Guns and inner cities are like lost relatives, each linked by blood, each unknown to the other.

Clearly, as Tom Diaz writes in his forthcoming book, The Last Gun: "Gun violence is not just an issue for gun violence prevention activists. Gun violence affects virtually every community socioeconomic, racial,...

I was reminded of Eugene Jarecki's The House I Live In while driving home recently -- a cop car pulls up alongside a trio of white teens on foot. It stops to eye the kids suspiciously. The boys look back, then saunter along, carefree. From firsthand experience, I know young...

"We are into our 11th day of temps near or over 100 with another week to go," Bill Patzert just reminded me.

He's a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and an expert on climate forecasting, and like me he's up working...

There's no better time for a work like Jitney, now playing at The Pasadena Playhouse. It's August Wilson's first play, a fact that made director Ron...

You know what time of year it is. The beautiful purplish blue jacarandas are blooming and June Gloom is in full effect.

Or not.

According to...

Last weekend Wendy Ida emailed me that she was going to an event. It being a holiday and all, I was thinking this involved the beach, a show, or maybe a somber get-together for Memorial Day. But no -- Ida was gearing...

When Larry, my uncle through marriage, came back to New York City from Vietnam, everyone knew he wasn't quite right but was unprepared to help him.

His life post war took a downward turn that he never recovered from. Loitering, bouncing between...

Pasadena, CA, - Approximately 7,000 men, women and children will gather to run, walk and bike the 4th annual Kaiser Permanente Pasadena Marathon and its related events on Sunday, May 20th.

For some, marathon running has become a rite of passage -- a kind of evolution of the...

Ina May Gaskin has been delivering babies for nearly 40 years and her latest book, Birth Matters, A Midwife's Manifesta (Seven Stories) shows you how. Not that you wanted to know. Or maybe like me, you do want to know. Finally, after...

The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross, made some $155 million opening weekend, and if you're among the few who haven't seen it yet, stop reading here.

This is one of those old school essays I used to write, not as a critic,...

By some reports Steven Soderbergh, may stop making films. I hope not. And I look forward to a time when moviemakers have the courage to make and promote films like Haywire, even if they "under-perform," as Haywire did

The Christmas season can be a lot of fun, buying and getting gifts, going to parties, being with friends and family, but it also has a profound spiritual component. And when people talk about "the holidays," there is often a kind of edge to that phrase, perhaps because this season...

Warrior, the new film from Gavin O'Connor, couldn't be more fitting for the times we live in.

It asks, how do you forgive when you really have been wronged? How do you proceed when no one believes in you? How do you...

Not exactly what I expected to be writing about Yoav Potash's spare documentary, CRIME AFTER CRIME. I was all geared up, in fact, to comment on dysfunctions endemic to many black communities, given that the film's about a black woman unjustly incarcerated for life.

Something else happened, however, that...

Werner Herzog is one filmmaker who defies the trailer, the reviewer and whatever formula you want to put on him. When I walk into a Herzog movie I never know what's going to happen. And when I walk out of one, I often...

Are you really trying this with me?

It's a strange thing when someone lies to your face and you both know it.

I left the house Good Friday eve feeling pretty good. I love the Easter holiday season. Ever since I was a kid I was captured by this...

"Am I the only one who liked this film?" a middle-aged woman's saying, talking to two other people. We've all just come out of SUCKER PUNCH, which just opened in theaters. When your number's in the 30's on Metacritic, I think it's pretty safe to say that she...

See the rest of this series this week here.

See the rest of this series this week here.