Beth Kopley

The LA Times has nominated five books in each of nine different categories for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. In the weeks leading up to the Festival of Books where the winners will be announced, LAist will take a quick look at each category and will wax poetic on a few favorites (or least favorites) along the way. The Beautiful Fall is a nominee in Current Interest. In 1954, two fledgling fashion...

The LA Times has nominated five books in each of nine different categories for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. In the weeks leading up to the Festival of Books where the winners will be announced, LAist will take a quick look at each category and will wax poetic on a few favorites (or least favorites) along the way. The Lost is a nominee in Biography. In any family, the stories that are only...

Inside downtown's Blue Velvet, the vibe is sleek, dark, and moodily reminiscent of the 80s, in the unisex bathroom with its clever sinks and puzzling lack of mirrors, and via the waitresses, whose severe miniskirts make them look like those endless rows of models in old Robert Palmer videos. "Addicted to Love," anyone? Despite the 80s trappings, Blue Velvet aspires to be a fine dining destination restaurant, and succeeds based on its ambitious menu,...

Although I know my way around the kitchen, for years I considered bread baking a specialized talent that took patience and a certain cast to character that I did not have. This didn't bother me; in fact, I confess that I looked down a bit on my breadbaking friends, raving about yeast and living dough and all manner of crunchiness. Until this fall, when the New York Times' Mark Bittman offered a bread recipe,...

Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower, which closed out last November's AFI Festival, is now in release. Curse takes place on the eve of the Chrysanthemum Festival in the year 928 A.D. at the end of the Tang Dynasty, as the emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) arrives unexpectedly to find that the empress (Gong Li) is unwell, despite the herbal medicine that he personally prescribes. The palace setting--the crazy psychedelic colors of its jade walls,...

A bistro is a café that serves simple meals in a relaxed setting, the kind of place you can go where you don't have to worry about meeting anyone's expectations for relative fame or fashionable dress. My favorite places in L.A. this year generally fit this definition. 1. Pazzo Gelato (my review) Many of my friends look at the dessert menu before they even consider a main course, so let's start there. After lunch...