Hello, my name is Gregory, and I walk -- a lot. In Los Angeles. Happily, I have discovered a new TV show about people like me: people who walk -- in cities -- all over the U.S.A.

The six-part series is called City Walk, appropriately enough, and it's excellent. Borne...

Okay, dig: If you're in or around Los Angeles, the charming, smart and hella talented singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith plays Largo at the Coronet tonight, the 5th of June. They don't like it if you're late. Factor in traffic. Get there.

Oh, I love a benefit concert! Grew up on 'em (the Secret Policeman's Ball shows, the Amnesty concerts for human rights, Live Aid...), and always welcome another.

Very happily, a huge new benefit show occurred Saturday night near London: Chime for Change: The Sound of Change Live Concert!

The cause...

On Thursday night, the 9th of May, 2013, as a rainbow descended into Hollywood and a cotton-candy sunset filled the firmament of Beverly Hills, the Paley Center for Media L.A. celebrated a humor deity: the one and only Mel Brooks. The occasion: a preview screening of Mel Brooks: Make a...

Hi. I'm not sure if you've ever seen a movie, but I've seen quite a few of them, and as a public service I'd like to tell you that they're just not any good. I've spent the prime years of my life being an award-winning professional cinema critic, while most...

A few years ago, Hollywood finally got it together to make their version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- which I like to call "The Good Book" -- by Douglas Adams, a brilliant writer and thinker who was so steeped in irony that he dropped dead at the...

Mike Scott of The Waterboys is back in the U.S.A., with a marvelous new album (An Appointment With Mr Yeats) and a fresh, well-received autobiography (Adventures of a Waterboy). In anticipation of a U.S. tour this autumn, the globetrotting Scot is playing the Prince tribute charity concert at Carnegie Hall...

Thomas Dolby's works "hold up," as it were. His five primary studio albums (including the wonderful, recent A Map of the Floating City -- also an immersive online game) auditorily evoke more pure cinéma than most movies. Meanwhile, his efforts in music video, film scoring and technology define pioneering. He...

Beautiful Creatures is wonderfully wrought, funny, smart and enchanting, the best film I've seen thus far this year. Indeed, it's a tale of young love set in a milieu torn between the status quo and the supernatural. And if comparisons to this or that get you interested (I was pondering...

Dreamlike. Yes, that's the word for it. In the middle of an L.A. February Monday best described as "sunblasted," suddenly global chanteuse-extraordinaire Ellie Goulding wafts in amongst the (wait for it!) lights of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art -- a.k.a. LACMA -- specifically performing from within artist Chris...

Steven Soderbergh's new movie Side Effects is about drugs, and reality, and how subjective "reality" may become. It features Jude Law as a hip New York-based psychiatrist, Rooney Mara as his troubled charge, and Catherine Zeta-Jones (in her third Soderbergh production) as a doctor with mysterious intentions. It's a bit...

Pete Townshend.

Three syllables, and your synapses are already tingling, aren't they?

To know Pete Townshend a little (say, hearing "Let My Love Open the Door" on the radio) is to love him. And to know Pete Townshend a lot (as guitarist,...

Here is something beautiful to share.

Following up on last week's story about the making of "Over the Rainbow" -- the Sandy Hook Elementary students' lovely contribution to the good of the world -- here is the recently-completed music video to accompany the song.

More here need not be said....

Music saves us. We whistle in the dark. I love the darkness of a starry night -- but the darkness of the tragedy last December in Newtown, Connecticut is nearly beyond words. Here, however, we can consider the music which followed it. Via a mutual friend, I spoke with seasoned...

The heart of America beats hard, fast and true in LUV, the debut feature by Sheldon Candis. Part spiritual autobiography, part crumpled Valentine to Baltimore, all coming-of-age saga, LUV presents a breakout performance by young Michael Rainey, Jr. -- a lad on the line who takes a day off with...

Friends and heroes, let us celebrate a truly great man of American letters: the one and only Stan Lee. Friday, the 28th of December, 2012, Stan Lee turns 90 years old -- and he doesn't look a day over 72! POW! Happy birthday!

But ladies first: We interrupt this article...

Every year it gets better, as L.A.'s Grove becomes the premiere destination for winter holiday fun. Brilliant pageantry warmed many a heart (an estimated 25,000) as the Grove launched the holiday season earlier this week. There was singing, dancing, philanthropy, fireworks, and Santa Claus looking rather darned happy to be...

I love a great movie. Skyfall is a great movie. It's nuanced, complex and truly thrilling. Plus it's a James Bond film to its core: featuring a slamming opening like Spielberg or Greengrass (or Terence Young!) at their best, grand opening titles as true overture/fantasia (plus tip-top Adele song), and...

There is no movie without a script, and there is no script without a screenwriter. Certainly somebody has said this sort of thing before, but I'm saying it again. It's a vital position, demanding a complex personality. I speak with screenwriters. Some are cool and interesting and fun and smart....

The movie Looper features a lot of extreme, graphic, realistic-looking and definitely not satirical violence. Torture, mutilation, executions, loads of bang-bang, women blasted in the guts, and the murder of a child. Plus more gun-fetishizing than in small-town Pennsylvania on a Saturday night. The studio should be okay with me...