“Hidalgo” Ackerman Grand Ballroom Feb. 10, 8 p.m. If not for the pretty overt pro-American sentiment, this almost looks like a David Lean movie, Omar Sharif and all. Read more...

Most leading actors demand millions of dollars to star in films. Filmmaker Larry Blamire found one for only $98. “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra,” a spoof on old B-movies, features a fake skeleton that Blamire purchased off eBay in the title role. Read more...

Play it again, Sam. Returning to the stage after a successful 2002 debut at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and currently playing at the Geffen Playhouse through Feb. Read more...

When Cary Long, owner of the sci-fi-themed Nova Express Cafe in Hollywood, moved from Berkeley to Los Angeles 14 years ago, he carried with him a passion for the Bay Area’s literati-independent coffeehouse culture and planted it between a barbershop and a pharmacy on Fairfax Avenue. Read more...

It’s difficult to find common ground in the writings of Alice Sebold and Glen David Gold. Her dark first-person narratives on unsettling topics differ from Gold’s fantastically colorful historical fiction. Read more...

Photography has been used to document and display since its invention, but it took the innovative minds of the 1960s and 1970s to shift the practice of taking photos into a full-fledged artistic movement. Read more...

At about 4:30 p.m. last Sunday, the sun was already so low on the horizon that the pedestrians on the Venice boardwalk had to squint to look toward the ocean. Read more...