Kenny Bania buys a slice

A long time ago, a friend gave me a copy of Gerald Brittle's The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren, and warned me not to read it before going to sleep. I …

September doesn't start until tomorrow, and Fall's not for another three weeks, but Scott Marks has shaken off the torpor brought on by a slew of summer snoozefests and lept back into the fray like …

The Little Stranger: Gleeson’s ghost story

When the Chula Vista cop pulled Carlos Abram Reyes over, he thought maybe the 21-year old was driving a Nissan 350Z. He had some reason to think it: the rear diffuser surrounding the twin exhaust …

Through the kind indulgence of the residents and the largesse of friends and loved ones, I have on occasion been allowed to visit St. Malo, a private community of beachside homes situated at the southern …

“These are getting more elaborate every year,” said my fellow media person Callie as we gazed up at the full-scale model helicopter above the two-story set intended to invoke a bombed-out Middle Eastern edifice. We …

There’s a moment near the beginning of Mission: Impossible: Fallout — when can-do American agent Ethan Hunt is receiving the recorded details of his impossible mission via reel-to-reel video embedded in a copy of Homer’s …

You don’t need no stinkin’ badges

Sheila Szilagyi-Noseworthy is getting the upstairs bathroom remodeled in her pretty Poway home. “It’ll be nice,” she muses. “But I always joke that we need a smaller house and a bigger garage. That’s my dream, …

The Adams Avenue Bookstore in Normal Heights is closing after 53 years of operation. I stopped in at the Store Closing sale, and overheard one fellow tell another that he had 16,000 books in his …

Needless to say, most people, critics and civilians alike, disagreed with my negative take on Incredibles 2. Biggest opening of all time for an animated film, 94% fresh rating at RottenTomatoes.com, A+ Cinemascore — plus …

Sarah Kahn was stuck — “in a lot of areas in my life, but really in my career.” She’d gotten her doctorate in clinical psychology, but didn’t want to get licensed, because she “didn’t like …

I loved the first Incredibles movie. I especially loved the ending. Journey back with me to 2004, and mind the fourteen-year-old spoilers along the way. The super-powered Parr family has triumphed: in stopping the killer …

Well, director Colin Treverrow (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jurassic World, and um, The Book of Henry) went and gave a barn-burner of an interview to the good people at Uproxx that should have folks talking about …

Love is hard. Sometimes, it's going well, and the past intrudes in unexpected ways. Sometimes, it's going well, and you hit an unexpected squall. Sometimes, it's going well, and someone murders your wife and all …

I played an awful lot of Star Wars when I was a kid. My snowy backyard in upstate New York was the ice planet Hoth. My jungle gym was The Millennium Falcon. And my best …

Pulitzer-nominated political cartoonist Jeff Danziger once wrote that he wanted his panels to work like an icicle slipped down your back — funny in a way, but also discomfiting. Laughter tinged with the twinge that …

There’s an elevator at the Pendry hotel on Fifth that runs from the underground Oxford Social Club, with its $1500 Saturday night bottle service, up to the ground-floor Lionfish restaurant, home to Eater “Top-50 Young …

I've been on about this before, but one of the things that make so many superhero punch-ups so deadly dull is the Toughness Inconsistency Index, which states that the amount of punishment a hero can …

Avengers: Infinity War was a long movie: 160 minutes or so. After a long movie, there is often a general rush to the rest room, followed by an increasingly uncomfortable wait among a crowd of …

Bagpipes are mostly synthetic nowadays — reeds, chanters, drones; even the bags are rarely fashioned from animal hide any more. But the sound is still primitive, primal: a single octave plus one, the keening whine …

The Supergoose that Laid the Golden Eggs?

For a while there, Ye Olde new release schedule seemed to be waving a blank white flag of surrender: "Oh, Avengers: Infinity War, we know better than to try to compete with your awesome earning …

This week's big new release is very big: Avengers: Infinity War is here to mash up The Avengers, Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and probably a bunch of other stuff into …

Last Sunday, I took the 79 up to Julian for a family gathering with friends. I usually take the less-winding 67-78 route, but I was trying to work out a musical round about the French …

Bee Pedersen can still remember when she saw the thriller Seven in a theater. “We were going to have dinner after, but when we came out, I said, ‘You know, I think I’ve got to …

Look, even Homer nods. So yes, we missed A Quiet Place. Happily, a whole bunch of people found it without our help. Hooray for smart (by all accounts), small-budget horror! You know, like The Endless, …

A Catholic friend of mine is fond of saying “That’s gonna burn” when he looks back on this or that moment of personal failure. He imagines that when he dies and faces his final judgment, …

Well, we tried. We made it to Sgt. Stubby, You Were Never Really Here, Beirut, Baja, Rampage, and Borg vs. McEnroe. Aardvark and Sweet Country should be up before 5 p.m. (UPDATE: Okay, 10 p.m. …

The Rodeway Inn at the intersection of Spring and Gateside in south La Mesa burned in 2015. But its freestanding roadside sign still advertises the “new management, complimentary breakfast, and free WiFi” at the “home …

The Easter Bunny slipped a bottle of Fortaleza reposado tequila into the bright blue English watering can that doubled as my wife’s Easter basket this year. He deigned to plunk a bottle of Casa Noble …

Let's start with the big new release: for some reason, there's a rooster in the poster for Blockers, a movie about parents trying to preserve their daughters' virginity. What's that about? (Cue Beavis & Butthead …

For a while there, it looked like Steven Spielberg had spun his last spiel — or was getting close to it, anyway. Three years between Munich and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal …

Actor Bob Balaban has appeared in director Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom. In the delightful and exquisite Isle of Dogs, he plays King, a former dog food commercial star who is …

“God love him, you can’t have a holiday without Mike,” says Beth Lipski of her uncle, Mike Welch. He’s the one standing in full Tipperary kilt on the greensward of Balboa Park along Sixth Avenue, …

San Diego State University has appointed a task force to make a recommendation about whether or not to keep Monty Montezuma, the school’s Aztec warrior mascot. As of this writing, there has been no corresponding …

Harumph. My fellow critics are comparing Pacific Rim: Uprising to a Transformers movie. I say both action and story are vastly more clear and compelling than Michael Bay's blockbusters. They're saying that it's not as …

In Love, Simon, the kid has a problem. In Loveless, the kid is the problem. In The Cured, the kid is a reminder of a problem. In Tomb Raider, the heroine's problem is that she …

The San Diego Film Foundation’s 2018 Oscar Viewing Party was held at the luxurious Hacienda del Corazón in Rancho Santa Fe. On January 5 of last year, it was the Wall Street Journal’s House of …

On this particular Sunday, the longest line at the Chino Farm vegetable stand in Rancho Santa Fe is not the one for the pricey produce, or even for the wood-fired Stinging Nettle pizza. Instead, it …

First, the whimsical, quirky news, or at least the news of the whimsical and quirky: as a run-up to the March 28th release of Wes Anderson's latest, Isle of Dogs, the Digital Gym is running …

San Diego Instagram model Julianne (@juli.annee) has 4.9 million followers on the social-media platform. Her posts regularly receive over 100,000 likes. Julianne favors lingerie and swimsuits and often includes teasing captions with her photos that …

Most years, I watch the Oscars from the comfort of my bed, clad in my finest thrift-store pajamas and swilling El Jimador like they’re going to stop importing tequila when they build Trump’s wall. That …

It’s Saturday morning and I’m helping my wife and daughters clean Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Little Italy. It would be purest folly for the church to hire cleaners when they can instead …

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about joining Rotten Tomatoes because I liked the idea of a critical conversation — all those informed perspectives, gathered in one place and trading impressions. Last week, I …

I came out of the screening for Black Panther unmoved. I like films set in Africa. I like star Chadwick Boseman. I sometimes like director Ryan Coogler and actor Michael B. Jordan. I like actress …

It doesn’t much matter how I came to be in my recent predicament — stranded in the Evanston, Wyoming, Comfort Inn, just over the Utah border, staring out of the second-story window at the parking …

Ten years ago, the Academy Award for Best Picture went to No Country for Old Men — a solid choice, even though I would have gone with There Will Be Blood. (Not that you asked.) …

Books do furnish a room, but not at Pottery Barn in University Town Center. Even the writing desk is piled high with leather travel cases instead of readables. The only exception — the John Derian …