I WANTED TO THANK you for Ted Parks' thoughtful article about our beloved City of the Angels Film Festival ("Strange Bedfellows," March-April 2000).

But geologist Amy Barnes knows that something big is about to threaten the City of the Angels when she discovers that temperatures haver risen in the city's landmark La Brea Tar Pits.

CONFIDENTIAL (18) It's Christmas Eve in the City of the Angels but goodwill is in short supply in the cells at the LAPD.

Boot's rosy picture of policing in Los Angeles will be sharply contested by many citizens in the City of the Angels, but it will undoubtedly win Dunn accolades from most of his peers.

Italian artist Giovanni Smeraldi used plaster, paint, and gobs of gilt to create a symphony of symbolism, from angels (for the City of the Angels) to bison and tepees symbolizing (well, sort of) California's Native American heritage.

Wanamaker's influence can also be seen in Heimann's new tome, "Sins of the City" (Chronicle Books, 1999) which is about crime in the city of the angels.

Sunset begins near where the City of the Angels began: its first leg, from El Pueblo de Los Angeles plaza northwest toward Hollywood, was created around the turn of the century.

It is here that Hall's -- and the audience's -- eyes are opened to the pic's highlight: an astonishing re-creation of a bygone City of the Angels. Rusnak and the staff of Centropolis Effects have hatched a remarkable simulation in its own right, stuffed with such period detail as a view of southbound La Cienega Boulevard from Sunset Boulevard, cutting through undeveloped land forested with nothing but oil derricks.