10 Hugh Laurie Quotes From House That Makes More Sense Than Our Whole Lives

Francesco Rosi's Classic 'Hands Over the City' to Pre-Open Venice Fest

Rod Steiger in 'Hands Over the City'
ROME – Le mani sulla citta (Hands Over the City), Francesco Rosi’s classic examination of political corruption, will be the pre-opening film at the Venice Film Festival 50 years after it took home the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion award.

The film, digitally restored, will screen at the Arena of Campo San Paolo in historical Venice -- not on the Venice Lido, where most of the festival takes place -- on Aug. 27, one day before the official start of the 70th edition of the festival.

Le manu sulla citta, which also collected five nominations for the 1964 Nastri d’Argento (Silver Ribbons) awards, Europe’s oldest film honors, stars Rod Steiger as a ruthless Naples city councilman who uses his influence for personal profit. The film is considered one of the masterpieces from the long career of Rosi, who won Venice’s career achievement honor last year.

The 90-year-old Rossi -- one of the last living directors with strong ties to Italy’s Golden Age of film -- first came to Venice with La sfida (The Challenge), which won a jury prize in 1958.

The festival officially gets underway with the world premiere of Alfonso Cuaron’s much-heralded Gravity, the sci-fi thriller with an onscreen cast made up entirely of George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.

Venice, the world’s oldest film festival, runs through Sept. 7.

Opera 15 mixes classic features, mobile-inspired enhancements

Opera 15 moved out of beta Tuesday, with Opera declaring that the latest version of its browser is ready as a stable release for Windows and Mac.

The latest version of the much-loved browser is the first official release powered by Blink, the new rendering engine the Chromium project develops for Google’s Chrome browser after forking from WebKit in April. Opera said in April it would switch to Blink after previously announcing it was giving up its own engine, Presto, for WebKit.

Opera’s new Discover feature shows you news articles based on location and interest.

Opera 15 offers a number of enhancements that first appeared on the mobile version of Opera as well as come classic features. Turbo has been renamed Off-Road mode similar to Opera for Mobile. This feature compresses Web page sizes through Opera’s servers before hitting your browser, allowing for faster Web page delivery and a more manageable browsing experience if you’re on a slow connection. Discover, another mobile crossover, shows you a stream of news articles based on location and interest categories such as travel, arts, business, sports, and technology.

Stash creates a visual and searchable set of bookmarks.

Opera 15 also sports a new take on bookmarking called Stash. Whenever you hit the heart icon in the upper right side of the address bar, the page you’re viewing is saved in the Stash, which is accessible from Opera’s start page. Stashed pages are displayed as Web page thumbnails, the size of which can be adjusted using a slider to the right. Stash also has a search function that lets you search for pages by keyword—a handy feature when your stash collection gets to be a little big.

Opera 15’s history page

Although Opera 15 now shares some underpinnings with Chrome and Chromium, Opera still maintains its own distinctive look and feel. Power users will find that Opera still offers mouse gestures for navigation in this new version, though restore and minimize didn’t work in my tests. Also, link gestures were not working properly while trying out Opera 15 on Windows 8. M2, Opera’s built-in email client is now a separate download, as previously announced.

Despite having some of that old Opera feel, there are some decidedly Chrome-like features in the Opera 15 such as the Omnibar that lets you enter a URL or search directly from the address bar. Downloads and Settings pages also feel a little Chrome-ish; however, Opera has done a nice job in adding its own stylistic touches to these pages.

After spending a little time with Opera 15, I found it to be a nice-looking, speedy release that most fans of the browser should enjoy using. The new Blink-based compatibility may also help Opera win over anyone tired of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari and looking to try something new.

Ultimate Classic L.A. Summer Weekend: Historic Hot Spots

Travel back to the 1950s at the midcentury-mod Bob's Big Boy (4211 W. Riverside Drive) in Burbank, where every Friday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. hot-rod hotshots line up with their rides to compare carburetors in a scene right out of American Graffiti. No surprise: Big-time car collector Jay Leno has been known to roll up. Afterward, drop by the nearby SmokeHouse (4420 Lakeside Drive), a steak spot just outside the lot at Warner Bros. -- the studio's execs have been coming since it opened in 1946. Garry Shandling frequently name-checked it on The Larry Sanders Show, and George Clooney and Grant Heslov named their production company Smoke House after their favored hang. Once stomach-lined, head to under-the-radar throwback The Blue Room lounge (916 S. San Fernando Blvd.), a popular scene-setter in neo-noir films including Memento and Heat.

PHOTOS: Best of Hollywood: 28 Ways to Create a Perfect Summer Weekend

SATURDAY

For breakfast, take a counter seat downstairs amid the iconic banana-leaf wallpaper at the Beverly Hills Hotel's Fountain Coffee Room (9641 Sunset Blvd.) for retro basics such as corned beef hash and silver-dollar buttermilk pancakes. Then cross the city to stroll downtown L.A.'s reviving Broadway corridor on a walking tour run by preservation group L.A. Conservancy (laconservancy.org). Built in the 1910s and '20s, the historic theaters on the tour once premiered the films of Charlie Chaplin and other silent film stars, and hosted acts like the Marx Brothers. In the early afternoon, gather a group for lunch at Pizzeria Mozza (641 N. Highland Ave.); book the rustic table and Gothic-style red leather chairs in what was Jack Warner's private dining room, located just off the main entrance. Afterward, take a hike from the base of Griffith Park, beginning across from The Trails Cafe (2333 Fern Dell Drive) and leading up to the 78-year-old art deco Griffith Observatory, site of James Dean's famous knife fight with rivals in Rebel Without a Cause. For dinner, visit that most old-school of grill rooms, Musso & Frank (6667 Hollywood Blvd.), where Valentino and Fairbanks ate and Fitzgerald and Faulkner drank. For late-night drinks, head down the boulevard, first to the neon sign-bedecked Frolic Room (6245 Hollywood Blvd.) -- which doesn't just look like a Charles Bukowski-esque dive but really was frequented by the author -- and then to No Vacancy (1727 N. Hudson Ave.), a new throwback lounge from the folks behind nightlife period pieces Pour Vous and La Descarga. The revivalist '20s and '30s decor may be an amalgamation, but the property -- the last Victorian house along Hollywood Boulevard -- is the real deal.

PHOTOS: 26 of Summer's Most Anticipated Movies: 'Man of Steel,' 'Wolverine,' 'The Lone Ranger'

SUNDAY

Get up early to browse Pasadena's Rose Bowl Flea Market (1001 Rose Bowl Drive), the mother of all vintage bazaars in Southern California, with 2,500 vendors and such fans as Madonna, Gwen Stefani and Maria Shriver. The earlier you go, the better the finds. (The market takes place the second Sunday of every month.) Next, visit the angular, '60s-styled House of Pies (1869 N. Vermont Ave.) in Los Feliz for brunch. The selection of fresh, house-made namesake desserts -- apple, peach, cherry, Bavarian chocolate banana -- are made from recipes that date back to an era before the city became obsessed with frozen yogurt and cupcakes. If you haven't had enough treasure-troving, hunt for retro spectacles across the Eastside. Gentleman's Breakfast (1101 Mohawk St.) in Echo Park is renowned for everything from antique monocles to vintage aviators, while Russ Campbell's Old Focals (45 W. Green St.) in Pasadena is the exclusive go-to for Mad Men. "Russ is endlessly resourceful -- digging through his warehouses for the perfect Pucci sunglasses for Megan [Don Draper's wife] or making six new pairs of an old style for Harry [Crane], working only from a photograph of Michael Caine," says the show's prop master, Ellen Freund. "Utilizing vintage eyewear is tricky as it can be very fragile, but Russ seems to be a magician at restoring these fragile treasures."

See more perfect summer weekends below:

Shopping With Jewelry Designer Jennifer Meyer

Music With Breakout Star Skylar Grey

Art With Director Phil Lord

Food: From Seafood Craze to Farmer's Market Bounty

Outdoors: Fun in the SoCal Sun

Pampering: Spa, Aaah

Romance: Date Nights (and Days)

The 1 Percent: Live in Luxury

Kids: Modern Family Adventures

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Miranda Kerr's Summer Style: All About Her "Classic, Chic" Looks

Miranda Kerr accessorized her denim look with metallic flats, Linda Farrow sunglasses and a Balmain X Aurelie handbag in New York City June 17, 2013. Credit: NCP/Star Max/FilmMagic

Hot mom in the city! As the epitome of a stylish mom, supermodel Miranda Kerr -- named by Us Weekly readers as their Celebrity Style Crush for the week of June 17 -- makes summer fashion look easy. "For me it's all about keeping things simple and feeling comfortable in what I am wearing," Kerr, 30, tells Harper's Bazaar of her look, which she characterizes as 'classic and chic.' "I prefer investing in classic, well-tailored pieces."

PHOTOS: Stars' timeless wardrobe tips

Running around New York City in recent weeks with baby boy Flynn in tow, that's nothing but evident as Kerr treats the city sidewalks like a runway, showing off her impeccable taste -- and fabulously fit figure. During a June 17 outing in NYC, the former Victoria's Secret model -- now working on the release of her second book, Empower Yourself, and her skincare line, Kora Organics -- made denim-on-denim look fab by adding metallic ballet flats, Linda Farrow shades and a Balmain X Aurelie handbag to her ensemble.

PHOTOS: Take your outfit from day to night

One day later, Kerr switched up her style during an outing with Flynn wearing an Isabel Marant skirt, shirt and shoes, along with Stella McCartney sunglasses and a straw hat.

Miranda Kerr (toting son Flynn in NYC June 18, 2013) wore an Isabel Marant skirt, shirt and shoes, along with Stella McCartney sunglasses.
Credit: Alo Ceballos/FilmMagic

Though her summer style is breezy and chic, the model mom isn't afraid to push the envelope for her evening looks on occasion. Case in point: May 6's MET Gala Costume Ball, where she dared to bare in a cutout Michael Kors custom black crepe gown.

Miranda Kerr showed some skin in Michael Kors' custom black crepe cutout gown at the 2013 MET Costume Ball in New York City.
Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Pulling together her daily outfits and red carpet looks can often be a daunting task for Kerr. "I look for something that I haven't worn before . . . which sometimes can be hard," she has admitted. "I look for something that is flattering because every woman's shape is different."

PHOTOS: See 100 red carpet looks from the Met Gala

Telling Us she's forever in a comfy robe at home when she's just lounging around, Kerr's stunning style often takes Hollywood's A-list aback. At the 2013 MET Ball, fellow attendee Gwyneth Paltrow (in pink Valentino) told Entertainment Weekly she complemented the model during the event. "I was like, 'Is it weird to be that pretty?'" the Iron Man 3 actress recalled to the magazine, laughing. "And she was like, 'No.'"

To vote for your Celeb Style Crush, click here -- we'll highlight the winner's best looks on UsMagazine.com next week

 

Review: Company of Heroes 2 delivers classic RTS gameplay on the Eastern Front

Company of Heroes 2 $60.00 Company of Heroes 2 is a sequel with a few new tricks that plays almost identically to its predecessor, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Note: This review focuses on the single-player portion of Company of Heroes 2 because there were very few multiplayer matches running on the actual release code during our review period. If there are any huge problems we encounter after release, we’ll update this review accordingly.

Company of Heroes 2, the long-awaited sequel to Relic Entertainment’s critically-acclaimed World War II real-time strategy game, belies its name. Playing as the Soviets in the game’s main campaign, there are very few times you’ll feel like a hero.

The trials you’ll face along the Eastern Front, from Stalingrad through to Germany, are a far cry from the original game’s D-Day inspired rah-rah-palooza. The campaign in Company of Heroes 2 is a series of morally ambiguous situations where the guys you’re fighting for appear just as bad as the enemy you’re fighting against.

Even our protagonist, former Soviet lieutenant Lev Abramovich Isakovich, doesn’t agree with his country’s actions. The story is related as a series of flashbacks from his comfy home in a Siberian jail cell, presumably for rebelling against the Motherland. It’s a gloomy set-up for a discomfiting game.

Relic definitely tries to capture what made the Eastern Front so horrific. No matter what obstacle you're facing, the primary solution is to throw more men at the front lines. Squaring off against the Nazis, you definitely come to understand this war involved a smaller, more powerful German force on one side and a meat grinder on the other

The Russian Army relies on conscripts backed up by heavy-duty firepower.

Your main special ability involves calling up conscripts—fodder troops forcefully drafted into the Soviet army that you can merge into other units to replenish their numbers or treat as disposable forces. These conscripts make poor soldiers, but there are certainly a lot of them to go around—a seemingly infinite number, in fact.

Who cares if the Germans have a tank? You have a hundred men, and a hundred more after that, and a hundred more after that—this is a war of attrition in its rawest form. Unfortunately, the emphasis on this “throw-more-men-at-the-problem” tactic removes any sense of real desperation from the campaign.

In one of the game’s first cutscenes you see a line of Soviet grunts, many unarmed, charging a Nazi position. One of the Russian front-liners gets shot, and you see the man behind him scrounge the weapon from the corpse and continue charging.

The bleak cutscenes interspersed throughout Company of Heroes 2 belie the game's rote strategic gameplay.

Yet that never happens whie you're actually playing Company of Heroes 2. You’ll scrounge equipment from the battlefield occasionally, sure, but you’re never leading a group of unarmed, terrified, underfed Soviets straight into a German machine gun until their bodies form a wall of cover for your remaining soldiers.

In fact, considering you’re supposedly scraping penal colonies and other “undesirables” to make up the majority of your army, your soldiers follow orders remarkably well. Every time you call up conscripts, the game enacts Order 227—a real-life (though short-lived) edict by Stalin whereby retreating troops were shot on sight. While Order 227 is in effect, any of your troops—not just the conscripts you called up—who panic and flee will be executed.

It's a neat idea, but in practice it rarely has any negative consequences; in my time with the game I never saw anyone executed because of 227. It’s just another timer to pay attention to, one more example that the horrific images conveyed in the game’s scripted sequences rarely affect how you actually play—they’re just set dressing. Given how linear most of the campaign missions are, Company of Heroes 2 ends up playing out like a weird Call of Duty or Medal of Honor strategy game where you aimlessly follow the game’s directions with no real sense of why. Maybe that’s meta-commentary on Soviet High Command during World War II, but I doubt it.

Combat in Company of Heroes 2 oscillates between wonderfully challenging and disconcertingly easy.

The AI difficulty is also frustratingly inconsistent. Playing on “Captain” difficulty (the game’s equivalent to Normal) I alternatively felt like I was squaring off against General George S. Patton himself and a lukewarm cup of tap water. At best the missions are an exciting push-and-pull of tactics; at worst, your Soviet squads will frolic down the road right next to a bunch of Nazi soldiers, neither group acknowledging the other exists.

All this aside, the campaign isn’t bad. There are a few stand-out missions, including an excellent scenario midway through the game where your small squad of infantry plays hide-and-seek with a German Tiger tank in a sleepy village, ineffectively chipping away at its armor with limited armaments. But that's the exception—most of the campaign is underwhelming.

There are very few set up a base, build troops, manage resources, attack scenarios in the main storyline; in fact, the extremely scripted and linear Company of Heroes 2 campaign gives you almost no idea how to jump into multiplayer with the exception of a few missions at the end.

Luckily, the Theater of War mode rectifies that shortcoming. Here you’ll find co-op scenarios, solo challenges, and regular battles against the AI. As far as I could tell, all scenarios are based off actual events during World War II, lending the battles a nice veneer of authenticity. Theater of War is also the only place you’ll be able to try out the German forces in single-player.

Theater of War mode is where Company of Heroes 2 shines, at least as far as single-player is concerned. multiplayer formula is essentially an adapted version of the system in Battlefield: each team has a certain number of tickets when the game starts, and various command points are scattered across the map. Control more of these areas than the enemy and their ticket count gradually decreases. When you run out of tickets, you lose.

It's a tried-and-true formula that still makes for great games—battles evolve into a literal arms race as you counter the enemy’s tanks with AT guns and build bunkers encircling your favorite regions, trying desperately to take one more point and expand your supply lines. Throw men in cover and wait for the enemy to fall into your trap, or funnel their tanks into your deftly placed minefield. Theater of War mode encourages the sort of tactical decision-making that isn't really required to complete the campaign.

Sure, capturing and holding points is a classic RTS trope, but it creates plenty of opportunities for challenging tactical decision-making.

And that's a shame, because it’s in those moments when you're quickly making difficult decisions that you really feel like a wartime commander. Battles are frantic and very deep, though newcomers may find it overwhelming to manage all this information at once.

Right now Theater of War mode contains 18 missions—nine Soviet, nine German—though Relic plans to expand this content later (through paid DLC). It looks like packs will be organized by year; the game ships with scenarios from 1941.

Relic adds a few new features to Company of Heroes with this sequel. Most touted is the new ColdTech system, which fits well with the Russian setting. Here's how it works: during certain matches troops fight in blizzard conditions. Your units will get cold over time, courtesy of “General Winter,” eventually dying from exposure if you don’t huddle near a bonfire or sequester them in a building.

Huddle your troops near bonfires to keep them from freezing to death during a blizzard.

Deep snow slows down your troops while also leaving tracks for the enemy to know where you’re headed. Frozen rivers and lakes can be blown open with mortars or mines, turning unlucky units into unwitting Titanic reenactors.

Relic also does an excellent job with its sound design, rivaling DICE (Battlefield series) for wartime audio. Everything sounds crisp here, from the tank rumbling through the silent, snowy village as your troops lie in ambush to the Stuka planes dive-bombing the battlefield.

A note on performance: the game runs fairly well on my PC—an i5 machine with 8 GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 7850 GPU— though I experienced some slowdown during especially busy or explosive sections of the game. I also had odd frame rate hitching during the game’s pre-rendered cutscenes. I’ll keep experimenting with my settings to see if I can find a solution.

The best and worst thing I can say about Company of Heroes 2 is it feels like more Company of Heroes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, it’s a testament to how ahead-of-its-time the original Company of Heroes was—or perhaps an indicator of the glacial pace with which the RTS genre evolves.

However, this is a sequel to a seven-year-old game that plays almost identically to its predecessor. Oh sure, it’s pretty and it sounds great, and the winter effects add a new tactical layer, but it’s essentially a big expansion pack.

If you’re a diehard fan and you’ve been waiting years for this game, great. I want to stress, Company of Heroes 2 is still objectively one of the best RTS games out there, and I certainly enjoyed my time with it. The formula was nearly perfect last time, and it’s just as good this time around.

It just feels kind of like the original Company of Heroes died, dropped its gun, and the sequel picked it up and kept running in the same direction.

 

9 Best Things at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic

There’s plenty that’s rich at Aspen’s Food & Wine Classic, a four-day event from which this reporter still is recovering. There’s a treasury worth of foie gras medallions, red seas of Syrah, tributaries of tequila and so much Iberian ham one imagines Spain to be completely kosher.

But not all there to be seen is to be ingested. Aspen is a really funny place, beautiful, yes, but also darkly comic. It’s a little like one imagines Stabiae, the seaside getaway for the Roman emperors, would look like had they lived in America and been really into skiing instead of swimming. Here are the 10 best things this reporter saw and/or ate.

Octopus Ceviche, Parsnip, Salsa Papanteca

Chef: Alex Stupak, Best New Chef, 2013

Stupak, a man who looks like Robert Pattinson and cooks like Jeremiah Tower, turned out these little cups of spicy octopus, a variation of which is on the menu of his New York City restaurant, Empellon Cocina.

Poulard, Liver, Seaweed Vinegar, Coastal Herbs

Chef: Justin Cogley, Best New Chef, 2013

There’s nothing like poulard, liver, seaweed vinegar and coastal herbs on a hot Aspen day after a few bottles worth of red wine. But Cogley, a former professional ice skater for Disney, has a gentle touch here and at Aubergine, his restaurant in Carmel, Calif.

STORY: What was Ali Larter Doing at the Food & Wine Classic?

Abalone, Asparagus, Bone Marrow, Yuzu Chili

Chef: Jamie Malone, Best New Chef, 2013

It’s counterintuitive to find a superlative seafood restaurant in Minneapolis, but Sea Change, Chef Jamie Malone’s 3-year-old restaurant there, fits the description. Her abalone dish was refreshing, rich and complex with a hint of heat.

Slow-Cooked Beef With Turnip Pretending to Be Beef

Chef: Michael Voltaggio, Best New Chef, 2013

This dish was from a Lamborghini-hosted dinner with Ali Larter, so it tasted even sweeter. But Voltaggio's super-tender beef accompanied with a beefy slow-roasted turnip wasn’t so bad either.

Baby Blue Pig Pants

Chef: Chris Cosentino

Chris Cosentino, chef at San Francisco’s Incanto, is pig-obsessed, so it makes sense he girds his loins in baby blue pig pants. Not pictured but present was a T-shirt that read “Porc.”

STORY: Five Things Learned from the Food & Wine Classic

Goat Ssam

Chef: David Chang

This slow-roasted goat was served slightly more broken down but not quite. Pretty much guests at the Best New Chef’s party could wrap bits of it up in lettuce, thereby creating a ssam, which Chang has described as an Asian burrito. (It’s also the name of one of his New York City restaurants, Momofuku Ssam Bar.) According to Chang’s sous chef, a man strangely called Slash-Rudy, Chang and his team decided to get as gnarly as possible, since at the neighboring stall, Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud were plating extremely elegant cuisine.

Dominus To Go

Chef: Oenophile Bicyclist

Most people put an old milk crate on their bike if they want to jerry-rig a basket. But if you live in Aspen, you put a crate of Dominus 2009, a renowned wine that goes for $169 a bottle.

Cock & Bull Cocktail

Chef: 213 Nightlife

Most people started drinking wine at around 10 a.m., passed out for a siesta and resumed at 6 p.m. But for some, it was impossible to be moderate in consumption. One of the reasons: the Cock & Bull cocktail, by the mixologists from Los Angeles’ 213 Nightlife, contained Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Fresh mint, Amaro and Pedro Ximenez sherry. No man stood a chance.

Highway to Hell

Chef: A 10-year-old wearing a Budweiser shirt

This was, by far, the most awesome thing in Aspen. It was around 3 p.m. on a Saturday. This kid and his brother were sitting in front of the Loro Piano store. The kid singing was incredibly sunburnt. He was wearing an XXL Budweiser shirt. He was playing, mostly, to an admiring cohort of fellow pre-adolescents.