1947 Project
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1947 was a vintage year for noir in Los Angeles history: it was the year of the infamous
Black Dahlia murder and a time of tension between returning World War II soldiers and newly independent women. Kim Cooper of the 1947 Project, an L.A. historical crime blog, tells Ben Adair what it is about that year that still fascinates her.
Noir Then and Now
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The noir style remains influential in current movies and television crime dramas. Alain Silver, co-author of L.A.
Noir: The City as Character, tells us why American noir was born here. And Rob Thomas, creator of UPN's Veronica Mars,
says classic noir inspired his series about a teen sleuth.
Paula Woods
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Mystery novelist Paula Woods
continues a long tradition of setting her crime stories in Los Angeles. But her detective,
Charlotte Justice, is different: she's a black woman fighting crime in a city that's been
torn by riots and racial tension. Woods, author of Inner City Blues and the upcoming
Strange Bedfellows, talks to Queena Kim about the rise of the black detective.
In a Lonely Place
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Back in October, the Hammer Museum
in Westwood hosted a reading called "In a Lonely Place," the title of which was taken from a
classic 1950 Humphrey Bogart film. The event featured best-selling noir novelists James
Ellroy and Bruce Wagner and actress Dana Delany. James Ellroy, author of LA
Confidential, The Black Dahlia and many other classic noirs, introduced Delany's
reading of his book My Dark Places, which is about his own mother's unsolved murder.
Cold Cases
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When murder investigations hit a dead end, they wind up on the desk of LAPD Detective David
Lambkin of the Cold Case Homicide Unit. Lambkin tells Ayala Ben-Yehuda that improvements in
DNA technology have helped solve cases - and have led to some unsettling conclusions about
killings in the city.
Masters of American Comics
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It may seem odd that two of our region's top art museums have given huge gallery space over
to an exhibition of comic strips. But step into the Masters of American Comics exhibition at
both the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, and it becomes clear that the best comics are about more than punch lines and superheroes in
tights. Cynthia Burlingham from the Hammer's Grunwald Center for the
Graphic Arts schooled Ben Adair on the beginning of comics and the comic artist.
Song Break: "Comic Strip"
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...by Serge Gainsbourg, from the album Love and the Beat
Comics as Art: Kozyndan
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Southern California has a whole group of young fine artists who have grown up reading comics
and whose work is inspired by them. Two young artists who collaborate under the name Kozyndan say their paintings and portraits are like a single frame from a longer comic. Their work is sometimes absurd, but it also shows a playful uneasiness with modern life and technology. Dan and Kozy met Ben
Adair at the room in the MOCA Masters of Comics show dedicated to the artist Chris Ware - one of
their favorites.
Top Bands of 2005
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A couple of weeks ago, the LA Weekly
published its annual music issue featuring the best of the Southern California scene.
Pacific Drift invited the LA Weekly's Kate Sullivan and Lina Lecaro to come in and let us
hear what they're talking about.
