In honor of Earth Day, the new documentary film Tomorrow opens April 21 at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills. Directed and narrated by actress Mélanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) and activist Cyril Dion, the documentary sheds light on creative and successful small-scale solutions to the world’s biggest environmental challenges. The filmmakers’ explorations were motivated by a [...]
Spin room at YAS on Main Street in Venice Since 2001, Kimberly Fowler’s YAS Venice (Yoga and Spinning) has inhabited a distinctive corner at the north end of Abbot Kinney. Now as of August, the Venice institution has moved to nearby Main Street at the border of Santa Monica to inhabit the space [...]
Vandana Shiva is one of the seed experts and activists featured in the film Seed: The Untold Story Seeds? I thought I knew the whole story: GMOs, Monsanto, the massive Norwegian seed bank. Yet there’s so much more including the true diversity of seeds, the beauty, their essentialness, their history through hybridization, the [...]
The film Milton's Secret is based on a children's book by Eckhart Tolle Milton’s Secret is a story about survival during the difficult middle school years, when bullying runs rampant and children begin to understand their own family’s dynamics. The protagonist Milton is portrayed by William Ainscough as a thoughtful, gentle suburban child [...]
There is a spiritual take on The Sea of Trees Gus Van Sant is a powerful director who tackles our human inner turmoil in films such as My Own Private Idaho and now The Sea of Trees. With these stories, Van Sant gets inside the mind of the characters, to the point where you viscerally [...]
Former NFL player Steve Gleason set out to make a lasting impression for his son: to impart what fatherhood means and to teach his son about the priorities of life. So, he started a video blog where he directly spoke to his unborn son through the eye of the camera. Director Clay Tweel then crafted [...]
Contemporary, cool, and clean, Speir Pilates exudes the vibe of a fully modern studio with floor-to-ceiling windows, white walls contrasting exposed black ceilings, concrete floors, and eight Pilates reformers. With limited class size (eight—one person per machine), the classes are already booking up after just a few months; so if you want to partake, make [...]
Matt Ross, an actor known these days for his role as Gavin Belson in the TV show Silicon Valley, is also a surprisingly deft director and screenplay writer. In his second feature, he has created a populous, intelligent, and heartfelt film titled Captain Fantastic. While the film may be a conventional intergenerational family drama-comedy at [...]
Owen Suskind is an unlikely film protagonist: autistic, dreamy, awkward, yet genuinely innocent and enthusiastic. The documentary Life, Animated follows this extraordinary young man on the brink of college graduation and independent living, while unveiling his life-long challenges and how he continues to creatively overcome them. This is a modern-day coming-of-age with a twist. At [...]
Love Thy Nature film demonstrates how we can connect with the power and beauty of the natural world. Love Thy Nature opens with a quote from Rumi, “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the Earth.” This documentary reminds you of just [...]