Now, for you nitpickers out there, watch the above 2012 trailer again and try to make geographic sense of the sequence of events.

Oh, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news for believers in the Mayan apocalypse, but the ever-so-useful “No-Frills” calendar from MyBoatClub stretches all the way into 2020.

Congratulations again, you just gained eight more years of life!

People seem to be peeing their pants over Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity, and who can blame them for being excited over a movie that’s genuinely scary?

But let’s not forget that 2009 marks the 30th — yes, as in three oh, you dabgum punks — anniversary of Ridley Scott’s Alien, the indisputed monster movie heavyweight champion of the world. To celebrate the occasion, the American Cinematheque is screening a double feature of Alien and it’s inferior-but-pretty-damn-entertaining sequel Aliens (1986) at the Egyptian Theater this Friday at 8:00 p.m..

That’s over four hours of facesucking fun for the entire family!

Some of my favorite venues include the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Silent Movie Theatre, the New Beverly Cinema and the American Cinematheque (which is screening the any-self-respecting-Angeleno-and-cinema-lover-must-see Los Angeles Plays Itself this weekend at the Aero Theatre, with director Thom Anderson in person on Sunday). People literally line up around the block to see screenings at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. And let’s not forget the screenings that the American Film Institute, the Academy, the Los Angeles Film Festival and heck, even the Natural History Museum (which is screening Reptilicus this Sunday as the final film in its B-Movies and Bad Science summer series) offer every year.

Images: Title screen of Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) and a poster (detail) for Repticilus (1961).

But wait, what’s this? A new report on KNX 1070 says that the U.S. Forest Service has retracted its earlier “human caused” statement about the fire.

What does this mean? It means my two-year-old daughter’s assertion that dragons are behind the blaze may still be a valid theory.

You can run, Puff, but you can’t hide.

Image: A Michael Martchenko illustration from Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess.

Out with the old...

Enough is enough. How many fires must we endure before we start treating arsonists as terrorists?

I know the jury’s still out on the exact cause of these most recent fires, but just consider all the endangered lives, wasted resources, interrupted commerce, health hazards, environmental damage, destroyed property and the psychological damage that one arsonist creates when he ignites a forest.

If it turns out that somebody did indeed purposely start one of these blazes, doesn’t he deserve an all-expense paid trip to Guantanamo Bay?

Or at least somewhere where he can chill out?

If you haven’t already guessed by the photo and title of this post, I’m talking about the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Festival of Lights display it mounts in Griffith Park every holiday season. For the uninitiated, for two nearly six weeks out of the year, the LADWP strings together an absolutely third-rate series of displays on Griffith Park’s Crystal Springs Drive that, for some bizarre reason, attracts thousands of visitors every year. Nearly all of the visitors drive through the light display, which means they idle in their vehicles for up to two hours on Interstate 5 and Los Feliz Boulevard as they wait to get to the main event. Not only are the displays amateurish and the resulting traffic congestion nightmarish for nearby residents, but the event also seems highly inappropriate for a municipal utility that claims it has “an obligation to take a leading role in the fight against global warming.”

Thankfully, somebody is trying to remedy the situation. As mentioned in an article in the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood City Council’s latest newsletter, the Council is advocating for the event to be turned into a pedestrian-only event. Huzzah! And the Council wants your feedback. If you have a thought or two (yes, even if you don’t agree with me), write to them at GGPNC@ggpnc.org and give them your two cents. I’ll scan the newsletter’s article and post updates in the months to come.

UPDATE (8/27/09): Scanned the article. Here it is.

Photo by Lisa Newton via a Flickr Creative Commons license.

Tonight at 8:00 pm, Machine Project presents a lecture on a guy intimately familiar with diversions — St. Anthony, “the 4th century desert ascetic who was tortured by hordes of demons and would go on to become the patron saint of skin diseases.”

But wait, there’s more! According to the ephemera, the lecture, titled “Tempting St. Anthony: Epilepsy, Masturbation and Iconophobia,” will cover various depictions of St. Anthony during the Renaissance (including one by Heironymous Bosch, right); French novelist Gustave Flaubert’s lifelong obsession to retell the saint’s story; and topics as varied as, “epilepsy, ergotism, demonic posession, madness, [and] the scourge of masturbation and its relationship to capitalism.”

Hell, yes! And, remember, scratching will only make it worse.

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down
Godzilla!

Hey, Angelenos! Put down that copy of G-Fan, take the needle off that Blue Oyster Cult LP, and put on your favorite pair of Pumas.

Why? Because American Cinematheque is screening Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) tonight at 7:30 pm at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

Not only is the film, in this humble writer’s opinion, the very best Godzilla flick after Ishirō Honda’s original from 1954, but it’s also being followed by Honda’s Battle in Outer Space (1959), a rarely-screened Toho gem that partially inspired Star Wars.

That is all. And now, back to California’s regularly scheduled budget cuts.

Image: Poster art for Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. Courtesy of the American Cinematheque.

For his latest film, The Oxford Murders, the Spanish director of Day of the Beast (El Dia de la Bestia), Common Wealth (La Communidad) and The Perfect Crime (El Crimen Ferpecto) has decided to do things a little differently. The movie, which stars Elijah Wood and John Hurt, is not only a straight-up thriller, but it was also shot in the Queen’s English.

Oxford Murders is finally being screened in L.A. tomorrow night (Saturday, June 6) as part of the 15th annual Recent Spanish Cinema film series. As a special treat, Alex de la Iglesia will be at the Aero Theatre in person to introduce the movie. Please note the film is playing with Agustín Díaz Yanes’ Just Walking (Solo Quiere Caminar), a crime drama starring Diego Luna, that also looks pretty badass.

Image: Alex de la Iglesia. Via Wikimedia Commons.