ENTERTAINMENT
May 23, 2012 | By Margaret Gray
Reality TV has plenty to recommend it — even beyond Schadenfreude — but likable characters are not its long suit. “Nobody Loves You,” an original musical premiering at the Old Globe in San Diego, is about a fictional televised dating contest also called “Nobody Loves You,” a mash-up of “The Bachelor” and “Paradise Hotel” with some clever original twists. The risk of the premise is a parade of objectionable people mocking themselves in song.
ENTERTAINMENT
May 22, 2012 | By Chris Barton
Perhaps proving that nothing incites suspicion among New Yorkers quite like a public display of affection, artist and furniture designer Takeshi Miyakawa was placed under arrest this weekend for setting up illuminated "I Love New York" displays in a Brooklyn neighborhood. The pieces consisted of a battery-powered flashlight stuffed into a plastic bag with the familiar "I Love NY" logo on it, which were then dangled from a wire in public spaces.
ENTERTAINMENT
May 22, 2012 | By Margaret Gray, Special to the Los Angeles Times
There's a flicker of uncertainty in Danny Burstein's friendly brown eyes as he greets a reporter backstage at the Ahmanson Theatre, as if he half-expects her to step around him on her way into the dressing room of one of his "Follies" costars. "When I heard that The Times wanted to talk to me, I said, 'Are you sure?'" he says, after being persuaded that he, and not Ron Raines, Victoria Clark, Jan Maxwell,Elaine Page,or any of the show's other big guns, is meant to be the subject of this interview.
ENTERTAINMENT
May 20, 2012 | By Scott Timberg, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Most writers can only daydream about meeting - in the flesh - the characters they've imagined. But for Ernest Hemingway, one afternoon in Key West, Fla., it came close to actually happening. One day when the writer was in his mid-30s, hanging out at a local fisherman's bar, he spotted a woman uncannily similar to the strong-willed, sexually liberated heartbreaker from his first novel. "It's as if, borne on the sea foam, she emerged - out of his own mind," says director Phil Kaufman.
ENTERTAINMENT
May 18, 2012
In"Lovely Molly,"a young woman moves with her new husband back into her family's empty old house. She immediately begins behaving strangely, as if the house itself exerts some mysterious power - whether she is being overtaken by bad memories and old habits or something supernatural is initially unclear. If the story sounds somewhat similar to the recent Elizabeth Olsen vehicle"Silent House,"it is, and unfortunately, "Lovely Molly" and its star, newcomer Gretchen Lodge, only suffer in comparison.
SPORTS
May 18, 2012 | By Kevin Baxter
DALLAS -- Everything about Holley Mangold is oversized. Her personality. Her laugh. Her ambition. But the first thing most people notice is her body, which, at 5 feet 9 and 350 pounds, is hard to miss. "I'm huge," Mangold says with pride, not political correctness. "I love my body. I think it's perfect. "I don't know what my personality would be like if I wasn't so huge. " She has a pretty good idea what her athletic career would be like, though. And it wouldn't include a trip to the Olympic Games this summer.