Despite the older generation's lingering fear that even stepping outside of your car in Echo Park will somehow get you assaulted or shot or worse (suburban Boomers, I'm looking in your direction!), this increasingly gentrified neighborhood has become a new mecca for intelligent, classy dining. Joining Lot 1 and Masa is Restaurant 15, a hip spot with a cool interior, but also a menu that still seems to be a work in progress. 15's......

Hmm, I wonder what the mean blood alcohol level is at Churchill Downs. | Photo courtesy of Jacdupree via Flickr Below, you'll find some short reviews of three documentary films that will only be in theaters for a couple more days. They each tell very different stories in unique ways and all of them are worth your time and money. I've said it before (and I'll keep saying it until my nemesis, Per Degaton,......

Image courtesy of Paul Graham Raven via flickr Just when you thought stoner doom metal was dead, Austin natives the Sword have stormed onto the scene with some of the darkest riffs and sickest solos since Sabbath. With their sophomore release entitled "Gods of the Earth" in their arsenal of show material, the Sword took the stage at the El Rey and just started destroying ear drums one song at a time.......

Colourmusic are the rarest of musical rarities- a band from the isolated hinter portions of America's Heartland (Also known as "The Sticks") that not only doesn't suck, but actually turns out to be pretty great. And not in that sort of special olympics, everyone's a winner, "well, they're good for [insert your tiny state here]" kind of way, but actually, honestly, for realsies good. Kind of like how The Flaming Lips are so good......

The Black Crowes' new album Warpaint, due out March 4th, was recently negatively reviewed in everyone's favorite trucker guy bible, Maxim. This was odd, however, since apparently, no advance copies of the album were given out. As it turns out, the reviewer never heard the album at all. According to The Black Crowes' website, when the band's management complained, the review was explained by Maxim's editors thusly: "Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing......

Many of LAist's contributors have been checking out L.A.'s dineLA Restaurant Week -- and we've discovered that some experiences definitely offered more value than others. I decided to close out my own Restaurant Week experience with a casual lunch and a more upscale dinner: for the former, I took LAist editor Zach out to lunch at eat. on sunset, while I saved the fancy hotel dinner at Circa 55 for my special guy. Both......

What are your favorite breakfast spots in Los Angeles? Who's got the best cup of coffee? The yummiest pancakes? The thickest slabs of bacon? Who's overrated and who's overlooked? We're determined to find out -- so wake up with us, won't you? Enjoy L.A.'s Best Breakfasts!!!...

Last Friday night at Bordello, Elite Yelpers gathered for drinks and music to wish Stephy S, Community Manager of Yelp.com for Los Angeles (she's like Tom of MySpace, but goddess style), a farewell adieu as she takes on a larger responsibility for the website up at its San Francisco HQ (sister site SFist should feel so lucky). Since May 2006, Stephy has been leading the way for Yelp.com, bringing in the energy for a site......

With the big Christmas season movies still a week away (The Golden Compass, Atonement), it's a rather soft schedule of new releases. That's not to say there aren't any quality films coming out, though. At the top of the list is The Savages. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney and Philip Bosco star in Tamara Jenkin's acerbic drama about two siblings forced to care for their not altogether pleasant father as he slips further into......

With one very notable exception, it's a fairly dull weekend in the movie world. That exception, of course, is the sterling No Country for Old Men. After several misfires (Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, The Man Who Wasn't There), the Coen Brothers are back with their best film since The Big Lebowski. Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones all give superb performances in this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name.......

For what seems like the 300th time this year, Hollywood is giving us a movie based on a graphic novel. That movie is 30 Days of Night and stars the lethally inexpressive Josh Hartnett as a small-town sheriff charged with the task of protecting Barrow, Alaska from a rampaging horde of hungry (or is thirsty?) vampires. All I can say is, "at least it's rated R". I'll probably sit this one out and wait......

It's a strong weekend for new releases. After a long break, Jim Gray is back in the director's chair with We Own the Night. Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix star as brothers on opposite sides of the law. Reviews have been 50/50, but critics were equally blase about Gray's last flick, The Yards, which I loved. Cate Blanchett is back as Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Reviews have been weaker than those......

Though it opens Wednesday, I'm including The Darjeeling Limited in this guide because Wes Anderson is a director whose films you just automatically have to see and the more advance warning, the better. His latest jewel box follows three brothers (Wilson, Brody, Schwartzman) who decide to travel together across India in an effort to mend the rift that has grown between them all. Expect fantastical plot twists and plenty of whimsy. Though many critics......

The fall tradition of releasing prestige films continues tomorrow as Resident Evil: Extinction opens wide. Milla Jovovich stars as the beneficent Alice, a latter-day Tess of the d'Urbervilles who is charged with the stygian task of killing armies of the undead--and the joke is now over. Anyone dumb enough to see the latest chapter of this awful series probably didn't notice anyway. At least there's nudity. But not from Ali Larter. Dang! Into the......

It's a fairly busy release schedule tomorrow with a few studio pictures and a bunch of indies hitting the screens. Neil Jordan directs Jodie Foster in The Brave One (or, as it was originally titled, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang: The Lady Bernie Goetz Story). Reviews are mostly positive and it does have the supremely underrated Nicky Katt (and the formerly underrated, now probably properly rated Terrence Howard), so I'll give it a......

When Howard Stern left the airwaves, many of us in LA were too cheap, or too lazy, or too broke to follow him to Sirius. Adam Carolla took over, coming from years of experience in radio, and a frequent guest on the Stern show when it was on KLSX. Adam has since built his following, fine tuned the show, and is kicking ass in morning radio. That isn't to say it has been a completely......

The noble and delicious sea-faring species caridea - more commonly known as shrimp - is a member of the phylum arthropoda, subphylum crustacea. Why is this interesting? Well, it's not - until you realize that those yummy little nuggets in your shrimp taco are actually more closely related to ants, lice, and cockroaches than they are to fish (phylum chordata). Isn't that FANTASTIC? Next time you want to freak out someone close to you,......

After a good two weeks of bragging about being the first reviewers to test the God|Jesus|fuckme|iPhone, at least WSJ's Walt Mossberg and the NYT's David Pogue had the courtesy to post decent video reviews. Both reviewers did their best to avoid extreme gushing, while failing to really criticize the device. In fact, both are quick to blame AT&T's EDGE network for sucking without explaining why the iPhone does not connect to AT&T's faster networks......

It was one of those lovely Sunday mornings down in the Valley: sunny and clear, not yet hot enough to send San Fernando-ists scurrying indoors towards the comfort of central air conditioning. We were looking for a casual and parent-friendly place along Ventura Boulevard to enjoy some lunch and a cold beer with our nearest and dearest. Mexicali Cocina Cantina seemed to fit the bill: reasonably priced, easy parking, and a wide array of......

Earlier this week came the launch of BlogSoopLA, a searchable restaurant database that brings together the reviews and write ups from local bloggers. The LA outpost is following closely on the heels of the site's origins in New York, and its first sequel in San Francisco. Users of the site can either search for specific dining spots, or browse; listings are sorted by the number of blog posts for each restaurant. Here in LA,......

One of our favorite local food blogs is Eating LA, which is helmed by Pat Saperstein, a senior editor at Variety. LAist asked her to put together her own Best of 2006, which she has so kindly shared with us; we can't help but notice that she likes pork and--if we may interpret--dislikes the deluge of Pinkberry frozen yogurt shops. Is it coincidence, we wonder, that she, too links the year to the pig, like......

A list of some of the current critics' choices around town. Click on the show title for a review. Click on the theater name for info on tickets. Hotel C'est Lamour (The Blank Theater Company) References to Salvador Dali Make me Hot (Theater Planners at Art/Works Theater) Side Show (La Habra Depot) Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks (Freud Playhouse) Rocks in my Salsa (Highways Performance Space) The Beastly Bombing (Steve......

Last night we were invited to see Emily Haines of Metric play her solo album for the first time in Los Angeles at the Viper Room. We weren’t familiar with Metric’s catalog and had only been to one Metric show before that resulted in a Metric fan strong-arming us out of the way of the stage resulting in our subsequent departure. That being said we went in not really knowing what to expect. We......

On Thursday LAist reported that Universal was running a trailer for the soon-to-be released film "Accepted", whose sole critical raves were from one source, Paul Fischer of Dark Horizons.com. At that time we could find no review on the website that stated that "Accepted" was a "total triumph" or "raucously funny". In fact the only place that we saw Fischer's praises for the film were on other blogs, where fellow critics were dissing Fischer.......

Recent LiveJournal Reviews of "Snakes on a Plane" WAAAHHH!!!! I saw Snakes On A Plane last night. 10:05pm showing. Saw it before all you bitches! XD XD XDDDD It is so awesome. GO SEE IT NOW. I believe today is the official opening day. For those of you clearly not as cool as moi. - niicko snakes on a plane... the greatest b movie of all time... - jack zodiac Saw Snakes on a......

First off, The Stranger's Seattle books department has hit another one out of the park with "Being Savage: Dan Savage's Older Brother Reviews His Younger Brother's New Book." Read it and chuckle in that pleasant feeling of being included in the inner circle. Ben makes comments like "Danny doesn't go far enough, he pulls his punches." This about a man who writes one of the most sexually explicit columns in Internetville? It's funny to......

We are all about movies that people either love or hate. Todd Solondz's Palindromes appears to be one of those flicks. Film Threat falls on the side of love for this disturbing tale of a 13 year old desperate to have a child. The 13 year old is played by 6 different people of varying ages, ethnicities, and genders in an attempt to force the audience to consider their own assumptions and prejudices about......

We posted this once already, but we really want to reach as many bands as possible. Please pass on this call for submissions to anyone you know who is in a band in LA. The more, the merrier! We want to hear local bands! LAist is going to start reviewing local bands, so we need demos, CDs, tapes, MP3s or any other form of audio you can throw at us. If you recorded it,......

If you are in a band in Los Angeles, this post is for you. We want to know about you—and more importantly, we want to hear you. LAist is going to start reviewing local bands, so we need demos, CDs, tapes, MP3s or any other form of audio you can throw at us. If you recorded it, we will write about it. So, if you want your band covered on LAist, write to us......

TheFoodSection.com's Kristin Franklin, blogging the site's "Moveable Feast" feature from LA, takes readers on a culinary tour of our city's burger joints. She hits all the usual suspects like Original Tommy Burgers,The Apple Pan, Fatburger and In-N-Out, but, surprisingly, fails to look in on Astro Burgers. Guess, it's too vegetarian for the list. LAist is also rather fond of the Double Del Cheeseburger at Del Taco. PS. We are really digging Franklin's post today......