Happy 233rd Birthday USA - And Have a Great Independence Day Bel~Air!

From CNET.com - Independence Day downloads

by Jessica Dolcourt

Red, white, and blue flags flapping in the breeze, smoking grills, and blazing sunshine. There's no better time to celebrate America's 233rd birthday. And what better way to wish Uncle Sam (and ourselves) many happy returns than a schmaltzy screensaver for your desktop? Show off your patriotism and passion for dazzling explosives with this collection of Independence Day downloads.

Liberty Shines Screensaver See an entire Fourth of July day from the water, looking onto Manhattan's shoreline. Lady Liberty and New York are the daylight stars in this well-animated screensaver. As dusk falls, the buildings light up and the fireworks begin to sparkle and burst behind this enduring symbol of America's freedom.

Fireworks Screensaver
This classic fireworks screensaver draws you in to the spectacular display you shoot onto your desktop. Interact with the screensaver by choosing the number of rockets to compose your grand finale. If your tastes run high, you'll be able create in no time a blast befitting America's birthday.

Patriotic Scenic Reflections Screensaver
If to you Independence Day is more than just barbecue and pyrotechnics, you'll want a patriotic screensaver like this one on your desktop. This one displays more than 80 classic images of American icons, including a proud bald eagle, the Washington Monument, and the Statue of Liberty.

3D Magic Mahjongg
Brush aside the old-school graphics and you'll find a July Fourth-themed tile-matching game with addictive gameplay. The game opens with a stack of tiles covered with fireworks, flags, and Liberty Gells. Your job is to strategically match two unobstructed tiles. Pair them all off and you win the game, but get stuck and you'll have to start again.

3D Fireworks Extravaganza demo
If nothing but the most realistic fireworks will do to celebrate the Declaration of Independence, this could be the screensaver for you. The colorful blasts look right, and we are sure they are even better in the full version. Like many of its screensaver cousins, the trial download unfortunately obscures the view with a nag screen.

3D Fireworks by the Bay
New York, Boston, and Philadelphia aren't the only places to celebrate the turning of the years! While San Francisco postdates the Declaration of Independence, the City by the Bay sure knows how to honor it. This jubilant screensaver shoots off rockets from San Francisco Bay over the city's unique nighttime skyline.

Flags Demo
You have an American flag waving in the breeze outside your door. But what about inside your home? You can easily show your pride there, too. Just download this patriotic screensaver to proudly hoist the stars and stripes on your desktop while you step away.

Awesome Navy Aircraft Screen Saver Lite
Nothing says patriotism like the U.S. Navy. This high-flying screensaver features a slew of professional-quality photos of fighter jets and helicopters in action.

4th of July Dreams Screensaver
This nifty screensaver features a festive fireworks display against the backdrop of various symbols of American heritage including the Lincoln Monument, Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, and the Washington Monument.

Where Are YOU Seeing Fireworks this July 4th?

Ever since Santa Monica banned fireworks years ago, it has become increasing difficult to find a great fireworks show in the Los Angeles area.

The following links to a list of show locations and schedules for 2009 fireworks shows in the Los Angeles County area.

http://www.safejuly4th.org/fw/fwshows.htm

WHERE ARE YOU SEEING FIREWORKS?

If you have a great suggestion - let us know in the comment section below.

We wish everyone a safe and happy July 4th.

Measure R Tax: Arriving Tomorrow!

The half-percent increase in our sales tax that will fund Measure R, which provides tens of billions for additional transit lines and freeway improvements, begins tomorrow. LA County residents will now pay a 9.75 percent sales tax.

According to the Daily News, "Voters had approved Measure R several months before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger imposed a 1 percent state sales tax - which began April 1 and will expire in 2011 - to help whittle down California's $24 billion dollar deficit." Here's how it may affect some sample purchases: "The additional half-percent sales tax means an extra penny for a $3.25 medium-sized Starbucks latte. It means an extra $7.50 for a $1,500 plasma TV with a 50-inch screen. It adds $96 to the price tag of a basic Mini Cooper car selling for $19,200." You have less than 24 hours to make all your big purchases, so get a move on.

[Daily News via Curbed LA]

Bel~Air's Moraga Vineyards - From Canada's National Post of all places. . .

Tippling in Bel Air

BY OLIVIA STREN, NATIONAL POST

Moraga Vineyard's grapes loll about in more SoCal sunshine than the bathing beauties at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel.

Photograph by: Handout Photo, Canwest News Service

The setting could not be more idyllic had it been designed by Universal Studios: lemony sunshine, the Santa Monica mountains beyond, a lonesome wisp of cloud making only a cameo in cerulean California skies. Cached on a quiet palm-and-manor-trimmed street in Bel Air -- the luxe L.A. neighbourhood -- Moraga Vineyards (so named because it is in the Moraga canyon) stretches improbably over 16 acres of steep hillsides, claiming some of the world's priciest real estate.

Moraga Vineyard's well-pampered residents (grapes) loll about in more SoCal sunshine than the bathing beauties at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel. But as proprietor Tom Jones notes: "A grape doesn't know its address: It's about the way the breeze comes in and the sun shines." What's most startling about this secret garden is precisely that: its secrecy. (This city and its people are not generally known for their discretion.) And Moraga remains unknown even to native Los Angelenos. Jones protects the privacy of his grapes like a bodyguard does a starlet.

Now 87, Jones is a retired aeronautical engineer and the former CEO of Northrop Corp. He's tall and trim, wears well-pressed chinos and a button-down, and has the tidy elegance and gentlemanly dash of an old-Hollywood screen idol.

"This is the way California used to be," he says of this lush sweep of Bel Air bacchanalia, populated with wild roses, sycamores, a family of golden eagles, and animated only by the sound of soft, leaf-ruffling winds. Jones bought the property in the late '50s when it was a horse ranch owned by Victor Fleming, who directed Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. (Fleming's wooden stables are still intact, and now house Moraga's offices.) The place still beguiles with the mystique of a more rugged, long-gone, horse-trammelled California of agriculture and big skies. "I was born and raised in Pomona, and [my wife and I] bought this property because it reminded us of an old California."

Jones later realized that the soil in the canyon was identical to the soil in Bordeaux: Underfoot there is calcareous sandstone, a layer of marine fossils (the Los Angeles Basin was once submerged under the Pacific) and 40-foot-deep gravel beds ideal for sauvignon blanc.

Moraga also boasts a microclimate (more rain, chillier nights) that is distinct from the surrounding city and perfectly vine-friendly. Jones resolved to plant grapes in 1978: "It was just an experiment. The cost of farming on these hills is so steep. We had no intention of being commercial," he says. But his wine was fast praised for its depth and complexity, said to resemble a top-flight Bordeaux, and made its way to the world's finest tables (Alain Ducasse's three-starred Paris restaurant). When Jacques Chirac dined at Ducasse, he reportedly sampled Moraga, asking the waiter after an enchanted sip: "Is this Bordeaux?" (Today, Moraga vintages also star on wine lists at such decadent dining rooms as Hotel Bel-Air's restaurant and New York City's The Modern.)

It wasn't until 2005 that Jones determined to build a winery. He acquired the approval (and signatures) of 106 Bel Air neighbours before approaching the authorities. "We're very good neighbours," he says. "The grapes are quiet." Hiring 20 miners from Nevada to dig up the wine cave, Jones's winery is now the first in Los Angeles since Prohibition in 1920.

Walking through Moraga, steeped in sunshine and silence, you can spot the white silhouette of the Getty Museum perched high across the canyon -- the only reminder that you're in the midst of a smog-cloaked mega-city. Rodeo Drive is 15 minutes away. "If you're a bird, the Hotel Bel-Air is a mile away," says Jones, preferring to consider the distance for a sparrow, than for, say, an SUV. (For the non-winged: The hotel is a 10-minute drive down lush, coiling roads.)

There are no formal tours but if you drop around for a tasting -- even better if you buy a bottle or two -- Jones or a staff member will be happy to show you around.

---------

IF YOU GO

Hotel Bel-Air, like Moraga, is redolent of a grander old-world Hollywood. An oval-shaped pool (once an equestrian arena) is well-ornamented with visiting starlets; petal-drizzled pathways ribbon their way through gardens so fragrant that Jo Malone crafted a scent (Orange Blossom) after them; guest rooms (each one of a kind) cosset with wood-burning fireplaces, Spanish marble and languor-inducing Italian linens. 701 Stone Canyon Rd.; 310-472-5234, hotelbelair.com - For more information on Moraga Vineyards, visit moragavineyards.com

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Westwood Village / Los Angeles Film Festival Screening

The Los Angeles Film Festival will be screening the classic 1971 film, "Billy Jack" with the digitally remasterd film print taking place at the wonderful Billy Wilder Theatre located at the Hammer Museum this Saturday, June 27th @ 9:45pm. This is the last weekend of our Festival and we have truly saved the best for last.

BILLY JACK

(USA, 1971, 114 mins)

Directed By: T.C. Frank

Producer: Mary Rose Solti

Screenwriters: Frank Christina, Teresa Christina

Cinematographers: Fred J. Koenekamp, John Stephens

Editors: Larry Heath, Marion Rothman

Cast: Tom Laughlin, Delores Taylor, Clark Howat, Victor Izay, Julie Webb, Debbie Schock, Teresa Kelly, Lynn Baker, Stan Rice, David Roya, John McClure, Susan Foster, Susan Sosa

Music: Mundell Lowe

DATE: SATURDAY, JUNE 27th

TIME: 9:45PM

LOCATION: BILLY WILDER THEATRE @ THE HAMMER MUSEUM

COST: $12.00

SYNOPSIS

• Watching Billy Jack today it seems part time-capsule, part alternate history, as it’s tough to imagine a film quite like this catching on again. After an initial, half-hearted release by Warner Bros., star Tom Laughlin sued the studio to gain back the rights and try it himself. His own innovative grass-roots release became a smash success, turning the conventional wisdom on film distribution upside down.
  
• Directed by Laughlin under the pseudonym T.C. Frank (he also co-wrote the story with his wife and co-star Dolores Taylor), the film tells the story of an alternative school for wayward teens run on a Native American reservation that is protected from small-minded townspeople by a mystical Vietnam vet. Billy Jack may spring from the ideologies of the ‘60s counterculture, somehow touching on gun control, environmentalism, education, discrimination, and a whole policy think-tank worth of other issues, but as filmmaking it comes from the fast-and-loose exploitation school, hence its high-minded, proto-political correctness is surrounded by motorcycles, fast cars, groovy girls and a few hearty helpings of martial arts whoop-ass. And keep an eye out for a pre-WKRP Howard Hessman, appearing here as part of the early improv comedy group The Committee.
  

LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL, JUNE 18-28, 2009.

www.lafilmfest.com

"One of the best film festivals in the United States" - Filmmaker Magazine

"An essential stop on the North American circuit" - Variety

Film Independent Home of the Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by Los Angeles Times, and the Spirit Awards, live and uncut on IFC

Final Home of Michael Jackson

We previously reported on Michael Jackson's rental of his extravagant Bel~Air / Holmby Hills estate. Click on the Link Below to see our archived post and pictures of the home where MJ spent his last months and where he ultimately passed:

http://belaironline.blogspot.com/2008/12/michael-jackson-back-in-neighborhood-or.html