On his way to winning a best picture Oscar for “Moonlight,” a film made for a minuscule $1.5 million, writer-director Barry Jenkins took time between awards-season red carpet appearances for a six-city European promotion tour. It was time well spent. “Moonlight,” about a poor black boy living in...
Today in Entertainment: New Kendrick Lamar song; Harry Potter ride gets an upgrade March 24, 2017, 12:05 p.m. With the arrival of spring, blockbuster movie season has gotten an early start with "Beauty and the Beast" and other films, music fans are making plans for recently announced summer festivals,...
When Chuck Berry died on March 18, plenty was written about the rock ’n’ roll icon’s musical achievements. But as profound an impact as Berry had on the music world — indeed, the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and pretty much every other rock musician credits him as an influence — it’s easy to overlook...
His low-brow comedies have earned him few fans among connoisseurs of serious cinema, but Adam Sandler has found a steadfast supporter in Netflix, which has partnered with the actor on three movies since they teamed up in 2015 on “The Ridiculous 6.” Ahead of April’s release of “Sandy Wexler,” Netflix...
UNDERRATED ‘Hotel Beau Séjour’ on Netflix: This worthy new addition to a crowded streaming field of moody European crime thrillers adds a twist by placing the victim at the center of the investigation. Set in a dreary (though surprisingly motocross-obsessed) corner of Belgium, it hinges on a young...
SUNDAY Where’d everybody go? The strange disappearance of settlers in Colonial-era Virginia is revisited in “Roanoke: A Mystery Carved in Stone” and the follow-up special “Return to Roanoke: Search for the Seven.” 8 and 9 p.m. History Channel Gothic girls: The fact-based 2016 drama “To Walk Invisible:...
The Wooster Group, venerable purveyor of postmodern performance collages, has come upon a gender-politics gold mine in the company's latest adventure in cockeyed cultural excavation. "The Town Hall Affair," which opened Wednesday at REDCAT, re-creates a raucous night in the annals of second-wave...
As German bombers savagely attacked Warsaw in late September 1939, a surreal scene began unfolding in the streets. The city's renowned zoo was hit hard, and panicked animals were racing through the city’s Old Town. Many were shot, but the slaughter had just begun. When a Nazi entourage visited...
With just 48 hours to conceptualize, shoot and edit a short film, Nancy Paton found herself stuck. Hours into filming, London rain made it impossible to shoot a terrace scene without soaking the camera. Then the camera rig she’d planned to shoot the entire film on stopped working. With the clock...
Say hello to Calvin. Or maybe not. Calvin is the resident alien on space station Plymouth Rock and really, he would as soon suck the life out of you as look at you. Calvin comes from Mars, if you must know, but in truth his talents for havoc and devastation were wasted on the cold, dead Red Planet...
SERIES Tangled: The Series Rapunzel and Cassandra go to a wizard’s cottage to learn what has happened to Rapunzel’s hair in the premiere of this animated series. 7:30 p.m. Disney Grimm The dark prophecy appears to be nearing fulfillment when a sinister force arrives in Portland with its eyes...
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday settled its lawsuit with AT&T, resolving claims that a high-level DirecTV executive illegally colluded with other pay-TV companies in Southern California to block the rollout of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ cable sports channel in 2014. As part of the proposed...
The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust announced a new executive team with interim director Beth Kean promoted to executive director, and board member Paul Nussbaum bumped up to board president and CEO. Both are descendants of Holocaust survivors. Nussbaum says the team’s first order of business...
Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan, Justin Chang and other reviewers. After the Storm A sublimely simple family drama from the Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, a filmmaker assured enough to hide his mastery in plain sight. Nothing is overemphasized, and nothing escapes...
Work by African American women. Paintings that embody the tones and hues of California. And the unique partnership that explores the phenomenon of a Central American immigrant train. There’s a whole lot going on in El Lay. Here are nine openings and events to check out in the coming week: “Power:...
Walt Disney Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Iger has extended his contract by one year, underscoring the challenges the company’s board of directors has faced in finding a successor to lead Hollywood’s iconic entertainment giant. Iger, 66, previously was expected to leave the company at...
Writer/director Christophe Honoré adapts Ovid’s epic poem “Metamorphoses” into a lyrical and philosophical film of the same title. Honoré sets the events in a contemporary environment, while maintaining the story details of the mythology, a choice that highlights the hedonistic, brutal, often misogynist...
"Trooper" (1998), a single-channel video by Thomson & Craighead, shows a police officer yanking a woman from her car at gunpoint, forcing her to the ground and cuffing her hands behind her back. The short scene, taken from a CNN webcast, repeats more than 20 times, speeding up with each replay...
With a resume that includes zombies, soldiers, a smart-mouthed superhero and now astronauts fighting a creature in space, screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have become specialists in crafting genre hybrids and defying expectations. Their latest film, the sci-fi thriller “Life,” had its...
Thousands of AT&T technicians in California and Nevada went back to work Thursday, ending a one-day strike after their union and the Dallas telecommunications giant reached a truce. An estimated 17,000 union members had gone on strike early Wednesday over a grievance about increased responsibilities...
Can anyone fill Martha Graham’s shoes? That’s a formidable challenge for the young performers who take on her roles, but it may be even more ambitious to embody the real-life grande dame of American modern dance. Actress and former professional dancer Christina Carlisi makes an admirable attempt...
Perhaps most disheartening about the disjointed mess “Diamond Cartel” is that it will go down as the late, great Peter O’Toole’s final screen appearance. What he was doing in this cheesy, Kazakhstan shot-and-set crime thriller is anyone’s guess; that he’s scarcely in it may be the saving grace....
The slow-burning supernatural thriller “Dig Two Graves” was co-written by Jeremy Phillips and director Hunter Adams, but if the credits said “based on a story by Stephen King,” few viewers would be surprised. Like the best of King, Adams’ film finds dread and mystery in the lives of ordinary folks...
A young couple’s Icelandic vacation turns into an existential mystery in the admirably stripped-down “Bokeh,” a sci-fi drama without all the explanatory “sci.” With its bare-bones approach, the first feature by writer-directors Geoffrey Orthwein and Andrew Sullivan distills even the backstory of...
For a director regularly drawn to slipperiness and surprise, French filmmaker François Ozon (“Swimming Pool”) sounds almost unfamiliar with his own work when he reveals, “For a long time, I’ve wanted to make a film about secrets and lies.” Wasn’t 2013’s “Young & Beautiful,” about a teenager keeping...
In 1969, an angry young man caught up in the social unrest of the period holed up in the New York Public Library poring through piles of military manuals and eventually emerged with “The Anarchist Cookbook.” Containing detailed instructions for making TNT and “converting a shotgun into a grenade...
Marion “Suge” Knight has been hospitalized for an undisclosed medical condition as he awaits trial in two robbery and murder cases, authorities said Thursday. The 51-year-old former rap mogul, who has been jailed since January 2015, was taken Tuesday to an area hospital, where he remained in stable...
The prodigiously talented British director Ben Wheatley makes the kinds of films whose images — much like the skillfully wielded hammer in his nightmarish thriller “Kill List” — have a way of lodging themselves in the brain. But his movies offer far more than a post-Quentin Tarantino wallow in...
John “Sib” Hashian, former drummer for the arena rock band Boston, died on board a cruise ship Wednesday. He was 67. His son, Adam Hashian, said Thursday a cause of death had not been determined. Sib Hashian was listed as one of the featured performers on the Legends of Rock Cruise, which departed...
In 2011, as cost estimates for Hamburg’s new waterfront concert hall soared and kept soaring, Barbara Kisseler, the city’s senator for culture, told reporters that “the Elbphilharmonie is very dear to us. In both senses of the word.” Skipping past the remarkable fact that Hamburg has a position...
“It’s 1763. London is booming, and one in five women makes a living selling sex.” The opening words of Hulu’s new series, “Harlots,” are there to make it clear that this is one British television drama that won’t be sipping tea in the drawing room. Nor will it be passing judgment on the many working...
Zedd’s upcoming benefit concert at Staples Center started with a tweet. The 27-year-old electronic music star — who was born Anton Zaslavski in Russia, grew up in Germany and now lives in Los Angeles — was on the road in January when President Donald Trump announced his controversial ban on travel...
SERIES The History of Comedy This new episode explores the evolution of racial humor and how comedy can cross cultural barriers. 7 and 10 p.m. CNN Superstore Jonah and Cheyenne (Ben Feldman, Nichole Bloom) try to give Mateo (Nico Santos) legal advice when his hopes of transferring to one of the...
If the first CW television crossover between “The Flash” and “Supergirl” back in March of 2016 sparked the superhero friendship, Tuesday night’s musical revue cemented it with tap shoes. Watching the jaunty episode titled “Duet” was like inhaling pure joy — a saccharine-saturated performance so...
For “Mulan” fans stressed out over rumors that next year’s live-action update won’t be a musical, director Niki Caro has a message: Don’t set off the fireworks just yet. Caro, the “Whale Rider” and “Zookeeper’s Wife” filmmaker who will be directing the new Disney production, says the outrage is...
Global movie box office revenue growth slowed last year as international receipts declined for the first time in 12 years, reflecting a cooling in China’s once-red-hot film market, according to a new report. The total worldwide box office rose 1% to a record $38.6 billion in ticket sales last year,...
Is it an album or a mixtape? Such was the question when Drake released “More Life,” a collection of new music billed as a “playlist,” last weekend. Presented by October Firm, the team of Drake and his co-manager Oliver El-Khatib, and released through Young Money/Cash Money, the 22-track offering...
Pocketwatch, a new entertainment company led by former Disney and Nickelodeon executives, aims to be the children’s media headquarters of the 21st century. The Culver City company, whose content will target 2- to 11-year-olds, debuted this month and announced Wednesday that it had raised $6 million...
For Samuel Beckett, it was never words and music, no matter that they were personified in his 1962 radio play, “Words and Music.” It was ever words are music. Reputed to have been a fine musician himself, Beckett directed his plays as though he were conducting an orchestra. His recently published...
If you’ve ever been torn between spending your Friday night at a comedy show or a concert, or if you’ve binge-watched Jimmy Fallon’s lip-sync battle segments wishing the stars were actually singing, don’t fret: Comedy Central’s new show, “The Comedy Jam,” is about to fill that celebrity/comedy/karaoke-shaped...
An estimated 17,000 AT&T technicians in California and Nevada went on strike Wednesday, highlighting workplace tensions within the massive Dallas telecommunications giant. UPDATE: AT&T strike ends; 17,000 technicians in California and Nevada return to work » The strike follows a protracted dispute...
While Los Angeles’ FYF fest earned praise on Tuesday for its three-day expansion and adventurous programming (including headliners Missy Elliott, Bjork, Frank Ocean and Nine Inch Nails), Lollapalooza went straight down the middle for its summer festival lineup, which was announced Wednesday. The...
Jordan Peele knew “Get Out” had a shot. The reviews were glowing. The tracking was strong. The buzz was decidedly buzzy. All signs pointed to at least a decent-sized success for a modestly budgeted movie with no major stars. Still, on the eve of the release of his debut feature, the writer and...
Chuck Barris, “The Gong Show” creator and host who claimed — though never too seriously — that he doubled as a CIA assassin during the height of his game show popularity, has died at his home in Palisades, N.Y. He was 87. The game show creator, producer and host died Monday of natural causes, a...