Abu Ghraib

Rapture, Blister, Burn Is an Exuberant Take on the State of Feminism in 2013

Play captures the cultural tension between ambition and family

Behaving Badly: Bad Apples, Empanada for a Dream and Slice, Reviewed

A Look Inside Blackout, L.A.'s Most Extreme Haunted House

Imagine (1) somehow finding yourself among a group of apprehensive "fresh fish" being badgered and browbeaten by a brutal prison guard as he processes you through a penitentiary populated by Hannibal Lecter-esque psychotics and the lobotomized victims of grizzly, Mengele-like inmate experiments. Or ... More >>

Bad Apples

Richard Serra, Ed Ruscha and Others Created Artwork to Help Obama. But Is it Any Good?

Richard Serra, the sculptor whose maze-like steel cylinders take up half the first floor of LACMA's Broad Contemporary building, made an uncharacteristically overt political drawing in 2004. In heavy, rough black crayon, he drew that disturbingly hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner with arms outstretched. He ... More >>

Burton's Bacharach

Mystery of The Mean DMV Worker Solved by USC Researchers

Day at the DMV.​Long the subject of deep academic research and study, it looks like the mystery of the mean DMV worker has finally been solved. The USC Marshall School of Business, with the help of Stanford University and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, have concl ... More >>

Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves: Duncan Birmingham Discusses the Suicidality of Cats and Dogs

"When I die of embarrassment, please don't bury me in this."​Duncan Birmingham is the author of the blog turned book Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves. He lives in Los Angeles, where it's happy and sunshiny every single day and yet cats and dogs and guinea pigs live in silent agony. What is th ... More >>

Birth of a Zombie Nation: The Undead in the Movies

From Bela Lugosi's zombie love slave to George Romero's Living Undead through the soulless corporate workers of more recent films

Duking It Out at Patrick Painter With Jim and Peter and Glenn

Agree to dis

Pugilist Specialist

Theater Reviews: 9 to 5: The Musical, 43 Plays for 43 Presidents

Also, Asleep on a Bicycle, Speech & Debate, Pugilist Specialist and more

Election '08: Taking Down Amy Goodman and Donna Brazile

The scene outside MSNBC's outdoor RNC studio at St. Paul's Rice Park, just outside Xcel Center. BY VANESSA SILVERTON-PEEL The 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle were like the Big Bang in the evolution of modern police tactics and policies toward protesters. When the political b ... More >>

Standard Operating Procedure: Get Out of Jail Free

Errol Morris cuts the Abu Ghraib MPs some slack

Pan African Film Festival Under Cover

Festival closes with dirty secrets, fly fashion

Seymour Hersh, the Optimistic Pessimist

On Bush, Iran and the challenges to journalism

Walk Through the Valley

Don’t let Paul Haggis’ heavy hand stop you from seeing his latest

Must See Art

Richard Ross’s “Architecture of Authority” and Mathilde ter Heijne

Film Reviews: Fantastic Four, Fido, Amu

Also Casting About and Eagle Vs. Shark

Palace of the End

Theater Reviews

The Boomerang Kid, It's Just Sex, and this week's pick, Palace of the End

Theater Reviews

Including this week's pick, Bush is Bad

Film Reviews: The Reaping, Are We Done Yet? and More

Alsoo reviews of Firehouse Dog, Sacco and Vanzetti and Operation Homecoming

Evidence Grise

Paul Verhoeven returns to the past — his and ours — in the Holocaust thriller Black Book

The Liberation of Baghdad

Art download by Sandow Birk

StreetSignism

The new, weird counterculture

Print the Legend

But flag the truth

The Dalai Museum

Gaze navelly, paint globally

Scary Clowns

John Powers on Zarqawi and Haditha

Night Vision

Jim Shaw's "The Dream That Was No More a Dream"

Histories of Violence

In the best films of 2005, the past came back to haunt

The French Insurrection

Cars burn, Islam benefits

The Sinking of the President

Bush and the Democrats need to catch up on their reading

Cow Patties

Officers’ Mess

Sophocles goes to Baghdad

Newsfreak

Lost in the Smog

Environmentalists say the energy industry helped write Clear Skies. Yeah? So what else is new?

The Meta-Media Madness Top 10

The Army You Have . . .

. . . Under Bush and Rumsfeld couldn’t care less if your humvee is armored with cardboard

The Gospel Hours

Networks retool primetime for religious Republicanism

Smoke and Mirrors

Wrecked

Looking behind images of torture

The Perfect Storm

Remember me to Herald Square

Teaching Torture

Congress quietly keeps School of the Americas alive

But Is It Art?

Abu Ghraib, The WB’s Superstar USA, Black Panthers

Please, Sir, I Want Some Moore

Post cards from Cannes

Let It Be John McCain

Why not choose a VP who can carry an election rather than just a state?

Who Are the Black Sheep Now?

NEA war ghosts at Highways' quinceańera

Dirty Pictures, Dirty War

Doing your own thing in Abu Ghraib

The Torture Files

Iraqi detainees allege mistreatment and abuse