ENTERTAINMENT
February 18, 2014 | By Carolyn Kellogg, This post has been corrected, as indicated below.
If Charles Dodgson could have seen into the future, we might never have had "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. " Dodgson, of course, was the mathematician who penned the books "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass," using the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. During his lifetime, his identity as the "Alice in Wonderland" author had become known -- although he would have preferred it hadn't. "All that sort of publicity leads to strangers hearing of my real name in connection with the books, and to my being pointed out to, and stared at, by strangers , and treated as a 'lion,' " Dodgson wrote in a previously unpublished letter.
NEWS
January 16, 2014 | By Laura E. Davis
In 1964, Jong Sook Kim visited Disneyland. It was no ordinary trip for the 14-year-old. Doctors once thought she would never see again, but after she traveled from her native South Korea to San Francisco for surgery, her sight was restored -- and she got a personal invitation from Walt Disney to visit the happiest place on earth. A moment from that day, of Kim with "Alice in Wonderland" characters the Mad Hatter, Alice and the White Rabbit, that was taken for the Los Angeles Times' article about her, is captured in one of our vintage Disneyland photos above.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 17, 2013 | By Margaret Gray
Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass surely never imagined that the Winter Warlock from their 1970 TV Christmas special “Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town” would go into improv. The Troubadour Theater Company (“the Troubies”) first cast the Warlock in “Santa Claus Is Comin' to Motown” at the Falcon Theatre in 2004. The breakout star, known fondly as Winter, has become a staple of their annual holiday mash-ups. This year, in “Walkin' in a Winter One-Hit-Wonderland,” Winter attempts the transition from bit player to lead, determined to prove that, “like Scott Baio," as he puts it, he can carry a show.
HOME & GARDEN
December 14, 2013 | Chris Erskine
Christmas makes old men of us all, particularly the women, who grow grumpy and put-upon because most of the holiday prep falls to them. Christmas is a glorious celebration till it gets its claws into you. If you're not too careful, you grow cynical over the drumbeat of sales-sales-sales, the idiot radio stations that start the yuletide tunes in mid-November, the whole colossal runaway holiday sled. Our Thanksgiving was a triumph of the human spirit, and by Sunday of that weekend I was nearly Christmased out. I'd had just the right amount, yet there stood before us several more weeks of holiday mayhem.
NEWS
November 23, 2013 | By Lisa Boone
Fiber artist Niki Livingston dyes textiles using natural pigments and a combination of Japanese shibori and Nigerian adire techniques. The results are one-of-a kind works of fiber art, our latest picks in our Handmade Holidays gift guide. Livingston's repertoire has included curtains, duvet covers and clothing. For the holidays, Livingston has blankets ($275) created with a shibori technique (the fabric is folded, clamped or twisted). The blankets are handwoven in Indonesia and dyed by Livingston in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles using logwood (a type of willow)
ENTERTAINMENT
November 21, 2013 | By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
Walt Disney Pictures has its animation mojo back. Finally. With a cool, contemporary spin on a fairy-tale classic, a dramatic Nordic landscape animated in splendid storybook style and Broadway vets belting out power ballads, "Frozen" is an icy blast of fun from the very first flake. A certain scene-stealing snowman named Olaf chief among them. Directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee create a magical 3-D winter wonderland in "Frozen. " A sisterhood saga loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," it is filled with heart and heart-stopping action.