Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer aren’t talking about their decision to produce a remake of the classic epic “Ben-Hur,” and it’s easy to see why. Their re-imagining of the New Testament-era tale grossed a measly $11.2 million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada in its debut last weekend,...
The true story of the late Arkansas Razorbacks football hero Brandon Burlsworth is an underdog saga to rival “Rudy,” and while the modest Burlsworth biopic “Greater” doesn’t have that film’s inspirational spark, the indie drama is just sweet enough and slick enough to appeal to pigskin fans and...
Filmmaking brothers Ben and Orson Cummings deliver a compact, cleverly constructed L.A. noir with “Blood in the Water,” their third film as a writer-director team. Though its story and character-development aren’t up to the standards of the genre classics it’s aping, the movie sports an attractively...
Director, actress and activist Kamala Lopez stumps for women’s rights in her searing documentary “Equal Means Equal.” With a ruthless, surgical approach, Lopez breaks down legal gender inequality in the United States, what she terms the War on Women. Lopez primarily attacks the laws, acts and legislation...
Death by viewership is back in the “Rings” trailer. The long-awaited third installment of the “The Ring” franchise hit the Internet on Wednesday, bringing the haunted VHS tape into the digital age. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour » This time around, a young woman is sucked...
In his book “Conducting Business,” Leonard Slatkin, former principal conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, recalls a time when bowl audiences cheered after the first four notes (ta-ta-ta-TA) of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 were played. On Tuesday night, a large Bowl crowd...
“Slow motion music.” That’s how Jean-Benôit Dunckel characterizes what his band Air creates. And if you’ve heard anything by this crafty French duo, which also includes Nicolas Godin, you know what he means. In songs like “Cherry Blossom Girl” and “Playground Love” (from Air’s soundtrack for 1999’s...
Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan, Justin Chang and other reviewers. Café Society Woody Allen’s new film, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Steve Carell, is of course funny, but it also ends up, almost without our realizing it, trafficking in memory, regret and the fate...
Danish, French, German, Spanish and now Italian — subtitled foreign dramas aren’t just for art-house theaters anymore. In the last few years, American television has taken on Rosetta Stone tendencies with multilingual originals (Netflix’s “Narcos,” USA’s “Queen of the South”) and artisanal imports...
The raging hormones of adolescence can be a destructive force that leaves stunned parents sifting through the wreckage, looking for clues about what went wrong. Playwright Wendy Graf dramatizes that poignant scenario to frequently ravaging effect in “Please Don’t Ask About Becket,” her new play...
The comedy festival running Thursday through Sunday in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood is an Asian American comedy festival, with a bill of more than 100 comics of Asian descent. But you wouldn’t know it from the name of the event: the Comedy Comedy Festival. Putting some element of racial...
Legal problems for Roger Ailes and Fox News mounted this week as another female employee has gone to court over sexual harassment claims. In a 37-page lawsuit, cable news host Andrea Tantaros alleges that she was removed from her on-air role in retaliation for making a sexual harassment complaint...
Low-budget horror movie “Don't Breathe” and action sequel “Mechanic: Resurrection” will clash with “Suicide Squad” in this weekend’s box-office matchup as Hollywood crawls to the end of a mixed summer film season. Warner Bros.' DC antihero mash-up “Suicide Squad” has held the top spot at the...
Jim Gianopulos, the veteran chief of the 20th Century Fox film studio, is stepping down sooner than expected to make way for his replacement, Stacey Snider. Snider, whose elevation was announced in June, will take over as chairman and chief executive of 20th Century Fox Film on Sept. 1. She had...
With the debate over diversity in Hollywood growing louder, the conversation will shift toward the world of comedy with the announcement of the Diversity in Comedy Festival by Hollywood’s Second City comedy club. The goal of the October event is to offer a stage for people of color, LGBT performers...
Who can resist a peephole, visual entry to some sort of private delight? Especially one — make that a dozen — making their mysterious appeal in a highly public setting? The large wooden shipping crate parked at a jaunty angle to the foot traffic flowing through Union Station's grand waiting room...
Steven Hill, a versatile character actor in theater, films and television who achieved his greatest success late in life as grumpy Dist. Atty. Adam Schiff on TV's long-running “Law & Order,” died Tuesday. He was 94. He died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, said his wife, Rachel. The cause of...
Universal Filmed Entertainment Group has solidified the leadership structure for DreamWorks Animation, a day after NBCUniversal completed its $3.8-billion acquisition of the Glendale studio. DreamWorks Animation’s film group, known for movie franchises like “Kung Fu Panda” and “Shrek,” will continue...
Teasing apart an agreement between a San Francisco museum and a major donor. Why the naked Trump statue is a pile of clichés. And the surreal case of a painter getting sued over a painting he states (quite firmly) he didn’t paint. Plus: The issue of housing heats up in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale,...
After a whirlwind, unconventional release, Frank Ocean’s new album is coasting toward the top of the charts. “Blonde,” the follow-up to the enigmatic singer’s critically acclaimed and Grammy-winning major label debut, “Channel Orange,” is expected to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — a first...
As the transgender community experiences increased visibility, its members and supporters continue to fight for trans rights. One such way is through the celebration of transgender artistic and cultural achievements at a new transgender film festival in Los Angeles. Dubbed the TransNation Festival...
NBCUniversal has completed its $3.8-billion acquisition of DreamWorks Animation, a blockbuster deal that alters the face of Hollywood and accelerates the pace of consolidation in the media industry. Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of the boutique studio behind such animated hits as “Kung Fu...
Demi Lovato is the latest artist to be slapped with accusations of lifting from someone else’s work -- and to get sued for it. More than nine months after indie noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells publicly called out the pop singer over alleged similarities between a track from her latest album and one...
Video streaming every competitive event at the Olympics may have been too much of a good thing for NBC. The prime-time TV audience over 17 nights for the Rio Games averaged 25.4 million viewers, the lowest since the 2004 Games in Athens, which averaged 24.9 million viewers. Nielsen data showed...
So is “West Side Story” an opera, or what? For a semi-staged performance last month at the Hollywood Bowl, Gustavo Dudamel found an ideal balance between the Broadway roots and operatic potential of Leonard Bernstein’s classic musical. Now he is conducting a full-scale operatic production of “West...
For American film and TV show creators and distributors, it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing in China recently. Online video portals have been ordered to limit foreign films and TV shows to 30% of their offerings, driving down licensing fees. Authorities are discouraging broadcasters from using...
SAN DIEGO — The Old Globe’s staging of “Love’s Labor’s Lost” proves that it is possible to fall in love with a production at first sight. John Lee Beatty’s scenic design transforms the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre into an elegantly verdant royal park. I haven’t yet taken a vacation this...
The Silk Road Ensemble, Yo-Yo Ma’s grandly all-encompassing world music band that seeks to find meeting points for musical traditions from China to Europe, has proved after 18 years to be the ever-curious cellist’s most valuable project. Whether this group has managed to make an iota of difference...
It’s back-to-school season, and Marvel comics marked the occasion by revealing five variant covers promoting science, technology, engineering, art and math. Even superheroes are excited for education, because knowledge is power. Marvel has turned to some of its youngest and brightest — including...
Old people! So funny, and without even trying! As a culture more invested in the inchoate ramblings of teenage pop stars than in the earned wisdom of the early-bird-special class, we find anything outside the imagined norm of the elderly – bad words, motorcycles, sex, shenanigans, hijinks – improbable,...