Robert Francis | Photo via his MySpace page As we said yesterday in this column, Robert Francis fell ill earlier this month, prompting the cancellation of his Monday night residency at the Silverlake Lounge. Good news, though, the new favorite local artist of ours is playing tonight at El Rey at 8:45 p.m. with the Australian Missy Higgins performing after. There's no better way than letting you get to know Francis via a few......

I had originally planned to forgo a "best of" list and just talk about all of the movies I enjoyed in this very deep and rich year. After some consideration, though, I decided I should stick my neck out a little bit and go with the best of the best. I'm sure I went with a few outliers and even ignored some consensus picks, but that's why you do these things, right? The hardest......

I'm still waiting for all your hot happy hour tips, Los Angeles! We'll be posting happy hour listings at least a few times weekly in 2008; send your secret spots and recommendations my way at carrie@laist.com. And besides, what better way to get 2008 started than with some cheap booze at some happening city spots? Here's a few more we managed to dig up this week: Miss T's Barcade, Koreatown, Happy Hour 5-9 pm:......

Need some butt-rock to motivate your ass out the door to finish shopping? Luckily it's not just Satan, Satan, Satan all the time with these guys. TWISTED SISTER - Heavy Metal Christmas (Twelve Days of Christmas) That's quite a swag bag Dee Snider's accumulated by day twelve... twenty-two pairs of spandex pants, thirty studded belts, thirty-six quarts of Jack... but one wonders where he can possibly fit twelve Ozzy tattoos on his body. &righticonhover=0x333232&text=0x333232&slider=0xF2F2F2&track=0xFFFFFF&border=0xFFFFFF&loader=0x838383&soundFile=http://aprodxn.com/laist/10 Heavy......

The past year has given us two searing portraits of the human crisis in Darfur: Darfur Now and The Devil Came on Horseback. Tonight on HBO, a worthy third film joins them. In Sand and Sorrow, director Paul Freedman and narrator George Clooney follow John Prendergast, Samantha Power and Nicholas Kristof as they explore the tragedy of the genocide in Sudan. They journey through refugee camps on the Chad-Sudan border, visit mass graves inside......

Dethklok - "Bloodrocuted" The Pogues @ The Wiltern Michelle Shocked @ Temple Bar West Indian Girl, The Mae Shi, Ashkon @ The Highlands Dios Malos @ Rio Honda College Jon Brion @ Largo Danzig @ Grove of Anaheim Northern @ The Troubadour Matt Costa @ Detroit Bar Vincent Fernandez @ The Gibson The Ringers, Dutch Pink @ Viper Room Bad Dudes, Planets, Totally Serious @ The Smell You Me & Iowa, Coco B's, Saint......

Spider-Man 3 would have been an immeasurably better movie if it had just stuck to one villain. Seriously, Venom should not be sharing the screen with anyone else. No End in Sight received ecstatic reviews when it was released in theaters so, naturally, no one saw it. Correct that mistake when it lands on DVD shelves. Talk to Me was better than I expected; Wendell Baker was worse; Day Watch was unwatchable nonsense. The......

Hope you caught the season finale of Mad Men - it was excellent, especially the final pitch to Kodak (the finale will repeat tonight at 10:00pm on AMC). Am still bummed over the death of Deborah Kerr, of the King and I and From Here to Eternity fame (yeah, that was her rolling around in the surf with Burt Lancaster), she will be very much missed. We also lost the last remaining member of the......

Daniel Johnston at SXSW, 3/07 He's probably best known for his "Hi How Are You" tshirt that Kurt Cobain often wore, but if you don't know Daniel Johnston's music you're really missing out and you should definitely pick up the award-winning DVD, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston". Equally amateurish and darkly genius, Johnston's tunes lie somewhere between Brian Wilson and Wesley Willis while being heavily influenced by the Beatles: Daniel Johnston @ Henry Fonda......

Monday Gordy Slack presents The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday Kimberlee Auerbach presents The Devil, The Lovers and Me: My Life in Tarot 7pm @ Book Soup Gregg Hurwitz presents The Crime Writer 7pm @ Borders, Century City Kirk Douglas presents Let's Face It 7:30pm @ Barnes & Noble, Encino Wednesday Laurie Viera Rigler presents Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict 7pm @ Vroman's Helen Gilbert presents Okay Girls,......

Suicidal Tendencies, Gwar, The Devil Wears Prada, Goatwhore, others @ Verizon Wireless Clay Aiken @ The Greek St. Vincent, Josh Haden, Death Vessel @ The Echo The Bronx, Qui (with the Jesus Lizard's David Yow) @ The Echo, benefit, early show (5:30pm) Billy Bob Thornton @ El Rey Theatre G. Love & Special Sauce, Ozomatli @ Pacific Amphitheatre Tift Merritt @ McCabe's Radars to the Sky, Bedroom Walls, Rademacher, Death to Anders @ Spaceland......

Monday Mike Carey presents The Devil You Know 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Doug Stumpf presents Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy 7pm @ Book Soup Joy Horowitz presents Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School 7pm @ Central Library Michael Tucker signs Living a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine and Love in Italy 7pm @ Dutton's Jerry Stahl presents Love Without 7pm @ Borders, Long Beach Thomas......

Photo by fallsroad via Flickr Here's a follow-up post as the job search horror continues. Not only was I duped once again by a recruiter (note to self: only interview for jobs to which you actually applied!), but this time, I'm pretty sure I was interviewed by Eeyore. I was contacted by a recruiter at a shoe manufacturer, regarding a position that she claimed involved Photoshop skills, and communicating with web people, sales people,......

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge) Gogol Bordello - Super Taranta! (Side One Dummuy) Mark Ronson - Version (RCA) Oh No! Oh My! - Between The Devil And The Sea (Dim Mak) Gravy Train!!!! - All the Sweet Stuff (Cochon Records) Danzig - The Lost Tracks of Danzig (Evilive) The Monkees - Headquarters [DELUXE EDITION] (Rhino) Chris & Rich Robinson - Brothers of a Feather: Live at the Roxy (Eagle) They Might......

LAist is proud to offer a weekly chart roundup of Billboard Magazine's most coveted rankings. Join us as we revel in the conventional standard of musical success. Let us cross our fingers, hoist our lighters, and dream together of the supreme resurrection of artist-driven recordings that will forever eclipse the dark cloud of big label greed, A&R sleaze and disposable audio. Amen. Here are this week's chart toppers. Behold the #1s. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Billboard Charts Issue......

5:30 - I can hear the press people and the MTV handlers trying to corral Jack Nicholson in the next tent over, which apparently isn't easy to do. We here in the Blogghetto have been promised by MTV that they will try to get as many celebs as possible in here. You know you're low on the totem pole when even Shia LaBeouf is too big to talk to you. 5:26 - Dane Cook......

Photo Credit: Leo Buurman By now most Americans understand that something awful is happening to the people of Darfur. Relatively few, though, could clearly explain exactly what that is. With an artful simplicity, The Devil Came on Horseback reveals the true scope and horror of the continuing genocide in Darfur. Widely lauded since its debut at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, this fantastic documentary deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as......

He's probably best known for his "Hi How Are You" tshirt that Kurt Cobain often wore, but if you don't know Daniel Johnston's music you're really missing out and you should definitely pick up the award-winning DVD, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston". Equally amateurish and darkly genius, Johnston's tunes lie somewhere between Brian Wilson and Wesley Willis while being heavily influenced by the Beatles. He took to the stage yesterday at the Convention Center......

Venerable French magazine Cahiers du cinema (yup, it's still in existence) today launched its first English language edition, which will be available both in print and online for an annual fee. For $45, English-language readers will now be able to subscribe to a year's worth of the magazine (11 regular issues + 1 special issue). Cahiers will also offer free online supplements. Currently featured on the publication's Web site is a diary about the making......

About three weeks ago, LAist's Elina reviewed the critically acclaimed fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth and gave it a resounding meh. Elina said then that this film and 2001's The Devil's Backbone (both by director Guillermo del Toro) have a lot of similarities, but sadly Pan's is lacking. ...where The Devil's Backbone uses careful plotting and clever visuals to meticulously interweave the fantastical and realistic narrative threads, Pan's Labyrinth is all baroque styling and tangential......

You couldn't ask for a better director than Guillermo del Toro -- visually inventive, intellectually nimble, devoted and self-effacing -- but with his latest film, Pan's Labyrinth, his technique outshines his film making, and the result is a movie that's more admirable than it is enjoyable. There's enough in Pan's Labyrinth to make it worth watching, because even on his worst day (Blade II) Guillermo del Toro brings more to the table than 90%......

Blackmore's Night - Winter Carols (Locomotive) Brand New - The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (Interscope) Daughtry - Daughtry (19 Recordings/ RCA) Handful of Hate - Gruesome Splendour (Cruz del Music) Il Divo - Siempre (Columbia) Jay-Z - Kingdom Come (Roc-A-Fella) Killswitch Engage - As Daylight Dies (Roadrunner) Patti Labelle - The Gospel According to Patti Labelle (Bungalo) Rock Star Supernova - Rock Star Supernova (Epic) Snoop Dogg - Tha Blue Carpet......

The Fall TV premiere season is finally winding down -- which is good because we need to catch up with a lot of shows already stored in the DVR. Tonight's premieres are new takes on The Devil Wears Prada, Superboy and Ghostbusters meets Charmed, respectively. Thursday, Sept. 28 8 pm Ugly Betty (ABC) 8 pm Smallville (CW) 9 pm Supernatural (CW) For the complete list of season and series premieres, check out TV Squad's......

I love movies. I love clothes. And because I don't watch enough reality TV shows to have an unhealthy dose of schadenfreude in my life, I love stories about evil bosses who receive their comeuppance. So I was, of course, dying to see The Devil Wears Prada. I am a girl after all. My lady friends who were lucky enough to have attended advance screenings or rushed to the theater on opening weekend all......

Who doesn't love the dramatic skills of Meryl Streep? Who doesn't think Anne Hathaway isn't the cutest thing? And who doesn't think the director of several episodes of "Sex and the City" and "Entourage" (including the pilot) will probably put together a good film? Ah, who cares? All we know is in order to promote the new Streep/Hathaway/Stanley Tucci flick, "The Devil Wears Prada" you can get a free large cup of joe at......

Shanghaiist probably knows a little more about China than the Chicago Sun-Times. Giving them the benefit of the doubt on that one. The city does to have a music scene. Don't even front like they don't. They also have Dorito bananas and white guys shopping for wives. What they don't have is any more tolerance for jaywalkers. Bostonist sees Boston and Somerville each whip out their art and face off. A plagiarized novel is the......

There's a whole wide world out there, and here's the proof: DCist revels in The University of Maryland's basketball triumphs, marvels at Metro's security strategy, and applauds DC local Katie Couric's new gig. Phillyist is all about the Philadelphia Film Festival. OK, not all about -- they still have time for loitering, underage sex, and random wacky news. We would have to send a camera around the world to get shots as bizarre as Katie's......

Speaking of Starring LA, Constantine opens this weekend with Los Angeles, Sunset Boulevard in particular, as it's major backdrop (well when Keanu Reeves isn't spending time in Hell). Hank Steuver in his review of the film says, "Hollywood really believes it's got a lock on the infernal...in the Goth mind-set of who-knows-how-many screenwriters, there can apparently be nothing creepier than a dive/dance bar populated by the demonic undead, in which you'll find your Lestats,......