Sarah

A woman who said she was sleeping when her ex-boyfriend violently abducted her children, Sarah, 11, and Cody, 9, was convicted of not doing anything to stop the deadly attack. Schwana Patterson, 37, could get up to 99 years in prison on each of the two counts of injury to a child by omission. Prosecutors claimed she ignored her children's screams as Bobby Wayne Woods abducted them from their bedroom in Granbury, Texas, in 1997. Sarah was found dead, her throat slashed. She had been raped.

Ever since Freud demonstrated that people actually do not grow apart from family when they come-of-age--they merely try to recreate as father and mother the social dynamics that ordered their lives as son and daughter--novelists concerned with individual freedom have been busy engineering ways for their characters to escape the familial trap. Most prominent among them today is John Fowles, whose dauntless heroines surmount even love to "find their freedom," often making Jell-O out of noblemen in the process.

Ringo Starr became the first Beatle grandfather over the weekend, it was announced today. Tatia Jayne Starkey, weighing 7 pounds, 2 ounces, was born Saturday to rock musician Zak Starkey, 19, Starr's son, and his wife Sarah, 25, at an undisclosed hospital in England, Starr's secretary Joan Woodgate said. Starr, 45, in England for the birth, was "absolutely delighted and said the baby was a little beauty," Woodgate said.

"The Craft" cleverly--and brutally--imagines what would happen if several unhappy girls at a fictional L.A. Catholic high school, declaring themselves witches, could actually tap into malevolent supernatural powers. The young women are naturally thrilled to even some scores, but predictably the whole thing gets out of hand in gory fashion, occasioning lots of gruesome, nightmarish special effects.

Oliver Sacks turns brain anomalies into suspense thrillers, with synaptic gaps as cliffhangers. Now Kathryn Walat, perhaps inspired by the good doctor's “Musicophilia,” follows similar neural pathways to explore the deepest changes of heart.  “Creation,” her world premiere drama at the Theatre at Boston Court, plays as an elegant if subdued case study in chemical romance. On holiday celebrating his 40th birthday, evolutionary biologist Ian (Johnathan McClain) is struck by lightning but miraculously revived by his pathologist wife, Sarah (Deborah Puette)

For why is all around us here As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would? --"Idylls of the King," Alfred Lord Tennyson "Children of a Lesser God" (citywide), which had its stage premiere at the Mark Taper in 1979, is an exceptionally adroit adaptation of a play to the screen. As a film, it flows beautifully under Randa Haines' direction and has considerable humor as well as dramatic intensity.

Writer-director John Chuldenko stretches a sitcom episode premise to feature-length breaking point in "Nesting. " Neil (Todd Grinnell) and Sarah (Ali Hillis) star as a pair of ex-hipsters turned rut-stuck marrieds who try to recapture the magic by escaping their under-construction Pasadena home for a few days in their old Silver Lake neighborhood. This includes squatting in their very first apartment, which, whaddya know, just so happens to be vacant. But life in the bohemian enclave - which the couple treats as if it's 10 states away from Pasadena instead of just 10 miles - proves less idyllic than they remembered, especially when the cops and a brusque landlady (Erin Gray)

In the words of Golden Globe winner Anne Hathaway: “blurgh.” Did this episode of “The Bachelor” drag for anyone else? I always forget how painful I find the beginning of the season. The tedious group-dates with 9,000 girls and “I'm not here to make friends” declarations. The way-too-early proclamations of love on one-on-one dates. The jealous crying. It's all a bit too predictable. At least Sean is good eye candy. OK, opening the episode with a shot of Sean in the shower with water dripping down his abs may have been just a tad over the top but hey, I'm not complaining.

One doesn't typically associate experimental German theater with big yuks. However, in "Mr. Kolpert," now in its West Coast premiere at the Odyssey, up-and-coming German playwright David Gieselmann wields a double-edged sword, carving out a mortally incisive sendup of postmodern European corruption and angst, while at the same time striking a lethal blow to the funny bone.