Despite rumors that the historic Eames House burned in the wildfire raging in Pacific Palisades, The Times has confirmed that this gem of midcentury design — one of Los Angeles’ most important architectural landmarks — remains undamaged. Some of Los Angeles’ treasured cultural institutions and historic architecture are at risk, however, as fires spread in the Palisades, Altadena, Pasadena, Sylmar, Topanga and points beyond. Here is the status of cultural destinations near the fires; check back for our updates as the emergency continues to unfold.

The Getty Villa: J. Paul Getty Trust President and Chief Executive Katherine E. Fleming said Wednesday that the Getty Villa in the Palisades was still safe. Trees and vegetation caught fire Tuesday, but the staff and collection of antiquities were safe. The Villa will be closed until early next week and perhaps longer. Fleming said the Getty Center in Brentwood would remain closed through at least Sunday in an effort to alleviate traffic in the area.

Will Greer Theatricum Botanicum: The beloved open-air Topanga theater — known for its annual Shakespeare-under-the-stars performances — is under a mandatory evacuation order. A representative said that the complex was safe for now but it’s “a waiting game.”

Thomas Mann House and Villa Aurora: A statement on the website for Villa Aurora and the Thomas Mann house noted that both structures were safe but “the impact of the fires on our two houses will only become fully visible in the coming days. The situation in immediate vicinity of Villa Aurora is especially dire and we must expect the worst.” The Spanish-style Villa Aurora mansion was built in 1943 for the German author Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife, Marta, and was the site of gatherings for German and Jewish immigrants during World War II. It has been an artists’ residence since 1995. The Thomas Mann House is a two-story villa completed in 1942 for writer and Nobel Prize laureate Mann and his family. They lived in the residence from 1942 through 1952, during Mann’s exile from Germany. The house offers residency programs for visiting fellows.

Theatre Palisades: The theater, founded in 1963 by three TV writers, appeared in news reports to have been largely destroyed in the wildfire. The organization’s website said that all operations at its 125-seat community theater are suspended until further notice.

The Gamble House: The historic Craftsman home built in Pasadena in 1906 for Procter & Gamble founder James Gamble’s son David B. Gamble, is part of a Level 2 evacuation warning for the Eaton fire, meaning a mandatory evacuation could come but hasn’t yet.

Descanso Gardens: The 125-acre historic La Cañada Flintridge property filled with winding pathways and lush landscapes including a Japanese garden and an oak forest, is in the evacuation zone for the Eaton fire. But a Descanso representative said Wednesday that the grounds were safe and out of immediate danger. The gardens will remain closed until further notice.

Norton Simon Museum: The museum, which has more than 44,000 objects in its collection including European sculptures, paintings and tapestries as well as Asian art and woodblock prints, sits just outside of the Level 2 evacuation warning for the Eaton fire. A representative said that the museum is safe and that security and facilities staff members are on-site and in close contact with Pasadena emergency teams. “Our grounds are kept clear of brush and our building is constructed with fire resistant materials,” the museum said.

Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens: Nestled in the flatlands of San Marino, away from the hills of Pasadena and Altadena, the Huntington and its historic buildings, priceless books and gorgeous gardens are not close to evacuation zones. The museum, however, will be closed Wednesday due to the threats from high wind. In an email, a rep said that the Huntington lost a few trees due to the high winds, but so far has sustained only minor damages to the property from falling debris. “While we are currently outside the range of active fires, our buildings are equipped with features designed to enhance the safety of our art and library collections. Our HVAC systems continue to maintain safe collection storage environments, including the filtering of outside air,” the rep wrote.

Los Angeles Arboretum and Botanic Garden: The 127-acre complex is south of the 210 Freeway, below the mandatory evacuation zones. It was closed Tuesday and remains closed Wednesday due to the fires but does not appear to be in imminent danger.

Eames House: The historic 1949 home — formally known as Case Study House No. 8 — has been unharmed by the wildfires so far. Eames Foundation founder Lucia Atwood, granddaughter of legendary designer Charles Eames, confirmed the house’s states as of noon Wednesday. “Windblown fires continue to claim other homes in the community and bring the fires nearer,” she said by email. “We are closely monitoring the situation and the Eames Foundation has taken every precaution to protect the site.” The foundation’s team removed some objects from the house on Tuesday before evacuating the building themselves.

In 2008, when The Times assembled a panel of residential architecture experts to choose their favorite L.A. houses of all time, the Eames House finished No. 4, ahead of other landmarks such as John Lautner’s space-age Chemosphere, Greene & Greene’s beloved Gamble House in Pasadena and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. The accompanying photo gallery beautifully captured the eclectic bohemian modern vibe that continues to inspire generations of design fans.

The house has faced fire threats before, most notably the 2019 Getty fire, whose mandatory evacuation area included the Eames property.

Making art in the middle of the apocalypse is the literal and figurative ethos of “Grand Theft Hamlet,” one of the cleverest “What can we do during lockdown?” pandemic picture projects.

A couple of British actors — Sam Crane and Mark Ooosterveen –– stared into the same gutting void of everybody who was unable to work during the pandemic lockdowns. As they killed some time meeting in the online gamescape of “Grand Theft Auto,” they stumbled into the Vinewood (Hollywood) Bowl setting of that Greater L.A. killing zone. And like actors since the beginning of time, thought they’d put on a play.

As they wander and ponder this brilliant conceit, they wrestle with whether to attempt casting, setting and directing this play amidst a sea of first-person shooters/stabbers/run-you-over-with-their car. They face fascinating theatrical problem solving. How DO you make art and recruit an online in-the-game audience for Shakespeare in a world of self-absorbed, bloody-minded avatars, some of whom stumble upon their efforts and ignore their “Please don’t shoot me” pleas?

Crane and Oosterveen, both white 40somethings Brits, grapple with “what people are like in here,” as in “people are violent in the game.” VERY violent. But “people are violent in Shakespeare.” Pretty much “everybody dies in ‘Hamlet,’” after all.

Putting on a play in the middle of a real apocalypse set in a CGI generated apocalypse is “a terrible idea,” Oosterveen confesses (in avatar form). “But I definitely want to try to do it.”

Crane, struggling with the same mental health issues tens of millions faced during lockdown, enlists his documentary filmmaker wife Pinny Grylls to enter the game and film all this.

And as their endeavors progress, through trial and many many deaths (“WASTED,” the game’s graphics remind you), everybody interested in their idea trots out favorite couplets from Shakespeare as “auditions.” They round up “actors” from all over (mostly Brits, though), they remind us of the power of Shakespeare’s words.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep…”

Dodging would-be gamer/killers and recruiting others, they will see how a marriage can be strained by work or video game addiction and fret over the futility of it all.

The film, co-scripted and directed by Crane and Grylls, with Crane playing Hamlet, and narrated and somewhat driven by Oosterveen, who portrays Polonius, is a mad idea but a great gimmick, one that occasionally transcends that gimmick.

We’re reminded of the visual sophistication of CGI landscapes — they try out a lot of settings, and use more than one, a scene staged on top of a blimp, seaside for a soliloquy. The limitations of jerky-movement video game characters, lips-moving but not syncing up to dialogue, are just as obvious.

And if all the gamescape’s “a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” some folks — MANY folks — need to buy better headset microphones. The distorted audio and staticky dynamic range of such gear spoils a lot of the dialogue.

In a production where the words matter as much as this, as “acting” in avatar form is a catalog of limitless limitations, one becomes ever more grateful that the film is a documentary of the “making” of a “Grand Theft Auto” “Hamlet,” and not merely the play. Because inventive settings and occasional murderous “distractions” aside, that leaves a lot to be desired.

Rating: R, video game violence, profanity

Cast: The voices/avatars of Sam Crane,
Mark Oosterveen, Pinny Grylls, Jen Cohn, Tilly Steele, Lizzie Wofford, Dilo Opa, Sam Forster, Jeremiah O’Connor and Gareth Turkington

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, based on “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. A Mubi release.

Running time: 1:29

Welcome Tim Allen back to the land of multicamera sitcom, for a third run in a form that has treated him well. “Home Improvement” ran for eight seasons on ABC and is arguably what allowed him to become a film star; “Last Man Standing,” which returned him to television after a decade in the movies, finished a nine-season run (six on ABC, three on Fox) in 2021. And here he is again, once more on ABC, with “Shifting Gears,” premiering Wednesday, which, if past is prelude, should just about see Allen — a fit 71, his tight T-shirt would like you to know — into his 80s.

Allen plays Matt, who — importing Allen’s own automotive interests — runs a garage specializing in vintage and custom cars. (Working here we find Daryl Mitchell as Stitch, a wise wisecracker, and Seann William Scott as Gabriel, handsome, amiable, a little dim.) Literally driving back into Matt’s life, in a filthy Pontiac GTO she stole from him 15 years before, when taking off pregnant with a musician boyfriend, is his daughter Riley (Kat Dennings). She’s getting divorced, musicians being what they are, and needs a place to land with her two kids, moony teenager Carter (Maxwell Simkins) and cheerful little Georgia (Barrett Margolis), who has a thing for inventor and “Shark Tank” panelist Lori Greiner and dreams of becoming a billionaire. (The kids are excellent.)

“Well, good luck finding a man who’s OK with his wife making more money than him,” says Matt, an old-fashioned sort of fellow.

“I don’t need a man to feel complete,” replies Georgia.

“You want to kill a spider, a man’s going to look pretty darn good.”

“I have a shoe.”

Father and daughter have been estranged, more or less — the kids do know their grandfather — since the death of Riley’s mother some indefinite years before; she was the bridge that allowed them to have a relationship. Riley, a former wild child, voted “Mean for No Reason” by her high school class, is trying to raise her kids with a sensitivity that Matt, who is all “in my day we were,” regards as coddling. And so they must learn to get along under the same roof. You get the picture.

When “Last Man Standing,” in which Allen played a not dissimilar character, went on the air in 2011, we were in the third year of the first Obama administration, and a show with a volubly conservative lead character played a little differently in the TV ecosystem; now, on the verge of heaven knows what, such a character reads as something like an adorable, almost moderate curmudgeon. Matt reads the Wall Street Journal and rails against television pundits “telling you what you’re supposed to think about the news, like I‘m too stupid to form my own angry opinion.” When Stitch, anticipating one of Matt’s rants, says, “Let me guess, we’re all going to hell in a hand basket,” Matt replies, “We don’t even make hand baskets in the U.S. anymore. We do make excuses, quitters and diabetes, and celebrities that use diabetes medicine to lose weight.” He describes Gabriel’s dirty hat as looking like “a normal hat that was left in Portland too long.”

The tenor of such softball japes can make “Shifting Gears” feel behind the times. There’s something sort of dutiful about the show’s sociopolitical humor, such as it is, which exists more to give the characters something to bat around than to say anything substantial about How We Ought to Live Now. And no one is batting very hard; this is, after all, a show about loving your difficult relations and putting differences aside. (Riley: “Can we try to talk to one another like rational adults? Matt: “Have you watched the news lately? That’s not a thing anymore.”) Classic stuff.

Allen and Dennings do quickly strike a satisfying mix of antagonism and affection. Both know their way around a filmed-before-a-live-audience sitcom. (Dennings spent six seasons on “2 Broke Girls.”) They’re very good talking over one another, and very good not knowing exactly what to say. In one tender moment, side by side on a couch, unsure how to reach out, he touches her … foot. To the extent that there’s a new Tim Allen here, it’s the one who, thinking of his late wife, and the flour sifter he has taken care not to clean, he cries, almost, sort of. But there has always been a soft center to his self-important characters. (And who, really, needs a new Tim Allen?)

“It’s been really different here, alone,” he tells Riley. “I think that’s why I watch the news in the morning, so I can hear a woman’s voice — even though it’s sometimes Nancy Pelosi.”

“Yeah, it’s annoying the way she’s trying to save democracy.”

The series was created by Mike Scully and Julie Thacker Scully, “Simpsons” writers and co-creators with Amy Poehler of the animated series “Duncanville.” They reportedly left after the pilot (directed by John Pasquin, who directed about a fifth of “Home Improvement” and more than a third of “Last Man Standing” episodes), which is perhaps why the second episode — only two were available to watch — feels less focused.

That there is nothing new to see here is not in the series’ disfavor. Political differences among close-quartered sitcom families go back at least as far as “All in the Family,” which had been off the air nearly a decade when Dennings was born; adult children moving in with parents or parents moving in with children (see “Lopez vs Lopez,” currently in its third season on NBC) is an old theme on television, which loves to pack as many generations into a three-walled set as possible. Formulas are formulas because they give consistent, reliable, unsurprising results.