Rapture

Natalie Jones said the idea of paying someone to send emails to her loved ones after the "rapture" would have seemed preposterous to her a few years ago. That was before the occupational health therapist and mother of two in Surrey, Britain, became a born-again Christian. She now believes the faithful will be swept up in the skies to unite with Jesus in the rapture, while nonbelievers will be left behind to wait for Armageddon and the second coming of Christ. Eight months ago, Jones paid $14.95 to a website called You've Been Left Behind to send letters to nonbelieving loved ones in the event she is taken away in the rapture.

New and recent plays by Donald Margulies and Gina Gionfriddo will highlight the 2013-14 season at the Geffen Playhouse. The season also will include performances by actors Amy Brenneman and William Petersen, as well as a Harold Pinter play directed by Oscar-winning director William Friedkin. The Geffen will present nine productions for the season, one more than the current season. Randall Arney, the company's artistic director, said in an interview that he wanted to achieve "a balance between new plays, recent plays and classic works.

Paul Thomas Anderson's highly anticipated “The Master” screened for the second time publicly last night in Chicago at a hastily arranged benefit for the nonprofit Film Foundation. And the immediate reactions - rapture, admiration, befuddlement - mirrored those following the film's pop-up presentation at Santa Monica's Aero Theatre on Aug. 3. Then again, as A.V. Club film critic Scott Tobias, who saw the movie at Chicago's Music Box last night, tweeted: “One more thing about 'The Master:' It's comically resistant to instant reaction.

Every presidential campaign leaves a few indelible moments. Some can be game changers. Others go down as nothing more than odd non sequiturs. The Politics Now crew brings you nine moments we won't soon forget: YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT :  One of President Obama's most inartful, or misinterpreted, moments came July 13 at a rally in Virginia. In full context, fact checkers said, the president made clear he was talking about how America could accomplish some big goals only through collective action.

This is, indeed, a golden age of violinists. At a masterly 31, the Japanese-born Midori stands as the leader -- actually the groundbreaker -- of its younger generation. On Wednesday night, Midori began the second week of her current Los Angeles Philharmonic residency in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, playing the once-neglected, now-ubiquitous Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber.

I don’t know what you can take with you for the "rapture ," which some people believe will happen Saturday, but I do know there are things you can’t take with you on an airplane (and one thing I didn’t know about). And now, the owners of these objects know that too. In recent, separate incidents at John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Orange County,  would-be passengers were found to be carrying a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 Special; a round of .22-caliber ammunition; some throwing stars; and a shotgun barrel, the Transportation Security Administration said.

THE LEFTOVERS A Novel Tom Perrotta St. Martin's Press: 356 pp., $25.99 The two most moving scenes in Tom Perrotta's sixth novel, "The Leftovers," come late in the book. In the first, Kevin Garvey - abandoned husband, distracted father, mayor of the affluent suburb of Mapleton - tells a woman he's been dating that he's just heard from his college-age son for the first time in months. "Were you close?" she asks, herself a bit distracted. "He was my little boy, I was always so proud of him," Kevin answers and bursts into tears.

New and recent plays by Donald Margulies and Gina Gionfriddo will highlight the 2013-14 season at the Geffen Playhouse. The season also will include performances by actors Amy Brenneman and William Petersen, as well as a Harold Pinter play directed by Oscar-winning director William Friedkin. The Geffen will present nine productions for the season, one more than the current season. Randall Arney, the company's artistic director, said in an interview that he wanted to achieve "a balance between new plays, recent plays and classic works.

Re "Is The End Near?" (July 30, 1992): Drivers may disappear at any time? Give me a break! The freeways are dangerous enough already! Christians who really believe in the Rapture should have a "designated sinner" in the car with them at all times! CHRISTINE A. LEHMAN Los Angeles

I have never read a more pompous, condescending review of a book than Tolkin's. Tolkin clearly is on the defensive. What is he afraid of? It would behoove Tolkin to refrain from reviewing a review (of his movie "The Rapture") and to cohere to the object of his review. JOSEPH G. SMITH WHITTIER

Paul Thomas Anderson's highly anticipated “The Master” screened for the second time publicly last night in Chicago at a hastily arranged benefit for the nonprofit Film Foundation. And the immediate reactions - rapture, admiration, befuddlement - mirrored those following the film's pop-up presentation at Santa Monica's Aero Theatre on Aug. 3. Then again, as A.V. Club film critic Scott Tobias, who saw the movie at Chicago's Music Box last night, tweeted: “One more thing about 'The Master:' It's comically resistant to instant reaction.

MUSIC Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival Empire Polo Club, 81-800 Avenue 51, Indio Fri. - Sun. (323) 930-5700; http://www.coachella.com LECTURE Digital LA panel Casey's Irish Pub, 613 S. Grand Ave., L.A. 7 p.m. Mon. Free. 213downtown.com. MUSIC Kimbra Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood 8 p.m. Tues. $15. troubadour.com CLUB NIGHT Zachary James and burlesque show Harvard & Stone, 5221 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. 10 p.m. Tues.

On Oct. 21, the world did not end, despite predictions by Christian radio personality Harold Camping. We have by now laughed him off, but perhaps we owe Camping one more serious hearing. I for one can't help but ask: What if the apocalypse had happened? Or if not "the" apocalypse, then at least something fairly apocalyptic? That is what occurred 900 years ago. Thousands of people expected the apocalypse, and they got it, though not the one they were expecting. What if that happened again?

THE LEFTOVERS A Novel Tom Perrotta St. Martin's Press: 356 pp., $25.99 The two most moving scenes in Tom Perrotta's sixth novel, "The Leftovers," come late in the book. In the first, Kevin Garvey - abandoned husband, distracted father, mayor of the affluent suburb of Mapleton - tells a woman he's been dating that he's just heard from his college-age son for the first time in months. "Were you close?" she asks, herself a bit distracted. "He was my little boy, I was always so proud of him," Kevin answers and bursts into tears.

I wasn't rooting for the end of the world over the weekend, though there was some disappointment knowing I had no choice now but to join the Angels. You know — the ones down here who struggle so to be halfway decent Angels. The thing is, there is just nothing going on in Los Angeles, so there's nothing else to write about. I checked the Internet all the way up to game time, a little disappointed Kareem hadn't taken a sledgehammer to Magic or Jerry West's likenesses. It's so bad right now, I found myself looking for some golf tournament or horse race to write about instead of a baseball team that can't score.

Sue Espinoza was planted before the television, awaiting news of her father's now infamous prediction: cataclysmic earthquakes auguring the end of humanity. God's wrath was supposed to begin in New Zealand and then race across the globe, leaving millions of bodies wherever the clock struck 6 p.m. But the hours ticked by, and New Zealand survived. Time zone by time zone, the apocalypse failed to materialize. On Saturday morning, Espinoza, 60, received a phone call from her father, Harold Camping, the 89-year-old Oakland preacher who has spent some $100 million — and countless hours on his radio and TV show — announcing May 21 as Judgment Day. "He just said, 'I'm a little bewildered that it didn't happen, but it's still May 21 [in the United States]

Michael Tolkin has a deadpan irony that can get you in trouble, especially if you make movies. In 1991's "The Rapture," Tolkin's debut as writer-director, he dealt with subjects usually anathema in current American films--life and death, man and God, faith and unbelief--and did it with such surprising force and tragic inevitability that "The Rapture" was one of a handful of new American movies at the 1991 New York Film Festival. He has several films forthcoming, including one he'll direct, and he's just finished a novel.

The disingenuously conflicted apologia for mounting the Corvette ZR1 brought much welcome laughter. ("Burning the world's oil for a good cause: The rapture of the hypercar," Rumble Seat, Oct. 17.) A pity not all the passionate sinner's self-irony can resonate with readers who may have missed his role in the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Still, "The Rapture of the Hypercar" captures the ram on the rut: thrilling at power and possession. What a racy parable for masculinity overpopulating our globe in an analogous lust to possess.

Reporting from Oakland -- Harold Camping's promised final show Thursday night was much like his others. For an hour and a half, before a backdrop of wood paneling and fake plants in an Oakland studio, the self-styled scriptural scholar fielded calls from the devout, the derisive and the curious. He is 89 and bone-thin, making the leather-bound Bible on his lap seem enormous, and his voice was slow and unflappable. Near the show's end, Camping cut short a caller to announce that this would be his last appearance on the "Open Forum" TV and radio show he's hosted for decades.

I don’t know what you can take with you for the "rapture ," which some people believe will happen Saturday, but I do know there are things you can’t take with you on an airplane (and one thing I didn’t know about). And now, the owners of these objects know that too. In recent, separate incidents at John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Orange County,  would-be passengers were found to be carrying a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 Special; a round of .22-caliber ammunition; some throwing stars; and a shotgun barrel, the Transportation Security Administration said.