LA Stories
USC School of cinematic arts news
Making Waves: SCA Professor Midge Costin Documents Our Visceral Response to Cinematic Sound, October 16 2019: “Sound for too long has been the oft-forgotten stepchild of the film production process. This has been true whether it's studios that undervalue and under-budget for sound, or on campus, where students have not always considered the significance of sound to their short films until just before they put them in the can.”
The MISC List: The 15 Most Significant Social Impact Films of 2018, December 21 2018: “For a film to have real social impact, it has to be more than just technically proficient. It has to be able to expand our understanding, to change our perspective, to challenge us to do something.”
LIVESTRONG
#MeToo Shocked Me As a Man – And That's the Problem, October 20 2017: "Weinstein played the press like a pan flute; the outfits I worked for — Premiere and Variety — were by my reckoning two of his chief enablers, though they were far from the only ones. It is hard now to think back on those years and the gushing praise we in the press gave movies like “Pulp Fiction” and “The Artist” and not see it as part of the smokescreen that helped allow Weinstein’s multi-decade campaign of alleged sexual terror."
New York Observer
Observer's 2017 Content Kings, November 7 2017: "This is a strange time in Hollywood. We are already living in (with apologies to Jennifer Lawrence) a post-movie-star era…These days, the name above a title doesn’t mean the same thing it used to for ticket sales. And soon, we may face an era that will change the entertainment economy irrevocably: a post-movie-theater Hollywood."
Dennis Lehane: Can One of America's Great Crime Novelists Survive Los Angeles?, January 17 2017: "The epic-in-scope, Prohibition-era-set, Capital-G-gangster movie sank like a Craig Kimbrel curveball when it expanded wide this past weekend."
Now Hear This is the New 300-Pound Gorilla of Podcast Festivals, November 1 2016: "As much as the show was for fans, it did to serve to reinforce the sense of community within L.A.'s fast-growing pond of podcasts."
Take an Existential Slide 1,000 Feet Above Los Angeles, July 19 2016: "The Skyslide is an engineering and technological marvel, one that uses glass and extreme height to precisely calibrate a response that can best be described as a gentle, joyful existential crisis. Mercifully, it is one that is over pretty damn quick."
Hollywood's New Museum of Broken Relationships is Trying to Break Your Heart, June 9 2016: "The feelings the place evokes–melancholic whimsy, nostalgia for someone else's life–are difficult to label. Surely, the Germans have several names for it, but the rest of us are left a little tongue-tied trying to describe it."
Holy Hell Offers Rare, Intimate Glimpse Into Los Angeles Cult Life, May 27 2016: "It is hard to imagine a more L.A. villain than the pathological narcissist who Mr. Allen still refers to as 'The Teacher,' a Rosemary's Baby extra who claimed to be a conduit to divine knowledge while rarely wearing more than a Speedo or a leotard."
Observer's LA Power 25, July 7 2015: "Their selfies can alter a stock’s future. Their kind request for a donation can forever change the fate of a candidate or a charity. And if they can’t fix your problem, they know someone who can.
The DailyBeast
After the Los Angeles Wildfires, the Rich Will Rebuild Even Bigger, December 17 2017: "These fires happen to be hitting the hills of Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties at a time when houses being built in those areas more closely resemble James Bond villain hideouts than traditional single-family homes. Indeed, Zsa Zsa's 12,000-square foot rebuild would fit snugly on the roof decks of some of the so-called houses being built in her same neighborhood today."
Zsa Zsa Gabor's Fabulous Life: The Kim Kardashian of Her Generation, December 19 2016: "When asked how many husbands she had, her pat response was, "You mean other than my own?"
38 Years for a Murder He Didn't Commit, April 23 2015: "For now, Hanline, who kept his '70s biker beard long enough that it's now back in style, is free of the courts and a prison system that has claimed half his life. He's begun the bizarre process of acclimating to a world where everyone walks around with little TV sets in their jeans. 'It's Buck Rogers,' he says."
Fast Food Workers Starving to Live in L.A., April 16 2015: "Up to 2,000 people gathered in Los Angeles to picket for a higher minimum wage on Wednesday. Many more would have joined, but they couldn't afford the time off."
The Getty 'Curse' Strikes Again, April 2 2015: "The death of 47-year old Andrew–son of San Francisco socialites Gordon and Ann Getty and the grandson of J. Paul Getty, the miserly misanthrope who was America's first oil billionaire–was the latest tragedy to befall a family whose name has become synonymous with grand wealth and philanthropy and equally grand misfortune."
People
The Celebrity Designer Convicted of Rape, September 8 2009: "According to the district attorney, Alexander would typically troll social networking Web sites for aspiring models–the younger the better–and using celebrity connections as bait, would lure them to his Beverly Hills apartment, which he claimed was his studio."
Inside Story: How a Boy Became the Changeling Imposter, November 14 2008: "One of the enduring questions behind Angelina Jolie's film Changeling is why a little boy pretended to be a distraught mother's missing son. Now, after almost 80 years, that mystery has been solved."
United in Loss, December 6 2004: "Police in Los Angeles made the stunning announcement that they had evidence that White's and Johnson's daughters had been murdered by the same man."