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Hollywood studios could be in for another year of “big-budget bombs” and increased volatility around mid-budget releases, film industry analyst Doug Creutz warned in a report this week. As he has been warning for years, the Cowen and Co. media analyst said that film studios’ increasing reliance on tentpoles and superhero movies will contribute to a decline in per-picture box office grosses in 2017, making what once seemed like sure-fire bets on big-budget flicks a decidedly risky enterprise. According to Deadline, Creutz says the film industry in 2017 will be “at least as difficult” as it was in 2016, when...

In 2008, Californians approved a high-speed rail project that has become one of the largest infrastructure projects in the nation. The dream of taking a train from Southern California to San Francisco in about three hours is chugging along, but facing new barriers. The original plan voters opted for in 2008 was titled the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century. When voters approved the measure, the estimated cost of the project was $40 billion. The 2016 business plan reviewed by the Legislative Analysts Office estimated a cost of $64 billion. WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO...

The State Bar of California has agreed to launch a comprehensive assessment of whether the minimum score needed to pass its bar examination should be lowered to allow more prospective attorneys to pass. In recent weeks, a growing chorus of voices — from state legislators to law school deans to court officials — have registered urgent concerns that the lowest score needed to pass the exam, commonly referred to as the “cut score,” is too high, flunking would-be attorneys who would qualify to practice law nearly everywhere else in the country. That sense of urgency has increased since November, after...

Upending a hallmark of California school reform, Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed a bill that will award diplomas to thousands of young people who failed the California High School Exit Exam in the past decade. The new law, which takes effect in January, will allow former high school students who failed the test as far back as 2004 to now graduate, as long as they passed all of their required high school classes. The new law effectively undoes the decade-old requirement, imposed after a hard and bitter fight, that students pass a standardized exam in order to earn a...

A glossary of popular social justice-themed terms, and some not so popular, published by the University of California, Davis plainly asserts that only white people are capable of racism. According to a glossary drafted by the school’s “LGBTQIA Resource Center,” racism is “the systematic subordination of marginalized racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States, by members of the agent/dominant/privileged racial group who have relatively more social power.”

Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is drafting a health care plan for California that he plans to unveil as a core component of his gubernatorial run, based in part on the universal health care program he signed into law when he was mayor of San Francisco. Newsom, seen as a strong contender in the increasingly crowded field of candidates vying to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018, is staking out an ambitious plan to rein in rising health care costs, expand universal access to people across the state regardless of income or immigration status and preserve coverage for the estimated...

Seizing on growing concerns over college affordability, California lawmakers are poised to propose what would be the most generous college aid plan in the nation, covering not just tuition but also living expenses that have led to spiraling student debt. “Lower-income students … are able to many times, through our great programs in California, get help to pay for tuition. But they’re still graduating with a tremendous amount of debt,” said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who is spearheading the plan. “The cost of living, the books, the transportation — that’s [what] we really need to tackle.” Under the new plan,...

In what may be a perfect example of what happens when students suffer from complete “social justice” exhaustion, the first meeting of Chapman University’s “White Identity and Allyship” workshop series drew more facilitators than students — 3 to 2, respectively.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a lawsuit against five out-of-state companies he claims were selling kits, that contain the parts necessary to assemble normal capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds. From cbslocal.com: SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera Thursday sued five online gun equipment suppliers selling disassembled large-capacity ammunition magazines as “repair kits” in an alleged attempt to get around state laws.The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that Badger Mountain Supply, 7.62 Precision, Shooters Plus, LAK Supply and Buymilsurp.com are engaging in unfair or fraudulent business practices and...

Judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals are urging senators not to pass legislation to break up that district, which President Trump said was in a state of "chaos." . . . The Judicial Administration and Improvement Act of 2017 would create a new 12th Circuit Court of Appeals covering Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Washington state. The states remaining in the new 9th Circuit would include California, Oregon, Hawaii and the territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

With recent hate-fueled shootings of minorities in Kansas and Washington — and an alarming confrontation closer to home in downtown San Jose — about 75 community members gathered downtown Sunday to urge action in what they called an increasingly hostile post-election atmosphere.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has shot down a move inside the GOP to get the former California Governor to make a run for U.S. Senate. Arnold just said, "I'm deeply flattered by all of the people who have approached me about running for Senate, but my mission right now is to bring sanity to Washington through redistricting reform like we passed here in California." Schwarzenegger, the former "Celebrity Apprentice" host, and the former-former host, Donald Trump, have been going at each other for weeks, and a Schwarzenegger run would put Trump in an awkward position. The senator he would have run against,...

"Terrorism has nothing to do with our religion," American Muslim Iftikhar Khan saidIftikhar Khan, donning a white T-shirt with an American flag imprinted on it, graced the streets of San Jose on Saturday to teach the public about one topic: Islam. "The vast majority of Americans don't know a Muslim and a lot of Americans are afraid of Muslims," he said. "I can understand why. There are a lot of negative things that a very, very, very small percentage of Muslims across the world are doing and the rest of us (Muslims) are not speaking out and so that's what...

The organizers of the annual Los Angeles gay pride have announced that this year’s march will be replaced by a protest against President Donald Trump. Local West Hollywood news outlet wehoville.com revealed late last that “the annual pride parade has been canceled, ceding to the nationwide LGBT Resist March that is scheduled in many U.S. cities for Sunday, June 11, the day the Los Angeles pride parade would normally occur.”

The state is hoping the first-of-its-kind proposal generates interest in the profession at a time when educators are harder to come by. California legislators are hoping a proposal to eliminate income tax for teachers will help attract young people into the profession and keep them there at a time when the state is hemorrhaging educators and lacks a pipeline.

Immigration & Customs Enforcement officials arresting and departing people in the U.S. illegally has increasingly raised the ire of the Left. One person with a personal complaint about such actions is Chaz Bono: Follow Chaz Bono ✔ @ChazBono My housekeeper's helper along with husband&children were arrested by ICE. @JerryBrownGov What R you doing about this?

Berkeley previously housed an online library consisting of more than 20,000 videos of lectures. These videos were free and accessible to the public. But they are free no longer: next week, administrators will withdraw access to anyone who isn't a Berkeley student or professor. Two employees of Gallaudet University—a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C.—filed a complaint with DOJ alleging that Berkeley's online content was inaccessible to the hearing-disabled community. After looking into the matter, DOJ determined that Berkeley had indeed violated the Americans with Disabilities Act Berkeley had two choices: spend a fortune adding closed captioning to the...

Zander Dejah, 25, pays $1,900 a month rent to live in a downtown San Francisco house with at least 40 other people, many of whom sleep in bunk beds. Dejah is a resident of The Negev, a communal living space that styles itself as a home for millennial tech workers to brainstorm ideas, write code and create apps, even if they have to share toilets and bathrooms with dozens of others. (Related photo essay: here) Houses like The Negev, located in a neighborhood known as "SoMa" or South of Market, have cropped up around San Francisco as an influx of...

Full title: Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens asks Trump administration to help her hold undocumented immigrants With most California governments and police agencies resisting President Donald Trump’s push to increase immigration enforcement and deportations, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens is bucking the trend, telling the Trump administration she wants her department to cooperate more closely with federal immigration agents.Last month, Hutchens met with several high ranking members of Trump’s administration in Washington D.C., in part to communicate how her department, and possibly law enforcement in other large American counties, would be willing to impose federal immigration laws.Her message: Neighborhood enforcement...

Roman Polanski will come back to a California courtroom to face the judge over his fugitive status in his child rape case, but only if the judge says in advance that the director served his full time behind bars.