Repulsors fire! | Photo courtesy of Paramount What else can I say about Iron Man that I didn't say in my rave yesterday? According to the great Nikki Finke, it looks like it's going to be a monster hit so I guess I don't need to encourage you to go see it. I'll actually be seeing it again this weekend because I failed to stay through the entire end credit roll and see the......

Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't love Robert Downey Jr. as an actor? | Photo courtesy of Paramount I won't keep you in suspense a moment longer: Iron Man is a rousing start to the summer movie season. It succeeds not only as a visually dazzling popcorn movie, but as a human drama about a man forced to finally consider his former and future place in the world. Great credit must be......

Photo by ~db~ via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr It's official: Police have identified the Green Skeleton Bandit who was fatally shot earlier this week when he was caught in the act of robbing the AutoZone in NoHo by a US Marshal. He was 24-year-old Lawrence Dean Smith Jr. of Palmdale who used a knife and wore a skeleton-themed sweatsuit in his robberies. Fight for the right to ficus! Local activists in......

Test Your Reflex plays this month at Hotel Cafe on Wednesdays | Photo by Luke Wooden via their MySpace Despite SXSW starting up this week with 100+ Los Angeles based bands heading over there, residencies are growing stronger and more venue-diverse across the line, especially on Monday nights where the volume makes it hard to choose from. Here's to a great month of residencies, rock on. Mondays The Chapin Sisters @ The Echo (Free),......

Chris Burden's Urban Light | Photo by pink_fish13 from the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Monday Steve Tolz presents A Fraction of the Whole 7pm @ Book Soup Lisa McKay presents My Hands Came Away Red 7pm @ Vroman's Dario Castagno presents A Day in Tuscany 7pm @ Dutton's Terry Cheney signs Manic 7pm @ Borders, Westwood Ray Bradbury, Forrest J. Ackerman and Ray Harryhausen discuss their work 7:30pm @ Mystery & Imagination......

Live, from in front of our television set, it's LAist's Oscar night liveblog extravaganza. I've spent the hours preceding tonight's telecast half-assedly getting ready by drinking beer, making brownies, and marveling over how few movies I actually saw this year (yet again.) I've stocked the larder with movie-going snacks, like popcorn, junior mints, and Twizzlers (sorry, this Canadian cannot do Red Vines; they taste like candles). Last night some amped up pitch gal with a......

Today marks Jackie Robinson's 89th birthday, and the Dodgers are celebrating it by educating the youngins. The Dodgers, in partnership with the Jackie Robinson Foundation, will celebrate the first "Jackie Robinson Legacy Day" at the Stadium Club at Dodger Stadium telling the story of Robinson to over 200 school children. School children from Mayberry Elementary, Atwater Avenue Elementary, 42nd Street Elementary School, Jackie Robinson Academy, and Roynon Elementary School along with Jackie Robinson Foundation scholars......

It’s kinda quiet on the event front, a perfect day to reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. But if you're into going out tonight: CLASSICAL Southwest Chamber Music continues its Musical Imagination and Color series with a concert featuring 20th century composers, including Stravinsky, Milhaud, Berg, and Bartók. Violinist Lorenz Gamma, clarinetist Jim Foschia and pianist Ming Tsu are on the bill tonight. 8 // Colburn School Of Performing Arts: Across The Street......

We have all heard quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech. Few people have had the opportunity to hear the speech in its entirety. Delivered at the 1963 March on Washington, this speech helped to establish King as a national figure and proponent of ending social injustice through civil disobedience and nonviolence. The following year, in 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is worth taking the time......

"He knows, Doctor. He knows." A Flickr user gives us what he calls a "dramatic and gritty view of [his] silly Star Trek action figures." GEEK OUT You know you want to...so you may as well do it. Star Trek: The Tour has docked on the Queen Mary. Beam yourself up and get yourself to Long Beach to see exhibits from all five TV shows and each of the 10 movies, including Captain Kirk's chair.......

Increasingly free of gang violence, it may be getting safer to walk the streets of Watts, the Daily News reports. Homicides in the area have dropped from 24 in 2006 to just 11 last year and many residents are pinning hopes for further neighborhood revitalization on economic opportunities. Hey Magic Johnson, that's your cue! A man died last night after sliding down an escalator at the Hollywood Highland shopping pit of hell today. Apparently......

Orange County's fast-food favored son, Carl Karcher, died yesterday at the age of 90. It started as a hot dog cart, and grew to eventually become a ubiquitous fast-food mega-chain with the trademarked happy star. We all know Carl's Jr. as the place to get big burgers for a few bucks, but for Ohio-born Carl Karcher, things really kicked off in Anaheim in 1945 when he and his wife Margaret opened Carl's Drive-In Barbecue, which......

I've managed to avoid watching NFL playoffs and college bowl games but I'm getting worn down, I'm tellin' ya. If I got the Fox Movie Channel I would watch Less Than Zero tonight at 7pm because I'm just about as strung out as Robert Downey Jr.was in that flick. I'm not begging for the writers to capitulate, I want them to win, I'm just begging the networks to send me some shite to write about.......

Who has been the most potent force in filmmaking over the last twenty years? Steven Spielberg? Tom Hanks? Tom Cruise? Joel Silver? How about John Lasseter? His Pixar films have enjoyed unparalleled critical and commercial success since the debut of Toy Story in 1995. Tonight at the Egyptian you can see the whole story of Pixar unfold when the American Cinematheque screens The Pixar Story. Featuring never-before-seen material from the Pixar library, archival animation......

He's 30, he spells his name funny, when he's not injured he's tearing the cover off the ball, and he's got a gun for an arm. If he passes his physical Andruw Jones will be on the happy end of a $36.2 million, two-year contract to play for the Dodgers. But should Dodger fans be happy about another outfielder, especially one who had such a miserable season last year (.222 batting average, .311 on-base......

No one likes the stigma of saying they live in Van Nuys, so they chip away making their own new neighborhoods. To that, Councilman Tony Cardenas, who we admittedly give a hard time to on this site, said something that is right on target about this so called community pride: "If I had that many people show up to a community cleanup or an anti-prostitution night out it would do much more than changing......

In the world we live in now, Pixar is nothing less than an institution. Every film it releases is an event and each of them receive excellent reviews and make piles of money. Of course, Pixar wasn't always so admired and ubiquitous. It was once a money-losing division of LucasFilm that was sold off to Steve Jobs for a paltry 5 million dollars. All of this is laid out in a behind-the-scenes feature on......

Tim Minchin may very well be be the funniest comedian you've never heard of. Already wildly popular in the UK and his native Australia, Tim makes his U.S. debut tonight in New York before heading west and playing shows next Monday and Tuesday at the ACME Comedy Theatre here in LA. Tim's blend of piano-driven pop songs and razor sharp comedy yields songs that range from a love song for an inflatable doll to a......

The Sex Pistols @ The Roxy Gogol Bordello @ The Mayan Hank Williams Jr., @ Gibson Josh Ritter @ El Rey Blonde Redhead, Autolux @ The Wiltern Two Ton Boa @ Spaceland The Ringers, Dirty Kings, The Naked @ Viper Room Sick of it All, Madball, Last of the Believers, Down to Nothing, Viva Hate @ Key Club......

The Go! Team - "Doing it Right" Tell me this isn't the best single and video of the year Silversun Pickups @ The Wiltern Eagles, Dixie Chicks @ Nokia Theatre The Go! Team @ The Glass House Weird Al @ The Greek J. Lo, Marc Anthony @ Honday Center Jill Scott @ House of Blues Harry Dean Stanton @ The Mint Paul Green School of Rock @ The Roxy West Indian Girl @ Spaceland......

If you're a local sports fan, hopefully you had Columbus Day (International Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People, whatever) off to nurse a wicked hangover. In fact, maybe you should take tonight off from Sports Center, too. It's Leif Erikson day. Honest. Even George W. Bush knows that (and don't worry, he's probably not working today, either). Maybe it wasn't the worst, but it was up there. T.J. Simers hit the nail on the......

The cultural diversity that exist in just about every nook and cranny of this country sometimes blinds people of the ignorant, immature, and, in some cases, overtly racist actions of our more idiotic counterparts. We, Americans, like to think that we’ve come a long way since the 1960s and that the battles to destroy prejudice is somewhat obsolete, but every so often high profile cases, like that of the Jena 6, comes along and......

Ducks 4, Kings 1 - After Los Angeles shocked Anaheim 4-1 in Saturday's season opener in London (yes, London), the defending champs showed who really is king. Despite 10 goals in two days, British fans were reportedly most excited about a good ol' fashioned hockey fight. Welcome back, NHL. Welcome back. A's 3, Angels 2 - The AL West champion Halos hit a skid when they clinched the pennant, but they saved face in their......

Yesterday, September 20th, was the day that Mychal Bell was to be sentenced after being found guilty as an adult on the charge of aggravated battery. Prosecutors were asking for a sentence of 22 years at one point, then reduced it to 15 years. Last Friday the appeals court overturned his conviction. The court determined that Bell, who was 16 at the time, should not have have been tried as an adult. In spite......

So I went to see Band of Horses and Dinosaur Jr. a week ago at The Wiltern, mostly to see the former because they have become one of my all time favorite bands, Everything All The Time certainly one of my desert island albums. But I was also excited to see Dinosaur Jr., because, although I have to admit I never heard much of their music, "Feel The Pain" is actually one of my......

The season 3 premiere of FX's It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia is the pick of the night. This is arguably Danny DeVito's best work since L.A. Confidential and his best comedy work in almost 20 years. While it's true that since it's cable the cast can say "shit" and "asshole" but that's not a gimmick the show relies on too much. What the show does follow is what made Seinfeld a success - it's a......

The Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel was the place to go for live entertainment in Los Angeles. Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis Jr., and Merv Griffin were among the many legends to perform there. This weekend Pink Martini will recreate the nightclub's magic at The Hollywood Bowl. Merv Griffin was to have performed at these concerts. Now the evening will include a tribute to him. The one and only Carol......

It's amazing that the best rock record to come out in 2007 is by a band a gray haired guy who shreds harder and better than kids half his age. The return of the OG lineup of Dinosaur Jr. is something that should be celebrated, experienced, and savored. Beyond is old school grungy rock with omg guitar solos that twist and spiral and soar like nothing that is being played by today's mascara-wearing youth.......

If you go as far west as you can in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd., right before you wind up in Beverly Hills you will see the Troubadour - one of the most famous rock clubs in the world - established in 1957. Home of the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Elton John, and Linda Ronstadt in the '60s and '70s, the warm, rich club also saw the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and......

Recent major events for the LAFD include last night's apartment fires in North Hollywood and Westchester. Busy day on LAPD's blog: a drive-by shooting yesterday, a labor day homicide, Congressman Xavier Becerra's office burglarized, two fatal Skid Row stabbings, a Carl's Jr. robbery and a fatal shooting this morning in South LA. Sparked by the recent heat-reated power outages, Matt Littman at the Huffington Post asks if Los Angeles is in permanent decay: "It......