Part

INDIO, Calif. - Under Friday night's crescent moon, a giant iridescent snail slowly made its way among thousands of concert revelers at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, causing bafflement and awe in equal measures. Nearly 30 feet tall and stretching out to some 80 feet in length, the silver-skinned creature was in fact a slow-moving sculpture titled "Helix Poeticus" that was custom-commissioned for the festival by its promoter, Goldenvoice. "I don't know if I want to run away screaming or if I want to hug it," said Silvia Ay, 23, of Los Angeles, contemplating the sculpture's eerily rotating illuminated eyes.

As Urs Fischer stood inside the Geffen Contemporary last month preparing for his big MOCA survey, the museum's much-discussed financial troubles did not seem to be weighing on him. "I don't care about any of that; I care about art," said the beefy 39-year-old artist in jeans and a long-sleeve black T-shirt, with assorted tattoos snaking up his arms. And he noted that his show has not been shortchanged because of any budget crunch. "Putting on a sculpture show always takes a lot of effort, but we didn't have to compromise much.

It's so easy to make fun of the 1980s. Ray-Bans, glam-rock hair, acid-washed jeans, the yuppie and Reaganomics, and all those regrettable images of women in power suits and tennis shoes. It seemed even as it was occurring an age of Culture Lite, a consumer-driven wasteland after the socially and politically transformative '60s and '70s. Even the title of National Geographic's new six-hour, three-part documentary "The '80s: The Decade That Made Us" seems, at first glance, a bit of a joke.

Twenty-one-year-old Taylor Dankel darts around a quick corner of the racetrack and buries the throttle. The supercharged, 650-horsepower V-8 in his father's modified 2008 Shelby Mustang GT500KR lets out a guttural roar. It's a scene that would have put a smile on the face of Shelby American's founder, Carroll Shelby. An automotive icon whose career evolved from chicken farmer to world-class racer, engineer and businessman, Shelby died in May 2012 at the age of 89. Photos: Shelby after Shelby But his legacy is everywhere on this windy day in Pahrump, Nev., about an hour outside of Las Vegas.

Dana Delany plays a calculating politician's wife in Beau Willimon's "The Parisian Woman," set in contemporary Washington, "inspired" by Henri Becque's "La Parisienne" of 1885. The world premiere production, co-starring Steven Weber, begins previews Sunday at South Coast Repertory and runs through May 5. The two-time Emmy winner also stars as acerbic medical examiner Dr. Megan Hunt in ABC's procedural "Body of Proof," now in its third season. Beau Willimon has a pretty dim view of people in politics.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is proving to be a popular dinner host. Republican senators who dined Wednesday at the White House, the second time Obama has extended an invitation to his sometime adversaries, offered mostly positive reviews, saying the president's outreach has renewed their hopes that a budget deal can be brokered later this year. “It went hours longer than it was supposed to - it was nearly three hours in length - so that gives you some idea of how substantive it was,” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters Thursday.

Political leaders and outdoors enthusiasts expressed dismay Thursday over new details about an Interior Department recommendation for changes in federal management of a popular region of the San Gabriel Mountains. "The proposal raises many questions, and I want answers from the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service as to why this hybrid came about," U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said in an interview. The Interior Department announced Wednesday that it is recommending to Congress that the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service collaborate in the region, which includes a portion of the Angeles National Forest stretching from Sylmar to roughly five miles west of Interstate 15. Under the proposal, the region essentially would remain national forest land managed by the cash-strapped Forest Service.

"Upstream Color" is as enigmatic as filmmaking gets - not in a casual way, but determinedly, even willfully. Being completely understood at first glance is not on creator Shane Carruth's agenda, but while this may sound upsetting, it turns out to be quite the opposite. Carruth, whose cult favorite "Primer" won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004, is unwavering about telling his stories his own particular way, and he's so good at it that he pins us to our seats even when we're not exactly sure what's going on. Maybe because we're not exactly sure what's going on. For to watch the haunting, disturbing "Upstream Color" is to feel like you're inside not one of your own dreams but someone else's, a dream that's both compelling and unnerving in ways you can't put your finger on. Part science fiction scare movie, part offbeat romance, part completely unclassifiable, "Color" is also one-man filmmaking of a remarkable sort.

The new 2013-14 season of Dance at the Music Center will feature works by choreographers Matthew Bourne, Ethan Stiefel and Alexei Ratmansky. The season, which the Music Center announced this week, will also include return appearances by Ballet Preljocaj and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The dance series -- whose full title is Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center -- will take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, unless otherwise noted. As previously announced, Nederlands Dans Theater will present "Chamber" (Oct.

It's difficult to imagine a more delicate curatorial task than the one Todd Gannon, Ewan Branda and Andrew Zago faced in putting together "A Confederacy of Heretics: The Architecture Gallery, Venice, 1979. " The exhibition, running through July 7 at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, is the first show to open as part of the Getty-funded series "Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. " The specific focus of "Heretics" is a series of exhibitions and lectures that young architects connected to SCI-Arc organized in fall 1979, when the school, now downtown, was based in Santa Monica.