The first thing that happens when you walk through the doors of “The Tension Experience: Ascension” is that you’re handed a recruitment document for a cult, masquerading as the O.O.A. Institute. Printed on top of the enrollment paper is your own face, smiling back at you. A rosy-lipped receptionist...
Turn off your mind and relax and float through musician and visual artist Vinyl Williams’ wild new interactive video for “Feedback Delicates.” Taken from his just-dropped new record, “Brunei,” the clip from the artist born Lionel Williams, is a trip and allows viewers to explore an entire digital...
A settlement ending the bitter battle over media mogul Sumner Redstone’s mental competency and the future of Viacom Inc. received the blessing of a Massachusetts judge on Friday — but not until after an intervention to mend a rift within the famously fractious Redstone family. Rather than quickly...
Marvel is in the midst of Kirby Week, a celebration of all things Jack “The King” Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg), one of the most influential comic book creators and a founding father of the Marvel Universe. From Aug. 22-28, comic creators and others (like historian Peter Sanderson) will talk about...
One of the timeliest, most urgent movies you can see in a Los Angeles theater next month was first shown nearly 50 years ago, not long after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the devastating race riots that followed in its wake. Among the cities hit the hardest was Kansas City, Mo.,...
Paramount Pictures Chairman and Chief Executive Brad Grey has been widely criticized for his stewardship of the storied but struggling movie studio. But the leadership at Paramount’s parent company, Viacom Inc., including new interim CEO Tom Dooley and board member Shari Redstone, are voicing...
This weekend, the Baltimore duo Beach House arrives in Los Angeles for two performances in support of its most recent work. The pair, which features keyboardist and vocalist Victoria Legrand and multi-instrumentalist Alex Scally, has over the past decade composed a luxurious brand of guitar pop...
"Next to Normal," the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about a suburban mom's struggle with bipolar disorder, first arrived in Los Angeles in 2010, on its national tour. I remember feeling electrified — at once thrilled and unnerved — by the bracing honesty of Brian Yorkey's book and lyrics, the...
SUNDAY Empowering young people is what it’s all about on a new edition of the star-studded special “WE Day.” With Paula Abdul, Zooey Deschanel, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Hudson, Joe Jonas, Demi Lovato, Natalie Portman, Seth Rogen, Charlize Theron, et al. 7 p.m. ABC “I Miss Downton Abbey!” — perhaps...
Just like the 1972 Charles Bronson vehicle “The Mechanic” and the 2011 Jason Statham-starring remake, the best scenes in “Mechanic: Resurrection” contain almost no dialogue. When the sequel is really clicking, it becomes action cinema in its purest visual form: just one buff, taciturn dude doing...
UNDERRATED The Tragically Hip: If you’ve heard of this band, chances are it was from a Canadian friend who asked — probably rather politely — that you give one of their albums a listen. On the heels of leader Gord Downie’s terminal brain cancer diagnosis, the Tragically Hip embarked on one last tour...
Some private art collections are about the drama of the architecture. Others, the sheer accumulation of works. Glenstone, the private museum founded by collectors Mitchell and Emily Rales in Potomac, Md., is all about the arrival. Two-lane roads wind through patches of farmland and well-manicured...
Doug Aitken settles in around a long dining table at his Venice studio, coddling a cup of hot herbal tea. The artist is having a rare down day just weeks before the opening of his exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Classical music flows through the sun-filled space, which feels surprisingly...
Hal Linden, 85, acknowledges he’s not the most disciplined human being — and that turned out to be a good thing for his career. “If I had discipline, I would have been a professional musician,” said Linden, who played the clarinet in big bands. “Today, I could be making hundreds of dollars a week....
SERIES Masters of Illusion Jonathan Pendragon, Eric Buss, Naathan Phan, Barry & Stuart, Chris Randall and David & Dania are featured in this new episode of the magic showcase hosted by Dean Cain. 8 p.m. KTLA Bering Sea Gold The fleet is offered access to an untouched claim, which is rumored to...
When Andrew Ahn came out as gay, he was told by his Korean father that gay Koreans didn’t exist; that being gay was an American concept and he was only gay because he was Korean American. That statement left Ahn feeling “fractured, like your Korean identity and your gay identity can’t live in the...
Four Penn State University alumni who were students there at the time Nate Parker and his then-roommate were charged with the rape of a fellow student have written a compelling letter in defense of the “The Birth of a Nation” actor-writer-director. “We are both dismayed and disappointed at the...
For Thomas Dooley, securing the job as chief executive of Viacom Inc. might be the easy part. Fixing the struggling media company will take more work. Late last week, as part of a legal settlement to end a messy boardroom fight with Sumner Redstone and his family, Viacom’s board elevated Dooley,...
With “Hands of Stone,” Robert De Niro officially enters his Burgess Meredith-in-“Rocky” phase, bringing the ringside grizzle and rumpled gravitas by the pound. In writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s peppy, none-too-probing biopic of Panamanian champion Roberto Duran, played by Édgar Ramírez,...
The doctor is out at HLN. CNN’s sister cable channel is dropping addiction expert Dr. Drew Pinsky’s nightly prime-time show, “Dr. Drew,” on Sept. 22. The program, which has aired on HLN since 2011, is the latest casualty of an overall revamp at the channel aimed at returning it to its news roots....
Sculptural pieces that dwell on material and color. A performance inspired by the work of women sculptors. Paintings that draw from the unremarkable aspects of L.A.’s urban settings. And a daylong dance choreography that looks at identity in antiquity. Here are four openings and events to check...
Filmmaker Sam Raimi is a producer on the new horror-thriller hybrid “Don’t Breathe,” directed by Fede Alvarez. Across his broad career, Raimi has brought touches of the horror movie not only to his own trilogy of “Evil Dead” movies but also to films such as “Darkman” or even his three “Spider-Man”...
Long-haired, guitar-clutching frontman is a job in which Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker has excelled. Yet these days, the 30-year-old musician from Australia is spending more and more of his time in a different role: behind-the-scenes enabler for some of the world’s biggest pop stars. In May, Mark...
Two small objects were stacked on a worktable in the East Hollywood office of filmmaker Fede Alvarez on a recent morning, one prop each from his first two features. From his feature debut, 2013’s “Evil Dead,” was a midsized book, crafted and distressed to look like the mystical ancient tome known...
Filmmaker Maïwenn has an eye for messy behavior and emotional blind spots. Where her ensemble piece “Polisse” explored the interplay of work and home life — and their disconnect — her new feature zeros in on romance. From tantalizing seduction to fraught legal negotiations, “My King” is a Rorschach-test...
Give your latest project a name that sounds like an explosive cosmic event and, sure, maybe expectations run a little high. However, every bit as challenging for Mega Nova — the new project led by Carlos Santana that debuted at the Hollywood Bowl Wednesday night — was the idea to round out the band...
Given that it was booed after screening at 2015’s Cannes Film Festival and is opening against a tide of poor advance reviews, Gus Van Sant’s “The Sea of Trees” proves a stronger movie experience than one might expect. It’s anchored by a fine, understated performance by Matthew McConaughey and a...
Set in L.A.’s Koreatown, “Spa Night” is a classic American story of immigrant parents and assimilated children. The assured feature debut by Andrew Ahn is also the story of a young gay man’s sexual awakening, and its sensitive lead performance affectingly expresses the tension between tradition...
Blood Orange’s Devonte Hynes is often called an heir to Prince. But on Wednesday night at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel, he was just as much an inheritor of Gene Kelly. During the band’s performance of “You’re Not Good Enough,” a soft-funk single that sounds like the smooth station KOST-FM (103.5)...
The theater world lost two giants this summer, Zelda Fichandler, co-founder of Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage and a heroic pioneer of the regional theater movement, and James Houghton, founder of New York’s indispensable Signature Theatre Company. They may not be household names, but both can be...
While concerned cineastes bemoan the lack of women behind the camera, Italian writer/director Nanni Moretti makes one his autobiographical avatar in “Mia Madre,” about an emotionally fraying filmmaker (Margherita Buy) dealing with crises professional and personal, namely a problem-beset movie shoot...
Like the man himself, "Floyd Norman: An Animated Life" is genial on the surface but lets us go a little deeper into an unusual life than we might have expected. Now over 80, Norman is a genuine pioneer, the first black artist hired by Disney. He is, as documentary directors Michael Fiore and Erik...
As a generally mild-mannered father undertaking a brutal course of revenge in “In Order of Disappearance,” Stellan Skarsgård might occasionally strike you as Scandinavia’s answer to Liam Neeson in the “Taken” movies. Then again, he might not. The comparison almost, but not quite, nails the quiet...
The weekend-away-with-friends indie has become a safe testing ground for first-time feature directors: one (typically pretty) location reduces certain production stresses, while a large cast allows plenty of room to discover what works and what doesn’t. In the case of actress Clea DuVall’s debut...
It’s tough to dislike “The Hollars,” which is something director-star John Krasinski and writer Jim Strouse work overtime to ensure. That’s hardly a bad thing, though, when a film is as warm, funny and truthful as this one. But it’s the movie’s endearingly wacky approach that most sets it apart...
What “Psycho” did for showers and “Jaws” did for the ocean, the Korean disaster flick “Tunnel” won’t likely do for, well, tunnels. But after watching this often gripping, humanistic thriller, you may just think twice before driving into one. On a typical day’s ride home from his job selling Kias,...
There’s so much quality children’s entertainment on TV and at the movies these days that there’s no real reason to take your kids to see a dog — or, more specifically, “Space Dogs: Adventure to the Moon.” The sequel to 2010’s “Space Dogs” follows the son of a canine cosmonaut as he stows away on...
There’s little that comes off as “natural” in “Natural Selection,” a stiffly heavy-handed, drawn-out, faith-based drama about a Christ-like teen struggling to find his true path. Arriving in a new town, soft-spoken Tyler (Mason Dye) and his alcoholic mother (“Bluebloods” regular Amy Carlson) have...
Los Angeles is rife with film festivals of all sorts, but if the city has an underappreciated gem, it’s the Cinecon Classic Film Festival, a beloved event whose 52nd edition runs Labor Day weekend, Sept. 1-5, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Passionately dedicated to rarely screened films...
The three-page statement accompanying Laura Lasworth's show at Lora Schlesinger Gallery is useful for learning about the sources of the work but entirely unnecessary to feel the sheer radiance of it. Lasworth paints in a dawn-light palette with such luminous clarity and devotional intimacy that...
This week: Women gone Wilde, plus a sendup about the making of “Gone With the Wind,” and a hit musical comedy about “the change.” Back Off Track: Saga of a Quitter Writer-performer Carey Matthews’ new solo comedy. The Belfry Stage, Upstairs at the Crown, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood. Sun.-Mon.,...
"Mapping Fictions" at the Good Luck Gallery is one of those great, double-strength shows whose work is as fresh and memorable as the larger, lingering ideas and questions it provokes. Guest curators Andreana Donahue and Tim Ortiz are the founders of Disparate Minds, an initiative to integrate art...
Downtown Las Vegas will morph into a musical street scene in September as more than 80 bands — Mumford & Sons, J. Cole, Jane’s Addiction, the Lumineers, Young the Giant among them — take to several stages during the fourth Life is Beautiful festival. The three-day event also showcases art, culinary experiences...
Trumpeter Herb Alpert, known for his unique brand of Latin-tinged jazz pop, and for being a co-founder of A&M Records, a label that released key albums by artists from Cat Stevens to Janet Jackson, is now making his mark on education. The musician’s namesake foundation, co-founded with his wife,...