New Line Cinema's Stephen King adaptation "It" floated to the top spot in this weekend's box office charts, breaking the record for the largest opening of a horror movie ever, and blowing past analysts' $55-million projections to the tune of $117 million in the U.S. and Canada. The historic opening...
Film critic Justin Chang's diary of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
Michael Friedman, the composer best known for his Broadway musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” died Saturday at age 41 of complications from AIDS, according to the Public Theater in New York. Friedman was artist-in-residence and director of Public Forum, the Public Theater’s home for talkbacks,...
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. This week we’re writing from Toronto, where the Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing. Just last week we published our fall movie preview, and now with the onslaught of films...
Fall Festival Katie Critchlow and Christopher Sellars of Utah’s Ballet West perform as part of this showcase presented by Ballet Repertory Theatre. Golden West College, Mainstage Theater, 15751 Gothard St., Huntington Beach. Sun., 2 p.m. $15, $19. (714) 895-8150. Laguna Dance Festival With Paul...
As festival season kicks into gear, “American Assassin,” starring Dylan O’Brien and Michael Keaton, and Darren Aronfsky’s “mother!’ headline the wide releases. Ben Stiller stars in Mike White’s “Brad’s Status,” and Angelina Jolie directs “First They Killed My Father,” in limited release. Sept....
Lucia di lammermoor Pacific Opera Project presents an outdoor staging of Donizetti’s tragic love story set in 17th-century Scotland; in Italian with projected English titles. Forest Lawn Memorial Park, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale. Sun., Fri.-next Sun., 7 p.m.; ends Sept. 17. $25; tables, $65-$120....
Capsule reviews are by Philip Brandes (P.B.), F. Kathleen Foley (F.K.F.) and Charles McNulty (C.M.). Betty White The sitcom star appears in conversation with Valerie Bertinelli. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos. Sun., 2 p.m. $75-$200. (562) 916-8500. The...
“You’re nobody’s first choice for this job,” says the stern admiral of a vague intergalactic concern called the Union to Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane), commander of a spacecraft named “The Orville,” which is also the title of Fox’s new quasi-comedy premiering Sunday. And though MacFarlane’s...
Ava DuVernay’s Netflix documentary “13th” and Adult Swim’s animated favorite “Samurai Jack” were the big winners during the first night of the Creative Arts Emmys, each taking home four awards. Split over two nights this year, and presented at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, the Creative Arts...
This is a terrific article [“Harvey Refocuses National Media,” Aug. 30]. TV critic Lorraine Ali’s perception of the current opinion versus news is so obvious it’s “breaking news” that no one else seems to report on it. I suggest she email/tweet a copy of this article to champions of spinning opinion...
Among the most anticipated premieres of the Toronto International Film Festival’s first weekend was Craig Gillespie’s “I, Tonya,” starring Margot Robbie as notorious figure skater Tonya Harding. In part the anticipation was so high simply because few people knew what to expect from the movie: Would...
“We can’t give the people what they want at the beginning,” Kermit the Frog instructed early on Friday’s Muppets invasion at the Hollywood Bowl. “We have to make them want you.” He was advising Miss Piggy, his demanding diva of an ex who, not surprisingly, clamored for the spotlight from the get-go...
Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan, Justin Chang and other reviewers. Baby Driver Edgar Wright’s exuberant, one-of-a-kind vehicular-action-thriller-musical-romance stars Ansel Elgort as a tinnitus-afflicted, music-loving getaway driver alongside a superb supporting cast that includes...
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Nicholas Meyer’s director's cut screens for its 35th anniversary. The 1982 “Khan” is considered the best of the “Star Trek” films, especially those based on the original series. The regulars from the television series all returned to their roles, even the reluctant...
The noted patron of the Lowbrow movement, who also co-founded its bible, Juxtapoz, died in Huntington Beach.
A franchise and a director broke up, an awards show loomed, casting decisions were made, a duke and duchess got domestic and a natural disaster grabbed our attention. Here’s all that news and more from this week in entertainment. Director wanted — please contact ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ Like the...
Jane Campion has delivered a sequel to her 2013 miniseries "Top of the Lake," which starred Elisabeth Moss as Robin Griffin, a Sydney, Australia, police detective who, during a trip home to a remote New Zealand town, investigates the case of a missing girl. In "Top of the Lake: China Girl," which...
“The Sopranos” had the Bada Bing strip club. “Game of Thrones” frequented Littlefinger’s brothel. And now in “The Deuce,” it’s the peep shows, porn shoots and by-the-hour motel rooms of pre-Giuliani Manhattan. Though female characters increasingly drive the narratives of premiere HBO series such...
“Desert Ramparts: Defending Las Vegas From the Flood” is an eye-opening exhibition at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Culver City.
Exhibitions for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA are beginning to open up all over Los Angeles and it’s an embarrassment of riches. Plus, The Times pays a visit to the Salzburg Festival, a prominent TV actor takes on the life of Dick Gregory for the play “Turn Me Loose” and it’s time for our Fall Arts...
Don Williams, an influential and award-winning country singer of hits including the love ballad “I Believe in You,” has died. He was 78. A statement from publicist Kirt Webster said Williams died Friday after a short illness. Williams had 17 No. 1 hits before retiring in 2016. His mellow sound...
“I happen to believe in simplicity,” Los Angeles architect Gin Wong once told an interviewer. In aesthetic terms it’s easy to see what he meant. As a lead designer for William Pereira’s firm and later as the head of his own office, Wong, who died Sept. 1 at 94, often pared down the buildings he...
SERIES Planet Earth: Life BBC America offers a marathon of its landmark environmental series: “Beyond: Challenges of Life,” noon; “Beyond: Reptiles and Amphibians,” 1:10 p.m.; “Beyond: Mammals,” 2:20 p.m.; “Beyond: Fish,” 3:30 p.m.; “Beyond: Birds,” 4:40 p.m.; “Beyond: Insects,” 5:50 p.m.; “Beyond:...
Jane Campion knows as well as anyone the desperate longing to become a mother — as she puts it, the “battlefield of dashed hopes and dreams” — presented by infertility. As her career was flying high in the early 1990s, the filmmaker suffered a series of miscarriages. Her haunting period piece “The...
Timing is a funny thing. If noted psychologist William Moulton Marston and his wife Elizabeth Marston had not both fallen in love with the woman Olive Byrne, would he have gone on to create the character of Wonder Woman? And if writer-director Angela Robinson had not worked for years researching...
The once-famous acoustic showcase 'Unplugged' is returning at a moment when teens and twentysomethings are abandoning old-fashioned television. First up: Shawn Mendes.
SUNDAY Keep on trekkin’: “Family Guy’s” Seth MacFarlane captains a spaceship called “The Orville” in this new sci-fi sitcom. Adrianne Palicki and Norm Macdonald also star. 5 and 8 p.m. Fox The old Highland fling is back on with the return of the fantasy drama “Outlander.” With Caitriona Balfe and...
The straightforward production of “Iphigenia in Aulis” that opened Wednesday at the Getty Villa’s outdoor Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater might be retitled “Clytemnestra,” so enlivening is Sandra Marquez’s performance as the mother of the young woman whose life must be sacrificed so that...
If it were a standard thriller set on any other day in any other building, the film “9/11” would be laughable. Lame characterization, painful overacting and clunky lines would happen, but it wouldn’t cause any reactions beyond giggles and eye rolls. Making a film about an event that is still so...
Jeffrey Tuchman, a prolific filmmaker who helped introduce Bill Clinton to America and won awards for exploring topics such as civil rights and the evolution of modern medicine, has died. Tuchman died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 62 and was being treated for pancreatic...
The new ICA LA opens with a Martín Ramírez show, but two other site-specific installations are worth a look.
FALL PREVIEW: 'Young Sheldon' star Iain Armitage is a new face to watch on the spinoff to 'The Big Bang Theory.'
Before Maggie Gyllenhaal agreed to play Candy, a Times Square prostitute in the 1970s-set HBO series “The Deuce,” she had one condition: She needed to be a producer on the series too. While Gyllenhaal was excited to work with co-creators David Simon and George Pelecanos, she’d only seen scripts...
Bobby Moynihan has seen a lot of changes in quick succession. Fresh from his dream job at “Saturday Night Live”— his comedic home-away-from-home for nine years— he’s shifted to “Me, Myself & I,” a new sitcom on CBS due Sept. 25. As if that weren’t enough, Moynihan married in 2016 and soon after...
UNDERRATED The anthology series: Call it the “Black Mirror” effect, or maybe the result of so many daunting long-form series narratives available to stream, but single-episode storytelling has been enjoying a boost of late. Recent shows include “Room 104,” the Duplass Brothers’ barbed hotel room...
In 1989, Edie Falco paid little attention to the sensational murder case dominating the headlines involving the wealthy Menendez family. “The case was in the background of my life,” says Falco, when asked about the national fascination with the brutal Beverly Hills living room slayings of entertainment...
FALL PREVIEW: Talking the do's and don'ts of reboots with the new 'Dynasty' showrunner.
A chat with Ken Burns and Lynn Novick about their epic new documentary series, "The Vietnam War."
There are no easy outs in the Grove Theater Center revival of David Harrower’s “Blackbird” — not for its two characters locked in brutal psychological warfare, nor for anyone in the audience wishing for a moral framework that makes sense of their tortured relationship. That’s because Harrower’s...
With DACA ending, a Dreamer's tale of navigating the American immigration system leads our list of small-theater picks for the week.
SERIES Third Rail With Ozy Carlos Watson hosts this new seven-part cross-platform series featuring experts and celebrity guests debating a provocative topic. Up first: “Is Truth Overrated?” 7:30 p.m. KOCE Masters of Illusion Michael Grandinetti, Chris Korn, Jeff McBride, Barry and Stuart, Kyle Marlett,...
A longstanding manhood ritual reveals some sobering, unintended truths in the South African drama “The Wound” from director John Trengove. Issues of sexuality, generational divide, class and self-loathing are cross-stitched into a compelling patchwork of edgy masculinity in this tale of a gay Xhosa...
Turns out you can touch this. As he strode through the Hollywood & Highland complex on Wednesday afternoon, MC Hammer was approached by a group of young men who looked surprised to have crossed paths with the flamboyant rapper famous for his 1990 smash “U Can’t Touch This.” Could they shake Hammer’s...