Urgency

Even in the toughest times, price hikes are far more common in the new-home business than price cuts. But the smartest builders are far more sophisticated pricing strategists than you might think. Savvy builders raise their prices several times before they ever get to a grand opening, which is the event most buyers take as the signal that the builder is ready to start taking orders. "Price increases don't start when you have models," said William Becker, a veteran consultant who has been advising builders and developers for more than 40 years.

TUCSON - Two years after Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigration was signed into law, putting the state front and center in the debate over one of the nation's most controversial issues, the firestorm over illegal immigration has subsided a bit. The sputtering economy, a push by business leaders to avoid controversy and a sense of fatigue by some over the charged issue combined to push illegal immigration out of the spotlight, though it...

Omnibus films, those multi-episode endeavors that string together the contributions of disparate talents, are uneven almost as a rule. But the jaggedness and nagging irresolution of 1978's " Germany in Autumn" — a collaboration among 11 filmmakers, most of them associated with the German New Wave of the period — points to a desperate sense of urgency about a prevailing mood of confusion. In the span of a chaotic few months that came to be known as the German Autumn (partly thanks to this film)

WASHINGTON - The nation's Social Security and Medicare programs are sliding closer to insolvency, the federal government warned in a new report underscoring the fiscal challenges facing the two mammoth retirement programs as baby boomers begin to retire. Medicare, which will provide health insurance to more than 50 million elderly and disabled Americans this year, is expected to start operating in the red in its largest fund in 2024, according to the annual assessment by the trustees charged with overseeing the programs.

New team leader New York's Amare Stoudemire , telling teammates how they did it in Phoenix: "We don't have that sense of urgency. It's almost as if it doesn't matter. That's something I'm not used to. I try to instill the fact that we have to play with sense of urgency. " Knick tradition Pete Vecsey of the New York Post, on canceling a game against Orlando after debris containing asbestos fell in Madison Square Garden: "... After the success of Asbestos Night vs. the Magic, the Knicks have designated Dec. 15 vs. Boston as Mold Night and Dec. 17 [vs. Miami]

Assuming the sun came up Monday in Lakerdom and there's anyone out there reading this … In the good news for the Lakers, they still have their health! Oh and they're back in the race! Unfortunately, it's the wrong race. A week after trailing No. 1 San Antonio by one game in the loss column, Sunday's 120-106 loss to Oklahoma City dropped the Lakers to one game in the loss column ahead of the No. 4 Thunder. Of course, maintain their legendary cool, even if the Lakers have lost five in a row, what's the problem?

UCLA plays Arizona on Saturday in a game in which the Bruins will either equal last season's victory total or continue their rock-in-a-deep pool descent. Times staff writer Chris Foster looks at some of the game's key issues and matchups. There was something in the air around Westwood this week and, after three consecutive losses, it didn't have a "relentlessly positive" feel. On Wednesday, Jayson Allmond, a fullback who is redshirting, became fodder for individual tackling drills.

There are two kinds of extremes at play in the brutal, medieval action drama "Ironclad": sword-fighting gore of the splitting-a-human-in-half kind, and Paul Giamatti's snarly outrage as bloodthirsty 13th century English ruler King John. Huffing and puffing between scenes of grueling warfare is a muscular if cheesy tale of resistance heroism, made for teenage boys interested in "300"-style violence and chest-heaving martyrdom on a more rough-and-tumble scale. Director Jonathan English, working from a blunt script by himself, Erick Kastel and Stephen McDool, focuses on a band of rebel knights led by James Purefoy's stoic warrior and assembled by Baron Albany (Brian Cox)

England's KaitO and the Midwest's Koufax both have four members and names starting with the same letter. But their Spaceland sets Thursday offered much different twists on modern alt-pop craft, never sparking huge explosions but still starting the holiday weekend with a satisfying kick. Headliner KaitO played staccato, shouty new-wave punk that evoked an updated Elastica while fitting neatly alongside the current up-from-underground sounds of former tour mates Clinic and the Datsuns.

Can you have too much love? That's what VH1 is starting to wonder. The Viacom-owned cable network, whose top five shows this year all have the word "love" in the title, is reassessing its heavy reliance on dating and relationship shows. Although the network says it was already plotting a new direction, that shift has taken on greater urgency since one of its reality show participants, Ryan Jenkins, apparently killed himself after becoming the lead suspect in the murder of his former wife Jasmine Fiore.

Is any place less safe than a safe house? In the entire lexicon of movie locations, is any setting more likely to be visited by chaos and destruction on a biblical scale? Not very likely. So it's no surprise that the Denzel Washington-starring "Safe House" is a take-no-prisoners action extravaganza that doesn't stint on either bullets or brutal hand-to-hand combat. It also shows how much can be done with a business-as-usual CIA-thriller script when it's bolstered by effective acting and expert direction.

It's the norm in January: After the governor proposes a new budget and delivers his State of the State address, legislators slide into hibernation until spring. Oh, there's some rustling around in the dens — a few committee hearings, brief floor sessions — but no strenuous activity, no risk taking until May, when deadlines sprout and the governor revises his budget proposal. Not every year follows that pattern — last March, the governor and the Legislature made sharp spending cuts — but winter 2012 has all the signs of the rhythmic long nap. So it's not surprising that there seems to be a look of lethargy among legislators concerning the sensitive issue of public employee pensions.

There was some urgency for UCLA following Saturday's loss to Stanford. Coach Rick Neuheisel felt the need to have face-time with some players after the game to buck up spirits in the locker room. "I wanted them to realize that all was not lost," Neuheisel said. "The game was gone, but the season was still there. " A group of about 10 team leaders met Sunday to talk about accountability. "It was guys who have been in the program a while, who have seen things in the past in terms of guys not being held accountable," quarterback Richard Brehaut said.

Guatemala's long, violent civil war pitting its right-wing military leaders against the country's poor, indigenous peoples was given a world-shocking airing with Pamela Yates' 1983 documentary "When the Mountains Tremble," in which the government's Mayan genocide was first exposed. When her interview footage of notorious generals and shots of the military's policies in action became essential to later war-crimes investigations, Yates turned on her camera again to revisit the tragedy, its aftermath and her part in it. The result is a sober if only intermittently effective follow-up, "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator.

The NBA and representatives of its players' union met for six hours Wednesday in New York, with Commissioner David Stern promising more "meetings and meetings" through September to try to resolve the lockout that threatens the upcoming season. Stern told reporters there's "clearly enough time" to strike a new labor agreement that would allow the NBA's regular season to start on time Nov. 1. The meeting in Manhattan was the second between the sides since the lockout took effect July 1. Players' association President Derek Fisher of the Lakers told reporters after Wednesday's session that the union had not changed its "philosophical stance" on issues and added that "both sides [are]

USC middle linebacker Chris Galippo watched from afar — about 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage — as freshman Lamar Dawson took most of the snaps during full-contact drills the last two weeks. Now, with the opener against Minnesota a week away, Galippo knows that he must prove his injured right shoulder is sound. "It's getting down to the nitty-gritty," Galippo said Friday. "I've got to be able get a good week of full-contact practice. " Galippo, a fifth-year senior, suffered a sprained shoulder early in training camp and was limited for two weeks.

Vivendi, France's biggest media company, may sell its 20% stake in NBC Universal, though there is "no urgency" to do so now, Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Levy said. "One day we think this shareholding will be sold," Levy said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Palaiseau, France. "There is no urgency. Every year we consider it a little bit, whether it makes sense."

The Rancho Palos Verdes City Council has extended until May, 1990, a moratorium on the construction or placement of fences, hedges and walls that significantly impair a view from an adjacent neighbor's rear yard. The council imposed the moratorium May 16 so that it could examine view-preservation amendments to the development code. The council will receive those recommendations from city staff at its Aug. 1 meeting. In a related action, the council Tuesday also adopted a second urgency measure similarly banning walls or hedges that block side yard views.

State lawmakers escalated their war with Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday with a fresh attack aimed at the Internet giant's refusal to collect taxes on its sales, which a new law requires. The legislative move would halt Amazon's campaign to put a referendum on the June ballot asking voters to overturn the state's Internet sales tax law, which took effect July 1. In a bit of legislative legerdemain, the state Senate Appropriations Committee took the language of that law, tweaked it and put it into a so-called urgency bill.

A funny thing has happened to L.A.'s redevelopment agency in the wake of the state's yearly budget meltdown. After months of serving as the ripest of targets for budget-cutting state officials, the Community Redevelopment Agency turns out not to be so dead after all. That news became official Wednesday, when the City Council voted 13 to 0 in favor of an urgency ordinance that keeps its redevelopment agency alive and intact — by moving roughly...