Bewitched

The home of the late Sol Saks, the creator of the sitcom "Bewitched," has sold in Sherman Oaks for $1.2 million. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom midcentury house of nearly 2,900 square feet sits on a flat half-acre lot with mature landscaping. Saks, who died in April at 100, wrote the pilot script for "Bewitched," collecting royalties for the series that ran from 1964 to 1972 but never writing another episode. Other writing credits include the screenplay for "Walk, Don't Run" (1966)

Maybe there really are supernatural forces at work in this world. How else to explain "Beautiful Creatures"? The movie is an intriguing, intelligent enigma - three words not typically associated with teen romances. A couple of unknown heartthrobs provide the film's X-factor, while its angst lies in true love's struggle against otherworldly powers, Civil War flashbacks, literary conceits and high school friction. Besides, any film that credibly references poet Charles Bukowski has my attention.

Sol Saks, a veteran television writer and playwright who created the classic 1960s sitcom "Bewitched," has died. He was 100. Saks, a longtime Sherman Oaks resident, died Saturday of respiratory failure as a result of pneumonia at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his wife, Sandra. Although Saks wrote the pilot script for the sitcom "Bewitched," he never penned another episode of the popular series about a witch married to a mortal. It ran on ABC from 1964 to 1972 and starred Elizabeth Montgomery and, originally, Dick York.

The witch hunters are headed for a box-office bull's-eye this weekend. "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" has a lock on No. 1 at the box office with an expected opening of about $30 million, according to peole who have seen pre-release audience surveys. A spokeswoman for distributor Paramount Pictures said the studio is expecting a more modest debut of a little over $20 million. The action-oriented retelling of the classic fable will easily exceed two other new movies: "Parker," which stars Jason Statham in a crime thriller based on a series of novels, and the ensemble comedy "Movie 43. " Photos: Costliest flops | All-time leaders | Billion-dollar films Both are expected to have weak openings of less than $10 million.

With the feature film version of the long-running sitcom "Bewitched" starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell opening Friday, Sony Home Entertainment is releasing the first season of the series on DVD ($40) as well as the ill-fated 1977 spinoff "Tabitha" ($30). "The Complete First Season" of the 1964-65 ABC series is being offered in the original black-and-white and -- horrors! -- a colorized version.

It started out as a dark satire of the late '60s and its shifting morality, then became a big-haired '80s horror-show dominated by special effects and Jack Nicholson's eyebrows. And now, it's on its way to entering the world again as an easygoing television show, set in the first decade of the 21st century, about women's friendship and aimed at the "Desperate Housewives" crowd. (It's even shot in the old town square from "Gilmore Girls.") That's a pretty rich afterlife for a novel considered somewhere between an anomaly for its author and a misogynist classic.

Carina CHOCANO, in her review of "Bewitched," wants to know "who's going to buy Nicole Kidman as an unknown nonactress living in the Valley?" ["Suburban 'Bewitched' Takes Hollywood Detour," June 24]. If you buy the fact that she is a real-life witch who can cast spells with a twitch, who cares? Michael Karger Manhattan Beach

Kudos to Elizabeth Montegomery for another fine performance, this time in "Sins of the Mother." Montegomery is a marvelous actress and I'm glad I can see her regularly on "Bewitched" reruns. George Chin, Canoga Park

"Amos," with Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Montgomery, had to be the most brilliant television movie I've seen this year. Montgomery displayed her true talent for portraying a "witch." Her performance was incredible. However, with all the reunion movies on television lately, I would love to see a revival of "Bewitched." All I've seen Montgomery do in the last decade is heavy drama. Enough already. Let's see some comedy. I believe it to be her forte. Isn't it harder to make people laugh than cry anyway?

A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft. New York-based Human Rights Watch said religious police who arrested Fawza Falih and the judges who tried her in Quraiyat, Saudi Arabia, never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in law." The judges relied on a coerced confession and on the statements of witnesses who said she had "bewitched" them, according to the group.

This review has been updated. The sound of two women singing in close harmony can give a special feeling of pleasure and even exhilaration. It is a sound not restricted to French art song, but the French especially cultivated it during the belle époque era, 1880 to World War I. This was the era lovingly mined by soprano Renée Fleming and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in a joint recital Saturday at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The quintessential example would be the "Duo des fleurs" from Delibes' "Lakmé," appropriated as an ad by British Airways for its sense of classy uplift.

The Raven Boys A Novel Maggie Stiefvater Scholastic: 416 pp., $17.99, ages 12 and up In a young-adult market crowded with copycats, it's refreshing to find a book that blazes a path as unique as Maggie Stiefvater's "The Raven Boys. " The first title in the "Raven Cycle" quartet is a dizzying paranormal romance tinged with murder and Welsh mythology that brings a family of oddball psychics into contact with the rarefied world of teen blue bloods. It's an apocryphal idea that at times suffers from the complicated plot work required to pull it off, but like Stiefvater's bestselling werewolfian romance, the "Shiver" trilogy, and most recently her Michael L. Printz honor book about Celtic water horses, "The Scorpio Races," its originality and compelling characters are probably strong enough to pull readers through to the series' conclusion.

If your taste for cheesy movie horror has been ill-fed by the current vogue for moody found-footage pieces, the 3-D Bollywood entry"Raaz 3" -- forged from equal parts"All About Eve," Orpheus and the blood-sex oeuvre of Hammer and Brian De Palma -- could pick up the slack. Felicitously erotic Bipasha Basu brings some old-school witchy vengeance to the part of Shanaya, a fading leading lady so unnerved by the rising prominence of a sweetly sexy newcomer (Esha Gupta) that she calls on black magic spirits -- and the help of her director boyfriend (Emraan Hashmi)

As the director of more than 100 episodes of the enduringly classic 1950s sitcom "I Love Lucy," William Asher considered the first episode he directed to be one of his most memorable: Lucy and Ethel working in a chocolate factory. But for Asher, who died Monday at 90, his second "I Love Lucy" episode was even more memorable: He put his job on the line after discovering that Lucille Ball was giving cast members line readings and stage directions behind the scenes. "So I went to her and said, 'Lucy, I know what you're doing.

The home of the late Sol Saks, the creator of the sitcom "Bewitched," has sold in Sherman Oaks for $1.2 million. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom midcentury house of nearly 2,900 square feet sits on a flat half-acre lot with mature landscaping. Saks, who died in April at 100, wrote the pilot script for "Bewitched," collecting royalties for the series that ran from 1964 to 1972 but never writing another episode. Other writing credits include the screenplay for "Walk, Don't Run" (1966)

Sol Saks, a veteran television writer and playwright who created the classic 1960s sitcom "Bewitched," has died. He was 100. Saks, a longtime Sherman Oaks resident, died Saturday of respiratory failure as a result of pneumonia at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his wife, Sandra. Although Saks wrote the pilot script for the sitcom "Bewitched," he never penned another episode of the popular series about a witch married to a mortal. It ran on ABC from 1964 to 1972 and starred Elizabeth Montgomery and, originally, Dick York.

Try this at home, kids: Watch a really preachy "Afterschool Special," but use the remote to switch channels intermittently, being sure to hit the occasional MTV rap video, a "Bewitched" rerun or two, and plenty of commercials in which pretty young people hold brand names up to the camera. Congratulations. In less-than-scientific and highly cost-effective conditions, you've just reproduced the exact experience of paying $6 to watch "Teen Witch" (citywide), complete with teen wish-fulfillment fantasies, condescending moralizing, asinine musical montages, horrifying pop songs, French kissing, blatant product plugs and Dick Sargent (formerly of "Bewitched")

ARDMORE, Pa.  - It is hard to know whether this year's U.S. Open golf tournament will be remembered for Justin Rose's victory or Phil Mickelson's defeat. Rose is 32 years old, an Englishman born in South Africa, who was a prodigy as early as 17 with his tie for fourth place as an amateur in the 1998 British Open. Recently, he has been seen as somebody who hasn't won a major but certainly should. Now he has, making birdies on Nos. 12 and 13 and holding on for a one-shot victory with his closing 70, an even-par finale that left him at an unusual 72-hole winning total of one-over 281. The real answer to how this U.S. Open will be remembered may rest with the course it was played on, Merion Golf Club, which yielded nothing.

It started out as a dark satire of the late '60s and its shifting morality, then became a big-haired '80s horror-show dominated by special effects and Jack Nicholson's eyebrows. And now, it's on its way to entering the world again as an easygoing television show, set in the first decade of the 21st century, about women's friendship and aimed at the "Desperate Housewives" crowd. (It's even shot in the old town square from "Gilmore Girls.") That's a pretty rich afterlife for a novel considered somewhere between an anomaly for its author and a misogynist classic.

Cheryl Holdridge, the beautiful blond actress who first gained fame as a Mouseketeer on TV's "The Mickey Mouse Club" in the 1950s, has died. She was 64. Holdridge died Tuesday at her home in Santa Monica after a two-year battle with lung cancer, said Doreen Tracey, another former Mouseketeer. "What's amazing is that Cheryl and I have gone through so many things together, I'm glad I could have been there in the end too," Tracey said Thursday.