July was a bittersweet month for LAist. We had a record-breaking month with nearly a million visitors coming to our humble site. Little did we know that some of the guests were big wigs from the venerable Los Angeles Times who left with two of our editors. Indeed, several weeks ago our Film Editor Elina Shatkin was snapped up from our midsts to become Content Producer for CalendarLive at LATimes.com, and yesterday our Sports......

If ever there were a date to debut an expensive almost-sure-to-be-crap comic book sequel film, it would be June 15th. It's the summer, so kids are out of school and looking for a movie to waste their allowances on. It's PG enough that parents can take their youngest. And it's just hot enough in middle America and the South that anyone without an air conditioner will be looking for a dark theater to kill......

LAist is proud to offer a weekly chart roundup of Billboard Magazine's most coveted rankings. Join us as we revel in the conventional standard of musical success. Let us cross our fingers, hoist our lighters, and dream together of the supreme resurrection of artist-driven recordings that will forever eclipse the dark cloud of big label greed, A&R sleaze and disposable audio. Amen. Here are this week's chart toppers. Behold the #1s. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Billboard Charts......

Although LAist has previously reported that Pan’s Labyrinth is dull -- more than once mind you – this reviewer found it necessary to take one more look. I agree with what the other reviews put forward however I would also say that PL, although not originally clever, is a well-told story. The film is set in 1944 Spain, during the time of Francisco Franco. A young girl, Ofelia, is sent with her mother to......

Movie grosses have for some reason become mainstream news, so starting today here's your weekend box office report. I'm only writing this column so I can someday use screaming headlines like "Boffo at the B.O.!" and other flagrant abuses of Variety-speak. (BTW, thank you Variety for posting weekend grosses so promptly on your site every Sunday morning. You've made my job a whole lot easier.) The big news? People are still watching Night At The......

About three weeks ago, LAist's Elina reviewed the critically acclaimed fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth and gave it a resounding meh. Elina said then that this film and 2001's The Devil's Backbone (both by director Guillermo del Toro) have a lot of similarities, but sadly Pan's is lacking. ...where The Devil's Backbone uses careful plotting and clever visuals to meticulously interweave the fantastical and realistic narrative threads, Pan's Labyrinth is all baroque styling and tangential......

You couldn't ask for a better director than Guillermo del Toro -- visually inventive, intellectually nimble, devoted and self-effacing -- but with his latest film, Pan's Labyrinth, his technique outshines his film making, and the result is a movie that's more admirable than it is enjoyable. There's enough in Pan's Labyrinth to make it worth watching, because even on his worst day (Blade II) Guillermo del Toro brings more to the table than 90%......