The Los Angeles Times interviewed director Werner Herzog this weekend about his upcoming film, Rescue Dawn, and asked the German-born iconoclast why he has chosen to make Los Angeles his home: "We lived for a while in San Francisco, but it was too chic and leisurely," Herzog explains. "New York is only a place to go if you're into finances. But we wanted a place of cultural substance. And if you look behind the... more ›

The appeal of the indie coffehouse hasn't been fully exorcised from my 21st century modus operandi; I suppose I'm Gen X to the core, easily seduced by a yellow-lit room full of mismatched and well-worn furniture, singer-songwriter melodies emanating from low-fi boombox speakers, and walls bearing a wagon-train display of local artists' efforts. This is probably why I was recently tickled pink to rediscover Lulu's Beehive on the Sherman Oaks/Studio City borderline when I wandered in one overly warm morning and tucked into a latte and a look-see at the latest inky LA Weekly. It seems the Beehive and its caffeinated goings-on survived where so many other indies didn't as the mighty 'bucks and Coffee Beans bulldozed their way onto a corner--and corners--near you. Lulu's comes with the prerequisite tables of industry types talking about the Toronto Film Festival and has ample table-top space and plugs for the ubiquitous laptops of the lower eastside of the Valley. I'm shamefully impressed by their extensive selection of sugar-free Torani syrups; perhaps a survival strategy is to cater to the NutraSweet ingesting South Beach Diet denominator in the clientele. No matter. I was enamored with my (sugar free) Almond Latte and toasted everything bagel, and smugly appreciative of the multiple carvings that defaced the top of the table my goodies sat on. And even though I'm sitting here writing this, sipping my Grande house brew from my local corporate coffee-teria, my heart belongs to the indies. more ›

Now everybody wants to be homeless. Pras Michel, the Grammy-winning Fugees collaborator, just spent 8 days sleeping on LA's mean streets. He was trying to live on $1 per day for a documentary about poverty, which he plans to screen at the Toronto Film Festival. Living on the streets wasn't easy, he told the New York Daily News: more ›