Artistry

I was hoping that Steve Hochman would include my favorite album of 2005, "Zucchero & Co.," in his "Riffing on the Grammy" [Oct. 2]. The Italian pop star Zucchero duets with John Lee Hooker, Sheryl Crow, Sting, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Macy Gray and others in a totally fresh and enjoyable blues and pop romp. All but one of the songs were written by Zucchero, whose gutsy, gravelly voice is pretty much unknown in the U.S. Here's hoping that this album will acquaint American music lovers with the talent of Zucchero and that we can soon see him appear live in the U.S. BILL MEAD Oak View

A six-story-tall Doritos vending machine served as the backdrop for performances by artists such as Snoop Dog, White Denim and Mystikal at last week's South by Southwest Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas. It was perhaps the most impressive display of corporate sponsorship at the annual festival, which started out 25 years ago as a way to showcase indie bands but has since become a massive, mainstream music event. Chevrolet, Pepsi and FreeCreditScore.com were among 10 official sponsors of the festival, while Taco Bell, Marlboro and Spotify joined other big business names whose banners adorned Austin's dozens of live music stages.

Elvis Presley "Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight" RCA/Legacy The easiest way to have put together the new Elvis Presley CD anniversary package would have been to simply fill the four discs with the rock icon's 104 Top 40 singles. But RCA/Legacy has given us something far more valuable in the boxed set, which is designed to commemorate what would have been Presley's 75th birthday on Jan. 8. "Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight" ignores half of the hits to make room for selections that document the best of Presley, including the pre-"Heartbreak Hotel" tracks that largely defined rock 'n' roll in the 1950s.

Reporting from Chicago — Later this week, when music director Riccardo Muti brings his Chicago Symphony Orchestra to Orange County for the first time in 25 years, it won't be to show off. The CSO doesn't have to. The fabled 121-year-old ensemble long ago earned itself a lofty niche among the world's elite bands. Nor does the charismatic, much-honored Neapolitan maestro have anything to prove personally. His vaunted career, which includes the directorships of the La Scala opera in Milan, the Philadelphia Orchestra and London's Philharmonia Orchestra, speaks for itself.

I always knew that Conrad was obscene, but I could never prove it. Well, I finally got the goods on him. It appeared in his finger-waving artistry (I can't call it a cartoon). It sure is a wonderful example of behavior for our generation. FRANK ALBERT Camarillo

Barbara Stanwyck always said of herself that she was lucky and that she merely "did her job." Luck turned out to be sheer talent, and her "job" sheer artistry. She was an actress who never gave less than everything. GREGORY FARMER Brea

It may be that HBO's "Hung" has as much artistry, sociological value, great acting and humanism as Reed Johnson's article suggests ("The Anatomy of a Dramedy," June 28), but if so, somebody should tell the HBO marketing department about it. Looming over Santa Monica Boulevard near Sepulveda is a huge billboard that blatantly superimposes these words over the faces of the two main characters: "HO" and "PIMP." HBO knows what it has and what it is selling. It has had to get down and dirty to compete with Showtime's "Californication," "Weeds" and "Secret Diary of a Call Girl."

The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television is getting a $6-million gift from David C. Copley, publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune. It will be used to endow a costume design chair at the school. "The artistry of costume designers has long been a vital part of storytelling in the cinematic and performing arts and deserves significant scholarly attention," Copley said in a statement.

Let me get this straight. (The entertainment industry) and the liberal community join to support 2 Live Crew's "artistry" that advocates tearing women's vaginas, breaking their backbones, anally raping them, followed by forced oral copulation, and then they complain because Hollywood doesn't treat women as equal to men? DAVID SPETNER, Los Angeles

By far, there has been too much posturing on the prospect of art and architecture among environmental designers in recent years. As a landscape architect, I applaud the Getty Trust's decision to afford three acres of the new Getty Center for Robert Irwin's artistry ("Uncommon Grounds," by Kristine McKenna, April 7). I'm eager to see and experience the result. JOHN CRANDELL Sunland

Jon Jones, an acrobatic 24-year-old light-heavyweight champion, is fast becoming the most marketable fighter in Ultimate Fighting Championship. Lyoto Machida is the increasingly desperate former champion, a 33-year-old karate specialist who needs to end the reluctant fighting style that cost him two bouts last year and start aggressively unloading his arsenal of skills. Together, the men have the chance to create a special fight Saturday night at UFC 140 in Toronto. "There could be some cool, tricky things going on in there," said Jones (14-1)

A series of circus vignettes depicts the experiences, memories and vision of a traveling circus performer at this installment of Circus Vargas. The animal-free extravaganza features death-defying motorcycle feats, aerial artistry, hilarious clown antics and more. Westfield Topanga, 6600 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park. 7:30 p.m. Thu., 4:30, 7:30 p.m. Fri., 2, 5, 8 p.m. Sat., 12:30, 3:30, 6:30 p.m. Sun., 6:30 p.m. Mon. $15-$50. http://www.cirusvargas.com.

The plot of Pedro Almodóvar's new feature, based on Thierry Jonquet's taut suspense novel "Mygale," pivots on an act of cruelty both barbarous and scientifically refined. The action spinning out from this crime involves a series of rapes, actual and imagined, and suicide attempts, successful and not. But "The Skin I Live In" is no gloomfest, and not merely because most of the grisly bits take place off-screen. With his expected flair, the Spanish filmmaker has concocted a heady blend of beauty and repulsion, Antonio Banderas inspiring the requisite loathing as the story's debonair mad genius.

Few 18th century authors have achieved the modern popular success that Jane Austen now enjoys. Her novels are always in print, and in the last decades they have been adapted into films and television miniseries, from "Sense and Sensibility," "Emma," Persuasion" and "Mansfield Park" to perhaps her best-known work, "Pride and Prejudice. " Now the story of the Bennet sisters has been adapted for the stage by Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan for a South Coast Repertory production that begins previews Friday and opens Sept.

It's been a big week for glittery, over-the-top and slightly perplexing contests. First the Grammy Awards ceremony, with its requisite preening and prancing and bizarre outfits, then two evenings of the Westminster dog show, which offered more of the same. Not that the Leonberger or Finnish spitz showed up in a giant egg, as Lady Gaga did Sunday night. Nor did fans of the bearded collie, which was among the runners-up for best in show, take to defacing the Wikipedia page of the night's big winner, the Scottish deerhound, as Justin Bieber's fans did to the Esperanza Spalding page when she beat him for best new artist.

Until a few years ago, the architects who won the commission to design Eli Broad's downtown Los Angeles museum were known for anything but the standard practice of architecture. Elizabeth Diller and Rick Scofidio, who are married, were more interested in being artists than architects, in running a small practice out of their Lower East Side loft ? even allowing the FedEx man to use their bathroom. They collaborated on theater performances, media shows and museum installations, and, for a long time, were best known for a banana-shaped house that was never built and a temporary pavilion on a Swiss lake that spewed fog. They once set up 2,400 orange traffic cones for 24 hours in Manhattan's Columbus Circle to understand driving patterns.

Michael Cieply's account of the Directors Guild's repudiation of Cecil B. DeMille's 1950 loyalty oath campaign conveys in passing a misimpression of John Ford's assessment of DeMille ("The Night They Dumped DeMille," June 4). In the course of delivering the coup de grace to DeMille's McCarthyite attack, Ford doubtless felt the need to say something favorable about DeMille before proceeding to skin him alive. He did not, however, "pronounce his respect for DeMille's artistry," as Cieply notes in passing.

Thank you for the beautiful article about Paul Salamunovich and the L.A. Master Chorale ("Many Voices, but One Man's Sound," by Elaine Dutka, Dec. 17). He is a great Los Angeles treasure. I was a student of his at Loyola Marymount from 1977 through 1981. They were memorable years. I was a poor student struggling to escape the dead-end world of my youth. Salamunovich and choral singing opened my eyes and ears to a better life. His combination of thoughtful artistry and discipline remain with me to this day. HELEN (CONN)

The judge looks somber, even severe. "Each product," he says with great solemnity, "is a moral dilemma. " Is he talking about matters of life and death, about issues that divide nations and citizens alike? No, he is talking about desserts. French desserts. Welcome to the alluring, irresistible world of "Kings of Pastry. " The French, no one needs to be told, take food and food preparation with extreme seriousness. "There are no 'all-you-can eat' places in France," one chef sniffs in this excellent Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker documentary.

While mainstream, mind-bending blockbusters such as "Inception" light Hollywood's fire, French art-house bad boy Gaspar Noé throws down his own gauntlet with the spectacular head trip "Enter the Void. " The Argentina-born Noé last divided filmgoers with the assaultive and gimmicky "Irréversible," notorious for a one-shot rape scene that lasted eight minutes. Where that movie's pummeling sensibility felt cheap, though, this one works you over in order to stretch you out. Probing the fuzzy, synaptic turbulence of drug culture and life-after-death — "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" is referenced early on, while Stanley Kubrick and Kenneth Anger get visual shout-outs — "Enter the Void" displays a dizzying virtuosity with the cinema of altered states.