First foray into filmmaking needs work


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Don McKay is writer/director Jake Goldberger’s feature film debut. The independent film premiered almost a year ago at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and is finally getting a wider release in Los Angeles, New York and Boston this week. Starring Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Lost Vegas) and Melissa Leo (Frozen Rivers), the […]

Online postings can botch potential jobs


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Everyone has heard the warning: Don’t put images or statements online that you wouldn’t want potential employers to see. Now more than ever, companies are checking the public online profiles of prospective new hires. So if you upload that incriminating photo from your friend’s 21st birthday party or Tweet a nasty comment about a former […]

Science behind organic is underripe


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You’ve probably seen them at Ralphs: those cool cats who slink up to the register and don’t bat an eye when their bill costs three times as much as it should. And when they slide past, they give you a superior smirk — you and your bag of conventional oranges. Like Scottish accents, everything’s sexier […]

New Nicholas Sparks adaptation is almost touching


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Nicholas Sparks’ novels are formulaic, simple and cheesy, but girls love them. Adaptations of Sparks’ novels have the potential to be transformed for the screen into an epic love story, like The Notebook, but they can just as easily fizzle out into Razzy-worthy trainwrecks. The movie version of The Last Song was a giant “almost” […]

Novel delves into gritty Los Angeles personalities


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With an area population of nearly 10 million, it’s easy to focus on some of Los Angeles’ more beautiful and prestigious residents. But Broken, written by J. Matthew Nespoli, takes a look into the morbid lives of the underrepresented and unlucky. Nespoli’s novel follows 14 individuals whose lives of constant struggle somehow become intertwined. Although […]

Tourists helped by Ireland’s friendliest


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How do you spot a tourist in a city full of strangers? Look for the person with furrowed eyebrows stopped in the middle of the street, pouring over a tattered city map with all the major landmarks drawn as cartoon icons. In most places around the world, these confused visitors would be looked upon with […]