So Cal Arts & Entertainment

Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle, that’s the name of the game. The 25th Anniversary Tour of “Chicago,” which touched down Tuesday at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa—where it continues through Sunday, May 21—proved anew Bob Fosse’s long shadow hangs over the...

It’s curtains for Panndora Productions. Karen Wray and Sonja Berggren, aka The Panndora Girls, are calling it a night at the end of this season—their 20th year of producing new plays. They’re not finished just yet, though. Their swan song, “In My Bones,” written by...

Remember Vidiots, the alternative Los Angeles video store? The popular shop (which operated in Santa Monica from 1985 to 2017) and non-profit film organization has reinvented itself and relocated to the Northeast L.A. hood of Eagle Rock. It opens the doors to its new...

Where can you see vintage movies on the big screen today, the way they were meant to be seen? Alas, far too few places. The 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival, where movies are shown as they were originally intended, returns to Hollywood April 13-16. The fabled legacy of...

Chances are you’ve never heard of Paisley—Walter, that is—much less have any idea what he may or may not have accomplished of late. Don’t worry, no one else has either. All that’s about to change, however, as something that’s been described as “a beatnik horror comedy...

The pandemic seems to be generating more passion projects than ever, books willed into existence by their creators in spite of all odds. One such book is “The Compleat Beau Geste” by Frank Thompson, the author of two books on film director William Wellman and a noted...

Harlem, October 1935. The scene opens on Rose McClendon as Lady Macbeth, rehearsing the “screw your courage to the sticking place” scene from “The Scottish Play.” She asks 20-year-old wunderkind Orson Welles to direct their Negro Theatre Unit production. He turns them...

There’s a growing consensus women are getting shortchanged (as usual) in the revival of silent movie comedy. While Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd are justly celebrated and lesser knowns like Charley Chase are getting their due, their female counterparts have been largely...

It takes two people to make a great painting, so the old axiom goes—one to paint it and one to tell him when to stop. Perhaps Aaron Sorkin put it in his contract his script for Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa...

Long before “Private Benjamin” and “A Few Good Men,” there were movies about women in the military. Better movies like “Cry ‘Havoc’,” “Mrs. Miniver” and “So Proudly We Hail!” The latter, about US Army nurses and the living hell they faced on Bataan and Corregidor...