Eterne

At every auto show there are certain vehicles that generate a buzz (and a crowd). Many factors — newness, rarity, performance, looks, lavish features, revolutionary technology — can make a car a crowd puller. But at this year’s L.A. Auto Show, being sexy and green seems to be as important as being fast and expensive. We looked at a few of the models that have necks craning and cameras flashing at the L.A. Convention Center. BMW CONCEPT 6 SERIES COUPE This svelte four-seater is attracting an audience at the show because, though billed as a concept, it’s widely rumored to resemble the production third-generation 6 Series due in mid-2011 — and in this status-obsessed city, we all want to see what’ll be in our neighbors’ driveways next year.

Richard Griffiths was an actor of enormous size. He was physically big - obese to the point of sometimes needing a cane to get around. But his mind and soul were equally large, and his eloquence was so prodigious that playwright Alan Bennett found in him an ideal interpreter of his magnificently articulate art. He will live on as Harry Potter's unsympathetic Uncle Vernon, but I shall remember him for his portrayal of Hector in Bennett's "The History...

It was very interesting to learn, through The Times (Feb. 16) that NASA's Ames Research Center's supercomputer has calculated pi to the 29,360,000 decimal place. This sounds like an attempt to explain eternity, for which there is an old aphorism: Every hundred years a sparrow rubs its beak on a mountain. When the mountain is worn down, that is a moment of eternity! HELEN LEE Studio City

JERUSALEM - Opening his first presidential visit to the nation's closest Mideast ally, President Obama declared Wednesday that "peace must come to the Holy Land" during a red carpet arrival ceremony with Israeli leaders. In remarks after landing at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Obama described the U.S.-Israeli bond as “eternal,” the apparent theme of the three-day trip. The words "unbreakable alliance" are emblazoned on official signs, shirts, flyers and mugs all over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Why is Marilyn Monroe still an American icon 50 years after her death? She is endlessly analyzed in films and biographies; her image appears on T-shirts and posters; her popularity is reflected in the 52,000 Marilyn-related items for sale on EBay. My USC students, fixated on contemporary pop culture, know little about 1950s Hollywood stars, except for Monroe. Like everyone else, they puzzle over her death, respond to her beauty, recognize her paradoxes: the ur-blond child-woman, the virgin-whore of the Western imagination.

In June 1954, a small advertisement ran in the Wall Street Journal: "Biblical manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC are for sale. " The commercial offering was the start of a long and controversial path for the Dead Sea Scrolls, a cache of fragmentary writings in Hebrew and Aramaic (with a few in Greek) that were found in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. The ancient documents include early copies of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible and have been called, justifiably, the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

How does a regular 10-hour flight to Germany from LAX turn into an 18-hour drag? Simple--the Boeing 747 is five hours late arriving from Frankfurt, and we arrive three hours early as recommended for check-in. As the clerk hands us our boarding passes she adds in passing: Oh, by the way, you know we're running a few hours late! How should we know? Nothing is posted at the entrance, and once you arrive at the airport you're stuck anyway. Lesson: Call before you leave home and hope you get correct information about delays.

My dear art lovers, critics, editors and reporters of the things going on in the great city of Los Angeles. I, Michael Harries, am humbly requesting that you send me the tawdry picture of Edy Williams for my collection of scantily clad women. I have long admired Miss, or Ms., Williams' body, and do truly feel that I would give the still of Edy Williams a good home, and place her picture right next to my large poster of Elvira. I enclose $1 to cover postage, or as a bribe, whichever you prefer.

People who travel widely and are drawn to exhibitions of ancient art sometimes get the impression that an entire layer of civilization lies under the crust of earth we stand on. For those who survey a map of China in the catalogue for "The Quest for Eternity: Chinese Ceramic Sculpture From the People's Republic of China," at the County Museum of Art (through Jan. 3), the impression may solidify into a conviction.

In June 1954, a small advertisement ran in the Wall Street Journal: "Biblical manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC are for sale. " The commercial offering was the start of a long and controversial path for the Dead Sea Scrolls, a cache of fragmentary writings in Hebrew and Aramaic (with a few in Greek) that were found in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. The ancient documents include early copies of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible and have been called, justifiably, the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Bless San Diego designer Curtis Micklish, designer of the Armadilla, which holds the answer to one of life's most irritating questions: "Where's the remote?" Micklish designed the Armadilla as a place to hold all of those ugly remote controls that can litter the coffee table or get lost in the sofa cushions. His handmade design consists of maple slats attached to a neoprene backing, creating a flexible piece that drapes over the armrest of a sofa. Lift the magnetic closure, and inside you'll find a magnetic plate that holds up to four remotes in place.

A great power without a significant enemy? That's what the U.S. has become. Osama bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is reportedly a shadow of its former self. The great regional threats of the moment, North Korea and Iran, are regimes held together by baling wire and the suffering of their populaces. The only incipient great power rival on the planet, China, has just launched its first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Ukrainian throwaway from the 1990s on whose deck the country has no planes capable of landing.

Why is Marilyn Monroe still an American icon 50 years after her death? She is endlessly analyzed in films and biographies; her image appears on T-shirts and posters; her popularity is reflected in the 52,000 Marilyn-related items for sale on EBay. My USC students, fixated on contemporary pop culture, know little about 1950s Hollywood stars, except for Monroe. Like everyone else, they puzzle over her death, respond to her beauty, recognize her paradoxes: the ur-blond child-woman, the virgin-whore of the Western imagination.

Marilyn Monroe certainly achieved fame in the course of her 36-year lifetime, but in the five decades since her death, she's become such a celebrity-branding superstar, it often feels as if America's proto-platinum pinup never really left the building at all. She is routinely referenced in store windows and on runways; her image graces such products as glossy magazine covers and wine bottles; and her persona regularly flickers to new life on TV and...

Woody Allen's "To Rome With Love" is an affectionate but meandering comedy that contemplates romance, fame, legacy and longing. It comes with much of the lightness and love for one of Europe's great cities that made last year's "Midnight in Paris" so charming but little of the intellectual and emotional rigor that ultimately turned that film into something magical. Like Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi), a young provincial wife who quickly gets turned around in the Italian capital, audiences will be wishing for a map - the better to follow all the competing themes of "To Rome With Love.

Fred Zinnemann, who won directing Oscars for 1953's World War II drama "From Here to Eternity" and 1966's historical epic "A Man for All Seasons," never played by the rules. He rankled under the studio system and fought to get the films he wanted to make, not the inconsequential pictures the studios chose for him. "What he was interested in were characters who had to fight for what they believed in against all odds," said his son, Tim Zinnemann. "That is how he was in life. " So it's no wonder that the Getty Research Institute's retrospective on Zinnemann is called "Cinema of Resistance" because it reflects both the themes of his films and his personal philosophy.

NEW YORK - Oh, to be ignorant again. At least that's what Tim Rice is thinking as he looks back on his 26-year-old self. "It's a great advantage not to have a clue as to what you're up to," he says. "My son Donald, who has just finished his first film, said something I wish I'd said: 'You should make the most of your inexperience because you'll never get it back.' And it's true. " What has put Rice in such a ruminative mood are the Broadway revivals this season of his two early shows with Andrew Lloyd Webber,"Jesus Christ Superstar" (1970)