(A Superhero Named) Tony

The Future Is Now! (1985)

2008-04-18T02:22:23Z

While I was busy collecting Garbage Pail Kids, someone at RTD was dreaming. (So was the U.S. Department of Transportation when it called the Metro Rail project the "most cost-effective new transit project in the nation.") // More from metrolibrarian at YouTube

Funny Because It's True

2008-04-13T18:38:54Z

Below are a few videos that intersect with my life in one way or another. Via Carectomy: More Monkey Dust: ...which of course brings to mind this episode of South Park.

StreetFilms LA: Bus Rapid Transit

2008-04-10T18:34:34Z

The esteemed StreetFilms/Streetsblog LA debut their first video about developments in Los Angeles public transit with a particular focus on Bus Rapid Transit à la the Orange Line. I've been wanting to do a series of shorts like this one for some time now. I guess now I don't have to. Or now I should get my act together. // Also, via angelenic: this is how we roll? wired on la's transit problem

Six Weeks of Awesomeness

2008-04-04T22:46:04Z

The schedule for the 2008 Last Remaining Seats series is online. For the uninitiated, LRS brings classic movies to downtown Los Angeles' classic theaters, the way they were meant to be. New to this year's roster is the recently restored Million Dollar Theatre. Tickets go on sale to Los Angeles Conservancy members April 9 and to the general public April 23. Ticket prices are $15 for members and $18 for everyone else. For the more hardcore, there's a discounted series pass available for $75/$90.

Recent downtown theater news: // blogdowntown: Delijani Looks to Add 155 Bite-Sized Condos in the United Building // blogdowntown: More Theatre Reuse: Units for Palace, Los Angeles?

Movies That Make Me Wish I Was Italian In The '60s & '70s

2008-03-16T22:02:29Z

Currently groovy at the American Cinematheque, Mario Bava: Poems of Love and Death. Danger: Diabolik (1968)

Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)

Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970)

Lisa and the Devil (1973)

News Flash: LAT Reporter Disconnected From World Outside Office Window

2008-03-13T18:21:09Z

In a classic piece of anti-urban propaganda, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Peter Y. Hong tries to sign the death certificate on downtown L.A.'s residential market, writing "there are signs that downtown's residential boom is slowing, if not stalling out altogether." In a couple brisk passages, Hong discounts the possibility of the housing slump being the cause. That would be the same nationwide (er, countrywide?) slump stemming from the so called "credit crunch," the number one source of current economic woe. The article's ringer seems to be figures that condo prices have fallen more downtown than in the rest of Los Angeles and Orange counties, but the article ignores both the downtown rental market and the variety of real estate options the outlying areas provide. Hong's big sign of downtown's residential market "stalling altogether" is that fewer people are no longer buying overvalued condos and lofts. So what? It doesn't take heavy research to see that downtown is glutted with unnecessary "luxury" developments -- just look at the signs. Lack of affordable housing has been a citywide issue for some time, and it certainly can't help a developing area. Last year's closure of an Ellis Act loophole is a start, but builders need to take advantage of it for there to be change. Hard economic times for luxury opportunists could be the best wake up call. I try to stay optimistic. Hong closes his fantasy with a quote from developer James Atkins, who offers his expert opinion about the ultimate form of gentrification: "When the Westside empty-nesters arrive, that's when we'll see the real jump in the market." Maybe, Mr. Atkins, but until then what about the rest of us?

Million Dollar Theatre reopened

2008-03-12T18:50:40Z

In my initial Los Angeles Cine File piece for fol.lowfoc.us, I failed to realize that Grauman's Million Dollar Theatre was in the midst of restoration. That's why my business card doesn't say "journalist." The theater reopened at the end of February. Angelenic has the info and some great pictures. The next question is whether or not the Million Dollar will be included in this year's Last Remaining Seats series. My reliable research shows they haven't scheduled it yet.

Los Angeles Cine File #3

2008-03-07T23:35:34Z

The latest at fol.lowfoc.us: // Los Angeles Cine File #3: Silent Movie Theatre // Moving Places, Donald Gray's retirement tribute to the great Jonathan Rosenbaum

Revisited: Falling Down

2008-03-06T01:56:41Z

I don't have a solid memory of the first time I saw Falling Down, the 1993 Michael Douglas vehicle about American white male frustration. I remember that the movie was still fairly new, that I watched it on a television (either via cable or videotape) and that it didn't affect me much. The time was the early 1990s. Douglas was Hollywood's Male Victim #1. Bill Clinton was a new President, I was in high school, and not too soon before there was a riot in nearby Los Angeles. My interest in the film probably didn't go beyond the shoot-and-yell-at-people trend that came into vogue after Reservoir Dogs. Fast forward to the present: I spend about half of the intervening years living in New York City. A terrorist attack occurs. The country's tenor changes. Back in a Los Angeles hell bent on urban development, and with renewed interest in the city's elusive soul, I figure, Hey, why not watch Falling Down again? It's Los Angeles around the time of the riots. That's interesting. Why the hell not? Well, now I know. Because it's lame. As a movie, Falling Down is a footnote to the Movieland violence of the '90s that led to Quentin Tarantino and all his bastard children. But it also uncomfortably teeters between 1980s genre corn and early 1990s superhip posturing. For all it's sociopolitical pretensions, the movie has a vulgar ignorance of reality. It's the kind of world where a gangbanger carries butterfly knife and a sad-sack cop about to retire has a name like Prendergast. I half expected (or hoped for) the baseball bat gang from The Warriors to show up and make it enjoyable. Any depth in the story is undermined by a sloppy camp: A kid can help Michael Douglas use a rocket launcher because he saw one on TV? That's social commentary, right? Robert Duvall punches a fellow cop, who then falls onto his retirement cake?! Joel Schumacher's strangling of the Batman franchise was never better foreshadowed. As a cultural artifact, Falling Down is something quite different. It's the result of the Gulf War, recession, and the 1992 riots, which happened during filming of the picture. That could make it prescient, but in a grander retrospect the movie is so typical of the "complacency" discussed so much after September 11. Douglas's D-Fens character is pushed over the edge because of unemployment, being "not economically viable," because his sprawling city is alienating and he has no place to fit between the rich and the poor. He's outmoded, a throwback to the good old days of crew cuts and apple pie. Fine. But he chooses to take his aggression out on immigrants, fast food, street construction, and all forms of NIMBYism from the ghetto to the golf course. Cry me a river, White Man! We know all along that D-Fens is the villain, and we're strangely meant to sympathize with his discontent as much as we're expected to condemn his actions. Yet not once does the film actually explore the causes of these frustrations or their possible solutions. It merely points them out, yells a bit and moves on, as ineffectual as its insane hero. I suppose that was a conscious decision meant to make the movie "edgy," another relic of 1990s Hollywood. Ultimately, the film is less about Los Angeles, as I'd hope it would be, and more about using Los Angeles as a prototype for Scary Urban America. Rather, Scary Urban America as it's perceived from inside the safe confines of a car in rush hour traffic. L.A. aside, I would just prefer that if someone were to get out of the car and confront Scary Urban America, he or she would experience the real thing -- and not some movie gangster with a plastic knife.

The Original Freeway -- for bikes?!

2008-03-04T06:18:49Z

The 110 from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena is the original freeway. It's always an interesting drive to me. A freeway that's been dwarfed by its home, a piece of history I sort of regret, the big joke of Who Framed Roger Rabbit -- that stretch of road has a lot going for it and probably just as much going against it. Here's an interesting post from the Carfree USA blog pointing to this Sierra Club article about what once stood in place of the Pasadena Fwy: a bikeway (as in bicycles), and for a toll no less! Put that in your congestion pricing and smoke it.

Finally! Metro Approves Fare Gates

2008-02-29T16:14:11Z

It's official. For a variety of reasons I can't bring myself to believe (unless they're financially related), this is a kind of unpopular decision. To me, barrier gates just make sense, like cash registers at the supermarket. "Honor system" does not compute when money and profit are involved. MetroriderLA has an interesting conspiracy theory about the gates being a vehicle for the new TAP payment system, but an automated payment system would likely be installed with barrier gates regardless of what that system actually is. (I've never used TAP, but it sounds flawed when compared to New York's MetroCard.) I can't help but wonder what people would think if gates had been installed when the rail stations were originally built. Would anybody care? Would anybody fight for an honor system then?

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

2008-02-29T02:48:08Z

Over at fol.lowfoc.us, Amy Robinson has some thoughts about George Romero's latest zombie movie. What's most striking to me about the film is how it trades the old idea of zombies as stumbling metaphors for an obsessive look at the human response to apocalypse. Involvement vs. Aloofness, Criticism vs. Action, etc. Examining these responses has always been part of Romero's agenda, but in Diary to stay in communication and share stories of your immediate surroundings becomes a vital function of survival. As "mainstream" news of the zombies is woefully recut as propaganda, online user-generated content helps create a jigsaw puzzle of fact. This is social networking at its most useful! Not since Night of the Living Dead has Romero's social commentary involved the zombies so little. Here they're rendered almost irrelevant. This time around the threat could be any threat -- a tornado, a hurricane, a civil war, alien invasion. It just so happens that zombies are more entertaining.

Super Martes

2008-02-05T05:08:18Z

Dear 24 U.S. States (especially California), Don't forget to vote. Love, Tony

fol.lowfoc.us

2008-01-31T15:53:52Z

My good friend Donald Gray has started a new film community/blog called fol.lowfoc.us. The site is still coming together in terms of style, but it should prove to be a good place for both reading and writing film crit and commentary. Eventually, writers will be able to sign up (for free) to start their own film blog via the site, which also offers an on-site RSS aggregator of various movie related stuff around the Internets. With a good community base, fol.lowfoc.us could be an all inclusive pit stop for online film writers and enthusiasts. Check out my first exclusive posts, the beginning of a series on great Los Angeles movie venues: // Los Angeles Cine File #1: Grauman's Egyptian // Los Angeles Cine File #2: New Beverly Cinema

Streetcar Named Desire

2008-01-30T07:59:26Z

Angelenic provides the best coverage I've seen thus far of downtown's Bringing Back Broadway project. Of particular interest is the color-coded revitalization map and the long shot possibility of a streetcar revival to connect Broadway to downtown's other megaprojects, L.A. Live and the Grand Avenue Project, both of which are as close to completion as Broadway is to securing the streetcar funding. Which is to say not close at all. Quote of the week (if the WGA strike doesn't happen to end tomorrow): "A great city is more than a beach, two theme parks and a sign." - Carol Schatz Funny because it's true and because Los Angeles doesn't really have any theme parks. To solve any confusion, proposed theme park name changes: // Universal Studios, The Entertainment Capital of Unincorporated L.A. County // The Los Angeles Disneyland of Anaheim