Peter Krause

Hitting the boards: Peter Krause, who plays Nate Fisher on HBO's series "Six Feet Under," will make his Broadway debut this summer in a revival of Arthur Miller's "After the Fall."

Certainly better than the word "passable" might imply, "Beastly" is a sly and pleasant-enough young-adult programmer that is more likeable than not. Adapted and directed by Daniel Barnz, who previously made the Sundance title "Phoebe in Wonderland," the film centers on a brash, arrogant high school pretty boy (Alex Pettyfer) whose internal ugliness becomes externalized when he runs afoul of a spell-casting girl dabbling in witchcraft. She gives him one year to find someone to love him or he will remain in this altered state forever.

The glittering throngs, studded with golden statuettes, left their velvet seats promptly at 8 for the traditional post-awards party pilgrimage. They started at the Governors Ball, held in a room adjoining the Shrine Auditorium that this year had been transformed into a scene from another era. Here at "Club 55," palm trees surrounded a rotating stage, where the Glenn Miller Orchestra played big- band hits. Costumed couples twirled around the dance floor, doing the jitterbug.

Hitting the boards: Peter Krause, who plays Nate Fisher on HBO's series "Six Feet Under," will make his Broadway debut this summer in a revival of Arthur Miller's "After the Fall."

Certainly better than the word "passable" might imply, "Beastly" is a sly and pleasant-enough young-adult programmer that is more likeable than not. Adapted and directed by Daniel Barnz, who previously made the Sundance title "Phoebe in Wonderland," the film centers on a brash, arrogant high school pretty boy (Alex Pettyfer) whose internal ugliness becomes externalized when he runs afoul of a spell-casting girl dabbling in witchcraft. She gives him one year to find someone to love him or he will remain in this altered state forever.

Paging Dr. House: There a new tick-transmitted spirochete in town, and this wily relative of the organism that causes Lyme disease is probably sickening more than 4,300 Americans a year with relapsing fevers and flu-like symptoms, according to a new report. The good news: A round of common antibiotics appears capable of vanquishing the newly discovered threat. The organism, called Borrelia miyamotoi , was discovered in 1995 in Japan, but it was not until 2011 that disease hunters found and described evidence that it was making people sick in Central Russia.

I was delighted to read a positive article on "Six Feet Under," yet I feel Mimi Avins did the show some disservice ("It's More Than Death," Aug. 18). By saying "Touched by an Angel" fans are tuning in, she inadvertently made it sound like not much more than a dysfunctional "Little House on the Prairie." While character development and family dynamics are certainly central components, otherwise potential viewers might not tune in and thereby miss its intelligence and the wonderful black humor inherent in every episode.

Newly divorced Leon Barlow (Stan Cahill) makes his last decision. He will "live hand and mouth," earning just enough money to keep some food in his belly and beer in the fridge, but not enough to pay child support. Can a deadbeat dad be funny? In Mississippi novelist Larry Brown's "92 Days," presented by the Freeplay Theatre Company at the Powerhouse Theatre, the deadpan desperation and the sometimes tragic experiences of this struggling rural writer are at turns humorous, pathetic and poignant.

Andrew Spielman, 76, a Harvard School of Public Health professor and a leading authority on diseases passed from insects to people, died Dec. 20 at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston after being hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness. Spielman's research took him to remote areas of the world, and he wrote hundreds of publications on topics including malaria, Lyme disease and eastern equine encephalitis.

Students from four high schools--La Reina, Camarillo, Buena and Westlake--will face off Monday night in the final round of the Ventura County Mock Trial competition. The finalists beat out teams from 12 other schools during the first two rounds of competition earlier this week, when they argued a fictitious case in front of real Superior Court judges. The third and final round begins at 5:15 p.m. Monday at the Ventura County Hall of Justice.

The glittering throngs, studded with golden statuettes, left their velvet seats promptly at 8 for the traditional post-awards party pilgrimage. They started at the Governors Ball, held in a room adjoining the Shrine Auditorium that this year had been transformed into a scene from another era. Here at "Club 55," palm trees surrounded a rotating stage, where the Glenn Miller Orchestra played big- band hits. Costumed couples twirled around the dance floor, doing the jitterbug.

Thursday's news that HBO's "Six Feet Under" earned 23 Emmy nominations, more than any other show, was enough to wake the dead. The cable network's Sunday night original series about a Southern California undertaker family has been widely cheered by critics who revel in its complexity and unapologetic darkness. The show was created by Alan Ball, who won an Oscar in 2001 for his "American Beauty" screenplay. This is its second season, but only the first year it was eligible for Emmy nominations.

After a mysterious two-week disappearance, the body of Lisa (Lili Taylor), Nate Fisher's (Peter Krause) sweet, gentle, murderously passive-aggressive wife, washed ashore somewhere near Santa Barbara. The news, which came at the end of the final episode of "Six Feet Under" last June, broke the fever that had raged throughout much the third season. Thanks in part to Taylor's moony presence, the congenitally repressed Fisher family had plunged headlong into lunacy.