Discovering this little time bubble, Abe is accepted as one of the children. Almost immediately he falls for the lighter-than-air, 16-year-old Emma (Ella Purnell). From Emma and Miss Peregrine, Jake learns of villains called "wights," led by a man named Barron (Samuel L. Jackson). Barron and his "hollowgasts"-eyeless spidery monsters, invisible to all but the likes of Jake-consume the eyes of children. We see the devils gathered around their feast, fresh eyeballs stacked on a fancy cake platter as if they were petits fours. The grossness is satisfying; it's like a wild tale heard on a school playground. One of Miss Peregrine's children has an interesting talent: with the help of a special monocle, he can beam a visual representation of his » Read More

Before declining into standard uplifting moments of waving flags, prayer and action movie super-feats, Deepwater Horizon is a thrilling procedural about the worst oil rig disaster in history. Director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor) approaches these roughnecks from the opposite angle that Michael Bay would have taken: they're more soft spoken and less profane than you'd expect. The exploratory well that the floating Deepwater Horizon was trying to tap was nicknamed "the well from hell"-the drilling project was 43 days and $50 million over budget, and British Petroleum is accused here of cutting corners on safety and maintenance. Berg stresses the human price of the disaster; the ecological disaster to come is signaled only by one startling » Read More

It's easy forget that stand-up comedy is, first and foremost, an American art form. Decades before The Daily Show put Trevor Noah and John Oliver on the map, comedians like Jack Benny and Bob Hope stepped down from the vaudeville stage and ventured out on their own. These early comics paved the way for the likes of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld. Eventually comedy diversified, as more women and comedians of color picked up the mic-from Joan Rivers and Margaret Cho to Aziz Ansari and Kumail Nanjiani. It's also easy to forget that stand-up superstars are a relatively recent phenomenon. Andrew Dice Clay was the first comedian to sell out Madison Square Garden, which he did two nights » Read More

City Lights Theatre kicks off its 2016-17 season with the story of a dysfunctional family trying desperately to keep its skeletons in the closet. Other Desert Cities, opens in the living room of a Palm Springs mansion. The decor is modern-1950s international pavilion style-bright orange and muted green furniture set against a glass window backdrop, with a dark desert light wavering behind a large mountain range. Enter the Wyeth family, returning home from a tennis match. One quickly sees they are a Hollywood family. Polly and her sister, Silda, made a name for themselves writing a TV show in the '60s. Polly's husband, Lymon, was the town's go-to character actor whenever a director was in need of a gumshoe; he is best remembered for his » Read More

Cue the synths, smoke machines and the magic chandelier. Broadway San Jose opens its 2016-17 season with the newest touring production of The Phantom of the Opera. Scaled for the Center for Performing Arts, it still incorporates all the beloved features of the hugely popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. As this Phantom opens, the stage is covered by a giant smoky scrim, behind which an auction of old theater props is taking place. The auctioneer is selling off various items ... when he comes to Lot 666, an old, rusted chandelier. As he explains its connection to the strange events surrounding the phantom of the opera, the chandelier flickers to life, illuminated by the "new" electricity. The hulking candelabra quakes and sparks fly, as the » Read More

Nothing can stop them. The gates of business schools yawn open every summer and disgorge new legions of MBAs, coming to make their bones in the valley. The rents and property values pierce the skies and reach the orbit of Saturn. Once a refuge for endangered creatures of all sizes, San Francisco is today a bleached coral reef. Fresh indentured slaves arrive from Uttar Pradesh by the planeload, clutching visas that evaporate at the mere frown of a supervisor. The roads back up to Vacaville. The crux, perhaps: the insanely great iHorror Apple-caused traffic snarl at 237 and 880 in Milpitas. This reliable jam is so dreadful that it cannot be described in the tongues of men, but only in the shrieks of an electrocuted cockatoo. And we learn, » Read More

When the anti-man-about-town invades British Columbia, or anywhere in Canada, serendipitous events often emerge. Previous examples are out there, if readers require proof. In the most recent case, I was already scheduled to take the new Air Canada flight from San Jose to Vancouver, when Ed Solis of the San Jose Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services told me his crew was going to be in Vancouver the same exact stretch of three days, presenting at the Pro Bike/Pro Walk/Pro Place conference. As North America's most popular walking, biking and placemaking powwow, the conference was slotted to attract more than 1,000 people involved in active transportation issues: city planners, transportation engineers, public health » Read More

Amnesia is baked into our economy's dependence on planned obsolescence. Once last year's suite of electronic devices makes one trip around the sun, a new fleet of shinier gizmos is ushered in. As the years go by, information gets trapped by the medium that was previously in vogue. VCRs break down, CD players fade into obscurity, and those little ear buds with the white cord no longer plug into your handset. VHS tapes and compact discs become artifacts housed in the basement archives of museums. This can happen even when the information is of monumental historical significance. The single most titanic deed of the 1960s-the first human landing on the Moon, followed by the safe retrieval of the voyagers-was counterpointed later by » Read More

Don Buchla, the legendary modular synthesizer pioneer, passed away last week at the age of 79. Anyone currently playing a synthesizer, tweaking electronics for sound generation or making any sort of modern-day electronic keyboard music has Buchla to thank, at least partly. While Bob Moog was the first one to officially release a modular synthesizer as a commercial product, Buchla was probably the first one to envision modules with the intention of assembling them together into a live performance instrument. As an engineer and a musician, Buchla was a daring, ornery innovator with a keen sense of what avant-garde musicians, composers and performers might want. His modular electronic music systems forever changed the way sound is created and » Read More