The rambling metropolis of
Los Angeles sprawls across the thousand square miles of a
great desert basin, knitted together by an intricate
network of congested freeways between the ocean and the
snowcapped mountains. Its colorful melange of shopping
malls, palm trees and swimming pools is both mildly
surreal and startlingly familiar, thanks to the celluloid
self-image that it has spread all over the world.
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LA is a young city; in
the mid-19th century, it was a community of white American
immigrants, poor Chinese laborers and wealthy Mexican
ranchers, with a population of less than 50,000. Only on
completion of the transcontinental railroad in the 1880s
did it really begin to grow, as a national mecca for good
health, clean living, plentiful sunshine and endless acres
of citrus crops. The biggest group of transplants were
refugees from the Midwest, who created a new political
ruling class to replace the old Mexican elite. The old
ranchos were soon subdivided, the population grew rapidly,
and the enduring symbol of the city became the
family-sized suburban house (with swimming pool and
two-car garage). The biggest boom came after World War II
with the mushrooming of the aeronautics industry.
The first-time visitor
may well find Los Angeles thrilling and threatening in
equal proportions; it's a place that picks you up and
sweeps you along whether you want it to or not. While it
has its fine-art museums, California cuisine and a few
old-fashioned urban plazas, what people really come here
for is to experience the city that has come to epitomize
the American Dream the fantasy worlds of Disneyland and
Hollywood, as well as the gilded opulence of Beverly Hills
and Malibu.
With
only limited space between the desert, the mountains and
the ocean, LA has long since filled in the gaps between
what were once small and isolated towns. As a result,
it's a massive conglomeration of interconnected,
amorphous districts, often with little in common.
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over the years, with a high influx of population driven
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If LA has a heart,
however, it's downtown, in the center of the basin. It
offers a taste of almost everything you'll find
elsewhere around the city, from upscale avant-garde art
along Bunker Hill to the abject dereliction of Skid Row
in the Eastside, compressed into an area of small,
easily walkable blocks. The area around downtown
contains some decaying Victorian suburbs, 1920s Art Deco
buildings and the center of LA's enormous and growing
Hispanic population.
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Heading west from
downtown to the coast, the first major district you come
to, Hollywood, has streets caked with movie legend --
even if the genuine glamor is long gone. Adjoining West
LA is home to the city's newest money, shown off in
Beverly Hills and along the Sunset Strip. Santa Monica
and Venice to the west are the quintessential seafront
LA of palm trees, white sands and laid-back living,
while the coastline itself stretches another 20 miles
northwest to glamorous Malibu, home to the movieland
elite.
Suburban Orange County,
to the southeast, holds little of interest apart from
Disneyland and a handful of laid-back beach towns. On
the far side of the northern hills lie the San Gabriel
and San Fernando valleys, or simply "the Valley."
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Los Angeles News:
Headlines from latimes.com
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The idiosyncratic films are part of a new wave of art-house horror.
Idiosyncratic horrors, "The Innkeepers," "Kill List" frighten fests, VOD and theaters.
The George Lucas universe returns to theaters on Feb. 10 when "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" opens in 3-D, and it looks like he will be using every Jedi trick to get fans into seats on opening weekend.
Sony Pictures Television has announced she's joining the cast of the Lifetime series "Drop Dead Diva," now in its fourth season, for a multi-episode arc.
All the issues of DC Comics that hit shelves in March will have the publishing arm's version of the new-look symbol and, that same month, DC Entertainment will unveil its massive new website.
The unidentified woman told the 911 operator that Moore "smoked something -- it's not marijuana, it's similar to incense" and she "seems to be suffering convulsions."
Landis has a book out on the genre and Dante has a DVD of movie trailers. They'll sign these new releases in L.A.
From the earliest days of cinema, audiences have loved to be scared. The three-minute film from French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès, "The Haunted Castle," hit screens in 1896 with celluloid skeletons, ghosts, witches and even the devil himself, and our appetite for thrills hasn't abated since. Franchises such as "Saw" and "Paranormal Activity" continue to redefine the horror genre while setting records at the box office.
Southern California's early punk and media art scene is the focus of the film program 'Strange Notes and Nervous Breakdowns' at MOCA. It's part of the museum's 'Under the Big Black Sun' exhibition.
The early SoCal punk scene wasn't all guitars, mosh pits and visions of chaos — although there was a good dose of that, thanks to bands such as the Germs and Black Flag. Rather, the music was experimental, arty and all over the map.
