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American Beauty (1999)A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter’s best friend.Rating: 8.3/10Stars: Kevin Spacey (Lester Burnham), Annette Bening (Carolyn Burnham), Thora Birch (Jane Burnham), Wes Bentley (Ricky Fitts)20th Century Women (2017)The story of a teenage boy, his mother, and...

Lindsay Church and their wife started planning for a family in 2021. Church, who served as a linguist in the U.S. Navy, is medically retired from the military. “I’m missing 42 inches of my ribs, all the cartilage in my chest, and I have a spinal cord stimulator that controls my pain,” Church explains. Because of those injuries, Church has always known that it would not be possible to carry their own pregnancy: “A long while back, my wife became the person that was going to have the baby for us.

Today, Kcrw debuts a trailer for its latest podcast City of Tents: Veterans Row, which launches on February 15. Hosted by reporter Anna Scott, the podcast takes listeners back to the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when a large homeless encampment, decorated with American flags, sprang up beside the Veteran Affairs campus by one of Los Angeles’ wealthiest neighborhoods, Brentwood.

City of Tents: Veterans Row follows the lifespan of this encampment, nicknamed Veterans Row, which gained national attention after two murders and a visit from the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough. Over eight weekly episodes, hear the stories of the veterans who built the encampment and why it became both a refuge and a source of neighborhood conflict, as well as a microcosm for the larger homelessness crisis in cities around the country.

“I’ve been covering Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis for seven years, and I think...

“This is what Christmas is all about,” wrote Arnold Schwarzenegger on Twitter yesterday after personally donating 25 “tiny homes” to Los Angeles-area homeless veterans. Schwarzenegger was on hand at the unveiling, tweeting photos and his own thoughts on the process.

“All of you have the power to do something for someone else this holiday season,” he wrote. “It doesn’t have to be big. Just give a few minutes of your time to help someone else.”

This is what Christmas is all about. All of you have the power to do something for someone else this holiday season. It doesn’t have to be big. Just give a few minutes of your time to help someone else. https://t.co/xHiKKRPOh7

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) December 24, 2021

Anyone who lives in Los Angeles knows the city has a housing problem that has, in part, led to a broadening homelessness crisis. According to an annual...

Jon Stewart’s new Apple+ series posted a Veterans Day podcast on Thursday that features an interview with Staff Sergeant Wesley Black, who died on Sunday, shortly after the episode was recorded.

Black, 36, was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer that his oncologist linked to exposure to burn pits while he served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exposure to the military’s burning of waste in open air pits has been called “the Agent Orange of the post-9/11 generation.”

Stewart has called attention to the need to extend benefits and pass legislation to help those veterans. He’s spotlighted specific cases, including that of Black, who himself has been trying to raise awareness of the issue, the need for early detection and the urgency for the Veterans Administration to take greater action.

In the interview with Stewart, Black said that he hoped to leave a legacy for his son, and...

Apple TV+ on Thursday revealed The Problem With Jon Stewart, a new current affairs series that shares very little DNA with The Daily Show — you know, aside from the host.

Rather than focus on the headlines of the day, the aptly titled program focuses on a single problem in each episode, with the premiere dedicated to war — or, more specifically, how the United States government fails its veterans upon their return from war. After a couple of jokes about how much he’s aged since he departed The Daily Show — “Very few people would be happy looking like an anti-smoking poster,...

Updated, with Greene comment and Newsom response: California Governor Gavin Newsom called out Tucker Carlson and other figures on the right specifically for spreading vaccine misinformation and urged others to do so.

In an appearance on MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin Reports, Newsom said that the 25% of California residents who remain unvaccinated was due to an “overwhelming majority of misinformation by right wing pundits. Period, full stop. Time to be a little bit more specific. The Ron Johnsons of the world. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. The Tucker Carlsons of the world. I watch them. I listen. I pay attention. They are misinforming. They are literally putting people’s lives at risk. People are dying because of the misinformation, either knowingly or unknowingly, regardless, time to call it out.”

Newsom added that he recognizes that there are good people who have “real hesitancy and real concerns, and we are...

The Department of Veterans Affairs is moving to lift a 20-year ban on gender confirmation surgeries for trans people and will allow the procedure to be covered under Va benefits, Secretary Denis McDonough is expected to announce Saturday.

“[This is] allowing transgender vets to go through the full gender confirmation process with Va by their side,” McDonough will say, according to prepared remarks obtained by the Military Times for an event at the Orlando Va Healthcare System in Florida. “We’re making these changes not only because they are the right thing to do,...

Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff showed healthcare workers some love ahead of Valentine's Day. On Saturday, America's second couple made a surprise visit to the Washington DC Va Medical Center to hand out baskets of cookies, which included notes thanking healthcare workers for their service. "We are so grateful for you," the vice president told doctors and nurses during their visit.

Kamala and Doug were joined by Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough and his wife, Kari McDonough, who provided coffee for the workers. "This Valentine's Day weekend, our hearts are with the health care heroes working around-the-clock to support our country during this difficult time," Doug wrote on Instagram. "I'm so glad Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough and Kari McDonough could join us as we thanked the hardworking staff at the DC Va Medical Center."

Kamala and Doug aren't the only ones spreading love this Valentine's Day. Their sweet appearance...

The second night of the Democratic National Convention will feature two former presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and nods to some of the party’s revered figures of the past including Presidents John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The rundown includes remarks by Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and her son, Jack Schlossberg. Also appearing will be James Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of Fdr and co-chair of the credential committee.

Carter, 95, the longest-living U.S. president, will speak along with his wife Rosalynn. who turns 93 today.

Like the convention’s first night, there will be a dose of entertainment: Black-ish star Tracee Ellis Ross will serve as moderator, while Oscar winner John Legend will perform.

Democratic Convention 2020 Night 1 Review: The Virtual Biden-thon Comes Out Swinging; Eva Longoria Hosts Fast-Paced Trump-Bashing Event From Team Of Rivals

But the evening also will be a bit different, as the party will...

Adam driver stars in The Report, a sobering (if wearying) documentation of America's embrace of torture after 9/11.

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Midway through The Report, writer-director Scott Z. Burns’ firebrand account of a congressional study into the CIA’s use of torture (or “enhanced interrogation techniques”), Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) cannot believe his eyes. Bleary and exhausted as the Senate’s lead investigator, he’s staring at a television screen which is advertising a new Hollywood movie with awards season buzz: Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Marketed as the movie about “how we got bin Laden,” it is also the latest and flashiest twist in a media narrative that suggests “Eit” torture sessions provided actionable intelligence. The problem, however, is that narrative’s a myth; and even then, torture remains illegal.

At this point in 2012, about halfway into what became a grueling six-year investigation, it seemed like only Jones and...

"Democracy is messy," Jon Hamm says in the tense final moments of The Report's first trailer, and boy is he right. The upcoming dramatic thriller stars Adam Driver as Senate staffer Daniel J. Jones, tasked with investigating the CIA's post 9/11 Detention and Interrogation Program by his boss, Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening). Inspired by real-life events, the film follows Jones's "relentless pursuit of the truth," which leads to the discovery of the agency's brutal and ineffective interrogation methods. But when the Senate Intelligence Committee attempts to release the findings of the investigation, they realize the great lengths the CIA and the White house will go to destroy evidence and hide their secrets from the American public.

The Report originally dropped at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where Amazon Studios quickly snapped up distribution rights. Hamm portrays former White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, along with a star-studded ensemble cast including Michael C. Hall,...

With it now being over a decade since the Bush-Cheney era, our perspective on the recent history is greater, which means it is time for filmmakers to have a stronger focus on mining the territory of post-9/11 political debacles. While Adam McKay’s Vice divided in its useful insight (or lack thereof), Scott Z. Burns takes a strictly procedural route in the thrilling, sharply written The Report. A student of the Steven Soderbergh school of filmmaking, it has the propulsive slickness of that director’s best films, without ever feeling derivative.

The always-fantastic Adam Driver continues his streak here in his best role since Paterson, playing Daniel Jones, on staff in the Senate working under California’s Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening). He leads the investigation which, after spending six years and sifting through 6.3 million pages of documents, produces the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Report of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.

A bracing and unwaveringly journalistic dramatization of the largest investigative review in U.S. Senate history, “The Report” is so dry that it makes “Spotlight” feel like a Fellini movie by comparison. In isolated stretches, the rigor of Scott Z. Burns’ screenplay and the discipline of his direction can be enervating; if Robert Mueller were a filmmaker, this is the kind of clerical thriller he would make. And yet, the coolheaded patience of Burns’ approach is precisely what makes “The Report” so powerful in the end, not only as a lucid crystallization of our country’s recent political history, but also as an urgent reminder of how a world that prioritizes emotions over ethics will eat itself alive.

It’s easy to see why Senator Whitehouse thinks staffer Daniel Jones is the ideal candidate to lead a classified investigation into the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program (more specifically: the use...

‹We know that the bland, dark-suited people who run the government can sometimes be villains. But it’s easy to forget that people in government can also be heroic.

Making stories about those people can be challenging as entertainment, but Scott Burns’ “The Report” manages to do just that, dramatize in deliberate, thoughtful chapters the investigation into America’s shameful descent into torture after 9/11.

The film debuted on Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival.

Also Read: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Skip Sundance Screening of Doc About Her Primary Campaign

Senator Dianne Feinstein, played by Annette Bening, is the unlikely hero of this drama, as the veteran, centrist Democrat of California leads the Senate Intelligence Committee looking into allegations that the CIA tortured detainees.

Her staffer Dan Jones, played by Adam Driver, is even more worthy of note. He spends fully six years digging into mountains of evidence, seeking the truth of what the CIA did,...

With 46 days until her father Donald Trump‘s January 20, 2017 inauguration, Ivanka Trump has set her sights on some real estate in the nation’s capital.

The future first daughter and her husband Jared Kushner, along with their three children Arabella, 5, Joseph, 3, and 8-month-old Theodore, are planning a move from New York City to Washington D.C.

“Everyone is adjusting to these new circumstances during the transition period, and while Ivanka has no intention of taking a formal role in the administration, she plans to be an advocate for issues she cares deeply about,” a source close to Ivanka tells People.

The governor and lieutenant governor of Minnesota are calling for a federal investigation into Wednesday's fatal police shooting of 32-year-old Philando Castile, People confirms. A statement issued Thursday by Gov. Mark Dayton offers condolences to Castile's relatives while vowing to "do everything in my power to help protect the integrity of that investigation, to ensure a proper and just outcome for all involved." According to the statement, Dayton says he has reached out to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough "to request that the U.S. Department of Justice begin an immediate independent federal investigation into this matter." After Wednesday's fatal officer-involved shooting,...

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough condemned the remarks drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman made to Sean Penn in an interview with Rolling Stone as "maddening," but declined to comment on whether the U.S. would make the actor available to Mexican authorities. "It poses a lot of very interesting questions, both for him and for others involved in this … so-called interview," McDonough told Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. "And one thing I will tell you is that this braggadocio's action about how much heroin he sends around the world, including to the United States,...

Sean Penn has issued a brief statement following the publication of his controversial secret interview with Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera. "I've got nothin' to hide," the actor wrote in an email to the Associated Press. The AP reported that Penn, who has remained silent on the interview since the Rolling Stone article's Saturday release, did not directly respond to questions regarding El Chapo's advance approval of the piece and his protection of his source. The actor was also asked about images of him and the Mexican actress Kate del Castillo - who helped lead him to the criminal.

Sean Penn has issued a brief statement following the publication of his controversial secret interview with Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera. "I've got nothin' to hide," the actor wrote in an email to the Associated Press. The AP reported that Penn, who has remained silent on the interview since the Rolling Stone article's Saturday release, did not directly respond to questions regarding El Chapo's advance approval of the piece and his protection of his source. The actor was also asked about images of him and the Mexican actress Kate del Castillo - who helped lead him to the criminal.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough condemned the remarks drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman made to Sean Penn in an interview with Rolling Stone as "maddening," but declined to comment on whether the U.S. would make the actor available to Mexican authorities. "It poses a lot of very interesting questions, both for him and for others involved in this … so-called interview," McDonough told Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union. "And one thing I will tell you is that this braggadocio's action about how much heroin he sends around the world, including to the United States,...