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Review: Morgan Fisher gets contemplative over color

Written By kolimtiga on Jumat, 31 Januari 2014 | 23.51

Found art, or paintings and sculptures not originally made by an artist or even with art in mind, is a modern phenomenon heading toward its formal centennial anniversary next year. In 1915 Marcel Duchamp coined the term "readymade," annoying countless observers in the process, but today the strategy barely turns heads.

That doesn't mean it's moribund. At China Art Objects Galleries, Morgan Fisher has made two suites of paintings based on paint chips commercially produced in 1935 to help American consumers decorate their homes. He invented neither the colors nor the compositions. Yet, marvelously conceived and exquisitely crafted, Fisher's "Exterior and Interior Color Beauty" is an exceptionally compelling show.

Five small paintings are crafted from two or three wood panels, each painted a single flat color and all fitted together to form a horizontal rectangle. The pigments and their combinations were recommended by a professional color consultant as a fool-proof way to create harmonious rooms.

Most often the color is a neutral or soft pastel -- oyster, heather, iris -- and the use of organic names for industrially produced hues is sly. Each separate color panel is a different size, indicating its intended use on a wall or as a subsidiary trim.

Likewise, five large paintings do something similar for exterior color combinations. One large panel features an ideal hue for the outside of a house, while anywhere from three to six smaller panels are affixed along the side or, in one instance, along the bottom edge. The small panels feature possible trim colors.

The exterior paintings' compositions suggest semaphores or sign language, as if their geometric configurations and smoothly uninflected colors are gesturing to you from across the room. Initially, the communication is as mysterious as any composed in a symbolic language that a viewer might not understand.

All that falls away, though. The paintings slowly open up to embrace surprising questions about taste, personality, economics, aesthetics and history.

Up close, the precision of their hand-craftsmanship is as meticulous as fine cabinetry. It speaks of values like care, thoughtfulness and the importance of time. The paintings' unknown color consultant likewise did his or her job well, as balance and harmony (if not excitement or verve) are prominently displayed.

When one learns that Fisher based the paintings on a brochure published by his father, an adventurous Chicago architect who tried to make a go of manufacturing prefabricated houses, these abstractions enfold unexpected autobiography. Found art is likewise prefab, connecting the son's paintings to the father's houses; given the ubiquity of found art, it is also where we now live.

The original brochure intended to create comfort for what was, in 1935, a radical home-building (and buying) proposition. Here it gets turned on its head.

The work's ancestry during the Great Depression pointedly resonates with our social situation today, when more than one in six Americans languish in poverty. Industrial mass-production plays against handcraft, the optimism of Constructivist art and the Bauhaus gone sober in the lingering wake of housing shenanigans that shoved the economy over a cliff.

In the 1930s, the Social Realism of artists as diverse as Thomas Hart Benton and Dorothea Lange was the leading artistic response to grinding conditions of human despair.

Given long-standing precedents to Fisher's new paintings -- from the revolutionary premises of Constructivism to the more recent Minimalist color charts of Ellsworth Kelly, Gerhard Richter, Tim Ebner and Stephen Prina -- these abstract geometries suggest a loopy new form of American Scene painting, melancholic and contemplative.

China Art Objects Galleries, 6086 Comey Ave., Culver City, (323) 965-2264, through March 1. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.international.la


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Beatles special comes together with a little help from their friends

Dave Grohl was on his way to rehearsals for a TV special marking the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' U.S. live television debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show" when the panic set in.

"Suddenly it hit me: Maybe I ought to listen to the record again before we rehearse it," the founding member of Nirvana and Foo Fighters said of his impending run-through of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with guitarists Joe Walsh and Gary Clark Jr. for "The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles."

The two-hour special will air Feb. 9, exactly half a century after the Fab Four's debut appearance on Sullivan's show kicked Beatlemania into high gear on American shores.

PHOTOS: The Beatles: A look back at their U.S. debut

As Grohl related the comedy of errors the quickly ensued, he grew increasingly animated: "So I'm driving down here and trying to pull it up on my iPhone. Then it says I have to update myiTunes account, while I'm trying to plug it in.

"Finally I thought, [forget] it!" he said later, during a short break between the Beatles show rehearsal and his session with Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age working up their performance for the Grammy Awards telecast. "When I got there and sat down at the drums and started playing, all the fills were there — they just came out [because] I've been listening to this stuff my whole life."

Grohl's moment of clarity about the DNA-deep resonance of the Beatles' music in his life was echoed repeatedly by the musicians who perform in the Beatles special, which piggybacks on this year's Grammy Awards show with performances by Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry, Imagine Dragons, Gary Clark Jr., John Legend, Pharrell Williams, emcee LL Cool J and, of course, the surviving members of the Fab Four: Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

PHOTOS: The Early Beatles Collections

"We had no idea Ed Sullivan was the biggest show in America," Starr, 73, said in a Staples green room, flanked by fellow Brit rocker Peter Frampton, American guitarist Steve Lukather of Toto and other members of the band musician, producer and Blue Note Records label chief Don Was put together to accompany Starr's and others' performances. "We just knew we were coming to do some TV show. All we cared about was that we were coming to America. New York! Nothing else mattered."

Wonder not only vividly remembers the profound impact the Beatles' performance on the Sullivan show had on him as a 13-year-old musician but also recalled his early exposure to them while he was on tour in England, a child R&B prodigy at Motown Records who was billed at the time as Little Stevie Wonder while riding the crest of his first No. 1 hit, "Fingertips-Pt. 2."

"I'd heard them in England from being over there and I was telling people about the Beatles, how they had a great sound, with these great chord structures," said Wonder, seated in a golf cart outside the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the special was taped, after his run-through of "We Can Work It Out," the 1965 Beatles hit that he brought back into the Top 20 six years later with his funky arrangement.

PHOTOS: 'Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years'

"Obviously when I heard John Lennon singing 'Please Mr. Postman' [the 1961 hit by another Motown act, the Marvelettes],' it was a good experience to hear another take on American R&B," Wonder said softly. "They loved Little Richard and Buddy Holly, and when they did their version of [Smokey Robinson's] 'You Really Got a Hold On Me,' it was great."

In addition, the show's tribute to the ongoing impact of the Beatles' music spurred the reunion of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart as the Eurythmics, performing together for the first time in nearly a decade. Alicia Keys, Walsh, Jeff Lynne, John Mayer, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Ed Sheeran, performers from the Cirque du Soleil Las Vegas Beatles show "Love" and George Harrison's son, Dhani Harrison, are among those featured in the Beatles special who didn't appear on the Grammy telecast.

Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale and actress-singer Anna Kendrick pump up the celebrity content of what will be a two-hour special with their introductions to various performances, and longtime Beatles associate and Monty Python founding member Eric Idle delivered a lighthearted introduction tapping into his Rutles parody of Beatlemania. Idle also narrates separate video biographies of each Beatle that will be included in the show.

360 PHOTO: Paul McCartney gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

The efficacy of grabbing several au courant hit makers to serve up their interpretations of Beatles songs isn't likely to ingratiate this show to aficionados. Nor is it likely to quiet choruses of "It's all too much!" from those who grouse that the lionization of the band and its music has gone on long enough, a sentiment that surfaced in a number of critiques of McCartney's and Starr's performances for the Grammy Awards show.

But to those for whom there can never be an overdose of Beatles music in the world, it's worth noting that the show inspired the first performance of the biggest hit of the Beatles' hit-laden career, "Hey Jude," by McCartney and Starr together since they recorded the song in 1968, well after the group had given up live concerts.

"That was incredible," said Was, known in music circles for his laid-back "That's cool" attitude, which quickly vanished upon witnessing a new piece of Beatles history. "It's the best thing I've ever seen."

Although the Beatles show was created and rehearsed simultaneously with this year's Grammy Awards ceremony, there were few if any signs that the whirlwind nature of the production process was causing participants to lose sight of the gravity of the event they were celebrating.


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'American Idol' recap: Last stop, Omaha!

"American Idol" handed out a few final golden tickets -- 21 of them, to be precise -- as it wrapped up its Season 13 auditions on Thursday in Omaha. Along the way, Keith Urban reconnected with an old pal he hadn't seen in years, Harry Connick Jr. had his first "Idol" moment of self-doubt, and Lopez showed off her bright yellow fingernails by gesticulating whenever she could.

The talent sneaking through under the wire included …

--Quaid Edwards, 21, whose mom, Jolie Edwards, apparently performed with Urban back when she fronted a country music band called Jolie and the Wanted. The judges weren't terribly wowed by his take on Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," but he won them over with his apparent earnestness and avowed willingness to work hard and grow. Quaid's success made his mom cry, which in turn made Lopez tear up. Pass the tissues.

--Madisen Walker, 15, who flowed in to sing what Urban called a "perfect karaoke version" of Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats." Urban's description didn't bode well, but he and Lopez sent Walker through anyway. Connick demurred, predicting the heartbreak in store for her down the line would outweigh the fleeting joy of having made it through.

--Alyssa Siebken, 20, who failed to impress Connick with her acoustic version of Waka Flocka Flame's "No Hands." "I just don't think your voice is strong enough," he said. But thanks to the other two judges, she was handed a ticket anyway. "I'd like to see where you go," Urban said. Ryan Seacrest further rewarded Siebken by posing with her for a "victory selfie."

--Tyler Gurwicz, 25, who sang Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain" as if he might very well go out and fling a match into gasoline any minute. "You look angry when you sing, and it's hard to watch," Urban said, not to put too fine a point on it. The other judges liked Gurwicz's intense delivery, though Connick was torn as to whether to let him through. After Gurwicz sang another song at Connick's invitation (and Lopez's urging), Connick apparently relented and gave him the second "yes" he needed to make it to Hollywood. Almost immediately, though, the normally hard-to-please judge suffered pangs of regret. "That may have been my first slip in judgment," he said. "Everything else has been very clear to me. That's the first time when I second-guessed myself."

--Omaha club promoter Tyler Marshall, 23, made it through easily with his rolling take on "Rolling on the River." "You look like a happy guy," Connick suggested, the sort that "even if your world is crashing around you, you have that happy face." Then he made Marshall happier by handing him his ticket to Hollywood – without even waiting for the other judges to vote. They didn't seem too bothered, though.

--CJ Jones, 20, who sang "Stand by Me" solidly even though Connick got up and actually stood by him, dancing. "I like the sound of your voice …. It's a pleasing voice to hear," Urban told Jones before the judges put him through.

--Dajontae Lenear, 16, and Dylan Becker, 17, who each delivered the goods vocally, charmed the judges thoroughly and collected their golden tickets.

--Paula Hunt, 20, a Nebraska resident who sings for our troops as part of the U.S. Air Force Heartland of America Band. The judges were moved by her supple take on Etta James' "All I Could Do Was Cry" and perhaps even more so by her backstory: Her mom, an R&B and gospel singer, had had some record deals lined up, but lost her voice when multiple sclerosis struck her in 2007. "I get to finish what she started," Hunt told the judges, through tears. "The reason we have the best military in the world is because they get to listen to people like you sing," Connick said, adding that her style was "tasteful" and elegant. "I love your flow," Urban said. Lopez declared her to be one of her favorites. Hunt had made her mother proud.

--Andrina Brogden, 18, a North Dakota native who also made her mom proud. Though her rendition of Beyonce's "Halo" wasn't exactly rousing, Urban and Lopez attributed her vocal shortcomings to nerves and saw enough raw talent in her to put her through. 

--Casey McQuillen, 21, whose "Skyscraper" the judges found to be "angelic," restrained and "smart." 

--And Tessa Kate, a 25-year-old Arkansas native who plays and performs in Branson, Mo., and has a way with a descriptive phrase. "I was feeling really calm and now I feel like I grabbed an electric fence -- the kind that holds the cows back, not just the little animals," she said before taking her turn before the judges. Kate electrified the judges -- and the rest of us -- with her high-pitched take on Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues." Connick was reminded of his childhood crush, Barbara Mandrell, and the Mandrell Sisters' TV show, which he said he could see Kate on. "You just have a classic sort of timeless sound to you," he told her. The other judges were somewhat less effusive -- Lopez said something about Kate nearly veering into Chipmunks territory -- but they both gave her yeses. "I loved it. I think you're great. I can't wait to see more of you. It's a yes," Connick said, as Kate nabbed the season's last ticket to Hollywood.

Hooray! Which singers do you think will go furthest in this year?

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'American Idol' recap: A stop in Motor City

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'American Idol' recap: Peaks and valleys in Salt Lake City


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Todd Robbins, Teller turning 'Play Dead' stage show into TV series

"Play Dead," the ghoulish stage show that has run in Las Vegas, New York and most recently at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, explores the grisly side of the occult and features macabre magic tricks and illusions performed by a menacingly charming Todd Robbins.

The creators of the show -- Robbins and the illusionist Teller -- are now working on turning the production into a TV series. In an email, Robbins described the series' premise as "Breaking Bad" meets "True Blood," with copious amounts of blood and sex.

"The series chronicles a traveling theatrical troupe that, under the guise of performing a quirky magic show of spooky amusement, presents experimentations of alchemistic procedures for the resurrection of the dead," wrote Robbins.

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He said the series would follow the ragtag group of outcasts as they break into old theaters across the country and perform their ghoulish acts, then pack up and skip town before the authorities discover the decimated corpses and missing persons.  

"They are also being hounded by the Academy, an enigmatic organization that controls and protects alchemistic knowledge," said Robbins.

The stage show "Play Dead" was seen in Las Vegas before moving on to the Players Theatre in New York's Greenwich Village in 2010, and the Geffen Playhouse, where it ended its run earlier this month. Robbins co-created the show with Teller, who directed.

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Teller said in a separate interview that they are going to start pitching the TV series to producers and other executives.

A Times reviewer for the Geffen stage show wrote: "the dark, the gore, the morbid anecdotes — and that eye-twinkle — will put you into a state of nervous excitement."

Robbins said that the TV series "will be very creepy and funny and shocking and bloody.  And there will be lots of nudity and sex.... What more could you want from a TV series?" 

ALSO:

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The Beatles powered TV, and TV powered the Beatles

Fifty years ago next Sunday, on Feb. 9, 1964, via "The Ed Sullivan Show," America met the Beatles.

It was not the group's first appearance on American television. CBS News had reported, dismissively, on British "Beatlemania," and Jack Paar had aired on his talk show a clip of the band playing in England. Their music was in the charts, finally: After a year of outright refusal, Capitol Records (an American arm of EMI, the Beatles' British label) was finally releasing and promoting their records. In "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the band had its first U.S. No. 1 About 3,000 fans greeted the Fab Four at the airport when they arrived in New York two days earlier.

But the Sullivan show was different. The TV version of vaudeville's "playing the Palace," it conferred a seal of approval, even of importance, on the acts that appeared there. On the air since the dawn of the medium and watched regularly by many millions, it was a national institution, a family tradition. ("Hymn for a Sunday Evening," from the 1960 musical "Bye Bye, Birdie," is a meditation on his very name.)

PHOTOS: The Beatles: A look back at their U.S. debut

The Beatles would have happened here whether they played "The Ed Sullivan Show" or not. Indeed, for many the only reason the show is remembered is that the Beatles were on it, but they might not have happened so explosively, so definitively, so fast. Their first appearance on the show, which they both opened and closed, was estimated to have been seen by a record-breaking 73 million viewers, or one in three Americans, and they appeared the next week as well, remote from Miami Beach, and the week after that, on videotape.

Not everyone who watched was converted, of course. If they were relatively friendly revolutionaries, with their pressed suits and bemused grins and professional politesse and their malt-shop lyrics, they were revolutionaries nonetheless. Their energy was fearsome, their wit sharp and their hair, by local standards, was for some confusingly long.

Now that everything is at our fingertips, a swipe or click away at any moment anywhere, it is hard to conceive of the effect they once had. The revolution had actually been televised then. In a media world that requires a surfeit of "news," appearances by musicians are still talked about, especially if in some ways outrageous. (What Will Miley Do?) But the world does not change overnight, as it seemed to in February 1964, when, legend has it, legions of kids ran out and bought Rickenbacker guitars and Cuban-heeled boots, grew their hair and started writing songs.

PHOTOS: The Early Beatles Collections

The importance of that moment to the group's American fortunes was underscored by Capitol using images from the "Sullivan" show on the covers of "The Beatles' Second Album," released in April, and "Something New," which came out in July. But television appearances, from teen-pop shows to Morecambe and Wise's popular British comedy-variety series, had already played an important part in their career, building them through 1963 into household names in Britain, where they were regarded as lovable lads and invited to play for the queen.

It's no accident that their first film, "A Hard Day's Night," which began shooting soon after the group's return from the U.S. and is a kind of edited, enhanced version of the life they were living, largely concerns a television appearance. (That film, and its zanier follow-up, "Help!," also gave birth before long to "The Monkees," which was both a product of a traditional TV network and a step into the avant-garde: Producer Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson would, between them, have a hand in "Easy Rider," "Five Easy Pieces" and the surrealist post-series Monkees movie, "Head," written by Rafelson and Jack Nicholson.)

After the Beatles quit touring in 1966, television was their main instrument of public appearance. There was "All You Need Is Love," performed as part of a worldwide satellite telecast in 1967. There were promotional films — precursors to the video clip, and instructions, in a way, on how to read the songs — for the single sides "Rain," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Penny Lane," "Hey Jude," "Revolution" and "Let It Be." They came to New York in 1968 and went on "The Tonight Show" (guest-hosted by Joe Garagiola) to announce the formation of Apple.

"Magical Mystery Tour" was a BBC Christmas special before it became a film in the U.S. Each of these appearances, live or filmed but often shown only once, constituted an unmissable event, made more valuable by the scarcity of such events.

Now an institution

They are, to be sure, an institution now themselves. Though still working, enviably vigorous and recognizably themselves, the surviving Beatles are in their 70s now. One of them lets himself be called "Sir Paul."

Feb. 9, on the anniversary of the band's "Ed Sullivan" bow, CBS will air "The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles." Many of the acts had also performed at the Grammy Awards ceremony, which took place the night before the special was recorded, and at which Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award. I was present at the salute, some of which was inspired and some more of which merely proved the excellence of the original versions, though one can say at least that the current program is no less the end than the first was the absolute beginning.

When the Beatles made their "Ed Sullivan" debut, show business, like much else in the world then, was at a point of change, a change the Beatles both reflected and helped bring about. Rock 'n' roll had a history with television as had other types of teen pop; Dick Clark had been hosting "American Bandstand" since 1956.

PHOTOS: 'A Grammy salute to The Beatles'

The Beatles were not the first of their kind to appear on "The Ed Sullivan Show": Elvis Presley had made his own repeated splashes there, and in one famous instance was shot from the waist up for the benefit of more conservative sensibilities. But the assumption was that they were only fads passing through, something to exploit for a while, who would grow out of their youthful otherness, as Elvis did, or who would simply disappear, leaving the same figures in power and the power structure unaltered.

Self-contained and self-directed — notwithstanding the guidance of manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin, who were collaborators and not directors — the Beatles were something new and in no hurry to leave or conform. Other new things followed through doors they helped open. For better or worse, for a while, the world grew young.

There has been no "Beatles," of course, since 1970, when the group broke up, and no possibility of a reunion since 1980, when John Lennon was murdered — and, since the death of George Harrison, no possibility even of the virtual reunion that produced "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love," Lennon demo tracks finished by his former bandmates on the occasion of their 1995 retrospective "Anthology" project.

360 PHOTO: Paul McCartney gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

On the other hand, none of that seems to matter much. Beatles music still sells well in all available formats. The music has entered into the ether; it is something we live in; it has achieved something of the quality of folk music, a thing we know from childhood, and our children and their children will know as well. It isn't nostalgia that colors these songs; they are simply everpresent. Before playing "Hey Bulldog" at the anniversary salute, Dave Grohl paid tribute to the one group that was his mother's favorite band, his own favorite band and his daughter's favorite band.

It's easy to overstate the influence of a pop band on history, and yet it is hard to understate the importance of this one. They weren't necessarily the best band at all things. But no other group mixed talent and ambition, curiosity and opportunity, elegance and approachability, ease and urgency, to such a degree, or so attractively. As a unit, they contained all the tensions that would ultimately break them apart; but while they held together, the mix was powerful.

Paul and Ringo sang together last week as old bandmates and permanent Beatles. It was lovely and moving. And if it didn't change the world, well, they had done that already.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com


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Obama offers plan for Americans who lack 401(k) retirement accounts

Written By kolimtiga on Rabu, 29 Januari 2014 | 23.51

President Obama's plan for a new type of retirement account may help some Americans, but it's unlikely to be a panacea for the U.S. retirement crisis.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Obama proposed new accounts that would be available to the four-in-10 American workers who don't have access to 401(k) plans through their jobs.

It's a laudable goal but it's questionable how attractive or helpful the president's ideas might be to the millions of lower-income Americans who are struggling to make ends meet.

The president also injected a dose uncertainty for investors with existing 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts. He indicated a desire to roll back some of the retirement-related tax advantages for higher-income wage-earners.

That sparked immediate concern from the financial-services industry, which makes enormous profits managing retirement accounts.

"While we welcome the President's effort to create new retirement savings opportunities, it is with regret and deep concern that we heard his comments about reducing the retirement tax incentives that have been part of the foundation for the success of the private sector retirement system for all Americans, including hard-working middle income Americans," the Investment Company Institute, a mutual-fund industry trade group, said in a statement.

Obama seemed to make two separate proposals for helping Americans with insufficient retirement savings.

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He said he would direct the Treasury Department to create "myRA" accounts, which would allow people to invest in government savings bonds that guarantee "a decent return with no risk of losing what you put in."

Only 59% of workers 16 and older are eligible to join 401(k) plans, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

"Today, most workers don't have a pension," the president said in his address. "A Social Security check often isn't enough on its own. And while the stock market has doubled over the last five years, that doesn't help folks who don't have 401(k)s."

There are many questions and potential shortcomings concerning the plan. One is that savings would flow into lower-yielding government bonds rather than the stock market.

The president also proposed automatic IRAs, an idea that has been kicked around in policy circles for years.

There could be potential benefits to such a plan -- especially having a portion of savings automatically flow into accounts rather than go to workers who might be tempted to spend the money -- but it appears that such IRAs would need congressional approval.

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Twitter: @LATwalter

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Robert Lepage has helped Cirque du Soleil evolve with 'Totem'

Cirque du Soleil is famously protective about the artistic process that goes into its elaborate shows. So it's refreshing to speak with someone like Robert Lepage, the acclaimed Canadian director, who is relatively forthcoming about working for the Montreal company and its owner, the elusive billionaire-of-mystery Guy Laliberté.

Lepage is a veteran of two Cirque shows — "Totem," the 2010 touring production that is running in Santa Monica through mid-March, and "Kà," the long-running Las Vegas show at the MGM Grand.

"Cirque gives you the time and resources to push in the right direction," said Lepage from his offices in Quebec City.

"It's a generous environment. For some directors, they get lost. If you have too much freedom, you get lost. But not me."

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For "Totem," Lepage created a show about the evolution of the animal kingdom, which he married to Cirque's signature brand of acrobatics and aerial stunts. The show debuted in Montreal and has since toured the world, including recent stops in Orange County and the Port of Los Angeles.

"I was thinking, within the human body, we are all animals. At points, we resemble tadpoles, climbers, mammals, monkeys," Lepage said, "and our aspiration is to take off and fly away. So you see within the evolution of one human, all animals are present."

In "Totem," the evolutionary arc of the show begins with performers embodying apes and culminates with the arrival of contemporary man and wireless technology.

The director said that Laliberté can be quite hands-on when it comes to fine-tuning a Cirque show. The billionaire (whose hobbies include poker and space tourism) co-founded Cirque in 1984 and continues to head the company.

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"He's not there all the time, but you have these regular pitches and rehearsals you have to show to him. I get along with Guy but others find it tougher," Lepage said.

Lepage said that money is never an issue for Laliberté. In 2013, Forbes estimated that the Cirque co-founder's net worth is $1.8 billion.

Laliberté has cultivated an image of an unconventional business leader, describing himself in rare interviews as "head clown." But few outside the company know the precise nature of his management style.

"Some can feel a bit bullied by him," Lepage said. "There are points where we didn't agree. He can come in a week before and say this or that doesn't work. So you have to be prepared for that."

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Like most Cirque shows, "Totem" features an international cast. Alevtyna Titarenko, who hails from Ukraine, has been with Cirque for 15 years and with "Totem" since its beginning.

"Of course, it does get tiring," she said. "But as long as you can keep yourself motivated on stage to give the feeling of the act you're supposed to give, then it works."

"Totem" also features vocal performances from Christian Laveau, a performer from the Huron-Wendat tribe in Quebec. Laveau performs in his native tribal language throughout the show.

"Guy and Robert respected the language," he said. "I also asked elders in the tribe for their permission to sing in the language."

Lepage is the head of the innovative Canadian theater company Ex Machina, which has performed around the world and brought "The Blue Dragon" to L.A. in 2008. The company is renowned for its visually arresting productions that mix technically complicated mise-en-scène with artistically challenging material.


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Demand for planes boosts Boeing profit

Boeing's fourth-quarter profit rose 26 percent as it delivered more commercial airplanes — a speedup that it says will continue this year.

However, Boeing shares dropped in premarket trading Wednesday after it said 2014 revenue and profit would be lower than analysts have been expecting.

Boeing finished 2013 with a fourth-quarter profit of $1.23 billion, or $1.61 per share, well ahead of the expectation of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Profits grew in both its commercial airplane and defense businesses.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $23.79 billion.

Orders from airlines around the world have pushed both Boeing and competitor Airbus to build more planes than ever before. Boeing says it will deliver 715 to 725 planes this year, an increase of at least 10 percent from last year.

Boeing has sped production of both its workhorse 737, as well as its new 787. It expects to deliver 110 787s this year, up from 65 last year. Earlier this month Boeing said it began building 787s at a rate of about 10 per month.

Boeing's profits are benefiting from the surge in deliveries, but not as much as analysts had hoped. On Wednesday it said so-called "core" earnings, which exclude certain items, would be $7 to $7.20 per share, with revenue of $87.5 billion to $90.5 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had been expecting a profit of $7.52 per share on revenue of $92.72 billion.

For all of 2013, Boeing earned $5.96 per share on revenue of $86.62 billion.

In premarket trading, Boeing shares fell $3.36, or 2.5 percent, to $133.73.


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Stocks slide as emerging market worries return

Stocks were lower in early trading Wednesday as investors assessed the latest company earnings reports and awaited news from the Federal Reserve, which wraps up its two-day policy meeting later in the day. 

KEEPING SCORE: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 111 points, or 0.7 percent, to 15,817 in the first half-hour of trading. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 11 points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,781. The Nasdaq composite fell 26 points, or 0.7 percent, to 4,070. 

FED DAY: The Federal Reserve wraps up a two-day policy meeting and is expected to announce that it will continue to reduce, or "taper," its bond purchases to $65 billion a month from $75 billion a month. The policy is intended to hold down long-term interest rates and stimulate the economy by encouraging borrowing and hiring. 

"The common thought is that the Fed is to continue its tapering at $10 billion," said Joe Bell, a senior equity analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research. 

NOT GOOGLE: Yahoo fell $2.48, or 7 percent, to $35.75 after the company reported a drop in fourth-quarter revenue late Tuesday, highlighting the company's trouble in bringing in online advertising dollars. The internet company reported a 6 percent decline in revenue, the same rate of decline for all of 2013. 

PLANE DISAPPOINTEMENT: Boeing fell $6.09, or 4.4 percent, to $131 after the plane maker said that 2014 revenue and profit would be lower than analysts have been expecting as the pace of orders slows. 

PHONING IT IN: AT&T, the nation's biggest telecommunications company, fell $1.52, or 4.5 percent, to $32.14 after its outlook for the year disappointed investors. The phone company said its forecast "assumes no lift from the economy," and predicted earnings to be in the mid-single digit range. 

TREASURYS AND COMMODITIES: Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.72 percent from 2.75 percent. The price of oil fell 44 cents to $96.99 a barrel. Gold rose $16.40, or 1.3 percent, to $1,267 an ounce. 


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Intelligence leakers pose 'critical threat' to U.S., say spy chiefs

WASHINGTON -- Insiders such as Edward Snowden who leak secrets about sensitive U.S. intelligence programs pose a "critical threat" to the United States, America's spy chiefs warned Congress in their annual report on global national security risks.

For the first time, the threat of unauthorized disclosures from "trusted insiders" was ranked as the second greatest potential threat to the country, after cyberattacks but ahead of international terrorism, in the document prepared by the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

Those individuals aren't necessarily working with foreign intelligence agencies, the document says. Some members of Congress have all but accused Snowden of working for Russia's spy service, but no clear evidence has emerged to support the contention.

"The capabilities and activities through which foreign entities — both state and nonstate actors — seek to obtain U.S. national security information are new, more diverse and more technically sophisticated," the document says.

The report pays close attention to Snowden, a former contract employee at a National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii who began leaking thousands of NSA documents on surveillance programs to the media last spring and is now a fugitive in Russia.

"Trusted insiders with the intent to do harm can exploit their access to compromise vast amounts of sensitive and classified information as part of a personal ideology or at the direction of a foreign government," the report states. "The unauthorized disclosure of this information to state adversaries, nonstate activists or other entities will continue to pose a critical threat."

The heads of major intelligence agencies except the NSA are testifying at a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee Wednesday morning to deliver their annual roundup of terrorism, nuclear proliferation and other potential threats around the globe.

Those scheduled to testify include Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey.

Over the years, the annual "worldwide threat" hearings have broadened public understanding of Al Qaeda's growing network, Pakistani support for Taliban fighters, nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea and other sensitive issues.

Last year, the threat of foreign-based cyberattacks were portrayed for the first time as a more acute danger than international terrorism, and that continues this year, although the growing strength of Al Qaeda-linked fighters in Syria and Iraq, and parts of North Africa, was noted in the pre-hearing statement.

"The threat of complex, sophisticated and large-scale attacks from core Al Qaeda against the U.S. Homeland is significantly degraded," the statement says, although it warns the threat to U.S. facilities overseas has increased.

ALSO:

Mexico announces anti-kidnapping plan

China looks to halt New Year's fireworks to curb air pollution

Britain's royal family should cut costs and staff, lawmakers say

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Twitter: @kendilanianLAT


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Stocks are mixed as overseas stocks drop

Written By kolimtiga on Senin, 27 Januari 2014 | 23.50

U.S. stocks are mixed in morning trading Monday as emerging-market fears push stocks lower nearly everywhere else in the world. Most European and Asian markets are lower. 

KEEPING SCORE: Major U.S. market indexes gave up early gains and turned mixed at mid-morning. After the first hour of trading the Dow Jones industrial average was down 13 points, or 0.09 percent, at 15,865. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was down five points, or 0.3 percent, at 1,784. The Nasdaq was down 37 points, or 0.9 percent, to 4,090. 

OVERSEAS ANGST: Most major European stock markets were lower. Britain's FTSE-100 fell 1.5 percent. Spain's benchmark index was down 0.8 percent and Germany's DAX fell 0.3 percent. In Asia, the Hang Seng and the Nikkei each fell more than 2 percent. 

CURRENCY TUMULT: The Turkish lira hit a record low of 2.39 per dollar before recovering to 2.32 per dollar after the country's central bank said it would hold an emergency policy meeting on Tuesday. The South African rand fell another 0.3 percent to 11.13 per dollar, and Russia's ruble fell 0.5 percent to 34.68 per dollar. A sharp drop in emerging market currencies last week set off a global stock market decline as investors worried about a slowdown in China, which is a major importer of commodities from other developing countries. 

EARNINGS SURPRISES: Caterpillar was the biggest gainer in the Dow, rising $4.65, or 5 percent, to $90.83 after the industrial equipment maker reported fourth-quarter net income that easily beat analyst estimates. Royal Caribbean surged $1.35, or 3 percent, to $48.47 after the Miami-based cruise operator also posted higher profits. 

Several companies will report results after the market closes Monday, including Apple, Zions Bancorp and Seagate Technology. 

HOME BUILDERS SURGE: NVR Inc. surged $71.54, or 7 percent, to $1079.90 after beating analyst projections for earnings. Other home builders rose along with it. Lennar, D.R. Horton and PulteGroup were each up more than 1 percent. 


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Grammys 2014: Neil Portnow on the telecast's big wedding

All anybody wanted to talk to Recording Academy President Neil Portnow about backstage after the Grammys on Sunday night was if the academy was taking a political stance by marrying (mostly) gay couples during the telecast.

No, he said.

"We're not taking a stand on a political issue," he said. "We're taking a stand on a humanitarian issue.... This is about people who love each other and want to be together."

When it was pointed out that social justice seemed to be an overwhelming theme during this year's ceremony, Portnow said the Grammys simply reflect the artistic environment that they grow out of each year.

Grammys 2014: Full coverage | Top nominees and winners | Red carpet | Show highlights

 "Every year we get a fresh canvas to paint on, based on the nominations and music that came out," he said. "When you look at this year, a lot of artists are talking about social justice. That's not unusual for our creative community because we have a whole lot of heart."

Heart aside, the academy is now squarely in the center of a roaring debate in the Twittersphere and elsewhere on the Internet about whether or not it's trying to push a radical, liberal agenda.

"Personally, I think we live in a very divided country, whether we like that or not," Portnow said. "We represent creative artistry, we don't take a political position on any of these things. We provide a platform.... These  individuals believe in each other, love each other and want to be with each other."

At the end of the night, Portnow said the academy was just proud of what happened.

"It was as meaningful and powerful as we hoped," he said.

ALSO: 

PHOTOS: Grammys 2014 top nominees, winners

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

COMPLETE LIST: Grammys 2014 nominees and winners

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

PHOTOS: Top nominees & winners

PHOTOS: 2014 Red carpet arrivals

PHOTOS: 2014 Red carpet arrivals


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Grammys 2014: Neil Portnow on the telecast's big wedding

All anybody wanted to talk to Recording Academy President Neil Portnow about backstage after the Grammys on Sunday night was if the academy was taking a political stance by marrying (mostly) gay couples during the telecast.

No, he said.

"We're not taking a stand on a political issue," he said. "We're taking a stand on a humanitarian issue.... This is about people who love each other and want to be together."

When it was pointed out that social justice seemed to be an overwhelming theme during this year's ceremony, Portnow said the Grammys simply reflect the artistic environment that they grow out of each year.

Grammys 2014: Full coverage | Top nominees and winners | Red carpet | Show highlights

 "Every year we get a fresh canvas to paint on, based on the nominations and music that came out," he said. "When you look at this year, a lot of artists are talking about social justice. That's not unusual for our creative community because we have a whole lot of heart."

Heart aside, the academy is now squarely in the center of a roaring debate in the Twittersphere and elsewhere on the Internet about whether or not it's trying to push a radical, liberal agenda.

"Personally, I think we live in a very divided country, whether we like that or not," Portnow said. "We represent creative artistry, we don't take a political position on any of these things. We provide a platform.... These  individuals believe in each other, love each other and want to be with each other."

At the end of the night, Portnow said the academy was just proud of what happened.

"It was as meaningful and powerful as we hoped," he said.

ALSO: 

PHOTOS: Grammys 2014 top nominees, winners

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

COMPLETE LIST: Grammys 2014 nominees and winners

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

PHOTOS: Top nominees & winners

PHOTOS: 2014 Red carpet arrivals

PHOTOS: 2014 Red carpet arrivals


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'Ride Along' cruises! Daft Punk's big Grammy night. Leno talks.

After the coffee. Before making sure I didn't get married while watching the Grammys.

The Skinny: Wouldn't it have been funny if Kacey Musgraves went all Richard Sherman on Taylor Swift after beating her in the best country album category at the Grammys? Now that would have been entertaining. Today's headlines includes Grammy coverage and the box office recap. Also, "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno is starting to make the rounds with exit interviews.

Daily Dose: If the next time a political spot comes on and the candidate mentions you by name, you may not be hallucinating. Satellite broadcasters DirecTV and Dish Network said they were teaming up to offer what is known in the industry as "addressable advertising" which is a polite way of saying very specific targeting of commercials. "Campaigns can focus their message to a precise set of potential voters and eliminate the spending waste," said Keith Kazerman, senior vice president of ad sales, DirecTV. 

Oh Lorde! New Zealand singer Lorde (Ella Yelich-O'Connor) was one of the surprise winners at the Grammys last night as her hit "Royals" won best song and best pop performance. Daft Punk also cleaned up, as did Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. The show also featured a performance by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr as well as Pink once again auditioning for Cirque du Soleil and a surprise appearance by Madonna. Grammy recaps from the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Rolling Stone.

Still in fifth gear. The buddy comedy "Ride Along" had no problems staying in first place at the box office, taking in $21.2 million. Coming in second with just over $12 million was the war drama "Lone Survivor." Meanwhile, "I, Frankenstein" becomes the first official flop of the new year, taking in less than $10 million in its first weekend. Box office coverage from the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.

Exit interview. With his second term as "Tonight Show" host coming to an end next month, Jay Leno is making the rounds with farewell interviews. He's still a little bitter about the Conan O'Brien fiasco and isn't totally ready to walk away. That said, he also isn't looking for another TV gig for now, so all those other companies thinking they'll woo Leno for their own show should cool their jets. Here's Leno's conversations with TV Guide and the Hollywood Reporter.

Safe landing. Often when one gets a new boss it's time to get the resume ready. But Universal Pictures Chairman Donna Langley has apparently won over her new boss, Jeff Shell, who is chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment. Langley's deal with the studio was renewed through 2017 and she had oversight of marketing and international production added to her gig. Details from Variety and the Los Angeles Times.

You've arrived. The New Yorker's Ken Auletta weighs in on Netflix. Set aside a few hours (or days) for a deep dive into Netflix and how it's changing television, yada, yada, yada.

Inside the Los Angeles Times: A review of the Grammy Awards.

Follow me on Twitter. I'm spam free! @JBFlint.


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Grammys 2014: Queen Latifah on her role in the 'Same Love' wedding

A content Queen Latifah appeared backstage at the Grammys on Sunday night after officiating at the weddings of nearly three dozen couples, both gay and straight, during the telecast.

 "I look forward to the day when presiding over a historic wedding ceremony like this is the norm," said Latifah. "I can't wait to dash off and sign their marriage certificates.

 During the ceremony Macklemore & Ryan Lewis performed their song "Same Love," which has become a touchstone in the movement to legalize gay marriage. Madonna also appeared to sing "Open Your Heart." When it was over, many, including Keith Urban, were brought to tears.

 Latifah said she was approached to perform the ceremony only a few weeks ago. "I'm not an ordained minister, I'm a commissioner," said Latifah. "Call me Queen Commish."

GRAMMYS 2014: Complete list | Top winners | Show highlights | Quotes

 Would Latifah get married on national television?

 "Maybe, but probably not," she said carefully. "That would probably be a day I keep to me."

 Still, she said she thought the couples who married on Sunday night were incredibly brave. "They should be celebrating tonight," said Latifah. "Looking into their eyes -- this is a real moment for them -- and I'm happy to be here.

 Asked if she thought rap duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were breaking new ground in hip-hop by addressing themes such as diversity and acceptance, she said no. Social justice has long been fodder for hip-hop artists, she said.

 "Macklemore & Lewis are hugely successful with Grammy after Grammy for making good music and for talking about things that matter to people," she said.

 ALSO: 

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

PHOTOS: Grammys 2014 top nominees and winners

COMPLETE LIST: Grammys 2014 nominees and winners

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

PHOTOS: Top nominees & winners

PHOTOS: 2014 Red carpet arrivals

PHOTOS: 2014 Red carpet arrivals


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6 killed, scores wounded as 4 blasts rock Cairo

Written By kolimtiga on Jumat, 24 Januari 2014 | 23.50

CAIRO -- A trio of explosions in the Egyptian capital Friday, one of them an apparent vehicle bomb in front of a downtown security headquarters, killed at least five people and injured scores of others, according to officials and state media reports.

Four of the deaths were reported at the security headquarters, where the powerful early-morning explosion sheared off the building's facade, shattered windows over a wide radius and damaged a museum building directly across the street.

About three hours later, a second blast went off near a metro station a few miles away, killing one person, according to the Health Ministry. Shortly after that, a third explosion was reported near a police substation, with no immediate reports of casualties.

[Updated, 8:05 a.m. PST Jan. 24: Security forces later confirmed that a fourth bomb had exploded on a road in the capital as a police convoy passed by, killing one person.]

The timing of the attacks was symbolic, coming on the eve of a holiday hailing the police. Saturday also marks the third anniversary of the start of the uprising centered in Tahrir Square, which drove Hosni Mubarak from power. In advance of the commemorations, the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said any unrest would be dealt with harshly.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's explosions, but the interim government has consistently blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, for such attacks, even when another group claims responsibility. The Brotherhood has been branded a terrorist organization by the government.

Angry onlookers gathered in front of the police headquarters, some shouting slogans against Morsi and in favor of army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, who is expected to disclose soon whether he will run for president.

Friday is the main Muslim prayer day and a weekend day in Egypt, so few passersby were on the streets when the first bomb went off before 7 a.m. local time, and the fatalities were thought to be mostly police on duty at the headquarters. But more people were out and about when the second and third blasts hit at midmorning.

Attacks against the security forces are common in the restive Sinai Peninsula but relatively rare in major Egyptian cities. A bombing last month at a security headquarters in the northern city of Mansoura killed at least 15 people.

ALSO:

Pope Francis says the Internet is a 'gift from God'

Indian woman says she was gang-raped on orders of village council

Iran state TV breaks decades-long taboo against showing instruments

Twitter: @LauraKingLAT

laura.king@latimes.com

Hassan is a special correspondent.


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'Ride Along' to run over 'Frankenstein.' R.I.P. Ed Hookstratten.

After the coffee. Before going off the grid for the day. 

The Skinny: It was seven years ago today that I quit smoking. While I still occasionally miss my Marlboros, I have no real desire (or the wallet) to pick it up again. Today's roundup includes a preview of the weekend box office. Also, the crowds may have been big at Sundance but the business deals weren't. Oh, and I squeezed in a Justin Bieber piece to bring my demo down. Finally, an obituary for the legendary lawyer and agent Ed Hookstratten, who died Wednesday at the age of 83.

Daily Dose: Time Warner Cable is making some changes at its local Los Angeles channel SoCal 101 that will result in more than 50 people being let go. Primarily known as a sports channel for area high schools -- it has a TV deal with the California Interscholastic Federation -- the channel may be trying to veer a little more toward a lifestyle outlet. The cable operator said it would still honor its existing sports commitments but said, "we may have to slightly adjust our programming schedule."

Cruise control. The buddy comedy "Ride Along" should have no problem staying in first place for the second weekend in a row with a projected take of just over $20 million. The only new movie opening wide this weekend is "I, Frankenstein," a horror flick expected to crack the $10-million mark. "Lone Survivor" and "The Nut Job" are forecast to post solid results as well. Weekend box-office previews from the Los Angeles Times and Hollywood Reporter.

PHOTOS: Box office top 10 of 2013 | Biggest flops of 2013

Going for the gold. With the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, just weeks away, attention is starting to focus in the industry on whether NBC will be able to recoup the nearly $800 million it spent for the TV rights to the Games. One estimate has NBC taking in just over $1 billion in advertising for its coverage, which will be spread out across most of its broadcast and cable assets. Another major concern is, of course, security amidst worries of potential terrorist attacks. More on the games from AdWeek and the Los Angeles Times.

Lots of window shopping, not much buying. The Sundance Film Fesitval is wrapping up and while it got the usual attention and drew huge crowds, the Wall Street Journal says spending was off this year. One reason is that Sundance is no longer the only game in town when it comes to finding that next quirky hit. "The market for commercial independent movies is so healthy that they are selling at every major festival and often outside of a festival environment completely," Micah Green, co-head of the Creative Artist Agency's film finance and sales group said. "Most of what premiered at Sundance this year were smaller, more avant-garde movies."

Talk it out. A large Time Warner Cable shareholder is encouraging the company to at least have some conversations with Charter Communications about the latter's offer to acquire the pay-TV company. Time Warner Cable has said it found Charter's offer of $132.50 a share underwhelming. T. Rowe Price has written a letter to Time Warner Cable urging it to talk to Charter about a deal, according to Reuters. T. Rowe Price also has a stake in Charter.

Bieber bonanza. You didn't think I'd let the column slip by without finding a way to work in teenybopper Justin Beiber did you? His arrest has given cable news an excuse to take a breather from trying to be journalism operations in favor of chasing ratings. Have they gone overboard or are the problems of one of the world's biggest entertainers (it's scary typing that) a worthy news story? Variety columnist Brian Lowry offers his take.

Inside the Los Angeles Times: Ed Hookstratten, a powerful entertainment lawyer and agent who dominated the worlds of sports, TV news and entertainment, died at the age of 83. Betsy Sharkey on liking unlikeable movie characters

Follow me on Twitter. I have a long memory that comes in handy. @JBFlint.

ON LOCATION: People and places behind what's onscreen

 PHOTOS: Biggest box office flops of 2013

PHOTOS: Biggest box office flops of 2013

PHOTOS: Celebrity production companies



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Stocks slide, following global markets lower

U.S. stocks are falling sharply, following a global rout as investors pull money out of emerging markets like Turkey and Argentina and worry about a slowdown in China. Traders shifted money into lower-risk assets like U.S. government debt and the Japanese yen. 

KEEPING SCORE: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 149 points, or 0.9 percent, at 16,046 in the first hour of trading. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 15 points, or 0.8 percent, to 1,812. The Nasdaq composite was down 39 points, or 0.9 percent, at 4,179. 

FLIGHT FROM RISK: Investors were worried about sharp drops in the values of currencies in several emerging markets including Turkey, Russia, South Africa and Argentina. The downturn in emerging-market assets began Thursday following signs that manufacturing was contracting in China, a major importer of raw materials and a key driver of global economic growth. 

QUIZ: How much do you know about the Dow?

BIGGEST LOSERS: Railroad operator Kansas City Southern plunged $23.01, or 20 percent, to $94.27 after missing earnings estimates. Tool seller W.W. Grainger Inc. dropped $10.66, or more than 4 percent, to $246 after a disappointing profit. Engine-maker Cummins Inc. fell $3.17, or 2.4 percent, to $128.90. 

LOUSY WEEK: The Dow has fallen every day this week, leaving it down 2.4 percent. The S&P 500 had small gains Monday and Tuesday but is still down 1.3 percent since last Friday. 

MICROSOFT GAINS: The software maker's gains were one bright spot in a declining market. Microsoft rose $1.30, or 3.6 percent, to $37.35. Its quarterly revenue and earnings beat Wall Street expectations because of strong sales of its new Xbox One console and Surface tablets. 

JAVA JOLT: Starbucks rose $2.07, or 2.8 percent, to $75.46, after its quarterly earnings benefited from lower coffee costs and growing sales around the world. 

EUROPE AND ASIA: The worries about emerging markets also sent overseas markets lower. Japan's yen, which is seen as a safe haven, surged, which hurts the prospects for Japan's export-driven economy. The Nikkei 225 fell 1.9 percent. France's CAC-40 index fell 1.8 percent and Germany's DAX lost 1.7 percent. 

TREASURIES AND COMMODITIES: Bond prices rose as investors moved money into lower-risk assets. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note declined to 2.74 percent from 2.78 percent late Thursday. Oil fell slightly to $96.94 a barrel, while gold rose $6.30 to $1,268.70 an ounce. 


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Bombing at Egyptian police building damages nearby Islamic museum

CAIRO -- One of Egypt's loveliest but lesser-known museums was a casualty of a powerful bomb on Friday targeting a police headquarters directly across the street.

The stately 19th century Museum of Islamic Art in downtown Cairo, filled with precious cultural objects such as manuscripts, astrolabes and ceramics, was badly damaged by the early-morning blast.

The explosion, one of three blasts Friday that killed five people in the city, shattered windows, knocked off big chunks of masonry from the museum's ornate facade, and left a tangle of wires in the entryway. Doors dangled crazily from hinges.

[Updated, 8:10 a.m. PST Jan. 24: Security forces later confirmed that a fourth bomb had exploded on a road in the capital as a police convoy passed by, killing one person.]

The country's minister of antiquities, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the museum, which was recently renovated at a cost of nearly $15 million, would have to be closed and repaired at a cost that he estimated to be twice that of the previous work.

More than an hour after the explosion, there was little evidence of any organized police effort to secure the museum and its valuable artifacts. A light line of tape was placed in front of the museum entrance, but cordons of riot police appeared to have been deployed mainly to block off access to the wrecked security headquarters across the street, where four people died.

Volunteers later converged on the scene, fearful of looting like that which hit Cairo's famed Egyptian Museum amid the upheaval in adjacent Tahrir Square in 2011. Saturday marks the three-year anniversary of the start of that uprising, which toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The museum was inaugurated in 1881, then known as the Gallery of Arab Antiquities, with a small collection mainly garnered from mosques and tombs in Egypt, according to its website. It moved to larger quarters as its collection expanded to include tens of thousands of objects including coins, carvings, textiles, ancient weaponry and jewelry from across the Muslim world.

ALSO:

Pope Francis says the Internet is a 'gift from God'

Indian woman says she was gang-raped on orders of village council

Iran state TV breaks decades-long taboo against showing instruments

Twitter: @laurakingLAT

laura.king@latimes.com

Special correspondent Amro Hassan contributed to this report.


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On a Valley corner, Ariel Rechtshaid oversees pop's cutting edge

Ariel Rechtshaid works out of a squat, nondescript building on a quiet street corner in the San Fernando Valley. A gun shop does business a few doors down; across the way sits a martial arts academy. But step into the record producer's studio and you're within shouting distance of pop music's cutting edge.

Packed with computer gear and vintage synthesizers, the walls papered over by fliers advertising long-ago punk shows, this is where Rechtshaid has helped acts including Vampire Weekend and Sky Ferreira create some of the most exciting albums of the last few years — records that point toward new sonic territory even as they draw cleverly from the past.

"I like manipulating things so they sound subtly different from anything you've ever heard before," he said on a recent morning at the studio. The day before, Rechtshaid had returned from London, where he'd been collaborating with Kylie Minogue, and his eyes were still travel-bleary beneath a tangle of curly brown hair. "But the idea is always to find a unique performance and build a song around that."

FULL COVERAGE: Grammys 2014 | Complete list of nominees

It's an approach that makes Rechtshaid's work, which balances slickness with an identifiably human touch, grab your ears and hold on. And his clients aren't the only ones who benefit. At Sunday's Grammy Awards, Rechtshaid, 34, is up for the producer of the year prize, a tastemakers' long shot against more established hitmakers such as Pharrell Williams and Dr. Luke.

The nomination follows a prolific 2013 in which Rechtshaid oversaw albums by not only Ferreira and Vampire Weekend (whose "Modern Vampires of the City" also earned a Grammy nod) but Haim, the L.A.-based sister trio that dazzled critics with its retro-futuristic pop-rock debut, "Days Are Gone."

"Our record ended up exactly what we wanted but even better," Alana Haim said. "We had so many weird things in our brain we couldn't communicate to other producers. But by the end of recording, it was like Ariel could read our minds."

Perhaps that's because Rechtshaid, the son of Israeli immigrants whose passions included classical music as well as rock 'n' roll, knew what it was like to be in their place. Before he began helping other artists realize their creative visions — doing everything from suggesting drum tones to hammering out song structures — the producer, who grew up in Van Nuys, was a musician himself, first in the Hippos, a high school ska group that attained minor success, then in the more indie rock-inclined Foreign Born.

PHOTOS: Celebrities by The Times

His interest in playing shows and touring eventually gave way to a growing fascination with recording. "Being in bands just became an excuse to get into the studio," he said. "And then I realized that 10 songs every year and a half was not enough output for me. I needed to be doing this constantly."

As he honed his ability to sculpt sound using digital technology, Rechtshaid preserved his dedication to capturing a compelling performance: that lightning-in-a-bottle vocal take, for instance, or the guitar part that started as an accident.

"His thing is just being in the room and taking his time in the session," said Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, who recruited Rechtshaid to co-produce "Modern Vampires of the City." "And then he has strong opinions about what's the best version of something."

That focus on the unpredictable (and perhaps the unrepeatable) distinguishes Rechtshaid from producers such as Williams and Dr. Luke, both recording industry name brands trusted to deliver a recognizable sound. It's also made his work difficult to define. Though he's drawn praise for the meticulous arrangements on Haim's "Days Are Gone," one of his earliest successes was "Hey There Delilah," the stripped-down pop-punk ballad by Plain White T's that went to No. 1 in 2007.

INTERACTIVE: Discover songs of L.A.

Since then his palette has expanded to collaborations with mainstream stars such as Justin Bieber and Usher, whose smoldering 2012 single "Climax" (which Rechtshaid co-wrote) won the Grammy for R&B performance last year. He even went to Jamaica to assist in Snoop Dogg's much-discussed reinvention as a reggae singer.

At a moment when listeners' tastes have widened thanks to the instant-access promise of online music, Rechtshaid's strategy feels exceptionally current; he's in tune with the genre-hopping, anything-goes vibe that flourishes on Spotify and iTunes.

"Ariel is so universal, but at the same time he pushes boundaries," said David Wolter, an A&R executive at RCA Records who recently paired Rechtshaid with the up-and-coming singer Mikky Ekko. "What he does, it's fresh. I'd put him in the studio with anyone."

Which doesn't mean Rechtshaid is eager to accept every gig. Looking forward to 2014 and beyond, the producer insisted he's determined to resist streamlining his ideas or his habits even as his Grammy buzz amplifies demand for his services.

"I still don't know what my next record is gonna be — or what it's gonna sound like," he said at his studio, sitting beneath a poster of David Bowie, the veteran shape-shifter whom Rechtshaid called one of his primary inspirations. "That excitement about the unknown is what keeps me going. I feed off it."

mikael.wood@latimes.com

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

TIMELINE: Grammy winners through the years

PHOTOS: Top nominees

FULL COVERAGE: Grammy Awards 2014

FULL COVERAGE: Grammy Awards 2014



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Sundance: Lars von Trier's 'Nymphomaniac' opens to laughs and shocks

Written By kolimtiga on Rabu, 22 Januari 2014 | 23.50

PARK CITY, Utah -- By this point in his career Lars von Trier has done so much that's shocking that it's stopped being shocking.

Maybe it's that, or maybe just that, give or take an extended penis montage (of course), there actually isn't as much that's sledgehammer-startling about "Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1," the Danish director's first of two installments in his sex-addict tale, which, for all its naked women in compromising positions, has an unexpectedly straightforward and surprisingly (if not always intentionally) comedic undertone.

Von Trier premiered his new movie at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday. Well, he didn't premiere it, because he doesn't fly and is somewhere in Europe thinking of the next action star whose image he can soft-core up now that he's given it a whirl with Shia LaBeouf. But the film indeed played for the first time, part of a surprise screening orchestrated by the festival and one that generated a decent amount of laughter, some genuine and some awkward. Next month the full five-hour-plus director's cut will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, with a two-part set of shortened cuts, each a little longer than two hours, opening March 21 and April 18 in the U.S. This is the first of those installments.

MORE: Complete list of Sundance film festival selections

Here's how it plays out. A late 40's-ish woman named Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is found bloody in an alley by Stellan Skarsgard's professorial Seligman. After bringing her up to his apartment to convalesce, he begins listening to her erotic tale. From there we flash back to a child with a preternatural sexuality and,  eventually, a voracious young woman played by Stacy Martin.

Martin's Joe is fearless, practically nihilistic, about her conquests, their execution almost entirely joyless. She and a friend engage in wagers over who can sleep with the most men on a train before it reaches its destination (the bet is for a measly bag of candy, the one and only time a Von Trier movie will elicit thoughts of "Trading Places"). She eventually comes to have so many lovers on a given night that it practically requires a presidential scheduler just to keep them all straight.

Joe's exploits, portrayed with a kind of heartless abandon in flashback but conveyed with guilty regret by Gainsbourg, are all meant to show a woman in crisis (she is prone to describing love as "the lowest form" of expression), though whether compulsive sex is the answer or more of the problem is, at least for a little while, part of the movie's ambiguity. Less ambiguous are the cutbacks to Seligman, who is prone to finding comparisons between Joe's hard-core eroticism and everything from fly-fishing to a Bach sonata. (Upon hearing that her first encounter with a young LaBeouf involved three thrusts in one position and five in another, Skarsgard tells Gainsbourg, "Those are the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence." This is what made people laugh.)

BEST MOVIES OF 2013: Turan | Sharkey | Olsen

LaBeouf actually keeps his clothes on most of the time (the teaser to "Vol. 2" suggests otherwise) and is somewhat curiously seen by Joe as some kind of romantic ideal, though whether the heroine is also someone turned on by defiant tweets or an affinity for the story lines in graphic novels is an open question. Decidedly winning is Uma Thurman, who steals the show as a wife of one of Joe's many conquests; she shows up with her kids to confront Joe, in a wickedly sarcastic turn that has her inviting the children to see "the whoring bed."

So to recap, Stacy Martin has lots of sex while Charlotte Gainsbourg tells a story and Stellan Skarsgard lectures us about science, which in one sense would be short-shrifting the film and in another describes pretty much all you need to know.

There are no shortage of story lines outside the movie. Is the graphic aspect a help or a hindrance at the box office (and, by extension, will the fact that a lot of this cut is not qualitatively more shocking than, say, the director's "Antichrist" a help or a hindrance)?

Will Von Trier's infamous Cannes appearance a few years ago in, which he thought it funny to call himself a Nazi, work against him? (There is a reference made by Seligman, whom Von Trier saw fit to identify as a  Jew, to the character as "anti-Zionist" that is not even worth citing, so devoid is it of anything but a cry for attention.) And will the star attachments break the film out of the art house or just fill up some entertainment news magazine air-time with breathlessness about stars baring it all?

Seligman would invoke scientific principles to answer these questions. Joe might seek enlightenment elsewhere.

ALSO:

Sundance: 'Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter' looks for gold

Sundance: In Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood,' a profile of a man

Sundance: For embattled Matt Sandusky, a rare moment of redemption

 

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Stocks are mixed after IBM earnings disappoint

Stocks edged mostly lower Wednesday as investors pored over the latest batch of company earnings reports. IBM dropped after its revenue fell short of forecasts from financial analysts. Chipmaker AMD also plunged after predicting a drop in revenue in the first quarter. 

KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 fell two points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,841 as of 11:22 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 64 points, or 0.4 percent, to 16,350. The Nasdaq composite gained three points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,229. 

BIG BLUES: IBM fell $6.74, or 3.6 percent, to $181.81 after the computing company reported lower-than-expected revenue in the fourth quarter. Revenue fell 5.5 percent, hurt by a drop at IBM's hardware business. Profit rose 6 percent and adjusted earnings beat Wall Street predictions, however. The company has reported declining revenues for seven straight quarters, according to analysts at RBC Capital. 

HANDBAGS: Coach fell $3.50, or 6.7 percent, to $49.03 after the luxury goods maker reported a lower quarterly profit, citing weakness in women's bags and accessories in North America. Coach is facing tough competition from rivals like Michael Kors Holdings. 

EARLY TRENDS: There are lots of companies still to report earnings, but so far the stock market has failed to get a lift from the reports that have come out. After big gains for stocks last year, in which the S&P 500 climbed nearly 30 percent, investors want to see evidence that companies can boost their earnings through higher revenue growth rather than cutting expenses. 

"It's all about (revenue) outlooks, clearly that's what matters," said Ryan Detrick, a senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "It doesn't seem like there's been much to get excited about." 

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: Much like last year, small companies are again outperforming their larger counterparts. While the S&P 500 has moved sideways since the start of year, and is down 0.3 percent this month, the Russell 2000, an index that tracks smaller companies, is up 1.2 percent. The Nasdaq composite is up 1.4 percent. 

THE CHIPS FALL: Advanced Micro Devices plunged 46 cents, or 11 percent, to $3.71 after the company said late Tuesday that it expected its first-quarter revenue to fall 13 percent to 19 percent from the fourth quarter. That would translate into first-quarter revenue ranging from $1.29 billion to $1.38 billion, mostly below Wall Street's predictions. 

AMONG THE GAINERS: TE Connectivity jumped $3.42, or 6.1 percent, to $59.67 after the electronics company reported earnings that beat analysts' expectations and posted a strong earnings outlook for the second quarter. 

TREASURIES AND COMMODITIES: The yield on the 10-year Treasury note climbed to 2.84 percent from 2.83 percent late Tuesday. The price of oil rose $1.25, or 1.3 percent, to $96.23 a barrel. Gold was little changed from Tuesday at $1,241.50 an ounce. 

 


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Sundance: Lars von Trier's 'Nymphomaniac' opens to laughs and shocks

PARK CITY, Utah -- By this point in his career Lars von Trier has done so much that's shocking that it's stopped being shocking.

Maybe it's that, or maybe just that, give or take an extended penis montage (of course), there actually isn't as much that's sledgehammer-startling about "Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1," the Danish director's first of two installments in his sex-addict tale, which, for all its naked women in compromising positions, has an unexpectedly straightforward and surprisingly (if not always intentionally) comedic undertone.

Von Trier premiered his new movie at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday. Well, he didn't premiere it, because he doesn't fly and is somewhere in Europe thinking of the next action star whose image he can soft-core up now that he's given it a whirl with Shia LaBeouf. But the film indeed played for the first time, part of a surprise screening orchestrated by the festival and one that generated a decent amount of laughter, some genuine and some awkward. Next month the full five-hour-plus director's cut will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, with a two-part set of shortened cuts, each a little longer than two hours, opening March 21 and April 18 in the U.S. This is the first of those installments.

MORE: Complete list of Sundance film festival selections

Here's how it plays out. A late 40's-ish woman named Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is found bloody in an alley by Stellan Skarsgard's professorial Seligman. After bringing her up to his apartment to convalesce, he begins listening to her erotic tale. From there we flash back to a child with a preternatural sexuality and,  eventually, a voracious young woman played by Stacy Martin.

Martin's Joe is fearless, practically nihilistic, about her conquests, their execution almost entirely joyless. She and a friend engage in wagers over who can sleep with the most men on a train before it reaches its destination (the bet is for a measly bag of candy, the one and only time a Von Trier movie will elicit thoughts of "Trading Places"). She eventually comes to have so many lovers on a given night that it practically requires a presidential scheduler just to keep them all straight.

Joe's exploits, portrayed with a kind of heartless abandon in flashback but conveyed with guilty regret by Gainsbourg, are all meant to show a woman in crisis (she is prone to describing love as "the lowest form" of expression), though whether compulsive sex is the answer or more of the problem is, at least for a little while, part of the movie's ambiguity. Less ambiguous are the cutbacks to Seligman, who is prone to finding comparisons between Joe's hard-core eroticism and everything from fly-fishing to a Bach sonata. (Upon hearing that her first encounter with a young LaBeouf involved three thrusts in one position and five in another, Skarsgard tells Gainsbourg, "Those are the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence." This is what made people laugh.)

BEST MOVIES OF 2013: Turan | Sharkey | Olsen

LaBeouf actually keeps his clothes on most of the time (the teaser to "Vol. 2" suggests otherwise) and is somewhat curiously seen by Joe as some kind of romantic ideal, though whether the heroine is also someone turned on by defiant tweets or an affinity for the story lines in graphic novels is an open question. Decidedly winning is Uma Thurman, who steals the show as a wife of one of Joe's many conquests; she shows up with her kids to confront Joe, in a wickedly sarcastic turn that has her inviting the children to see "the whoring bed."

So to recap, Stacy Martin has lots of sex while Charlotte Gainsbourg tells a story and Stellan Skarsgard lectures us about science, which in one sense would be short-shrifting the film and in another describes pretty much all you need to know.

There are no shortage of story lines outside the movie. Is the graphic aspect a help or a hindrance at the box office (and, by extension, will the fact that a lot of this cut is not qualitatively more shocking than, say, the director's "Antichrist" a help or a hindrance)?

Will Von Trier's infamous Cannes appearance a few years ago in, which he thought it funny to call himself a Nazi, work against him? (There is a reference made by Seligman, whom Von Trier saw fit to identify as a  Jew, to the character as "anti-Zionist" that is not even worth citing, so devoid is it of anything but a cry for attention.) And will the star attachments break the film out of the art house or just fill up some entertainment news magazine air-time with breathlessness about stars baring it all?

Seligman would invoke scientific principles to answer these questions. Joe might seek enlightenment elsewhere.

ALSO:

Sundance: 'Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter' looks for gold

Sundance: In Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood,' a profile of a man

Sundance: For embattled Matt Sandusky, a rare moment of redemption

 

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Is NFL calling an audible? Tarantino mad at script leak.

After the coffee. Before again trying to shake this cough.

The Skinny: Got my power steering fixed. Nice not to have to feel like I did 50 push-ups after driving my car. Now I just have to get my health back! Wednesday's roundup includes Verizon's deal to buy Intel's online video unit and a look at all the deal-making at Sundance. Also, Ellen DeGeneres gets her show distributed in China.

Daily Dose: The Weather Channel isn't making much headway in its efforts to get back on satellite broadcaster DirecTV. Now the network wants DirecTV to waive its pricey cancellation fees so people who miss the Weather Channel can drop the service and sign on with rival pay-TV company that carries it. DirecTV doesn't seem to be taking the request or this whole contract dispute too seriously. Here's the latest.

Omaha! Is the NFL calling an audible on its own network? That is certainly one way to look at the league's push to take games from the NFL Network and sell them to one of their TV partners. If the league follows through with plans to create a new Thursday package, it could ultimately undercut the value of its own channel that it spent a decade building up. But for the NFL, building a bigger Thursday package (and developing a new revenue stream) is a priority that overshadows its own asset. Analysis from the Los Angeles Times.

GRAPHIC: Best of 2013 | Entertainment & culture

Over the top! Intel couldn't make a real go of its plans to launch an online video service, so it is selling its OnCue unit to Verizon. The challenge for over-the-top services has been trying to get networks to sign on. But Verizon is already a pay-TV player with its FiOS service, so it might have a better shot than Intel did. More on Verizon's deal from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon, which already has an online video service called Prime Instant, wants to also carry pay-TV channels to potentially compete with cable and satellite. However, Amazon denied it had such plans in the works.

Hope she has a passport. Daytime talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has finally done something Oprah Winfrey didn't do first. She's getting her show on in China. Warner Bros., which produces and distributes "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," has struck a deal with Sohu Video, an online service that will carry episodes of the show just two days after they have aired here. Details from the Los Angeles Times and Reuters. 

Wide release is a stretch. Universal Pictures is bailing on the movie "Stretch" from low-budget producer Jason Blum, who has been on something of a hot streak as of late and the subject of numerous glowing profiles. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Universal has decided that "Stretch," a comedy-thriller that was supposed to hit the big screen in March, won't deliver the goods. "Universal executives concluded it would be unwise to spend the $20 million to $40 million that it would take to release Stretch theatrically," the article said.

Taking his ball and going home. Director Quentin Tarantino is so mad that a new script of his was leaked after he shared it with a handful of actors that he has decided to shelve plans to make the movie for now. Tarantino tells Deadline Hollywood that he thinks Creative Artists Agency, which represented an actor who got the script, was behind the leak (which led to lots of calls from agents looking for parts for their clients). CAA denied that. Tarantino said he'll publish the script and then maybe make a movie of it in several years.

Inside the Los Angeles Times: A look at the wheeling and dealing that goes on at Sundance.

Follow me on Twitter. My bark is worse than my bite. @JBFlint.

ON LOCATION: People and places behind what's onscreen

 PHOTOS: Biggest box office flops of 2013

PHOTOS: Biggest box office flops of 2013

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Gustavo Dudamel conducting at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris

Gustavo Dudamel

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France during a rehearsal of Berlioz's "Requiem" at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. (Jacques Demarthon / AFP/Getty Images / January 22, 2014)

By David Ng

January 22, 2014, 8:15 a.m.

The historic Cathédrale Notre Dame in Paris will serve as a concert venue on Wednesday for Gustavo Dudamel, who will conduct a performance of Berlioz's "Requiem" with members of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

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L.A.'s Warpaint branches out from the abstract with stepped-up spin

Written By kolimtiga on Selasa, 21 Januari 2014 | 23.50

On the surface, the members of local quartet Warpaint give the impression they're low-key when it comes to making music. Bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg will tell you she doesn't think about music — she "feels" it — and along with singer-guitarist Emily Kokal, the two will regularly apply words such as "chill," "vibe" and "energy" to the band's creative process.

Don't be fooled.

With the release of a self-titled second album this week, Warpaint enters a key phase of its career. The band's 2010 debut, "The Fool," sold 150,000 copies worldwide, and its success allowed Warpaint to call on some of the most respected studio technicians in the music industry for the follow-up. Flood, whose credits include U2's "Achtung Baby" and Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral," served as producer, and Radiohead confidant Nigel Godrich mixed two tracks. 

INTERACTIVE: Times music staff best of 2013 list

When the currently touring band next visits Southern California, it will do so at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Such achievements haven't come Warpaint's way simply because the band, in the sometimes flowery words of Kokal, has "a language together."

But forgive Warpaint for speaking in the abstract. The band's musical vernacular, after all, is increasingly out there.

The new album finds a groove and then lets it spin. Vocals, guitars, whispers and a serpent-like bass lock in orbit around Stella Mozgawa's drums. The songs are more spacious, more drum-and-bass driven and more electronic. Guitars don't riff, they drip as if from a faucet, and sometimes the beat is up for dancing, but often it's down for conjuring a trance.

"We create very sensual, not sexual, music. It's music that creates a sensation around you, a world," says Kokal.

Got that? Let Geoff Travis of the band's label, Rough Trade Records, translate. "I really love 'Surrealistic Pillow,' that Jefferson Airplane record. They reminded me of that," Travis says of hearing Warpaint in 2009. 

PHOTOS: Top pop music moments of 2013

"Now it's more like Questlove playing with Jefferson Airplane or Questlove playing with the Grateful Dead," Travis says, referencing the drummer for celebrated hip-hop band the Roots. "Jenny plays bass in a way that sort of anchors around the sound. It's a tunnel. … Sometimes it's also like the Sugarhill Gang."

Visit Warpaint in its downtown arts district rehearsal space, and it's clear that the band is less about "vibing out" and more about perfectionism. The band is apt to spend 90 minutes shaping just 30 seconds of a song. At a momentary loss as to why a new tune wasn't coming together, the band eventually realized that vocalist-keyboardist Theresa Wayman was quietly intoning the phrase "she said" 21 times instead of the desired 20, a miscalculation that set off a domino effect of barely audible tonal shifts.

Every ghostly harmony, every snaking bass line and every beat must always be in its right place. And every outsider is a potential intruder.

Warpaint's habits were also shaped by the band's circle having always been celebrity adjacent. Warpaint formed in 2004 with Lindberg's sister Shannyn Sossamon on drums, and Lindberg herself left Reno as a teenager to chase a potential career in acting or modeling. When Sossamon's acting took off, the remaining members of Warpaint settled into a daily routine of rehearsing and working at bars and coffee shops.

"L.A. got demystified real fast," says Kokal. "The goal of trying to be known by everyone? Sure, we want people to hear our music, but we saw the stress our friends had. Simple pleasures weren't even an option just due to the awareness of the attention on them. So as much excitement as there was to come to L.A. and 'make it,' that all got quickly put into perspective. We protect our space." 

PHOTOS: Daughters of rock stars

Flood's resume, for instance, is impeccable, but when he met with the band for pre-production in 2012 he wasn't immediately welcomed with open arms. Warpaint, whose members are all in their early 30s, cut right to the point.

"Jenny was forthright," recalled Flood. "She said, 'I don't think we need a producer.' She was incredibly honest about it."

Flood, who enjoys a close professional relationship with Rough Trade, says he saw the band as a challenge and worked to quell Kokal's nerves that he would take the group to the "next level." He was drawn to what he says is the band's "impressionistic" nature.

"That needed to be kept," he says. "I loved that every song had a different structure."


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Egyptian court sets Morsi foreign-conspiracy trial for Feb. 16

CAIRO  -- An Egyptian court on Tuesday set a Feb. 16 date for deposed president Mohamed Morsi to go on trial on charges of colluding with foreign militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Morsi is facing a total of four separate trials on what his Muslim Brotherhood organization claims are trumped-up charges, several of which could carry the death penalty. This week, he was ordered to stand trial for insulting the judiciary.

The charges against Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, range from the extremely serious to the trivial; one charge sheet includes accusations of poultry thievery. Human rights groups have expressed repeated concerns about politically motivated prosecutions by the military-backed interim government, which has worked assiduously to stifle political dissent.  

Morsi is due back in court next week on the first of the charges lodged against him, incitement to kill demonstrators outside the presidential palace. A scheduled appearance earlier this month was called off after authorities said the weather did not permit a helicopter flight from his high-security prison to the court venue.

That appearance would have come less than a week before Egypt's constitutional referendum -- a vote that the Brotherhood urged Morsi's supporters to boycott -- and authorities may have wanted to deny the former leader a forum for a fresh show of defiance.

The trial's initial session, in November, dissolved into pandemonium when the ex-president and his co-defendants shouted that they did not recognize the authority of the court or the interim government.

The new constitution won overwhelming approval -- more than 98% -- but turnout was lukewarm, with young people staying away in particularly large numbers. That pointed to a deeply polarized public, with fervent support in some quarters for army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, the country's most powerful figure, but apathy or hostility on the part of many others.  

During Morsi's yearlong tenure, which ended when the military removed him from office in July following huge demonstrations against his rule, Islamist militant groups strengthened their foothold in the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt has accused Hamas, which runs the neighboring Gaza Strip, of aiding the Sinai militants in their attacks on Egyptian security forces. Hamas has consistently denied any involvement.

Thirty-five co-defendants, many of them already in jail, are to go on trial alongside Morsi on the foreign-conspiracy charges. Most of the Brotherhood's senior leaders are imprisoned, in exile or in hiding, and the movement has been formally designated a terrorist organization by the interim government.

ALSO:

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Sochi Olympics safety fears soar after video, 'white widow' report

'Hello, world': Rosetta spacecraft wakes for comet-chasing mission

Special correspondent Amro Hassan contributed to this report.

laura.king@latimes.com


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