The Lincoln Lawyer

Michael Connelly's novel makes a smooth transition to the screen

Former Los Angeles Times crime reporter Michael Connelly struck gold with his books about LAPD detective Harry Bosch, before pulling a deft gear-change with the creation of criminal defence attorney Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer. The movie version, directed by Brad Furman and scripted by film and TV veteran John Romano, sticks pretty close to Connelly's novel, even if Matthew McConaughey's lead character has mysteriously morphed from Mickey to Mick.

No Strings Attached

Natalie Portman isn't the only girl to swoon over cute Ashton Kutcher

There's nobody who plays Ashton Kutcher quite like Ashton Kutcher and, in this pleasant and undemanding romcom, he plays another cute guy whom all the girls (and boys of course) swoon over. This time he’s Adam, the sweet and rather vulnerable twentysomething son of Kevin Kline’s rascally-old-devil father,  who's three-times divorced, still doing drugs, and chasing young women as his 60th birthday looms.

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dudamel, Barbican Hall

Blistering Beethoven Seven shows a winning partnership at work

There had been murmurings that his star had dimmed. That Gustavo Dudamel's partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (greeted with such fanfare in 2009) had yet to set the West Coast on fire. Had this Icarus flown too high? Would their debut visit to the Barbican last night resemble Breughel's fall, Latino legs flailing in an orchestral sea? Not a bit of it.

Q&A Special: Musician Lee Hazlewood

His boots were made for walking: exclusive archival chat with the late great songwriter

Forty-five years ago today, Nancy Sinatra’s risqué “These Boots Are Made For Walking” entered the British charts, beginning its rise to Number One. This country-slanted ode to sex and domination, sung by Frank’s daughter, hasn’t had its impact blunted by repeated exposure on nostalgia radio.

Somewhere

Coppola heads to another hotel to measure the distance between father and daughter

Sofia Coppola proved, with Lost in Translation from seven years ago, that there’s hardly a better location for showing the nuances of emotional dysfunction than the anonymity of an international hotel. No surprise then that much of her new film Somewhere, winner of the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, is set in the characterless corridors and rooms of the celebrity hang-out Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, though her investigation here of a central father-daughter relationship delivers a stronger emotional reflection than in the earlier film.

Lemmy

Rockers line up to praise Motorhead's metal guru

As Ozzy Osbourne puts it, “He’s just Lemmy. You just take him or you fucking don’t, and he doesn’t give a flying shit whether you do or not.” It’s this irreducible Lemmyness of Lemmy which lies at the core of the gnarled heavy metaller’s mystique. Beyond fashion, as ageless as a rock’n’roll Flying Dutchman and with a constitution seemingly forged from buffalo hide and wrought iron, Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister is surrounded by his own private myth-bubble wherever he goes.

Odd Future, The Drop, Stoke Newington

LA's hottest teenage rap crew are a genuinely fresh discovery

Given the somewhat viral nature of Odd Future's rapidly flourishing notoriety, it's both appropriate and a little ironic that their debut UK performance should take place in the basement of a pub in a part of north London where the underground doesn't run. Also known as OFWGKTA (or Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), this 10-strong self-contained teenage rap conglomerate from Los Angeles has united hip-hop über-nerds, jaded old-schoolers and regular rap fans alike – a remarkable achievement in itself – in praise of unique DIY aesthetic, both musical and visual, inspired by, amongst other things, a love of early Eminem, skateboard culture and the consumption of marijuana.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, The Garage

LA's wiggiest art rocker doesn't quite pull it off live

Bounding on stage in a purple version of the man dress pioneered by Mick Jagger at The Stones’s 1969 Hyde Park concert, Ariel Pink looks like a mistranslated version of what a late-Sixties rock star should be. His long hair is dyed blonde. The roots show. His make-up is already smudged, as if applied with mittens. It’s a wonky look, in keeping with his music; a music that sounds like a badly tuned radio playing the hits of the early Eighties, the smooth soul of the Seventies and Sixties bubblegum garage pop all at once. Los Angeles’s most peculiar art rocker doesn’t seem to be playing it straight.

Takers

A powerful cast can't save this from its litany of crime-movie clichés

It’s all too tempting to lambast Takers as merely a collection of traditional clichés from the heist/cop/buddy genres. Over here is Matt Dillon as Jack Welles, a burned-out LAPD detective with a permanent hangover and a broken marriage – stop me if you’ve heard this one - who can’t cope very well with raising his young daughter. He’s riding around with his eager young partner, Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez), who still seems to have his whole career before him.

It’s all too tempting to lambast Takers as merely a collection of traditional clichés from the heist/cop/buddy genres. Over here is Matt Dillon as Jack Welles, a burned-out LAPD detective with a permanent hangover and a broken marriage – stop me if you’ve heard this one - who can’t cope very well with raising his young daughter. He’s riding around with his eager young partner, Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez), who still seems to have his whole career before him.

Herb Alpert, Tijuana Brass and Other Delights, BBC Four

Tijuana Brass trumpeter revealed as man of multiple parts

I used to have a childhood fascination with the music of Herb Alpert, because I liked the tunes and always felt there was a hint of melancholy behind Herb’s breezy, nonchalant exterior. Everybody else found Alpert laughably cheesy, but happily, this excellent documentary proved that I was right all along by building a watertight case for regarding him as something of a neglected legend.