Lights

One of Southern California's most impressive holiday events, the Riverside Festival of Lights, kicks off at the historic Mission Inn in downtown Riverside. Get a view of millions of festive lights, more than 400 animated characters, and enjoy live entertainment, an ice-skating rink and vendors. Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, 3649 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside. 5 p.m. daily Friday through Jan. 8. (951) 543-9557.

Albert Dupontel is a popular French comedy actor and film director whose heroes are Charlie Chaplin and "Monty Python's Flying Circus. " Katell Quillévéré, one of the France's up-and-coming filmmakers, lists among her influences Douglas Sirk and John Cassavetes. Dupontel and Quillévéré are making their first appearance at the City of Lights, City of Angels film festival, which will showcase the diversity of contemporary French cinema at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles through Monday.

It's calendar season, and design fans have lots of options: Taschen's celebration of Antoni Gaudí, Pentagram's popular typographic extravaganza for font freaks, and Blue Ant Studio's annual (and free) print-it-yourself calendar depicting classic chairs. For anyone looking for a midcentury motif, check out the Bubble lights calendar featuring the original 1950s advertisements and a brief design history by architectural writer and Home contributor Jeffrey Head. Just last week we reported that George Nelson's classic white lamps are being reissued with colored shades, but the Bubble calendar includes a 1953 ad that offers this wise alternative: If you want a little drama, just add a colored light bulb.

Onstage at a sold-out McCabe's in Santa Monica on Saturday night, Mary Gauthier immediately jumped into songs from her forthcoming album, “Trouble & Love,” offering up “False From True” and the title track. Then she explained to the audience that she had decided to bring out the new material at the start “so you wouldn't think the new songs accidentally got happy.” Even before her critically lauded 2005 breakthrough, “Mercy Now,” the Louisiana-born singer and songwriter recorded three albums that shone a light on some of the darkest corners of the human heart, but in a way that ultimately uplifts listeners.

A new wireless speaker system from Klipsch can deliver ambient party music from where you might least expect it: your recessed ceiling lights. The LightSpeaker showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show combines a 20-watt speaker with an LED bulb rated for 40,000 hours -- about 15 years of typical use. The device is as easy to install as a regular screw-in light bulb, and the energy-sipping LED substitutes for traditional bulbs that might consume three...

Re "Senator tells Edison to fix blackouts," Sept. 17 Cheers to state Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) for his work in making Southern California Edison aware of its responsibilities to its customers. Thinking back on my experience with utility service failures, a better solution to the problem of making utilities like Edison responsible might be to require the company to give deep discounts to customers affected by "massive, recurring and unacceptable power outages," as Lieu called them.

Humphrey Bogart Hamilton did not like Indiana. He liked California. He'd been born there; he'd lived there his whole life. Then his dad came home and told the family about his new job … in Indianapolis. In Indiana. "Wherever that is," Bo mumbled. They moved in February. It was cold. It was snowy. He didn't know anyone. Everything looked dead. There was no ocean; there was only a pond, and it was frozen. The worst was the day, after a huge snowstorm, that his dad said, "Hey, Bo, I've got a present for you!"

What's all this drivel in your editorial (Dec. 18), "Lights Out," about elaborate precautions to be taken to preserve the operational integrity of the Mount Palomar telescope? Turn out the lights, mandate a billboard blackout and install low-sodium lamps? Nonsense! Within 10 years, probably much sooner if our accelerated space programs are an indicator, we will be making astronomical observations with telescopes mounted in shuttles or other space apparatus with a thousand times the clarity and exploration potential at a fraction of the cost of existing methods.

First, the Los Angeles Times dropped the Monday science page. Now Tony Perry's column ("The Stargazers vs. We the People: Battling Over Orange Street Lights," San Diego At Large, April 26) trashes "the intelligentsia" in a diatribe reminiscent of George Wallace's gibberish in 1968 about "pointy-headed . . . intellectuals." Is this Perry's revenge for flunking out of science in high school? What's next, a hit piece on Mr. Wizard? MICHAEL GANNIS, Del Mar

In response to "Berliners Form 'Chain of Lights' Against Racism," Dec. 26: I am a foreign exchange student from Stuttgart, Germany, staying for one year with an American family. In Germany before I left, there were never any serious political demonstrations. People were not that much interested in politics. Now after all those terrible neo-Nazi acts in both eastern and western Germany, Germans have started to care more about their political system. They are standing up. They are trying to influence what is happening in politics and be part of a great democratic system, which provides so many rights for everybody.

BEIJING - On the first Sunday of March, China awoke to sickening news: Black-clad attackers with knives had hacked through crowds at the train station in the southern city of Kunming, killing 29 and injuring more than 140. Reporters leaped into action, gathering details from victims in their hospital beds. President Xi Jinping urged all-out efforts to investigate the slaughter. The incident was quickly dubbed "China's 9/11. " But by nightfall Monday, the state-run New China News Agency signaled that it was time to move on. "Kunming railway station serious violent terror case is successfully solved," its headline said.

JERUSALEM - Thousands of people gathered at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday for the lighting of the “holy fire,” an annual ritual marking the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ after his crucifixion. The Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem battled his way through crowds shortly after midday to enter the church's small chapel, where what is believed to be Jesus' tomb is located. Minutes later, the pilgrims inside the small basilica cheered as he emerged carrying two lit bundles of 33 candles each symbolizing the age of Jesus at the time of his death.

A Korean Airlines plane struck some light poles at Los Angeles International Airport, causing slight damage to one of its wings, authorities said Thursday. The incident occurred about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, airport officials said, according to L.A. Airspace, a Daily Breeze news blog. The Associated Press reported: The plane's right wing was scratched, but no one was injured. Two 30-foot light poles were bent. The A380 is the world's largest commercial airliner, carrying passengers in a double-deck configuration.

Officials said two fire trucks had their lights and sirens running when they collided Wednesday afternoon in Monterey Park, sending one careening into a restaurant.  Monterey  Park Fire Chief Jim  Birrell said the trucks -- one from Monterey Park, the other from Alhambra -- were responding to a house fire in south Monterey Park when they crashed at the intersection of Emerson and Garfield avenues about 3:15 p.m. Officials now...

Shawne Merriman once knocked four opposing players unconscious during a single high school football game. Can Nike make such a claim? Doubt it. Yet, the company is using "Lights Out" -- the nickname Merriman says he earned after that game -- as the name of one of its athletic apparel lines. That strikes a nerve with the former NFL star, who used the nickname throughout his career and performed a celebratory dance of the same name after sacks. And he's doing something about it. On Monday a lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Merriman's Lights Out Holdings LLC against Nike for trademark infringement and unfair competition.

If you never ask the question, you'll never know the answer.  That truism worked two times over for "Breaking Bad" fan Stefan Montana, who last week asked Bryan Cranston - a.k.a. Walter White - to help him ask his friend Maddie to the junior prom.  The answer to both questions was, happily, yes! When approached outside the theater where he's onstage as President Lyndon B. Johnson in "All the Way," Cranston obliged Montana by delivering a version of a classic "Breaking Bad" line: "Maddie, if you don't go to the prom with Stefan," he said, "then maybe your best course of action would be to tread lightly.

"Keep the Lights On" is a haunting, immersive portrait of a romance between two men, one that's marked - and marred - by both drug dependency and emotional codependency. Not unlike last year's gay-themed drama, "Weekend," it proves an important and mature piece of business. Director Ira Sachs ("The Delta," "Married Life"), who co-wrote this semi-autobiographical film with Mauricio Zacharias, places his lead characters under a magnifying glass in ways that often evoke Bergman and Cassavetes, while still maintaining his own distinct, impressive style.

The first lunar eclipse of 2014 - known as "blood moon" - is lighting up social media tonight as people post photos of the moon and the eclipse. Large crowd descended on the Griffith Observatory to look at the eclipse. They posted a variety of photos on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Here is a sampling:   In Los Angeles, the most impressive part began around 11 p.m. when the first "bite" is taken out of the moon. It will be blotted out entirely by 12:06 a.m. Tuesday, said experts at the observatory.

This is not a review, exactly, of the new season of "Mad Men," its seventh and, depending on how you slice it, its last. In order to hang on to this jewel as long as is seemly, AMC will divide its 14 episodes into two parts, to conclude in 2015. It could dollop it out over 14 years, I suppose, each year bringing a single new hour, as precious as that new Wu-Tang album. But there is only so much the people will stand. This is also not a review partly because Matthew Weiner, whose creation this is, is finicky about spoilers - "finicky" doesn't really do it justice.