Kenny Baker, who gave life to the “Star Wars” droid R2-D2 — one of the most beloved characters in the space-opera franchise and among the most iconic robots in pop-culture history — has died at the age of 81. The British actor, who was 3-foot-8, first played the plucky droid in George Lucas’ 1977...
Delroy Edwards, “Hangin’ at the Beach” (L.A. Club Resource). The curiously engaging bedroom dance music of Los Angeles producer and label head Delroy Edwards sounds duct-taped together, as though he gathered his beats and melodies via old Casio keyboards, fed them through a vintage MacIntosh computer...
Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony hits home Regarding: “Why Opening Ceremony Matters” [Aug. 8]. Thank you for a very wellwritten article. I read it twice and enjoyed it even more. You captured the true heartfelt meaning of “doing the very best with what you have.” Anyone can do techno-stuff if money...
Every life has its dramas. Be it the death of a parent, worries about paying the rent, fights with a spouse or the anxieties of adolescence, when something is happening to you it feels monumental no matter how it may size up for anyone else. New York-based filmmaker Ira Sachs works in that space,...
The key to a great television show is a great writers room. For a show like Starz’s “Survivor’s Remorse,” currently in its third season, “great” means much more than talent. For the show’s creator, actor-writer Mike O’Malley, it means diversity -- in age, race, religion and gender, among other...
In the new biopic, “Florence Foster Jenkins,” Meryl Streep plays the title role of a wealthy philanthropist with the desire — but not the talent — to be a singer. The Stephen Frears film is based on the real-life character who was a prominent figure in New York arts scene for almost half a century....
Sports journalism has received some rough scores a week into the Olympic games in Rio. Coverage has been criticized as being a bit sexist or racially insensitive. But a story that Grindr-baited athletes might have established a new low. The story published on the Daily Beast website Thursday detailed...
Guy Lawson was at a diner on a recent afternoon, feeling peevish about the state of reading in America. "You know what a New York Times bestseller is in this country? It's 2,400 copies — I sell 2,400 copies and get on the bestseller list. I tell that to people in Hollywood and they're shocked....
Two veteran Fox News executives will replace ousted chairman and chief executive Roger Ailes after the widening scandal over his alleged mistreatment of female employees. Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy will be co-presidents at the 21st Century Fox unit, reporting to its executive chairman, Rupert...
On Friday the long-running British group Psychic TV will perform its debut album, “Force the Hand of Chance,” at the Teragram Ballroom as part of the annual Berserktown music festival. The project of artist, musician and iconoclast Genesis Breyer P-Orridge — who is best known for his work as part...
SERIES Rush Hour Carter and Lee (Justin Hires, Jon Foo) investigate when a mysterious man targets upstanding members of society who all have something to hide. Wendie Malick, Aimee Garcia and Page Kennedy also star in this new episode. 8 p.m. CBS Boston EMS Many of the first responders profiled...
The Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro have been a showcase more for Brazil’s political and economic anxiety than any kind of architectural drama. None of the venues built for the Games is unorthodox or photogenic enough to rival Herzog & de Meuron’s 2008 Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing or the swimming...
It’s been a tough summer for blockbusters. Week after week, franchise films have been skewered by the critics, leaving a wake of splattered tomatoes and pun-filled critical barbs in their online wake. This weekend, however, seems to be shaping up as the one studios got right, at least according...
Andrew Manze ended his two-concert stint as guest conductor at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday night with an impressive rendition of Schubert's "Great" C-Major Symphony. The score runs nearly an hour, yet remarkably most of the 5,000 people in attendance seemed riveted to their seats. Indeed, Schubert's...
Here is the full cable and TV schedule of the first Olympic Games held in South America. Read more about when and where to watch the Rio Olympics here. :: Friday, August 12, 2016 Men's Golf, Second Round Coverage of the men's second round. From Olympic Golf Course in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Live)...
SUNDAY Coverage of the “2016 Rio Olympics” in Rio de Janeiro continues throughout the week on multiple channels. NBC, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Sports, USA Space … the final frontier: The special “50 Years of Star Trek” salutes the sci-fi franchise that has lived long and prospered on screens big...
Some magazine stories are read in the same way horror movies are watched: Nervously, through your fingers, while imploring the main character not to open the closet door. Such is the case with Amy Larocca’s recent New York magazine profile of Vanessa Beecroft, the Italian British performance artist...
The rapper Killer Mike, one half of the duo Run the Jewels, had been one of Bernie Sanders’ most outspoken advocates in the campaign. It’s clear that Sanders’ loss still doesn’t sit well with him, and he’s immensely dissatisfied with the remaining candidates. In remarks to TMZ, Killer Mike said...
Guess who's back? Back again? Vader’s back, tell a friend. The new trailer for "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" brought everyone’s favorite big bad villain back. After multiple suspenseful teaser trailers, fans have been eager for a more narrative hint at the new Disney and Lucas film’s plot and...
Among the multitudes of famous anecdotes about violinist Yehudi Menuhin — whose centenary is being celebrated this year with tributes and a massive Warner Classics box set of 80 CDs and 11 DVDs — is the one about his celebrated Berlin debut in 1929. Backstage after the concert, Albert Einstein...
They came not to bury punk but to praise it. 20 years ago, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain published “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk” with Grove Press. The format was ingenious — no single person could lay claim to know the whole of the sprawling, anarchically creative, drug-riddled...
UNDERRATED The Olympics: Yes, the International Olympic Committee may be only marginally less shady than the recently indicted FIFA. And yes, the recent doping scandals have brought into question the competitions themselves, which are aired by a network whose coverage is almost as much fun to mock...
Having married its far-out avant-garde aesthetic to numerous classic dramas over the decades, the Wooster Group will attempt to adapt a documentary film for the stage when it debuts its new production “The Town Hall Affair” in Los Angeles next year. The production is an adaptation of the feminism-themed 1979...
Despite his last name, 16-year-old Markees Christmas saw snow for the first time this year when he attended the Sundance Film Festival. The young South Los Angeles native made his acting debut in Chad Hartigan’s film “Morris From America,” which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance....
Singer-songwriters and longtime friends Billy Bragg and Joe Henry hopped a train in Chicago in March and spent the next several days riding the rails on a 2,728-mile journey to Los Angeles, during which they recorded 13 songs referencing trains and railroad travel in one way or another. The result...
There’s no question that Margot Robbie was in stellar shape for DC blockbuster “Suicide Squad.” She had to be, with character Harley Quinn’s costume consisting of little more than sequined hot pants, a crop top and a baseball bat. “It was the world’s smallest costume,” says her celebrity trainer...
What’s the most innovative year ever for rock ’n’ roll? Fans, critics and academics have any number of watershed years they can point to in the more than six decades of post-World War II popular music broadly defined as rock. There’s 1954, the year Bill Haley & His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock”...
SERIES Morgan Spurlock: Inside Man TV’s Everyman ends the season with two new episodes. In the first, Spurlock goes through a detoxification procedure, and in the second he looks into companies that rewrite the rules of their industry, including Google, Airbnb and Spotify. 7 and 8 p.m.; 10 and...
Comic book great Grant Morrison and “Crank” co-writer-director Brian Taylor have been tapped to adapt Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic “Brave New World” for Syfy. Set in 2540 London, “Brave New World” depicts a society where natural reproduction has been abolished and people are instead born...
In a further sign of Hollywood's deepening ties with China, startup studio STX Entertainment has secured major strategic investments from Chinese technology giant Tencent and Hong Kong-based telecommunications firm PCCW. Burbank-based STX announced the deal Thursday and said it would help finance...
For something steeped in the juvenile directness of puns and body humor, there is an enigmatic heart to the new “Sausage Party,” an R-rated animated film from the sweetly filthy minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Does it want to be a dirty movie or theological treatise? But first, a warning....
The mission was one of monumental daring, and its impact would be felt throughout Europe’s anti-Nazi underground. Yet somehow Operation Anthropoid, a plan to assassinate the Third Reich’s No. 3 man, is a little-known chapter of World War II. In the enlightening but seldom riveting drama “Anthropoid,”...
If the title “Ants on a Shrimp” evokes the worst picnic ever, guess again. It’s actually a highly involving documentary that tracks René Redzepi, founder and head chef of Copenhagen’s famed Noma eatery, as he and his stellar band of chefs create a temporary world-class restaurant in a Japanese...
Mel Gibson so rarely stars in movies these days that his new thriller, “Blood Father,” would be an event even it were lousy. Luckily for Gibson fans, the movie’s a small gem: a good old-fashioned chase picture, thickened with pulp. Gibson plays ex-con John Link, a growly tattoo artist struggling...
Thomas Gibson, one of the stars of CBS’ “Criminal Minds,” has expressed regret over a behind-the-scenes dispute that turned ugly on the long-running law-enforcement series. Gibson recently was directing an episode of the popular drama series when the incident occurred with one of the writers. “There...
An actor who had two brief appearances on CBS’ “Criminal Minds” has pleaded no contest to charges that he stole more than $60,000 from one of the show’s former headliners, actor Shemar Moore. As part of a plea bargain reached Wednesday morning in San Fernando, actor Keith Tisdell, 42, agreed to...
Political documentarian Robert Greenwald tackles the gun lobby with his latest film “Making a Killing: Guns, Greed and the NRA.” The audience for past Greenwald projects like “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” and “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” will know what to expect here:...
A sleepy tale of secrets and redemption, the neo-gothic Australian film “Downriver” hovers over the question of what happened to a child drowned years ago, whose body was never found. What’s unusual, however, about this corrupted-innocence mystery from writer/director Grant Scicluna is who’s investigating:...
“Elevator to the Gallows” is as elegantly fatalistic as it sounds. Made in 1957, at a turning point in French cinematic history, it's saturated with the romantic atmosphere of Paris. It drew upon several major talents – director Louis Malle, star Jeanne Moreau, musician Miles Davis – and achieved...
The pop-punk trio Green Day tends to show up with new music around volatile election seasons, and 2016 will be no different. The band has announced a new 12-track album, “Revolution Radio,” due out Oct. 7 on longtime label Reprise. The record is the first since 2012’s album-trilogy, “Uno!,” “Dos!”...
Danish director Mads Matthiesen takes on the world of high fashion in his second feature film, “The Model.” There’s clearly a theme in his work about industries of beauty and the commodification of appearance, as his first film, “Teddy Bear,” told the story of a Danish bodybuilder in Thailand looking...
Los Angeles is the star of “This Last Lonely Place,” a noirish mystery about a cabbie named Sam (Rhys Coiro), his last night on the job and the corrupt banker, Frank (Xander Berkeley), he picks up as his last fare. Their evening of sharing back stories — that we later learn are cover stories —...
A true auteur project, writer-director-producer-star Dan Eberle’s neo-noir “Sole Proprietor” is mostly helped — but a little harmed — by having only one strong voice at its center. The movie sports more personality than most low-budget thrillers, yet sometimes devolves into the kind of ponderousness...
After this season’s election tumult, Barack Obama is 100% ready to hit the road toward somewhere sunny and far away that serves myriad frozen adult beverages. Just listen to his latest Spotify playlists. The White House has released two new Obama-approved summer playlists — one for daytime and one...