Rube Goldberg

President-elect Barack Obama will soon face the extraordinary task of saving capitalism from its own excesses, much as Franklin D. Roosevelt had to do 76 years ago. The new president's team must get to the root causes of the mistakes that have brought...

The stagecraft that makes the roadster fly in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is pretty close to magical even if you have a good idea of how they do it. But it's not special effects that make this musical bank and loop through the Broward Center. It's the...

To call the sci-fi kids' film " City of Ember" a parable of energy independence might be pushing things, but it certainly abounds in symbols and allegories. It's set in a futuristic but delightfully rattletrap underground metropolis - part Fritz Lang,...

Cirque-Works' acrobatic extravaganza doesn't dazzle the eyes and surprise the senses just for show. There is a function to the performers' contortionist forms. Using artists Diego Rivera and Rube Goldberg for aesthetic inspiration, this show melds the...

Fixing the state's government Re "Prop. 11 foes waging Orwellian campaign," Column, Oct. 9 George Skelton suggests that the only intellectually honest reason to vote against Proposition 11 is if one wants the Democrats to "totally control the...

With cable news going 24/7 on election coverage, it would seem that biographies of the two presidential candidates have long since been told and retold. But the 27th season premiere of " Frontline" (CPTV, Tuesday, 9 p.m.) digs a big deeper to uncover...

IT'S A pity that Michel Gondry's “Be Kind Rewind,” a movie rife with DIY optimism and analog nostalgia, arrives this week on DVD and not, as befits its premise, good old-fashioned VHS. Gondry has a reputation for technical wizardry -- he is...

I admit it. I have bad vending machine karma. I know, I know. Your restaurant critic shouldn't be eating out of a vending machine. But a few weeks ago I tried to get some pretzels from our snack machine and......

(A-) With Horton Hears a Who!, the inventive gang at Blue Sky Studios have concocted an ebullient full-length feature from Dr. Seuss' slender comic verse narrative about an elephant whose big ears detect a whole world on a dust-speck. Unlike live-...

Even though the healthcare reform bill passed by the Assembly was negotiated with a Republican governor, ABX1-1 is very much a Democratic proposal at heart— witness its significant expansion to cover 3.6 million uninsured Californians, including 800,000...

A competent but unremarkable crime thriller, "Untraceable" does introduce one fascinating, troubling notion - that Americans are so addicted to their media that they would happily become accessories to murder in order to get their daily fix of...

Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) stopped by the Los Angeles Times this week to discuss health care reform. Kuehl will hold a hearing today on the Nunez-Perata health care bill, which is supported by Gov. Schwarzenegger. The Assembly has already passed...