Another Oscars comes and goes

Deserved new reputations for Marion Cotillard, French winner of the best actress statue for channeling Edith Piaf, and Gary Busey, who freaked out Ryan Seacrest and Jennifer Garner on E's red carpet. I hung in for most of the show, and liked Jon Stewart better than last time, but the Independent Spirit Awards Saturday night proved to a more entertaining (and shorter) show. Rival Oscar views: "Filled with as much magic and madness as ever," gushed the Los Angeles Times, now heavily invested in hyping all Hollywood awards. Nikki Finke, before the Oscars began: "Even Hollywood interest in the show is at its lowest point in recent memory." List of winners

Mayor pressures council on budget deficit

Weekend posts   City Hall politics

Villaraigosa will invite opinion leaders to the annual briefing by economists on the city budget picture as "part of an effort by the mayor to step up public pressure on the City Council to rein in spending this year to try to reduce the impact of more potential cuts next year." Rick Orlov

Mayor also to name his education team

Reformer Angela Bass will be introduced as the Superintendent of Instruction for the mayor's schools in a morning presser at Samuel Gompers Middle School.

Times rethinks water

"Today, we begin a series of editorials that explore some of the most ancient and deeply held views of our ancestors – the sturdy, rapacious men who built this newspaper and the city of Los Angeles." editorial page editor Jim Newton blogs, promising a revision of the Times' historic role as booster and water-grabber.

This time, we’re doing it not as land barons (it’s safe to say that Harry Chandler would have been crushed to wake up one morning and find himself in possession of the combined real estate holdings of today’s editorial board), but as heirs to a newspaper built on water – and as residents of a region whose history has been formed by its pursuit....

Yes, that means we’re breaking some precedent here, but we’re doing it with full consciousness.

Stuff white people like

Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez analyzes the emotional reactions stirred by Christian Lander's popular (or unpopular) new blog, only six weeks old and reportedly receiving 300,000 daily hits as it satirizes racial stereotypes. Lander, Canadian and white, lives in Culver City. Rodriguez:

Lander is doing to whites what scores of journalists and politicians do to non-white minorities every day, "essentializing" complex identities -- that is, stripping away all variety and reducing them to their presumed authentic essences.

One irony-deficient reader complained that the blog was less about white people than it was about yuppies. And without knowing it, she was cutting to the heart of the joke.

Grand Avenue plan in trouble

The developer says no worries, but apparently there are concerns about the economics. A key financial partner opts out, and the royal family of Dubai opts in. Elsewhere downtown, "More than a third of the approximately 110 residential projects proposed for downtown -- including the 50-story Zen tower on 3rd and Hill streets, the Mill Street Lofts in the industrial district, the multitower Metropolis off the 110 Freeway and the conversion of the former Herald Examiner building -- have been delayed or put on hold amid the rocky real estate market." LAT, Downtown News

CRA plans for Westlake Theatre

The agency bought the landmark theater on Alvarado this month for $5.7 million, and four adjacent properties for $5.1 million, and plans a mixed-use project. LABJ

Photo: Lawrence K. Ho / LA Times