Prodigy

UCLA and Steve Alford. A basketball program of unmatched pedigree led by a former prodigy who became a national champion and Olympic gold medalist before making a steady climb up the coaching ladder. On paper, a harmonic convergence. How they came together, a choreography of those themes, would make for a dazzling introduction, which UCLA held at center court in historic Pauley Pavilion last month. The aura of John Wooden, his contributions to sports and society -- and those 10 national titles -- was thick.

Less a documentary than an acutely positioned marketing tool, "Mindless Behavior: All Around the World" delivers a chaotically high-energy burst of performance and behind-the-scenes footage for fans of the slickly produced hip-hop boy band. Though less skillfully assembled than the cagily self-serving Justin Bieber and Katy Perry movies from last year, there's still a group portrait to be gleaned amid the Cuisinart editing and repetitive "we do it for the fans/just be yourself" platitudes from Princeton, Roc Royal, Ray Ray and Prodigy: namely, one that paints this carefully assembled preteen quartet with high-wattage smiles and dazzling moves as a mighty hardworking foursome.

I know it's unfair that music fans seem to be expecting Prodigy to "save" music, but one must understand what it's like for people who have been disappointed with the direction of rock in the '90s ("Setting the World Afire," by Robert Hilburn, June 8). I like bands that have lots of energy, a real edge and an interesting image, but most bands in this decade have been the opposite: glum, dull and colorless. I happened to come across MTV's "Fashionably Loud" program a few months ago. Just when I expected to see another sleep-inducing '90s band, instead I saw an incredible group that blew me away so much that I had to catch the program again when it was rerun.

Prodigy A Legend Novel By Marie Lu G.P. Putnam's Sons: 384 pp., $17.99, ages 12 and older The second book in any trilogy typically ends up the underachieving middle child: Instead of introducing us to a world or providing the series' climax, it's just connective tissue. This is especially true in the YA world, even in a blockbuster series - think "Crossed" (the "Matched" series), "Catching Fire" ("The Hunger Games") and "New Moon" ("Twilight"). Marie Lu has beaten the curse with "Prodigy," the second book in the "Legend" series.

Prodigy A Legend Novel By Marie Lu G.P. Putnam's Sons: 384 pp., $17.99, ages 12 and older The second book in any trilogy typically ends up the underachieving middle child: Instead of introducing us to a world or providing the series' climax, it's just connective tissue. This is especially true in the YA world, even in a blockbuster series - think "Crossed" (the "Matched" series), "Catching Fire" ("The Hunger Games") and "New Moon" ("Twilight"). Marie Lu has beaten the curse with "Prodigy," the second book in the "Legend" series.

At the age of 8, Curtis Tang, then living in Alhambra was a child prodigy in Go, the ancient Chinese board game that Henry Kissinger recommended as a key to Chinese thinking. Played with white and black stones on a crosshatched board, the game's object is to surround more territory than your opponent. So old, its year of origin is murky, Go is deceptively simple. But in Asia and much of the rest of the world, it's considered the richest game of strategy ever devised, and its mastery is a matter of unmatched prestige.

Violinist Ruggiero Ricci held the audience spellbound when he debuted at the Hollywood Bowl in 1932, a "wunderkind" of classical music with marvelous showmanship and beautiful tone. He was all of 13. What he accomplished in the ensuing decades is perhaps even more impressive: He made the rare leap from child prodigy to serious artist. He was regarded as one of the greatest violin virtuosos of his generation. Ricci, 94, died of heart failure Aug. 6 at his Palm Springs home, said Shelley Bovyer, a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic who regards Ricci as her finest teacher.

Remembering the mad times two years ago when he and his partners were gambling everything--not just all their money, but their health and sanity too--on their product, Stanislaw Lewak admits he'd never do it again. Lewak and three other computer engineers had founded Levco Corp. in February, 1985, with $10,000 and began making money selling kits that increased the memory of Apple's newly introduced Macintosh computer. But Levco still needed a breakthrough product that would guarantee the future.

IN the mid-1990s, about the time grunge started to slip into redundance, mainstream American audiences got a sample of the new kid on the block -- electronica, a burgeoning strain of supple dance music born out of the techno and house movements in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York and London. Electronica was made out to be a youthful force that would stomp the last breath of life out of the wheezing geezer known as rock 'n' roll.

Less a documentary than an acutely positioned marketing tool, "Mindless Behavior: All Around the World" delivers a chaotically high-energy burst of performance and behind-the-scenes footage for fans of the slickly produced hip-hop boy band. Though less skillfully assembled than the cagily self-serving Justin Bieber and Katy Perry movies from last year, there's still a group portrait to be gleaned amid the Cuisinart editing and repetitive "we do it for the fans/just be yourself" platitudes from Princeton, Roc Royal, Ray Ray and Prodigy: namely, one that paints this carefully assembled preteen quartet with high-wattage smiles and dazzling moves as a mighty hardworking foursome.

Director Stephen Fung's stylistic hodgepodge "Tai Chi Zero" follows a battle-hardened, impulsive kung fu prodigy who seeks training in a secretive, energy-conserving martial arts style practiced in peaceful Chen Village. He becomes an unwitting warrior in a battle between the town and a Western-influenced prodigal son whose giant mechanical claw-monster threatens to wipe out the residents so a railroad can be built. "Tai Chi Zero" is often more distracting than diverting with its everything-goes aesthetic - there are strains of steampunk, manga and silent film comedy, with video-game touches.

SEATTLE - He was a child prodigy, taking computer classes at Seattle Pacific University at the age of 13 and finishing in the top third of the Junior Olympics in fencing. But Dinh Bowman was earning a different kind of recognition over the weekend, appearing before a judge Saturday in Seattle on suspicion of killing a 42-year-old local man in what detectives believe was a case of road rage. Bowman, now 29, was arrested after an anonymous tipster suggested he was the man driving a silver BMW convertible who opened fire with deadly precision on a fellow motorist Aug. 31 in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood, inflicting fatal wounds before driving off. The victim, Yancy Noll, a popular supermarket wine steward, was stopped at a red light in a line of traffic when the silver BMW pulled alongside his car, came to a halt, and its driver fired several shots, three of which struck Noll in the head.

Violinist Ruggiero Ricci held the audience spellbound when he debuted at the Hollywood Bowl in 1932, a "wunderkind" of classical music with marvelous showmanship and beautiful tone. He was all of 13. What he accomplished in the ensuing decades is perhaps even more impressive: He made the rare leap from child prodigy to serious artist. He was regarded as one of the greatest violin virtuosos of his generation. Ricci, 94, died of heart failure Aug. 6 at his Palm Springs home, said Shelley Bovyer, a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic who regards Ricci as her finest teacher.

At the age of 8, Curtis Tang, then living in Alhambra was a child prodigy in Go, the ancient Chinese board game that Henry Kissinger recommended as a key to Chinese thinking. Played with white and black stones on a crosshatched board, the game's object is to surround more territory than your opponent. So old, its year of origin is murky, Go is deceptively simple. But in Asia and much of the rest of the world, it's considered the richest game of strategy ever devised, and its mastery is a matter of unmatched prestige.

MUSIC Chris Thile's adventurous Americana group Punch Brothers further refined its sound on its latest album, produced by the pop-rock savant Jacquire King. "Who's Feeling Young Now" is an implicit funny allusion to Thile's past as a childhood mandolin prodigy, but its rich and evocative tracks capture a white-hot musical mind coming into his own and collaborating with stellar peers. The El Rey, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Sat. $22, theelrey.com.

It's been 18 months since soprano Jackie Evancho charmed the nation as a finalist on TV's "America's Got Talent. " In that time, she's had a gold record, a platinum EP and a PBS special and has managed to sell out Avery Fisher Hall. Not bad for a girl from Richland Township, Penn., who won't turn 12 until April. Perhaps because she is a child ultimately thrust into the spotlight thanks to a public vote, everyone has an opinion on what she should sing, when she should sing it, how talented she really is and her shelf life as a performer.

Basketball star: A story in Monday's Section A about USC and UCLA withdrawing scholarship offers for Fairfax High basketball prodigy Renardo Sidney Jr. incorrectly identified Renardo Sidney Sr. as the player's stepfather. The family's attorney says he is the biological father.

In the year in which Prodigy seemed firmly established as the next British band to make a spectacular Oasis-like breakthrough in the U.S., keep an eye also on Radiohead. Don't think of it as an either/or proposition. At a time of creative lethargy in rock, there is plenty of room--and need--for both these stirring bands. Radiohead--which kicked off a U.S.

The voice floats confidently but quietly in the first few lines of Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You," the song for which the superstar vocalist, who died Saturday of undetermined causes at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, will always be remembered. Hear it rush out of the radio unexpectedly, and it has the power to transform your world. "If I should stay I would only be in your way," sings Houston in those opening bars, minus any instrumentation, as if into an abyss of loneliness.

Emmy Rossum, 25, returns to Showtime for the second season of "Shameless" as Fiona, the eldest sister and mother figure of the scrappy, law-skirting, non-working-class Gallagher family. Already a performing vet at 25, Rossum's latest gig follows a childhood launch as a member of the Metropolitan Opera's Children's Chorus and starring roles in the 2004 film "The Phantom of the Opera" and big-budget disaster movies including "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Poseidon. " What will we learn about the Gallaghers this season?