Los Angeles Plays Itself

[rich]

a very good film--denzel awesome as usual

rich

On 8/19/09, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Multiple resonances here, a great review, by a top-notch journalist,
> of what sounds like a fascinating film. Can't believe it's 5 years
> since this was published. And I still haven't seen the film. Or read
> 'City of Quartz' (although I have now started that one, thanks to
> Heikki).
>
> Very strongly recommended, many IV relevancies:
>
> "A decade ago, Carl Franklin was preparing to film Walter Mosley's
> Devil in a Blue Dress, an Easy Rawlins mystery set largely in the area
> around Central Avenue in Watts, then the largest black neighbourhood
> in Los Angeles. From the 1940s, when the movie unfolds, to the early
> 1960s, Central Avenue was the throbbing hub of the west coast's black
> jazz scene, incubator of Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Ornette
> Coleman, among others. Nightclubs and jazz dives stretched for blocks
> at a time and a thriving nocturnal scene drew whites and blacks
> together in the sort of racial harmony one doesn't often find in LA.
> This all lasted until Chief Parker of the Los Angeles Police
> Department, one of the primary villains in the city's postwar history,
> saw fit to tackle the peril of "race mixing" by aggressively targeting
> Central Avenue clubs until every last one was driven out of business.
> Standing there today, you would have no idea that any of it had ever
> existed...."
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/dec/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview12
>