By Susan JAMES Taking advantage of 130,000 enthusiastic Comic-Con fans packed into San Diego’s Convention Center, Hollywood studios sent producers and casts of their best and brightest upcoming TV shows to screen pilots, answer questions and drum up support for their fall premieres. Two themes predominated: hardy band of warriors fight end of the world […]
By Susan JAMES What a difference a year makes, especially in television. At last year’s Comic-Con, the annual, highly anticipated media extravaganza held in San Diego’s Convention Center, producers and cast of the brand new ABC television show “Once Upon A Time” faced a room of a few hundred people, screened the show’s pilot and […]
The Shakespeare By The Sea theatre group returned again to Two Strike Park on Friday to perform for a crowd of anxious audience members. Families and couples brought picnic dinners, lawn chairs, blankets and other accoutrements to the park to spend an evening with Shakespeare’s classic “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” The production was set on […]
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (www.chinesetheatres.com) is turning 85 years old and announced a 25 cent-a-ticket offering for families on Saturdays at its Chinese 6 theatres in Hollywood. Each Saturday a classic family film will be featured at 10 a.m. This Saturday is Madagascar 1; on July 21 Puss in Boots; July 28 Kung Fu Panda 1; […]
By Charly SHELTON Have you ever wanted to see someone beheaded by chainsaw? Or strung up with chains? All this and more is in Oliver Stone’s new film, “Savages.” I, for one, have never wanted to see any of that. Ever. But sitting in the darkened theater, I found it difficult to look away from […]
By Charly SHELTON “The Avengers” came out this summer and it became the most successful film of all time that was not directed by Jim Cameron. Then “The Amazing Spider-Man” had a nice, big opening this last weekend over July 4th. And later this month, Batman makes his last hurrah on the big screen in […]
By Susan JAMES Director Marc Webb, with the help of an able cast, has spun pure gold from the overworked tale of a boy, a spider and the birth of a superhero. With “The Amazing Spider-Man,” Webb offers us a fully fleshed out origin story that is entertaining, at times comic and always involving. Framed […]
By Charly SHELTON Big things have been happening at Disney California Adventure. We visited Buena Vista Street, the 1920s-era land recently added to DCA. Then we saw Cars Land located in the same park, the biggest land expansion since the opening of Disneyland. And this week, to wrap it up, we will take a look […]
By Ted AYALA As fireworks whizzed and cracked in the night sky above and the USC Trojan Marching Band took the stage and added their powerful brasses to the closing bars of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” one thing became clear for the California Philharmonic and their music director Victor Vener: it was good to be […]