Saturday, February 1, 2025
During his monologue on Friday’s episode of “Real Time,” Bill Maher expressed sympathy for the “pitiful, powerless people” being bullied and abused by Donald Trump. “I’m referring to congress,” he joked, obviously referring to the total lack of fight from Democrats and the full support for Trump’s various illegal actions by Republicans. Maher also briefly poked fun at Elon Musk over the gesture that the billionaire Trump supporter made that looks identical to a Nazi salute (Musk hasn’t specifically denied it was a Nazi salute but he has called accusations that it was “dirty tricks”). Maher backed off after that,…
Friday, January 31, 2025
Tens of thousands of Angelenos packed into Intuit Dome and the Kia Forum in Inglewood Thursday night for a star-studded tribute to Los Angeles as a city and community following the devastating wildfires that destroyed so much earlier this month. Among the acts who showed up to raise money for the city were Green Day and Billie Eilish, Alanis Morissette, Dr. Dre and Anderson .Paak, Rod Stewart, D-Nice, Joni Mitchell and Slash — and that’s just a sample. Read on for a look at more of the Hollywood heavyweights who showed out for their city. Alanis Morissette, recording artist (Photo…
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Donald Trumps’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, insisted he is not “anti-vax” during confirmation hearings Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Jake Tapper easily dismantled Kennedy’s claims by playing several clips in which Kennedy issued statements such as, “There is no vaccine that’s safe and effective.” “Much of the controversy Kennedy is known for, aside from admitting to dumping a dead bear in Central Park, is his anti-vaccine rhetoric and conspiracy theory-laden stances,” Tapper began. (Watch the segment in the embedded tweet below). RFK Jr. says he’s not anti-vaccine, despite past statementsWatch…
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Stephen Colbert started his Tuesday monologue assuring his audience that he didn’t want to “cause panic,” but he said this while discussing a lot of panic-inducing stuff, beginning with the latest illegal and unconstitutional actions Donald Trump has taken since taking office, his mass-firings of federal workers. “I want to welcome everybody here, out there watching and any recently fired federal employees who were looking to travel for a while,” Colbert joked. “Hey, remember, hey, remember when Donald Trump said he was going to be a dictator only on day one? Well, evidently, his first act as dictator was declaring…
Monday, January 27, 2025
To many of those who have gone through end-of-life decisions after a cancer diagnosis, the disease itself tends to be no laughing matter. It has the ability to destroy families, knock down the strongest of humans and alter one’s trajectory permanently. But for the lucky few, like poet laureate Andrea Gibson, cancer can be a struggle but it can also shed light on the true meaning of what it takes to keep a life well-lived going. Gibson was diagnosed with ovarian cancer several years ago, but that’s not the end of the story. Identifying with they/them pronouns, the now 49-year-old…
Sunday, January 26, 2025
PARK CITY – Sundance always holds surprises in store, and Saturday night a documentary about one of the most famous war photographs ever taken – a Vietnamese girl running naked from a napalm bombing of her village in 1972 – stunned the audience with its conclusion: the photo was taken by a freelance Vietnamese photographer rather than Nick Ut, the Associated Press photographer credited with the image for the past 50 years. “I took the photo,” said Nguyen Thanh Nghe, who came to the screening from his home in California, in a Q&A after the screening of “The Stringer” by…
Saturday, January 25, 2025
If you were to watch the first 10 to 15 minutes of “Rabbit Trap,” the fundamentally flawed feature debut of writer/director Bryn Chainey, and stop there, you might think you were witnessing the start of a unique horror vision. In particular, the way the film uses sound in these opening scenes feels like something special; it takes on a sinister resonance, almost as if it’s tapping into another plane of existence. You can practically feel it rattling through your bones and deep into the recesses of your mind. It’s a great way to open. Then, just when you are starting…
Friday, January 24, 2025
Like a lot of Angelenos, Jimmy Kimmel isn’t looking forward to Donald Trump’s visit this weekend to Los Angeles. Trump, is visiting, ostensibly to review the damage caused by the devastating wildfires. But like pretty much all Republicans, he has also responded to the them with incredible cruelty and pretty bitterness. That includes using the fires as an excuse to say bigoted things, spread conspiracy theories, attempt to punish California for being a blue state by holding aid hostage. Which of course is par for the course. So it makes perfect sense that Kimmel during his monologue on Thueresday lamented…
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Barry Michael Cooper, the acclaimed screenwriter best known for his “Harlem trilogy” consisting of the films “New Jack City” (1991), “Sugar Hill” and “Above the Rim” (both 1994), died Wednesday of undisclosed causes. He was 66. The news was announced by his son and by his friend and fellow writer Nelson George. Prior to his career as a screenwriter, Cooper was a journalist and music critic who changed the music industry when, in 1987, he coined the term “New Jack Swing” to refer to the then-nascent genre of R&B music fused with hip hop popularized by producer Teddy Riley and…
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t a fan of the string of extremist policies Trump announced through executive orders in the first two days of his second term. “The bully is back at his pulpit,” Kimmel declared before detailing some of the worst ones. Among them, Trump pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization as well as the Paris Climate Accords. And bringing former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s efforts to protect him from legal consequences for the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump also freed more than 1,500 of the people imprisoned for storming the Capitol on his orders. “The Burger…