Wall Street

Our 2012 Film Poll: Movie Critics Nationwide Pick the Year's Best

Proposition 32 Union Campaign Contribution Limits: Hitler Endorsed!

OK, so the late Adolf Hitler hasn't officially endorsed Proposition 32, the ballot measure designed to stop corporations and unions from deducting political contributions from employee paychecks. But based on the flurry of over-the-top attack mailers arriving in the last two days, it's surely only a ... More >>

How to Survive a Plague Review: New Doc About AIDS Organization ACT UP

Mitt Romney Extols Power of 'Freedom' to Latinos at Hispanic Chamber in L.A.

See the bottom for Romney's new foot-in-mouth video and his contention that he'd have a better shot at the presidency if he were Mexican. Really. Mitt Romney embodies his party's utter hypocrisy when it comes to all things governmental: Tax subsidies for the rich, but a distaste for "big government ... More >>

L.A. Fadeaway: Jordan Okun Turns His Experience as Hollywood Assistant Into a Novel

What Bret Easton Ellis's book American Psycho did to materialism and Wall Street power with his -- or, really, frankly, what Upton Sinclair did to the meatpacking industry with The Jungle -- Los Angeles native Jordan Okun attempts to do to Hollywood with his first novel, L.A. Fadeaway. While Hollyw ... More >>

New 'High End' Hollywood Walgreens at Sunset and Vine to Host Sushi Chefs, Makeup Artists

We always kind of associated Walgreens with crummy carpets and leftover Halloween candy on super-sale. (No offense, Walgreens. If it makes you feel any better, Rite Aid's worse.) But not the new 23,500-square-foot Walgreens slated to replace the shuttered Borders at Sunset and Vine! Apparently una ... More >>

$5.59 Gas in Los Angeles: Fuel Reaches High Not Seen Since 2008

The jobless rate is down. People are starting to spend money again. Some of Wall Street's biggest stocks, like Apple, are trading at record highs. Damn, this Great Recession might have just turned a corner for the better. Finally. Wait a minute. Did you say $5.59-a-gallon gas? Right here in L.A?

Occupy the Rose Parade's Octopus Float Is 70 Feet of Awesome (PHOTOS)

Update, January 2: "Occupy the Rose Parade: 5,000 Protesters, Giant Octopus Fail to Make Live TV." Pasadena's annual Rose Parade is on Monday! To pre-party, we were totally planning to write about the Natural History Museum's first-ever dinosaur float, a gorgeous menagerie of T-Rexes and long-necks ... More >>

Occupy L.A. Photos by Ted Soqui, Photog Behind Shepard Fairey's TIME Art, to Show at Gallery Where Cover Protester Sarah Mason Works

The Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica saw the show of the century fall into its lap this winter. Sarah Mason, who works at the gallery, was catapulted into accidental fame when a photo of her at an Occupy L.A. protest -- snapped by LA Weekly photographer Ted Soqui -- was reworked by graphic art ... More >>

Occupy L.A. Digs In

Henry Rollins: The Column! A Modest Proposal: Occupy Music Festivals

​[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.] Does music have the power to cause real change? Several times in my life I have been as ... More >>

"It Was Dark as F*ck on the Streets": Hip-Hop Does Halloween

TheUrbanDaily.com​The Halloween season is here again, which means very soon the streets will be filled with trick-or-treating children as well as women dressed as everything from slutty kittens to slutty paperclips to slutty sluts. If you're throwing a Halloween party you're going to want your ... More >>

America's Second Poorest Big City is Right Here in Southern California: San Bernardino

Pete ZarriaA motel on Route 66 in San Berdoo.​We sometimes marvel at the amount of wealth found in Southern California. Using Forbes' figures, we noted in spring that "if California were a nation, it would rank fourth, behind the U.S., China and Russia, in billionaire population (a lucky 88)." ... More >>

Occupy L.A.: Street Musicians Reign at City Hall

So we were wondering what kind of music was popular at Occupy L.A., the anti-Wall Street demonstration the surrounds Los Angeles City Hall night and day, and took a drive to downtown to find out. But rather than people listening to their favorite bands on iPods or whatever, we soon came to realize ... More >>

Occupy L.A.: City Council Resolution Supports Anti-Wall Street Protesters, Lets Them Keep Sleeping on Front Lawn

Council District 11 via TwitterCouncilman Bill Rosendahl bonds with the many characters of Occupy L.A.​L.A. City Councilmembers Richard Alarcon and Bill Rosendahl introduced a resolution to support the Occupy L.A. movement today -- a gesture that would essentially attach the City of Los Angele ... More >>

Occupy L.A. Demonstrators Plan to Stick Around City Hall Area All Week

Look alive people. The Occupy Wall Street movement that swept New York over the past two weeks finally gained a foothold in L.A. over the weekend. And now participants of Occupy L.A. are marching on the financial district downtown at traffic hour (5 p.m.) today -- and they have events lined up thro ... More >>

Frank McCourt's Money Man, Kevin Griffin, Stands To Cash In On Dodger Bankruptcy

Frank McCourt​The Dodger bankruptcy is a tragedy for all involved. All except for Highbridge Principal Strategies, the Wall Street hedge fund that stands to earn $10 million in fees from the deal.Highbridge's managing director, Kevin Griffin, agreed last month to pony up $150 million in bankruptcy ... More >>

Hollywood Fringe Festival

UCLA Study: In Vicious Cycle, Job Interviewers Are Biased Against Unemployed

Whatever you do, don't tell them you're a reject​Besides a skimpy check from Obama every month, there are few perks to being unemployed. Depression. Self-doubt. Existential crisis, underscored by bed sores. And now, according to UCLA researchers, there's an even more degrading downside to goi ... More >>

Top 5 Old School Indie L.A. Health Food Stores

J. Ritz​ Close your eyes and breathe. Deeply. Smell those bulk whole grains commingling with the aromas of spirulina, alternative pastas, sprouts of all types, and freshly juiced wheatgrass? Now take a look around. See the earnest hand-painted signs promoting health tips? Notice the knotty pin ... More >>

Inside Job: Greed, Interrupted

Part meltdown memoir, part essential finger-pointing, Charles Ferguson's latest will make you seethe

In the Studio with Saint Motel: The Audio-Visual Indie Band Talks New EP and KCRW's "Also I Like to Rock" Gig at the Hammer

Saint Motel's A/J Jackson (Erin Broadley)​Tracking down Saint Motel at the band's recording studio isn't exactly easy. Deep in Pasadena, the entrance to Crown City Studios lies hidden in a dark junkyard alleyway, abandoned and eerie like a CSI episode just waiting for you to stumble headfirst ... More >>

Villaraigosa 2010-11 budget: look for Wall Street-style backdoors, city asset sales, flip-flops

The mayor will release his official Los Angeles 2010-11 fiscal year city budget today, and it's widely expected to contain more flip-flops than a sidewalk sale at a 99-cent store. The Los Angeles City Council appears stunned by yesterday's announcement by Antonio Villaraigosa that the city doesn't n ... More >>

Stage Raw: Pigs' Life (St. Joan of the Slaughterhouses)

THE LATEST NEW REVIEWS ARE EMBEDDED IN THE COMING WEEK'S COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGSNEW REVIEW THEATER PICK ST JOAN OF THE SLAUGHTERHOUSESPhoto by Vitor MartinsFor a lucid analysis of the malfunctioning global financial markets, one could do worse than Bertolt Brecht. And it's hard to imagine doi ... More >>

Summer Movies: Villains and Heroes, Robots and Mad Men

Secret plot for Wall Street 2, huge tracking for Transformers 2

Theater Reviews: Lovelace: A Rock Opera, U.S. Drag, How Cissy Grew

Also, Torn Between Two Bitches, Love's Old Sweet Song and more

Election '08: Seven-Out -- McCain No Longer Serious Presidential Candidate

BY MARC COOPER Here's the only tin-foil if not exactly the silver lining in yesterday's literally depressing economic news: Next year's bread lines will be administered by a Democratic, not a Republican, administration. You can bet on it. For personal reasons (like now I have to work till I'm 113) ... More >>

Lehman Brothers Call McCain's Bluff: More Than Lipstick Needed to Mask the Meltdown

Sorry, Phil Gramm, but this time we're not imagining it

Clinton Defeats Clinton: After North Carolina and Indiana, a Postmortem on Hillary's Campaign

It's all over now, Baby Blue, as Barack Obama wins the presidential nomination for the third or fourth time

Can David Nahai Keep the Lights On?

L.A.’s man to watch in 2008. Talking water and power and history with the city’s new DWP head

The (Ugly, Nasty, Pissed) Men Among Children

With Deerhunter, The Horrors and Pissed Jeans

Orgy of Sequels Climaxing in 2007

Will the public get off? Or is it just studio masturbation?

Moguls Will Be Moguls at Camp Allen

Shareholders get burned around the Big Media campfire

Shit & Payola

Radio killed the radio star

Whip It Good

How To Cure Hollywood’s Summertime Blues, The Sequel

Danger-Humor

The sick, cathartic pleasures of the put-on kid show Wonder Showzen, plus the closet-anarchist boys of Stella

Survival Mode

Gray faces double whammy of recall and deficits

Once Is Not Enough

Salesmanship or Snake Oil?

Punitive dreaming, post-Enron

Today, on a Vicious Blue Planet

Katie Couric, Britney Spears, Lou Reed and Alastair Fothergill. Alastair Fothergill?

Male Malfeasance

The War at Home

Kicking Assets

Crisis catches state utilities counting cash

Frankenfoods

Spun City

The big documentary, plus Kane redux

Some Kind of Blue

Darkness Audible

An interview with Me'Shell Ndegéocello

On the Line at Amazon.com

Blue-collar labor in a high-tech company

Less Than the Sum of Its Parts

Our fragmented progressive movement, and what to do about it

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