Cast

CRESCENTA VALLEY — Voters of the Crescenta Valley cast their ballots to elect Steve Pierce, Curtis Cleven and Bruce Campbell as town council members on Saturday. Pierce took the lead with 304 votes and Cleven followed with nearly half that amount at 149. Campbell took a seat with 136. Alternates, who will act as understudy for council members, were also named in this year's annual race. Frank Beyt was voted as the first alternate with 133 votes, Dennis van Breman took the second alternate position with 128 votes and Virginia Choate squeaked by Roy Allmon with 5 votes over his 78. Council members will keep their seats for three years while the alternates change seats annually.

Mary Burkin, Weekend GLENDALE -- Glendale Community College's production of "Aloha, Say The Pretty Girls" starts with Vivian's boyfriend Will saying aloha to their two-year affair. This is just the beginning of a yearlong search from Hawaii to Borneo for love, Christmas trees, lost killer dogs and a tribal identity. Passing around and through Vivian's life while she deals with her loss and unplanned pregnancy are a wild variety of people (and animals)

Under the direction of new LCHS drama teacher Lacey Stanley, the LCHS Drama Department will perform the play "Brighton Beach Memoirs" by Neil Simon. This is the first play of what is known as the "Eugene Trilogy." Brighton Beach Memoirs is a semi-autobiographical comedy set in Brooklyn in 1937. Simon's alter ego, Eugene Jerome, is an irrepressible Jewish adolescent. He lives in a modest house with his father, mother, older brother, widowed aunt and her two daughters. Eugene, an aspiring writer who records everything in his journal, or "memoirs," is merely trying to get along with his family and, perhaps, learn a thing or two about girls from his older brother Stanley.

Much like the classic television show “Hogan’s Heroes” mined all the humor possible from something as truly awful as life in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, “My Old Friends,” currently running at the Victory Theatre in Burbank, mines all the humor possible from something as truly awful as life at the Golden Days Retirement Hotel, circa 1979. As the title implies, the main characters are old, and they are friends. But the play’s title isn’t really about how well nine residents bond together to overcome the patronizing and suppressive attitude of the never-seen, always-present hotel director, Mrs. Stone.

When Hoover High School theater teacher Dave Huber cast the parts for the school’s upcoming production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” many of the young actors and actresses sought out and watched the 1963 movie adaptation of the show to see what they’d be working on. And as the cast gathered to rehearse Wednesday, the students got an even closer look at the theater and cinematic productions of “Bye Bye Birdie” from the...

Consider Bradly Horwitz, a young man with seven years of dance training, including appearances with the San Francisco Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Or Gabrielle Miles, who has won summer intensive places with American Ballet Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet. Or Dawn Cantwell, who was recently offered scholarships to Carnegie-Mellon and NYU and won the prestigious Robert Preston Scholarship for Musical Theatre. Or Eric Bilitch, who won a scholarship to Syracuse University's renowned musical theater program.

What do Lewis Carroll and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have in common? This summer, 48 fourth- and eighth-grade actors and 23 eight- and 12th-grade actors have made Lanterman Auditorium come alive with the music, dance, comedy and drama of these two classic writers. Both adaptations by director Koni McCurdy employ historical people to introduce the story. "Alice in Wonderland," adapted from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," finds the real Alice, her sisters and school friends reading the book Mr. Dodgson wrote for them.

It's no secret the Western State Conference has enjoyed paramount success lately, as two women's tennis teams have won state championships each of the last two seasons. It's something that Glendale Community College women's tennis Coach Bob Donaghy is mindful off since he's seen plenty of Santa Monica City College and Ventura first-hand. Ventura won the state title last season after Santa Monica accomplished the feat in 2011. While Donaghy expects those programs to be at or near the top of conference again this season, he's eager to find out if the Vaqueros have the right mix to record a second straight top-three finish in conference.

It's been a tough run the last couple of seasons for the Glendale Community College women's basketball team. In that stretch, the Vaqueros have gone 6-44 and 3-21 in the Western State Conference's South Division. While times have been tough, it hasn't deterred coach Carrie Miller from hitting the recruiting trails around Los Angeles to bring in a new wave of talent and depth to help change the program's landscape. "It can be hard to get people to come here after not winning a game two years ago and six last year," Miller said.

LA CRESCENTA — While it was hosted by the Crescenta Valley High Falcons and featured more than half the other teams from the Pacific League, the championship round of the 2012 Crescenta Valley Passing Tournament was dominated by the Foothill League. By the semifinals of the two-day tournament that concluded Saturday afternoon, the final four consisted of Foothill mainstays Hart, Valencia and Saugus and Arcadia, which shared the Pacific League title last season. Hart bested Valencia, 30-24, in the championship round.

Councilman Frank Quintero is Glendale's newest mayor following a tense tie vote on the dais last week, with the city's now-former mayor breaking the tie Tuesday. Councilwoman Laura Friedman said before the vote Tuesday that she planned to vote for Quintero because he doesn't plan to run for council next April, and this year would be his last chance to have the title. “It's a courtesy that I would extend to anyone else on the dais,” Friedman said. Quintero took his position immediately after the 3-2 vote, with Councilmen Ara Najarian and Rafi Manoukian dissenting.

As the price tag for California's bullet train has soared to nearly $100 billion, a central argument for forging ahead with the controversial project is an even loftier figure: the $171 billion that promoters recently estimated will be needed for new roads and airports if no high-speed rail is built. Without a fast-rail network, they warn, the state would have to add 2,300 miles of highway and roughly the equivalent of another Los Angeles International Airport to handle a projected surge in future travel.

Structurally, Roman Polanski's “Carnage” hearkens back to his first feature, “Knife in the Water” (1962). “When a handful of people are stuck in a confined space, the layers of civilized social convention are peeled away, revealing hidden savagery beneath”: that would serve nicely as a TV schedule description of either film. “Knife in the Water” showed a couple and one stranger on a yacht; “Carnage,” two couples in the living room of a New York apartment. The main action here is book-ended by two short scenes in a local park, the first of which sets up the situation: A group of 11-year-olds are having some sort of dispute - we see this from at least a hundred feet away, so it's hard to be sure exactly what's at stake - ending with one of them whacking another on the head with a hockey stick.

Biopics are often greeted with charges of inaccuracy, since the genre invariably requires simplifications, distortions and even fabrications. It's worse yet when the subjects are universally famous … like, say, J. Edgar Hoover. But “J. Edgar” - directed by Clint Eastwood from a script by Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”) - has an advantage: Almost nothing is known for sure about Hoover's private life. The longtime FBI boss guarded his personal life closely, partly because he knew better than anyone how easy it is to invade someone's privacy.

Two separate traffic accidents on the 5 Freeway in the San Fernando Valley left two people dead and two others injured on Sunday, all amid a popular children's charity event that attracts hundreds of motorcycle riders, according to event organizers and the California Highway Patrol. Authorities and organizers were trying to determine whether the two people killed were taking part in a motorcycle ride from Glendale to Castaic Lake to help raise money for autism research. "Whether they were or not, this was a tragic accident," said spokeswoman Susan Morrison.

Walt Disney 's 1994 animated blockbuster "The Lion King" certainly hasn't been an endangered species for the studio. Not with an international gross of $788.2 million. Though it hasn't been out on DVD or VHS since 2004, Disney reports it is the most successful title in home entertainment history. The film has also spawned two straight-to-video sequels and a TV series. And the Broadway musical version has played more than 5,000 performances as of this week and won six Tony Awards including best musical.