By Charly SHELTON 2016 has been an impressive year for CVW’s Leisure section. New theme park rides and lands, incredibly successful movies, cool new TV shows, the return of fan favorites like Harry Potter (in a new play), Darth Vader (in “Rogue One”) and “Ghostbusters” (not that anyone really wanted it back), and the beginning […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE It’s easy to lose track of the fact that beneath the encrustations that have disfigured the Christmas season — the avarice, the sentimentality, and above all the sales, sales, sales — there remain the holiday’s roots, perhaps looking worn, but still plunging deep into the soil of religious rite. Music, Beethoven once […]
By Charly SHELTON All that glitters is not gold. Sometimes its rubies, sapphires, kunzite, iron pyrite or diamonds. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles is hosting a new mini-exhibit on glittery, shiny, sparkly diamonds. We all know diamonds – they are tiny, clear and super hard. According to De Beers Diamonds, they are the […]
By Susan JAMES While the male superhero world of Marvel debates the pros and cons of a solo Natasha Romanoff (aka the Black Widow) film and the universe of Harry Potter replaces the brilliant and irritating Hermione with the passive and colorless Porpentina, the “Star Wars” franchise, home to Princess Leia, Queen Amidala and the […]
By Charly SHELTON The holidays are full of laughter and cheer, giving and gathering, eggnog and gingerbread. And each year, local theme parks pull out all the stops to bring holiday cheer to those who visit them. This week, we head over to the theme park closest to the Crescenta Valley – Universal Studios Hollywood. […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE As Christmas looms ever nearer, performances of sacred and secular music inspired by the holiday proliferate accordingly. Two of the region’s finest chamber music organizations – Dilijan Chamber Series and Salastina Music Society – will be devoting programs this weekend to performances of the former. Across three days and in just as […]
By Vincent PAGE Imagine meeting someone online during a busy workday. Due to the distance between you two, you are unable to meet and take your relationship to the next level. Eventually you two fall for each other despite never meeting each other. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? Now put that situation in the 1990s amid […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE Performances of Handel’s “Messiah” have engraved in listeners’ minds two things: Christmas and huge masses of singers and instrumentalists. “I want a bloody row,” roared Sir Thomas Beecham at the Philadelphia Orchestra’s management when they suggested trimming the number of musicians for a scheduled performance of Mozart symphonies in the late 1950s […]
By Steve ZALL and Sid FISH With Christmas nearly here, everyone is getting busy with holiday season events – but don’t forget to include a night at the theatre, taking in a holiday production such as: OPENING “Bob’s Holiday Office Party” Every year, insurance agent Bob Finhead’s whacked out friends and clients stop by his […]
By Nestor CASTIGLIONE There is a wide streak of melancholy in the artistic works of the Czech nation, which comes as no surprise given how its citizens were beaten and subjugated by their more powerful neighbors across the centuries. It was the Habsburg Empire that first overran its borders, followed much later by Nazi Germany, […]