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To say L.A. Noire, developed by Team Bondi with support from Rockstar Games, has been a long time coming would be an understatement. Originally unveiled as a Sony-funded, PlayStation exclusive in 2004, this open-world crime drama has been peaking legions of Rockstar fans' curiosity for quite some time. The end result is by far Rockstar's greatest departure from Grand Theft Auto, yet still embraces their signature sandbox framework. L.A. Noire is, at its core, a linear, story-driven experience that uses the city of Los Angeles, and the player's freedom to explore it, to reenforce the ever-present narrative. This uncompromising focus restricts the playground mentality typically associated with open-world games, but the rich, engrossing atmosphere and grounded story it helps create are more than worth the sacrifice.

Set in the 'City of Angels,' post World War II, L.A. Noire places players in the shoes of Cole Phelps, a decorated war veteran who returns to civilization and decides to put his skills to work in law enforcement. Through impressive diligence and deduction, Cole makes a name for himself by working a series of high-profile cases. Rather quickly, the fame accumulated from police work and wartime service places Cole at the center of organized crime that reaches the highest levels of society.

As hinted at above, L.A. Noire is structured around solving a series of cases that have distinct tales to tell, but also frequently and subtlely develop the game's wider plot arch. Each case generally compromises a mixture of investigation, interviews, interrogations and action sequences. While these sections all possess unique mechanics, they are woven together in very seamless, natural and unexpected ways that generally prevent things from feeling too repetitive, although it does fall into that trap at times.Truly intriguing plot lines also help keep the player's attention on unraveling the mystery.

The first step in most cases involve canvasing the crime scene for clues. Ultimately, this amounts to little more than wondering the environments and picking objects up here and there - not exactly an inherently engaging task, although one very reminiscent of classic adventure and point-and-click games. However, L.A. Noire shrewdly streamlines the process by providing subtle and organic feedback while the players investigate. When the player approaches an interactive object a number of things can happen to signal its relevance: The controller will vibrate and the background music will swell briefly. The sound design here really shines and feels completely at home within the detective context.

After some clues have been found, persons of interest need to be interviewed. Once a question has been asked, the player will need to determine whether they think the person's response is credible, suspicious or outright false. This can be done by reviewing the evidence collected or by reading body language and facial expressions. It's in the last area, animation, where L.A. Noire truly amazes. Each character's expressions and reflexes are lifelike, to the point where they frequently become indistinguishable from live-action footage and cross the highly touted uncanny valley. The success of this integral part of L.A. Noire hinged on pushing animation to the next level, and fortunately Team Bondi nailed it. There's a lot to praise here, including the convincing cast of actors, many cherry-picked from Mad Men.

That being said, all the production milestones don't completely spare the game from the pitfalls of branching conversation paths. There will inevitably be times when your thought process and that of the developers tried to predict won't match up. Fortunately, L.A. Noire never punishes the player for failing to get mostly "right" answers during conversation. In fact, if you get stuck, you can always use one of those Intuition Points that you've stacked from ranking up to eliminate one option, or “Ask the Community” for help should you not be able to tell if a suspect is lying.

The city didn't just host the Ottawa Marathon on Sunday. To a great degree, the city was the Ottawa Marathon.

When the world's best hockey players come to town, it's not really Ottawa that hosts them -at least not in the same way. They use luxurious and exclusive amenities, of the same type they use everywhere they go.

And except for those lucky residents who have Senators tickets, it's almost a matter of trivia that a regular season game is happening here -unless you're stuck in traffic on the Queensway on game night.

By contrast, when some of the world's best marathon runners come to town, they run on the same ground as the 5,000 other runners, the same ground all Ottawans walk and cycle and drive on every day.

Yesterday, under clouds and through light rain, they saw the ceremonial precincts and the trendy neighbourhoods. They saw the new arch in Chinatown.

More than that, the run was so intimately Ottawacentric because of the fans and supporters who lined the city streets, all of them close enough to touch the runners and close enough to say whatever they chose and be heard perfectly.

For those reasons, if every runner on the course had been from Ethiopia, it would probably still have been the most uniquely Ottawan of our major sporting events.

Then take into account how many of the runners were from Ottawa, earning their right to run freely over so much blocked-off city infrastructure through a winter of training in ice and slush. When the crowds saw those runners, the lonely, ordinary-human types, they met them with a type of cheering grown-ups rarely receive.

Derek Spriet, a 35-year-old teacher at Lester B. Pearson High School in Gloucester, was struggling through the late stages of his first marathon when he heard people calling his name as he ran along the canal. Those people didn't know him, but that's one of the reason's each runner has their first name printed on their bib, so the crowd can give help to the strangers in shorts.

"They said, 'Go, Derek!'" Spriet said afterward, his finisher's medal around his neck. "I was suffering the last five kilometres. When people call out your name it just pushes you through."

Race Weekend as a whole pushed through a lot of runners. Between seven events of various distances, nearly 40,000 people participated. Together they took hundreds of millions of strides on Ottawa pavement. At a conservative estimate, more than $5 million worth of running shoes hit the ground. Organizers say the three-day event generates $25 million for the Ottawa-Gatineau economy.

While some of the runners were pushing themselves to record times fast enough to qualify for next year's Boston Marathon, Gordon Pilotte was visiting from Boston to run in Ottawa.

"It's beautiful," said Pilotte, who has done the Boston run 11 times and said he was impressed with how well-organized Ottawa's event is.

Claude Brault, 49, cycles to his public service job at the CRTC, so he already had a close relationship with the city streets. For him, it was a treat to be on them with no cars.

At the end of Sunday's race, as thousands of participants limped away from City Hall, where the race began and ended, Brault said he wasn't sure he'd ever want to run a marathon again.

Like most of the exhausted runners, he had no idea the race was won by a Kenyan named Laban Moiben, whose time was about half of Brault's three hours and 52 minutes.

Brault said the race's medal and bib weren't such a big deal. But the knowledge that he'd taken on more than 42 kilometres of his city and defeated it will stay with him.

"I know I did it."

Have vampires sucked the blood out of chick lit?

Remember when beachin' it meant toting along "Bridget Jones's Diary," "Good in Bed," "Confessions of a Shop-aholic" or anything by Candace Bushnell?

Well, if you're a dedicated chick-lit fan, you'll be packing light this year. Sure, Sophie ("Shopaholic") Kinsella is publishing "40 Love" under her real name, Madeleine Wickham, and Beth Harbison ("Secrets of a Shoe Addict") is bringing out "There's Always Something There to Remind Me." But a smattering of titles doesn't fill a genre.

The truth is, there' ain't a whole lot of chick lit going on these days. Not like back when ...

"There was a period when by the time you read a query for a chick-lit novel, a six-figure auction had been completed," recalls Manhattan literary agent Liza Dawson.

Ah, the era of "Bridget Jones's Diary" by Helen Fielding, "The Other Side of the Story" by Marian Keyes, "Mr. Maybe" by Jane Green, "The Devil Wears Prada" by Laura Weisberger, "Love the One You're With" by Emily Giffin — just to name a few in no particular order.

But while certain brand-name chick-lit writers still have an audience, many have fallen by the wayside. Still, anything that Stephenie Meyer or Charlaine Harris (her Sookie Stackhouse series is the basis for HBO's "True Blood") or Sherrilyn Kenyon (the "Dark-Hunter" series) chooses to write sells and sells.

"A lot of what happened was that there was a reading shift in the age potentially geared to chick lit," says Patricia Bostelman, vice present of marketing for Barnes & Noble. "'Sex and the City' went off the air and the world got darker with the recession. Meanwhile, a wide swath crossed over to the 'Twilight' series."

Sara Nelson, book editor at O magazine, agrees. "There's less emphasis on finding a man, getting a lot of money and Louboutin shoes now. The vibe is a lot funkier," she says. "There are more stories about women coming of age living in Brooklyn than trying to get a Park Ave. apartment."

Rarely, though, do genres just go away. At least not without a fight. Two staunch chick-lit defenders, authors Lisa Steinke and Liz Fenton, who will soon publish an e-book, "The D Word," have declared May to be International Chick Lit Month. They also have a blog toward that end, chicklitisnotdead.com.

"Chick lit has evolved from Cosmos and handbags," says Fenton. "There are divorces, single moms, women making rash decisions."

Her writing partner put it succinctly. "We're two girls who believe in a happy ending. If we could say what the definition of chick lit is, it's a book with a happy ending."

Lindsay Lohan just can't catch a break.

The 24-year-old was left red faced in Miami Beach yesterday when her bikini top fell down while she was frolicking in the surf.

She attempted to preserve her modesty by wrapping her arms across her chest but she failed to cover up the wardrobe malfunction.

The Mean Girls star did her best to laugh off the moment as she emerged from the sea.

Lindsay also revealed a new another tattoo on her body, but this one is only temporary.

She to have had the word 'blood' scrawled onto her upper right arm.

However after rubbing sun cream on shortly afterwards, she managed to smudge it and likely ruined it even further after going for a dip in the Atlantic Ocean.

Lohan was initially playing it coy, hiding behind an orange scarf, but eventually showed off her figure as she went for a swim with a friend.

The actress has around four real tattoos,including a star on her left wrist, which her mother Dina and sister Ali, 17, also have.

On Sunday, following a photoshoot, Lohan appeared to be stressed out and decided to unwind poolside in a tiny striped bikini with her sister Ali while smoking a cigarette.

But the star's once enviable figure has given way to a pot belly, which she exposed while changing from her bikini.

Lohan and her little sister soaked up the sunshine on the rooftop of the Raleigh Hotel in Miami, Florida.

But as Ali appeared toned and lithe, theactress looked strained, bloated  and in need of a good night's rest.

In between smoking her cigarette, Lohan sipped on bottled Fiji water and chatted on her mobile while her friends opted for cocktails at the hotel.

Once she'd had enough of the midday sun, the star threw on a tiny pair of denim shorts, a black T-shirt and knee-high gladiator sandals.

While she lounged by the pool, Lohan tweeted: ‘Can't I just be with my sister @ a pool and have out salad!! Grrr met the sweetest girl who's 17 and has a child.'

She later headed to a basketball game and tweeted: ‘So excited @ Miami Heat game! In a box I wish my brothers were here!!!'

Once she'd had enough of the midday sun, the star threw on a tiny pair of denim shorts, a black T-shirt and knee-high gladiator sandals.

While she lounged by the pool, Lohan tweeted: ‘Can't I just be with my sister @ a pool and have out salad!! Grrr met the sweetest girl who's 17 and has a child.'

She later headed to a basketball game and tweeted: ‘So excited @ Miami Heat game! In a box I wish my brothers were here!!!'

King was the mastermind behind the 1976 original horror movie that starred Sissy Spacek – an abused girl with telekinetic powers.

The Hollywood legend said in an interview with EW: ‘I've heard rumblings about a Carrie remake… Lindsay Lohan as Carrie White, hmmm. It would certainly be fun to cast.'

The role would certainly help relaunch her career and last week she won a restraining order against a man accused of stalking her.

The actress said she received more than 100 text messages from David Cocordan, with some leading her to believe he intended to sexually assault her.

He also altered magazine articles to make it appear as though they were dating, sent her gifts, visited her house and followed her to public appearances.