A&E Articles

Thursday evening is beach party time for the 7 p.m. performance in the Summer Sunset Concert Series in the Courtyard of City Hall. The Surf City All-Stars, who have been here before, are the attraction. Admission is free, and so is parking, underground, at City Hall for this fourth concert in the weekly series.

Even though the 4^th of July fireworks spectacular in Culver City — the gates open at 5 on Tuesday evening —is rich in history and tradition, the crucial preparations are the direct opposite of every other holiday. Usually, the setup is done under the usually helpful cover of darkness. When the brightness of daylight arrives, the background for the holiday looks as if it has been waiting in place for you for years. On the 4^th of July, though, family men such as the attorney Andy Weissman, and the Vice Mayor Alan Corlin, Culver City’s most eligible mid-life bachelor, link arms with fleets of comrades. Like an invading army, they head over to the athletic field at Culver City High School to lavishly dress it so that the layout will look elegant and beautiful by the time children and taller persons begin wandering in just ahead of the dinner hour.

A few weeks have passed since the release of the controversy that squeaked, namely The DaVinci Code. Like most Hollywood hullabaloos, the dust settled down rather quickly despite news headlines about boycotts, waving fists, distraught Vatican officials and equally upset Christians. As far as I’m concerned, the real controversy is how such a poorly written and blandly crafted film — surprising, given Ron Howard at the helm  — could be so popular. But the more interesting issue is how it is supposedly anti-Christian with a story to “challenge” people’s faith.  

Disclaimer: I can’t really speak about Dan Brown’s book, since I never read it. I tried reading the prequel, Angels & Demons. I couldn’t make it past a few chapters of Brown’s painful, puerile prose. My comments, then, apply to the movie.

Scarcely any Westside neighborhood can match the sheer beauty of Ladera Heights on a sunshine-bathed afternoon, especially when the undulating hillsides frame the portrait of an engaging and accomplished young woman. In the process of — almost accidentally — transforming the social lives of unsuspecting young students in Compton, the performer-teacher Carol Bristol-Henry has instituted a tradition that will be renewed on Saturday evening. With an assist from four professional friends, guest artists whom their teacher has recruited, three dozen boys and girls between the ages 5 and 18 will artfully glide across the stage of the University Theatre of Cal State Dominguez Hills, 1000 E. Victoria St., Carson, at 7:30 p.m. Among the professional performers on the program are are Dwana Smallwood, the principal dancer with the prestigious Alvin Ailey American Dance Co., and Crystal Michelle of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Co. “They like the idea of giving back to the community and sharing their art,” Ms. Bristol-Henry told thefrontpageonline.com. The celebratory occasion at Cal State Dominguez Hills is the Compton Dance Theatre Foundation’s fourth Spring Dance Concert.

It was 120 degrees in the shade in Palm Springs last weekend, and there was very little shade when I drove there to check out the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival/ It ran from June 1-4 at the Camelot Theater, which offers a comfortable 400-seat auditorium in a shopping mall in the center of town.

I’m not a particular fan of any genre of film. I just like good
movies. "The Maltese Falcon," with Humphrey Bogart, is one of my favorite films. I think it set the style and tone for hundreds of noir films that followed.

An Inconvenient Truth offers a portrait of a man and a plea for a planet in jeopardy. The man, of course, is former Vice President Al Gore, who jokingly introduces himself as the man who “used to be the next president of the United States.” It’s characteristic of a self-deprecating sense of humor that may come from his image during the 2000 presidential election campaign. But as tempting as it might be to believe that Mr. Gore embodied playwright Vaclav Havel’s words, “Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not,” the film offers a glimpse into Mr. Gore that goes beyond refuting his image as a stiff intellectual.