigy when she first stunned audiences as a last-minute substitute with the New York Philharmonic. They chronicled her ascent to adolescent superstardom, a status cemented when at age 14, she went through three violins in a single Tanglewood concert. The media continued to follow her as she matured into a venerated soloist.

For 95 years, Grant Park loomed over downtown Ventura without drawing much notice. Now, with the help of a city government willing to lease the park's 107 acres for $1 a year and a group of residents willing to raise millions for a botanical garden, it's sprung to life. On Saturday, hundreds of residents, their dogs and their kids trooped up a new mile-long trail with seed-filled Dixie cups, dumping them in spots where California bluebells, golden lupine, white yarrow, mission red monkey flowers and a host of other plants might bloom in the spring.

Downtown Los Angeles has changed dramatically in the past dozen years from being known as a high-rise office park ringed by poverty to an actual neighborhood where thousands live and more come to play. Its transformation into a fully rounded 24-hour urban center is far from complete, but the process is well underway and accelerating, said Derrick Moore, a property broker who finds space for such street-level businesses as restaurants, shops and bars. Moore, who works in the downtown office of Avison Young Inc., has tracked the local retail real estate market since 2000.