Cinderella

The Joffrey Ballet brings its production of Frederick Ashton's "Cinderella," set to Sergey Prokofiev's stunning score, to downtown for five performances. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. 135 N. Grand Ave. Thu., Fri., Sat. 7:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. matinees 2 p.m. (213) 972-7211. www.musiccenter.org

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom A Novel Christopher Healy HarperCollins: 432 pp., $16.99, ages 8 and up Whether it's Cinderella or Snow White, Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty, princes play a key role in the happily ever afters of fairy tales. But what happens once these dashing young lads have swooped in to save their distressed damsels? What if, as Christopher Healy theorizes with his cheeky middle-grade debut, these princes turned out to be insufferable losers?

American Ballet Theatre soloist Giuseppe Picone has been injured and will not dance the role of the prince today in the company's production of "Cinderella" at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Picone, scheduled to dance opposite Paloma Herrera, also missed Thursday evening's performance. Herrera will dance with Marcelo Gomes this afternoon. (714) 556-2787.

MEMPHIS - A lifetime watching sports, and just wow! The emotional high belongs to the Grizzlies. They send out an 8-year-old girl from St. Jude's to sing the national anthem, and the noise never stops. There are fireworks, the music louder than anything Lon Rosen tried to introduce to Dodger Stadium, and it looks as if a professional basketball team is taking on well-meaning church league players. PHOTOS: Clippers vs. Grizzlies, Game 1 This one is over after the first quarter.

As saccharine as it is disposable, this pillow mint of a movie stars Jennifer Lopez as Marisa Ventura, a single mom from the Bronx who catches the eye of an ambitious politician, Christopher Marshall (Ralph Fiennes), while working as a maid in a swank Park Avenue hotel. Marshall, a world-class Lothario and the scion of a political dynasty, accidentally takes Marisa for the wealthy ninny (Natasha Richardson) encamped in a neighboring suite.

Little Broadway Productions' musical "Cinderella" at the Showboat Dinner Theatre in Woodland Hills offers amusing variations on the familiar fairy tale, but with a paucity of pizazz, the show never lives up to its humorous potential. Several clever devices are undersold. Narrator Corky Dominguez, in black tuxedo and red tennis shoes, opens the show with "We're All Special," a song-and-dance number. The cast assembles on stage and freezes in position.

Thank you, Georgetown. Thank you for not even thinking about letting St. John's, the sentimental favorite, slip by you and into the NCAA championship game Monday night. Thank you for setting up the confrontation the nation's fans really want to see, but didn't realize it until now--Cinderella vs. the Ugly Stepsisters. I mean nothing personal by that, of course. It's just that a lot of fans see you as the bad guys, as bullies and thugs.

Breaking a wicked stepmother's curse, Disneyland's fairytale princesses will be whisked away from their crowded one-room temporary home in 2013 and magically transported to a spacious new storybook village more befitting of their royal lineage. Blame Rapunzel for the extreme home makeover after Disney's newest princess moved into her own brand-new Fantasyland home in 2010 and immediately drew hour-plus lines to her "Tangled" meet-and-greet location. In a fit of jealous rage, Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty demanded an upgrade from their windowless, doorless and roofless slapdash digs in an old converted theater.

If there is one thing that Fred Coury can't stand, it is stupid questions. Not that his job, as drummer with the hard-rock band Cinderella, finds him facing questions very often; mostly, he just drums. But when he does interviews, there is one question that so annoys him that he is actually grateful when it does not come up. "Thanks for not asking where we got the name of the band," he said over the phone from his hotel room in Columbia, S.C. "Everybody else asks, 'So tell me, how'd you get the name of the band?

Cinder A Novel Marissa Meyer Feiwel and Friends: 390 pp., $17.99, ages 12 and older Few fairy tales have been as endlessly reimagined and riffed upon as Cinderella. The beloved rags-to-riches story of an oppressed beauty whose kind nature is rewarded with the rare happily-ever-after ending has been turned into countless movies, ballets, books - even an ice show. Now it's getting a feminist, futuristic makeover in Marissa Meyer's terrific young-adult debut, "Cinder," the kickoff to the four-book Lunar Chronicles series that will incorporate fellow fairy-tale heroines Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Snow White.

OK, by a show of hands, how many of you really want to see Real Madrid play Barcelona — again! — in the UEFA Champions League final? Yeah, thought so. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. There's little doubt the two Spanish clubs are the best in the world and deserve to play for the title. Real Madrid, which meets Germany's Bayern Munich in a two-leg Champions League semifinal series beginning April 17, is scoring at a record pace with 100 goals through 30 La Liga matches heading into the weekend, an average of 3.3 goals a game.

It's been a bumpy ride for the custom motorcycle business as sales of pricey, blinged-out bikes skidded with the economy. But one bike scene is thriving, and that's been a boon for Ryca Motors in Whittier. The company sells build-it-yourself motorcycles that cost $3,600 to $7,500, or a fraction of the cost of souped-up custom bikes. Its CS-1 Cafe Racer is the creation of builders Ryan Rajewski and Casey Stevenson, who decided that if they were going to go to all the trouble of building a one-off, they might as well reproduce all the parts and offer them as a kit. The result is a motorcycle with all the style of a classic street racer at a far lower price.

March Madness has officially struck, and the ringmaster of the activity is taking his seat behind the ESPN studio desk. Dick Vitale, who called the cable network's first college basketball game in 1979, then made his Final Four debut working North Carolina State's 1983 upset of Houston, has become the face of the hysteria connected to the buzzer-beating, upset-packed action. As the 68-team field of the NCAA men's basketball tournament became set Sunday, Vitale weighs in. I'm not sure there's better paid days off than the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament.

Disneyland Paris will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a new nighttime spectacular in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle and a revamped evening parade starting in April. The Disney Dreams show will feature castle projections, water screens, dancing fountains, pyrotechnic displays and laser effects that combine elements from the Magic, Memories, and You show at Florida's Magic Kingdom and World of Color at Disney California Adventure. PHOTOS: Disney Dreams water show at Disneyland Paris The new Disney Dreams nighttime spectacular at the French theme park will employ 30-foot-tall water screens in the moats in front of the castle that will serve as giant canvases for Disney animated scenes set to an original musical score.

Cinder A Novel Marissa Meyer Feiwel and Friends: 390 pp., $17.99, ages 12 and older Few fairy tales have been as endlessly reimagined and riffed upon as Cinderella. The beloved rags-to-riches story of an oppressed beauty whose kind nature is rewarded with the rare happily-ever-after ending has been turned into countless movies, ballets, books - even an ice show. Now it's getting a feminist, futuristic makeover in Marissa Meyer's terrific young-adult debut, "Cinder," the kickoff to the four-book Lunar Chronicles series that will incorporate fellow fairy-tale heroines Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Snow White.

There were the Nine Old Men, Walt Disney's famed founding animators, and then there was visual stylist Mary Blair. Along with such legends as Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas and Wolfgang Reitherman, Blair worked on the studio's animated features for more than 20 years — the only woman to have such a prominent role at Disney. "She influenced the tone of the picture with her use of color and design," said Michael Giaimo, art director on Disney's 1995 "Pocahontas" and visual development artist on 2004's "Home on the Range.

Sadistic stepsisters ham it up in wacky wigs, a haggy stepmother dresses in worse drag than Felicity Huffman in "Transamerica," and a skyscraperesque Prince comports himself better as a soloist than a noble partner. Such were the goings-on Friday at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts when Ballet Jorgen presented a sweet but ultimately unsatisfying "Cinderella."

Maguy Marin's dollhouse version of "Cinderella" is less a nostalgic view of lost childhood than a re-immersion in it: Childhood as a kid experiences it, with its cruelties, irrationalities and discontinuities, its needs and vulnerability. It is often not pretty. There are no drive-by shootings, but there's enough real family menace to push it into dangerous psychological depths.

You know the old saying, it's not over until the fat lady sings or Tom Lasorda gives up on you. Well, with 12 minutes 29 seconds remaining on the Rose Bowl clock, Lasorda pronounced the UCLA football team goners and walked off the field. If Lasorda can't get a rise out of you, you're dead. The guy is 84. He makes the drive to the Bruins' Pasadena hotel Saturday morning, gives them everything he has in a pep talk, rides the team bus to the Rose Bowl, makes the Bruin Walk through the crowd sweating in his Dodgers sweater, and did I mention he's 84?

Breaking a wicked stepmother's curse, Disneyland's fairytale princesses will be whisked away from their crowded one-room temporary home in 2013 and magically transported to a spacious new storybook village more befitting of their royal lineage. Blame Rapunzel for the extreme home makeover after Disney's newest princess moved into her own brand-new Fantasyland home in 2010 and immediately drew hour-plus lines to her "Tangled" meet-and-greet location. In a fit of jealous rage, Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty demanded an upgrade from their windowless, doorless and roofless slapdash digs in an old converted theater.