ENTERTAINMENT

August 22, 2013 | By Sheri Linden

Shaking off cutesy for dour, Audrey Tautou plays the title role in "Thrse," a woman fumbling to free herself from an unfulfilled marriage. It's a welcome but not entirely successful change of pace for the French star, who's best known for frothier fare. The final film of Claude Miller, who died last year, is a handsome and quietly affecting - if at times frustrating - adaptation of Nobel laureate Franois Mauriac's 1927 novel "Thrse Desqueyroux. " (A 1962 version starred Emmanuelle Riva.)

ENTERTAINMENT

April 18, 2013 | By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic

French director Franois Ozon can usually be counted on for dark irony of the juiciest sort - his 2003 "Swimming Pool" of sexual provocations comes to mind. But the filmmaker has an especially deft touch when a dash of comedy is mixed in. He uses this to delicious effect in his latest, "In the House. " Adapted by Ozon from Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga's "The Boy in the Last Row," the literary conceit upon which this "House" stands required some maneuvering to open up the world of Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer)

ENTERTAINMENT

September 13, 2012 | By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic

"The Master" takes some getting used to. This is a superbly crafted film that's at times intentionally opaque, as if its creator didn't want us to see all the way into its heart of darkness. It's a film bristling with vivid moments and unbeatable acting, but its interest is not in tidy narrative satisfactions but rather the excesses and extremes of human behavior, the interplay of troubled souls desperate to find their footing. PHOTOS: Celebrity photos by the Times Its writer-director, of course, is the all-out visionary Paul Thomas Anderson, an all-in filmmaker whose previous work like "Boogie Nights" and "There Will Be Blood" explored strong and compelling personal conflicts.

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL

August 23, 2012 | From Los Angeles Times staff reports

R. Duncan Luce, a UC Irvine mathematical psychologist who received the National Medal of Science in 2005 for his pioneering scholarship in behavioral sciences, died Aug. 11 at his home in Irvine after a brief illness, the university announced. He was 87. In 1988, Luce founded and became director of UC Irvine's Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences. He was later named distinguished research professor in cognitive sciences and economics. His work, according to the university, combined formal math models with psychological experiments to try to understand and predict human behavior, including how individuals and groups make decisions.

ENTERTAINMENT

May 27, 2012 | By Dennis Lim, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Independence is a crucial part of the legend of John Cassavetes, the original Method actor turned DIY filmmaker. For that reason his early forays into studio directing - he made 1961's "Too Late Blues" for Paramount and 1963's Stanley Kramer-produced "A Child Is Waiting" for United Artists - are usually thought of as footnotes at best, or compromised failures at worst (a view that has been ascribed to Cassavetes himself). But even in these minor works, the Cassavetes touch - the delicate way of handling emotional messiness, the tough but ultimately generous view of human behavior - is unmistakable.

ENTERTAINMENT

December 25, 2011 | By Martin Rubin, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Tolstoy A Russian Life Rosamund Bartlett Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 544 pp., $35 Count Lev Tolstoy is one of those writers who was as fascinating and complex as his novels and stories. A man so awful and quarrelsome to those around him, especially his long-suffering wife, was nonetheless able to produce masterpieces of serene introspection and humane insights. How could Tolstoy, a loner, a quintessential outsider all his life, understand and evoke the glittering social whirl and intricacies of fashionable salons?

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