Though he is immortal in the annals of macabre film, 2011 marks the centennial anniversary of legendary Vincent Price's birth. Born May 27, 1911, Price at 100 is being honored this weekend at LACMA as the museum also bids farewell to the Tim Burton exhibit. more ›

Pie lovers, your day is coming: Sunday, September 18th is the 3rd Annual KCRW "Good Food" Pie Contest, and this year the event will take place at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Home cooks and pros will be submitting their entries in five categories for tasting and judging by a panel of local chefs and food writers (yours truly humbly included). more ›

We caught up with Bettina Korek, founder of ForYourArt this week to discuss the current state of the L.A. scene and what we have to look forward to this fall. more ›

The Tim Burton Retrospective is drawing crowds to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and savvy attendees will be sure to time their visit with room for a drink and some eats at Ray's and Stark Bar, the patio-style bar and restaurant that have recently opened up at the venue. more ›

More than 200 "blank access cards" and fraudulent credit documents for celebrities and characters including Tim Burton, Tommy Lee Jones, and "Gaylord Focker" were found inside a Burbank motel on Wednesday when Christopher Herrick, a 43-year-old on parole for embezzlement, and 42-year-old Traci Godlef were taken into custody on suspicion of identity theft and forgery, reports the Glendale News-Press. more ›

If you've ever given or sought consolation for receiving an A- instead of an A, you'll feel right at home in Whiz Kids. The documentary, which opens this weekend at Laemmle's Music Hall, charts three teen scientists as they prepare for the Intel Science Talent Search, high school's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. There's a lot of hard work and a little heart break along the way, but this trio is hell-bent on forging their destinies and a new world. Harmain, raised on food stamps by a Pakistani single mother, plots human evolution by carbon-dating crocodile fossils (human fossils from the same sites are too fragile to be examined). Ana, the first in her family looking to attend college, analyzes plant root systems to increase crop yields. more ›

I walked into Alice in Wonderland prepared to be completely underwhelmed. Something about Burton + Lewis Carroll + Depp seemed too on the nose for my taste. And yet -- mostly due to the fantastic performance of Mia Wasikowska -- I enjoyed the film far more than I ever expected. more ›

Alice in Wonderland dominated the box office for a second consecutive weekend, earning $62M ($208.6M) to blast the competition. Despite it's pedigree, The Green Zone limped to a weak $14.5M debut. The bonerific She's Out of My League suffered a similar fate ($9.6M) as did the evil Remember Me ($8.3M). Shutter Island enjoyed a solid fourth week ($8.1M | $108M), topping yet another newcomer, Our Family Wedding ($7.6M). more ›

Despite a mediocre critical reception, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland demolished Avatar's opening weekend record for a 3-D film by taking in a mammoth $116.3M at the box office. Fellow newcomer Brooklyn's Finest was a very distant second with $13.5M, just edging previous stalwart Shutter Island ($13.3M | $95.8M). After that it was the painful Cop Out ($9.1M | $32.3M) and heavyweight Avatar ($7.7M | $720.1M). more ›

I confess to being a little confused by the enthusiasm for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland since my enjoyment of Burton's work has steadily waned over the years. For me, he peaked with Ed Wood. Despite all the lovely visual filigree that decorates his work, I find that I'm never particularly surprised by any of his films anymore. Sure, I'll see Alice in Wonderland, but that's mostly to see if Mia Wasikowska is as good an ingenue as she appears to be. What I certainly will see is Brooklyn's Finest. Despite mediocre reviews, I'm a total sucker for cop movies (Street Kings -- yes, fucking Street Kings -- has been on heavy rotation at my place lately.) It will be good to see Richard Gere back in uniform after the awesome Internal Affairs. Long overdue! more ›

According to Andy Williams, this is the most wonderful time of the year. Why? Scary ghost stories! On the surface, it's drier than Mormon egg-nog out there, but seen through Williams' lens, the screens are full of magic. The most wonderful film of the week may be Nightmare Before Christmas, but don't forget the ghosts in Fiddler! It's tradition! But when push comes to shove, nothing shouts red & green like the New Beverly - it's got a Muppet show, sex & violence! more ›

Festival fanatics find an old standard turning about their head this week: "Hooray for Hollywood!" The Hollywood Film Festival features dramas, docs, mocks, horrors & even music videos. Highlights include The Upright Citizens Brigade (Wild Girls Gone), one of David Carradine's final roles (The Rain), North Korean defectors (Crossing), hipster murders (The Scenesters), Ugandan children (War Dance Returns), 30-year old "boy" scouts (Scout's Honor) & the worst Christian pop group in the world (Jesus People) - all in the Arclight's reserved-seat, caramel-popcorn splendor. But if, like yours truly, you've emerged from the Red Line to find yourself too lazy to walk down to Sunset, pop into the Egyptian for the Arpa International Film Festival. Arpa kicks off with Venezuelan spy-romance Venezzia (the most expensive Venezuelan film ever made) and continues with Armenian historical dramas and a ton of bizarre shorts. If sexy dolls, entomologists, Muslim stand-up, or Spanish gynecologists appeal to you, definitely stop by. more ›

Tyler Perry's latest mediocrity I Can Do Bad All By Myself demolished the competition this weekend, debuting to $24M to top the box-office charts. The visually delightful (but narratively generic) 9 came in a distant second, taking in only $10.8M in its opening frame. Inglourious Basterds is proving to be a much-needed and resilient winner for Quentin Tarantino and the Weinstein Company ($6.5M | $104.3M), while the renaissance of Sandra Bullock continues with All About Steve ($5.8M | $21.8M). more ›

Wow! Crowded weekend, huh? I'd say 9 has to be at the top of any list if only for its sumptuous animation. Tyler Perry continues to crank out middling material, though Taraji Henson is almost enough to pull me into I Can Do Bad All by Myself. I've railed against bad horror re-makes so I feel obligated to rail against Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, too. It has a decent pedigree (Peter Hyams directing, Michael Douglas starring), but stop recycling old ideas, Hollywood! Sorority Row may (will) suck but at least it has the stones to go for an R rating and let its gore/nudity flag fly. Whiteout is the new Dominic Sena movie. If you know anything about his earlier work, you'll know to stay away (actually Gone in 60 Seconds was good, dumb fun featuring vintage Cage). more ›

Though it did decent business at the box office, I'm thinking that was obviously too elliptical for anyone to completely puzzle out, but I still liked it. Brian Van Holt is always aces in my book and Emily Rose was a revelation in a small role. more ›

In a crowded weekend of new movies, it was zeroed in on $100 million ($4.1M/$98.3M). more ›

Actor and comedian-chameleon Sasha Baron Cohen admitted in an interview yesterday that the characters that made him famous, Ali G and Borat, will be retired from his repetoire. Borat, the improbably cuddly anti-Semitic Kazakhstani innocent abroad, whose antics and exploits were made famous in a highly successful 2006 film, transformed Baron Cohen from a popular British comedian to a world-wide phenomenon. But he broke the news in a Daily Telegraph interview that Borat, he not-a coming back:

"When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing," he said. "It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I 'get' with Borat again, so it's a kind of self-defeating form, really."

One day the golden touch of Judd Apatow will fade and one of his films will bomb (--but I'll be piling into the theater along with everyone else this weekend to marvel at the daring of John C. Reilly. more ›

Having never seen the stage version of , I can't speak to the fidelity the film shares with the play. That said, let there be no doubt that Tim Burton has crafted a true piece of musical cinema from Stephen Sondheim's bloody masterpiece. To their discredit, early previews have hedged a bit regarding the singing in the film. In them we only see Johnny Depp canting some recitative as he prowls the streets of London. While this scene is certainly in the movie, it's barely representative of the actual film which contains at least a dozen fully-staged numbers and only intermittent dialogue. more ›

Helena Bonham Carter and her boyfriend, director Tim Burton, both Golden Globe nominees for Sweeney Todd welcomed their second baby together, a girl, in London this weekend - People more ›

Does Depp's Sweeney Todd rip off Dave Vanian? more ›

Fridays at 7:30 pm: THE PERVERSE PUPPETRY OF JAN SVANKMAJER Unsurpassed in his tactile, uncanny approach to experimental animation, surrealist Czech master Jan Svankmajer's films have inspired a generation of directors, including Tim Burton and The Brothers Quay, to expand their confidence in what is visually and conceptually possible in cinema. Whether concerned with sexual taboos or blatant political satire, Svankmajer's vision is always off-kilter, mordantly funny, and oddly sincere. - The Silent Movie Theater... more ›

Listen to the interview here: Bobby Slayton is an icon, he's been doing stand-up for 30 years, everyone in the industry knows him, and generations of us have grown up on his comedy. At his live show the crowd gets warmed up with a video of practically every single well-known American comic, from Don Rickles to Robin Williams, giving props to Bobby. I've been listening and seeing Bobby Slayton perform for 25 years, listening to... more ›

Hadrian over at Cinefile in West L.A. just sent us the heads-up for a great event going on at the Silent Movie Theatre this Wednesday, 8/15 at 9pm. Brent Green is an animator from rural Pennsylvania whose unique style has drawn comparisons to Tim Burton and Adam Jones. Hadrian blogs: Brent Green an untrained, completely original animator from rural Pennyslvania, who plays music along with his short films, while narrating them live in freeform,... more ›