An L.A. brewery now open in La Jolla
Absolution finds its way back into town
Ian Anderson 5 p.m., Jan. 29
...or in hilarity with this week's new film releases, including Hostiles
Truth be told, there's not a lot on the new release front this week for some reason, and what there is has a decidedly backward-looking feel. Hostiles goes back to the settling (read: claiming) of ...
Soldier on
In Hostiles, director and cowriter Scott Cooper re-teams with his Out of the Furnace star Christian Bale to tell the story of Captain Joseph J. Blocker, a man of war facing a violent transition — ...
A smattering of career possibilities in this week’s new releases, including 12 Strong and Phantom Thread
When I was just a little boy/ I asked my mother, “What will I be?” A soldier? A sheriff? An actress? A singer? A dressmaker? Que sera, sera, kid. Que sera, sera.
My Belles A is "absolutely worth repairing”
Maybe it’s when a man starts to feel a bit broken down and disposable himself that he starts to look around for things that are worth repairing and saving. Things like this Belles A amplifier ...
There is a great gulf between us, millions of years wide.
I gave my wife five chickens for Christmas. A friend gave her three more, for a total of eight, which is also the number of children we’ve conceived. (Two made their exitus before being born.) ...
... including The Commuter and The Post
A dumb train movie. A sweet train movie. A movie about sad old people. A movie about sad young people. A movie about a strong white woman. A movie about a strong black woman. And ...
A list of favorites (as opposed to “bests”)
Looks back over the twisted landscape of 2017. Well, that was weird. Look, if lifelong cinephile Scott Marks can’t manage to put together a Top 10 List for this year, I don’t see why Matthew ...
Free library boxes in front yards around Altadena/Burlingame
2302 Montclair Street Litterachur: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace God, etc.: The Shack, by William P. Young Crime: Smokin’ Seventeen, by Janet Evanovich. Sexytimes: none Kidz: Troubling a ...
David Grant Urban uses serial murderer Cleophus Prince
David Grant Urban was a fit 50something who had just finished hiking Mount Whitney when he found a lump on his neck. “I went through cancer treatment with three other people, and they all died,” ...
Never mind who watches the Watchmen — who critiques the critics?
Below, please find the most popular movie reviews of 2017, listed in descending order. It should go without saying that “popular” does not necessarily have any connection with “positive.” That goes double for the comments, ...
All sorts of Christmas goodies in this week’s new movie releases, including Call Me By Your Name and All the Money in the World.
An ode to eros. A screed against greed. A plea for decency. A tribute to decency. A digital update of a board game. A threequel for the Bellas. Daddy issues. Chemical issues. And a trunkful ...
It’s not love
“What of [Alcibiades’] beard? Are you not of Homer’s opinion, who says, ‘Youth is most charming when the beard first appears’? And that is now the charm of Alcibiades.” — Socrates, the Protagoras That is ...
People don't get Santiago
Santiago, La Jolla’s Darger of the Hedgerows, lives most of his life in a sanctuary he carved for himself amid the dense trees and underbrush separating a kindly Frenchwoman’s home from the busy street on ...
The corkscrew-childlike inner life of Santiago
A recent exhibition of works by the artist known as Santiago — aka Charlie Chimpo, aka “the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s Retard Grandson” (a self-applied sobriquet) — during a festival at La Jolla’s Mary Star ...
That old familiar feeling in this week's new movie releases, including Star Wars: The Last Jedi
That's not entirely fair, of course. This new Star Wars has lots more ladies than usual, and besides, the repeated bits are always given a little tweak here and there. Still, I did have a ...
Then it's off to be auctioned at Scottsdale
The Kargoyle, a chop-topped 1967 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Funeral Coach of dubious practicality and somewhat mysterious origin, slunk and slithered its way into the Adams Avenue Vons lot in Normal Heights and parked next to me. ...
South Encanto has the views
When my friend Jon visits from from the murk and damp of Michigan, he always looks up for what he thinks of as a real San Diego sky: not merely cloudless, not merely blue, but ...
Outsiders abound in this week’s new movie releases, including The Shape of Water and The Other Side of Hope
What indeed, Elvis? But without war, hate, and myopia, we wouldn’t have the outsiders who drive the drama in so many of our stories. Like the fish-man and the woman with something fishy about her ...
“Is there sufficient reason for the tears that will inevitably run down my face by the end?”
Smash the American Idol. Still The Voice. America’s Got Talent, but let it stay at home and delight the household and its gods (or at least its ancestors). But what if the household is not ...
The wheelchair encyclopedia of Normal Heights
It’s not his real name, but the name he gave me wasn’t real, either. He’s navigated his dual wheelchairs, one for his luggage and one for himself, with impressive efficiency — and even agility, despite ...
But putting down my phone is futile
A while back, I sent my collegiate son a text with the following quote from a letter by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his collegiate daughter: “Once one is caught up in the material world, not ...
A few not-so-shocking giveaways about this week’s new movie releases, including Justice League and Frank Serpico
Okay, people, spoilers ahead. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. Justice League: Aquaman’s powers mostly go unused. BPM: AIDS kills. Frank Serpico: The hero cop of Serpico is a hero cop. Bill Nye: Science Guy: Bill Nye defends ...
The Square is lengthy, sometimes luxuriating in its long takes...to the point of discomfiture
What is The Square? Well, it’s a piece of art, so there are no doubt any number of interpretations. But I’ll hazard a guess: The Square is writer-director Ruben Östlund’s latest salvo against institutions that, ...
This week’s new movie releases look back: Murder on the Orient Express, Last Flag Flying, Novitiate…
Novitiate? The Devils. Last Flag Flying? The Last Detail. Murder on the Orient Express? Murder on the Orient Express. No Greater Love? It ain’t exactly Winter Soldier, but it does involve war footage and traumatized ...
How Stake, West Pac Noodle Bar, Moo-Time, Leroy's, Lil Piggy's Bar-B-Q came into being
David Spatafore, the “visionary” and “primary owner” at Blue Bridge Hospitality, goofed with the name of his first restaurant. “We called it MooTown Creamery, and the concept was that we were going to make homemade ...
Mikhail Baryshnikov poster: "Don't come back"
The House Where Nobody Lives sits out on Fuerte Drive in El Cajon. Kids sometimes visit at night to scare themselves: “Don’t come back” has been scratched into the black-and-white poster of a shirtless and ...
A plethora of three- and four-star movies in this week’s new releases, including Thor: Ragnarok, The Nile Hilton Incident, Jane, and Tragedy Girls
As the Beast used to say in the old X-Men comic books, “Oh my stars and garters.” (And yes, that’s a cheap way of referencing this week’s comic-book movie release, Thor: Ragnarok. Let’s get back ...
Knives abound in this week’s new movie releases, including 78/52 and Suburbicon
Guns are fun, but when directors really want to paint the screen red, they go for the stabbing, slicing, slashing goodness of blades. And this week sees the opening of 78/52, a documentary about maybe ...
Mel Taylor's home on Panorama Drive lot
It was the last undeveloped ocean view lot on La Mesa’s Panorama Drive, and the view was what made artist/designer Mel Taylor bite. The 7000+ square-foot home he nestled against the steep slope features decks ...
“The genius behind your smartphone’s smart is a San Diego native.”
“Qualcomm: why you love your smartphone,” proclaims the company’s regional ad campaign, the one you may have seen on billboards, at bus stops, or on electric taxi carts around town. Curious: an ad campaign that ...
Children abide (or don’t) in this week’s new movie releases, including The Florida Project and Goodbye Christopher Robin
It’s tough being a kid, especially when Mom is an unemployed stripper. Or a suicidal lover. Or something of a child herself. And then there’s Dad — you know, the distant guy who pushes you ...
The Florida Project: A different sort of Disney movie
“My soul is humbled when I see the way little ones accept their lot,” says Mrs. Cooper at the end of Night of the Hunter. “Lord save little children. The wind blows and the rains ...
Lots of new movie releases, including The Foreigner and Trophy
Suffering Sappho! There certainly are a lot of new movie releases this week! (Yes, that’s Wonder Woman’s catchphrase, chosen in honor of the Wonder Woman origin story biopic Professor Marston & the Wonder Women.) And ...
A brisk, brusque, bloody, bawdy Italian cheapie
That thundering synthesized flop you hear is Blade Runner 2049 coming in well below industry expectations; guess you people don’t have much use for highbrow, three-hour sci-fi epics that are long on scenery and short ...
Death next door
I moved from Normal Heights to La Mesa in 1999, mostly because I wanted a yard for my kids. But also because an old woman was attacked across the street from my house on East ...
Heartfelt '80s music at TJ's Privee Lounge
Green light glows off the stippled white exterior of Priveé Lounge Bar, perched above the Plaza San Angel on Tijuana’s Avenida Sonora. (Just off Boulevard Agua Caliente before the Club Campestre.) Inside is white as ...
This week’s new movie releases include Blade Runner 2049, The Queen of Spain, and The Mountain Between Us
Ryan Gosling may be at the center of Blade Runner 2049, but he’s surrounded by women: his boss at the police station, his opposite number on the corporate side of the investigation, his digital girlfriend, ...
...but we can watch them on screen in this week’s new releases, including The King’s Choice and Victoria and Abdul
Royals: they’re just like us! King Haakon VII of Norway liked to play hide and seek with his grandchildren and even pretended to have conversations with his grandson’s teddy bear! I mean, he also had ...
Feeds and is fed by popular culture
“The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” says San Diego Comic Art Gallery manager TJ Shelvin, “are unlike anything else. On the one hand, you’ve got this major machine that it became” — six movies, six TV ...
A chat with Shrabani Basu, author of the book on which the film is based
“I think it’s significant,” says Shrabani Basu, “that Queen Victoria, in those days, over 100 years ago, chose to learn Urdu,” the language of a people under her rule. “And that she placed a young ...
Drawing Blood — a combination of Breaking Bad, Spinal Tap, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Wally Wood is regarded as one of the great comic-book artists of all time. He was with Mad magazine from the very beginning; he created Daredevil’s red costume; he (probably) drew the Disneyland Memorial Orgy ...
Director Charlie Bean gives background of Lego Ninjago Movie
At the Lego Ninjago Movie press conference held last week at Legoland Carlsbad, a child asked the film’s assembled cast and crew, “What happened to the cat?” The tot was referring to the monstrous beast ...
Flesh and blood in this week's new movie releases, including The Villainess and The Wound
I mean, it's the movies, so what else is new? But still. The Wound has violence done to a bunch of guys' sexy bits. Also, sex and violence. mother! has much more violence than sex, ...
There was something about the freedom of Ocean Beach
“We live in cities you’ll never see onscreen,” sang Lorde on “Team,” trying to make obscurity sound cool but fooling nobody. If it were really cool you wouldn’t have to make a cool song about ...
If Netflix's Ted Sarandos reads this...
Simon & Simon was a buddy detective series set in San Diego that ran for eight seasons on CBS during the ’80s. Veronica Mars put a teenage girl in a noirish milieu and managed three ...
Horror flick heads up this week’s new movie releases
It is out, but is It good? Well...there are good bits. But it doesn’t touch Get Out as the year’s best horror flick. Because the real horror is the evil that men do. The monster ...
The star has three lackluster vehicles currently in theaters, including this week’s Tulip Fever
Poor Dane DeHaan. He started 2017 by starring in the criminally underrated A Cure for Wellness, then starred in the monumental flop Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and now here he is ...
The kids of today
If last year’s The Edge of Seventeen felt like the kids of today as portrayed by a (smart, sensitive) grown-up, this year’s Get Big is very much the kids of today as portrayed by the ...
The price of cream
The wife and I like cream in our coffee. So do our kids. Trader Joe’s in La Mesa charges $3.29 for a half-pint. Walmart charges $4.14 for a full pint. I resolved to make the ...
Even the Ben & Jerry’s is gone
On my first morning in San Diego — July 1995 — I set off walking toward downtown. I was young and I didn’t know anybody, so I went to be where people were. Once there, ...