Loud

Two 17-year-old girls have been sentenced for torturing and butchering an elderly woman, less than three weeks after a pair of 10-year-olds were charged with murdering a toddler. Again, a troubled nation is asking, how could this happen? Edna Phillips, 70, was throttled with her dog's leash and stabbed or slashed 86 times. The mental images of the crime have shocked the nation just as the video pictures of little James Bulger being led to his death did last month.

Warning: Music may be hazardous to your health. It's not just your hearing that's at risk, according to a study out Monday in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics. Teens and young adults who listen to digital music players with ear buds are almost twice as likely as non-listeners to smoke pot, the study says. And those who attend concerts or frequent dance clubs are nearly six times as likely as homebodies to go on a binge-drinking bender. These findings are based on survey results collected from 944 low-income students at two vocational schools in the Netherlands.

You look fat in that. Of course I'll be late. Your baby reminds me of Gollum's uncle. This is what the 2013 Subaru BRZ might say if it could talk. The all-new, rear-wheel-drive sports car starts at $26,265, and boy is it honest - perhaps more so than any other car on the market today, save for its mechanical twin, the Scion FR-S. The two were jointly developed by Subaru and Scion's parent company, Toyota, with both assembled by Subaru in Japan. The question about the BRZ is, can you handle the honesty?

In the Land of Blood and Honey Sony Blu-ray, $40.99 Writer-director-producer Angelina Jolie's earnest Bosnian war film received more attention than it otherwise might've because of the presence of her name above its title, but it was subject to undue skepticism as well. This is a well-crafted drama, following the tricky relationship between a Serbian soldier played by Goran Kostic and a Muslim prisoner of war played by Zana Marjanovic. Given the grimness of the subject matter, Jolie drains the film of nearly all lightness and thrills, but as with a lot of actors turned directors, she helps her cast find the emotional truth in every scene and builds a compelling story.

Television viewers are a notoriously dissatisfied bunch, complaining often about lousy programming, foul language, superficiality and assorted other irritations. Although most of these shortcomings are matters of individual taste, on one point viewers are unified: TV commercials are too loud. That complaint has been voiced almost since the dawn of advertiser-supported TV, yet neither broadcasters nor advertisers have put a stop to the volume surges. On Tuesday, the House approved a bill to turn down the advertisers' volume.

Sure, the writing on shows such as "Growing Pains" and "Who's the Boss?" hovers between mediocre and insufficient ("Tales of Two Sitcoms," Feb. 26). But if I had kids, I wouldn't mind them spending one hour per week with a couple of "loud, dumb relatives" if it meant lessons in societal values and human decency. JOE DUNGAN Van Nuys

There's a moment in the documentary "It Might Get Loud" when Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, while sitting with fellow guitarists Jack White and the Edge, reaches for his Gibson Les Paul to play a thundering "Whole Lotta Love." The solid-body guitar remains the model of choice for Page and many of rock's leading players, and is the enduring legacy of the late guitarist and inventor Les Paul. "It was like a throwdown," director Davis Guggenheim said of that moment in his film. "It was like, 'I'm done talking.

Thanks for allowing Heather King to share her appalling ignorance and racism with the Los Angeles Times' readership ("Of Pizzas and Peacemaking," Nov. 28). Perhaps King does not have enough experience with children in general to know that all children are loud. They laugh and they play. If the children had not been Korean would she have so ignorantly asked them if they ate dogs? Would she like it if the children asked if she came from an "inbreeding hillbilly" family? I doubt it. Amy Yang Santa Monica

Lawrence Christon's article "Kim, the Savant Who Came to Hollywood," Jan. 8), while showing great knowledge of and sensitivity toward autistic people, also shows great ignorance about and insensitivity toward toastmasters. Toastmasters are members of the international, nonprofit Toastmasters International. The steps of our program include getting over nervousness, speaking with sincerity, varying one's voice, using body language, organizing thoughts, working with words, persuading people, speaking with credibility and inspiring people.

This is about courtesy and the people who are up at the crack of dawn every day, weekends and holidays included. They put on their quiet walking shoes that wouldn't wake a soul, and then they proceed to carry on loud conversations all over the neighborhood as they walk. If the conversation doesn't awaken you, the chain reaction of barking dogs does. I respect the walkers' quests for good health, and they should respect mine. That means letting me get a good night's sleep. JO HICKS, Santa Ana

Late nights in Silver Lake belong to Los Globos. Once a rough-and-tumble haunt of gangs and local toughs, the beat-up-looking spot on Sunset Boulevard has been under new management for eight months that hopes to transform the space into a concert venue on par with the Echo and some of the area's other taste-making music joints. Since late 2011, however, it's been pulling in crowds for a different reason: Friday through Sunday, the dancing goes on until the break of dawn. There's no alcohol served between 2 and 6 a.m., but that hasn't stopped throngs from hanging out all night, as masses of people mostly in their 20s have adopted the club's downstairs room as their domain.

Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau finally had seen enough sloppy plays and missed passes Wednesday  morning at Anaheim Ice. It irritated him enough that he halted practice and launched into an expletive-laced blast at his players and their effort, looking much like the man who starred in last season's “24/7” on HBO when he coached in Washington. “I wasn't happy with their practice the first half,” Boudreau said. “Maybe guys aren't used to getting up at 7:30 in the morning or something.

Reporting from Henryville, Ind., and Durham, N.C. -- "See, they told us yesterday morning to get out," Beverly Evans said Saturday, stifling sobs as she gazed at the crumpled modular home she had lived in before Friday afternoon. Evans did leave. But her husband, Lloyd, did not, she said, because you can't tell him anything. He regretted it. "I told my wife, if another one comes, I'll beat her to the truck," he said. The retired forklift driver, 69, rode out the tornado that blasted through Henryville, a town of about 1,900 people north of Louisville, Ky. It was one of more than 90 that tore through the Midwest and South on Friday, well before the expected peak of tornado season.

Being loud isn't nearly enough in heavy metal. A bad attitude helps, but for the bands collected under Megadeth's touring mini-festival Gigantour, some distinctive style and vision made all the difference Friday at the Gibson Amphitheatre. Though each of the three top-billed acts — Megadeth, Motorhead and Volbeat — were dependably loud, confrontational and contained elements of classic metal and punk, each delivered something vastly different from the next. While headliner Megadeth stood in front of a big wall of Marshall amplifiers, the real power was less in volume than in the details of the band's dense sound.

Perhaps you've heard of Tommy Jordan. He's the North Carolina dad who recently recorded a video of himself reading and responding to a Facebook post composed by his 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, after which he shot her computer nine times with a .45 pistol. Hannah had done what 15-year-olds have been doing since time immemorial: She complained to her friends, in this case in rather foul-mouthed terms, about household chores and the overall lameness of her parents. Her dad, in turn, did what parents do: He lost his temper and took away something she held dear - in this case, the laptop.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences paid homage Tuesday morning to the early days of cinema by bestowing the lion's share of Oscar nominations on two films that are valentines to the early days of cinema. "Hugo," Martin Scorsese's heartfelt love letter to filmmaking, earned the most nominations with 11, including best picture, best director and best screenplay as well as several technical Oscars. "The Artist," the low-budget black-and-white silent movie that offers a glimpse of Hollywood during its transition to the "talkies," earned 10 nominations, including nods for best picture, best director, screenplay, actor and supporting actress.

Band: The Buck Pets. Personnel: Andy Thompson, vocals and guitar; Chris Savage, lead guitar; Ian Beach, bass; Tony Alba, drums. History: Dallas high school pals Alba, Savage and Thompson started the Buck Pets in 1985 in classic American rock fashion: jamming in a bedroom at Alba's house. The trio went public that New Year's Eve at a Dallas club and eventually went around the country in a van on a catch-as-catch-can tour that gave the group a reputation for loud and loose shows.

When it's nearing midnight and some amazing maniac is shredding through a guitar solo on stage, eyes closed, sweat flying, vibrations rumbling through the house like a northbound freight train, it's easy to forget just how much art and craft and science is involved in creating that sound. Director Davis Guggenheim, who brought us Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," reminds us of this in his very fine documentary about the electric guitar and the men who play it best, "It Might Get Loud."

Reporting from New York City--There are a number of reasons why director Stephen Daldry could have wanted Max von Sydow to play the role of the Renter in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. " He needed only one. "Because he's Max von bloody Sydow!" Daldry says, laughing. He certainly wasn't hiring the veteran Swedish actor for his stentorian, grittily warm voice, which Von Sydow has put to effective use for decades in such varied roles as Jesus Christ and Sigmund Freud, a knight who plays chess with Death and the devil himself.

One crucial facet of Stephen Daldry's film "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" emerges with a mysterious key accidentally discovered by a young boy whose father perished in the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. The boy, Oskar, becomes obsessed with finding the lock the key will open, a theme that French composer Alexandre Desplat strongly connected with in crafting the music for Daldry's film. "Most of the time, I'm looking from the director's point of view," said Desplat, who wrote the scores for no fewer than eight films released in 2011, including the finale of the "Harry Potter" franchise, Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life" and George Clooney's latest, "The Ides of March.