There Will Be Blood: scenes from early California

Opening in theaters today is Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, “There Will Be Blood,” based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel “Oil.”   I'm a sucker for the wide-open landscapes of the western U.S. captured on film, and, from what I saw on the trailer, “There Will Be Blood” promises to be a visual treat on par with other favorites like Terrence Malick's first two films, “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven,” and the latest Coen brother's film, “No Country for Old Men.”

“There Will Be Blood” is set in the barrens of central California's Kern County (to be confirmed after I see the movie…), still the site of huge oil fields. In Anderson's movie, New Mexico and Marfa, Texas stand in for the younger California landscape. California still has vast tracts of open space, but they are ever-encroached upon by our burgeoning population — as well as countless oil derricks which still spot California, particularly along Highway 33 in Kern County.

Below: some scenes from “There Will Be Blood,” captured from the online promo trailer.

The reviews are mostly positive, with the notable exception coming from Salon.com's Stephanie Zacharek, who found it “tempered and wrought, to the point of dullness.”

More on “There Will Be Blood:”

» Rotten Tomatoes (aggregated reviews)
» New York Times review
» Salon.com review
» “There Will Be Blood” film trailer at Apple.com

Below: my photos of the California and the west:

Technorati Tags: California, cinematography, globalwarming, landscapes, movies, oil, OilAddiction, PaulThomasAnderson, PTAnderson, SouthernCalifornia, ThereWillBeBlood, UptonSinclair

FEMA administrator lies to the American people

Have you heard about this fake FEMA “news” conference?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15673519

I want FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson held accountable -- he should lose his job. This is a disgrace.

FEMA Apologizes for Phony Fire Briefing
by David Folkenflik, National Public Radio
All Things Considered, October 26, 2007

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is apologizing for holding a phony news conference earlier this week in Southern California.

On Tuesday, FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson held a briefing to discuss the agency's performance during the wildfires. He took questions from what seemed to be reporters, but it turns out they were FEMA staffers.

Johnson now says FEMA made an “error in judgment.”

Technorati Tags: California, FEMA, HarveyJohnson, wildfires

Tejon Ranch, Ritter Ranch ~ more goodbyes to California

The last great rancho in California, Tejon Ranch, is in the process of going under the knife. Some of this landscape is now a paradise of rolling hills, native perennial bunchgrasses, streams, wildflowers, and ancient oak stands. If the Tejon Ranch Corporation has its way, it will become just another sprawling developer-driven “community” of 70,000 people living in 23,000 homes, set in the once-open California landscape 60 miles north of the last century's booming metropolis, Los Angeles  (see John Gertner's story in the Sunday March 18, 2007 New York Times, “Playing SimCity for Real”).

The giant master-planned development will encompass nearly 12,000 acres, and will, no doubt, require huge amounts of energy to build and sustain, from the energy expended to build a city from scratch so far away from the urban centers — with its roads and water and sewage and electricty and cable TV — to the energy needed by residents who, we can be sure, will be regular folks driving regular inefficient cars and cooling their oversized homes in the scorching California sun.

Below: typical suburban sprawl in California, 2006.

Below: future site of Centennial, California, seen in 2003. This area is just east of the Interstate 5 / Highway 138 interchange (Google map), a 70 minute drive north of Los Angeles.

Another massive project is underway in the nearby Anaverde Valley, where a gorgeous landscape is now being scraped over to build more thousands of homes far away from anything. Below, grading the land in November 2006, for either Ritter Ranch or Anaverde (does it really even matter?).

More about suburbs, sprawl, and all that jazz:

• Save Tejon Ranch and especially their map with photo tour
• Even the Injuns done sold out: Ritter Ranch breaks ground [Le Blog]
• Ritter Ranch in Palmdale: The Bulldozing of California Goes On [Le Blog]
• The Geography of Suburban Sprawl in Southern California’s Antelope Valley
• Suburban sprawl and other calamities ~ panoramic photos
• Antelope Valley // desert suburbs ~ photo collection

“‘We have invested all our wealth in a living arrangement with no future,’ said James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency which postulates the end of suburbia. ‘In building suburbia we embarked on the greatest misallocation of wealth in the history of the world.’”

Californians sure do love their cars... don't they?

From my “Auto Carnage” series.

Between these roads // the way to get there?

Interstate 280 over Mission Creek, San Francisco // Bodie (Eastern Sierra), California //  Interchange at Interstate 5 and Interstate 14, Los Angeles County

Technorati Tags: automobile, Bodie, cars, EasternSierra, freeways, highways, interstates, LosAngeles, SanFrancisco, sprawl, suburb, suburbansprawl

Empire: idealized suburban development ~ vs. Upland: real suburban development

From the Jones, Partners: Architecture website comes this theoretical plan for a suburban development in the “Inland Empire” counties east of Los Angeles.

EMPIRE
The structure of the typical suburban family can no longer be considered nuclear, unless by that we are implying as well its fissioning. Instead, the contemporary family is as likely to be single-parent, or no-kids, or same-sex or multi-speciated, as to be like the Cleavers of yore. Even that decreasingly typical 2-parent-2.3-kid family is more complex than the numbers alone would indicate, given the new independence of the members from each other and from the community as a whole. The single family dwelling of today must operate as much like an apartment building as a single household when all the family members are engaged in so many disparate activities at all times of the day.

In this context, to imagine the house as a machine for living is to conjure a much different image than that assumed by Le Corbusier when he first captured the imagination with that phrase. While Corbu chided the “eyes which do not see” for missing the potential referents in the planes and boats of his time, he never believed that buildings should intervene as actively in the affairs of their occupants as these examples, much less move like them. But then, the user groups of that age were themselves less mobile, and the expectations for housing were still satisfied by a traditional formula of fixed spaces. Flexibility, if addressed at all, was offered by arrangements of sliding panels or repositioning furniture.

The contemporary machine for living is more likely to understand those referents on a functional level, and have the means to emulate them on their own terms. Today flexibility can be achieved by repositioning more than just the furniture. This project, MOMORedondo, distributes the typical range of program components among three different MObile MOdular units, which are able to continuously reposition themselves over the length of the lot along a bridge crane track system. The MOMO units are able to link up to with each other to create closer adjacencies or larger interior spaces, or remain separate to give their occupants greater privacy and relief from family life. Each of the units is also able to tune its relationship to the exterior, represented on this lot by a pool, garage and work area, and front porch; by their arrangement on the site they are able to create larger outdoor spaces or eliminate them entirely, and allow light and air to any exposure of any of the units.

On the interior of each MOMO unit is a two-level rack of PRO/dek (U.S.Pat.No. 6526702) units, which house the actual equipment that gives the interior spaces their specific program identities. These are of course repositionable in the same way as the MOMO units, to produce or eliminate spaces as needed throughout the day in response to the complex dynamics of the twenty-first century family’s activity schedule.

By way of comparison, here are some photos I took in 2005 of recent suburban developments around Upland, California (in the Inland Empire):

Victorian mansion versus suburban sprawl: Fontana, California

Here's one of those things that blows my mind about Southern California (and by god I love it there): this Victorian mansion is on Sierra Avenue in Fontana, California (San Bernardino County), south of its intersection with Interstate 15 (Google satellite view and map). I don't know the story behind it but I'd love to figure this out (please contact me if you know anything about this building).

UPDATE August 2008: Read the comments on this post, where readers chime in with information about this strange home. (Thanks, everyone, for the comments!)

It was built in what was the middle of nowhere for many decades. As of late, Fontana's suburban sprawl is marching toward the property; who knows what fate awaits this incredible example of Southern California's architectural eclecticism.

Below: Seen on Live.Local.com.

Technorati Tags: Fontana, SanBernardinoCounty, SierraAvenue, Victorian

Suburban sprawl in California: panoramic photos

For your consideration: panoramic (extra extra wide) photographs of suburban sprawl developments around California: San Ramon 2004 · San Ramon 2006 ·  Clayton ·  Antioch · Santa Clarita · Valencia · Tassajara Road and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Technorati Tags: california, clayton, exurban, realestate, residential, sanramon, southerncalifornia, sprawl, suburb, valencia

San Gabriel River to run a little more freely

From the Pasadena Star-News, a story about Southern California's San Gabriel River getting a back-to-nature makeover; and a nice map of the river (click to enlarge; map ©2006 Pasadena Star-News):

Here's a shot I took back in 1993 of a jeep abandoned in the river that comes out of the San Gabriel Mountains nearby, at the foot of Mount San Antonio (aka Old Baldy); see it in my Auto Carnage photo essay.

Case Study Number 22 / mashup

Barbed wire, invented to fence the American West. This land is your land, this land is my land. Come and get a piece of the dream, kiddo.

And on and on it goes, Western Avenue is paved, the Engelmann oaks are cut down, the water is brought in, who doesn't hate cold winters, dollar fares to sunny Los Angeles, oranges behind the bungalow, snow capped Mt. Baldy out the picture window.

Dust bowl refugees getting their footing, returning soldiers, post-war optimism, an aerospace industry enriches the educated classes, freeways mobilize, and the International Style draws new lines.

Modernism, Art & Architecture magazine, the Case Study houses, young architect Pierre Koenig, Case Study House #22.

Endlessly reproduced, the iconic image captured by photographer Julius Shulman. A chance meeting with the architect decades after its building.

(from the J. Paul Getty Trust website)

Time passes. Accumulations, and discards. The fence pieces, the image, a natural fit. The home, you can't, not anymore. Too many coming in, too many being born, just a blip, an accident of history, no more trailers by the beach, too much cash, debtor nation, every 9th person wants to sell me a house, loan me hundreds of thousands of dollars, piles of debt, it would seem, does not matter, U.S.A., freedom to shop at WalMart 24 hours a day, freedom to drive forever and eat McDonalds, free to give our lives for a lie, free to elect scoundrels, free to give up what makes America so good.

More on Le Blog Exuberance:

• Case Study House #21 ~ buy your own Pierre Koenig pad
• Meeting Pierre Koenig in Case Study House #22

Technorati Tags: architecture, california, modernism, pierrekoenig

Technorati Tags: architecture, california, CaseStudy, CaseStudyHouseNumber22, CaseStudyHouses, modernism, pierrekoenig