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Whether it’s a brush fire, a mass shooting, a car chase or the aftermath of a major storm, viewers in Los Angeles are used to getting the news from above.

Television news helicopter coverage has become one of the most important elements of any local newscast, with the high-flying helicopters roaring overhead a common fixture of breaking news scenes.

These images are so ubiquitous, it’s easy to take them for granted, until Tuesday, when an NBC4 helicopter carrying reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw crashed while covering breaking news in Chatsworth. Both died, along with a bystander on the ground.

The tragedy has prompted soul-searching in the world of TV news helicopter pilots and focused attention on safety issues.

Pilots describe a high-stakes race in the skies of Los Angeles, with the TV stations battling to get breaking news on the air first. The air space easily becomes crowded and in the case of moving stories like car chases, a bit unpredictable and chaotic. The crews who take to the air in Los Angeles must not only navigate each other, but air traffic to three regional airports and smaller, local air strips across the Southland when doing their job.

They say safety is always the top priority and that everyone in the air works together to avoid problems.

The NBC4 crash marks the most serious incident involving an L.A. news chopper crew since 2000, when a Fox 11 helicopter covering the Academy Awards crashed and burst into flames at Van Nuys Airport.

Nationally, National Transportation Safety Board data show that 16 people have died in eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the United States since 2000. A cause of Tuesday’s crash has not been determined, but some experts have said they believe mechanical failure might be the cause.

“It crushed us all,” said Tim Lynn, a now-retired helicopter pilot and reporter who flew for 16 years for KTLA-TV. Lynn worked with Moreno and knew how much she cherished her job.

“She loved the job so much that she put her all into it,” he said.

Camaraderie, competition in the air

For all the camaraderie in the air, there is also some competition.

Stations want to be first to get to the scene of breaking news.

Kurt Deetz, a former news helicopter pilot who retired five years ago, said it’s a difficult business to be in.

“It’s very competitive, and at what cost?” Deetz said.

News pilots tend to have plenty of experience, former pilots said, and dangerous incidents are rare. But Deetz said pilots are pushed to be out in the air first, get to the scene, and remain on scene for extended periods of time.

“If you can be the first on the scene, you’re a hero,” Deetz said. “I think about that now and think, that is so dumb.”

Deetz started his career with KMEX in 1995, and worked for nearly every station in the area while working with Helinet, he said.

In the sky, reporters and pilots keep an eye out for one another, warning when one is drifting too close to another or if there is something else to keep an eye on.

“We all know each other,” Lynn said. “Maybe we never met, but we’ve all talked on the radio and know the names.”

There are unspoken rules that news helicopter pilots learn once they join, Lynn said.

During a police chase, for example, the first helicopter on the scene immediately takes the front position left of the fleeing vehicle, he said. The next helicopter takes a position behind that helicopter. The third helicopter takes a spot in the front right side of the chase, and the fourth sits behind it. All four maintain those spots throughout the chase, regardless of the turns and twists throughout the area.

And when the pursued begins to circle a residential area — a common occurrence during police pursuits — all news helicopters are expected to stop and hover in place, even if their shots are temporarily blocked by trees and buildings.

That’s because the tight turns and circles could result in a crash if all helicopters remain in pursuit.

“You never move unless you say something,” Lynn said. “It’s a well-coordinated operation.”

Lynn remembers at least once when a new pilot joined in a pursuit.

“We were all stopped and he’s just chasing the guy like he’s the police,” Lynn said.

Lynn got on the radio and, as the other three choppers kept their position, Lynn asked him to stick to “one of the corners.”

“That was a learning curve for that guy,” Lynn said.

But Lynn said there’s respect for new staff and veterans in the field. Regardless of what station they work for, reporters and pilots are constantly helping each other, abiding by unspoken rules to keep each other safe.

‘A dangerous place to be’

There is one maneuver that pilots say brings them particular anxiety.

Jack Cress, a former helicopter pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps and a helicopter accident investigation instructor for USC’s Aviation Safety and Security Program, said news helicopters will often spend time hovering over an incident, sometimes at a low altitude.

“That is a dangerous place to be,” Cress said.

For Deetz, he said he’d often say that he wouldn’t hover low for extended periods of time, especially if he didn’t see a place he could land in case of an emergency.

“You set up, get your shot, and then you move on,” he said. “I made a point of saying, ‘I’m not going to hover here for hours.’ ”

He knows the practice is still popular among current pilots, which he thinks needs to be rethought.

“In this day and age, there’s no need to hover,” he said. “Those cameras are so powerful. There’s no need to be so low.”

Helicopter pilots are trained to stay away from those conditions because, in case of trouble like engine failure, the lack of altitude and forward momentum gives the pilot little recourse. If the engine were to fail, for example, a pilot can sometimes perform an “autorotation” procedure to use altitude and forward momentum to force the rotors to turn, easing their descent.

The procedure is one that Lynn is familiar with. In 2012, Lynn was covering an incident in Hollywood for KTLA when his helicopter started to smoke heavily. He had no idea until one of the other choppers radioed him to tell him.

“As soon as I turn it, he said, ‘You need to put it on the ground now,’ ” Lynn said.

Lynn headed down and started getting the helicopter ready for an autorotation, as heavy smoke started to shoot from the engine. Lynn looked toward the ground and was eyeing Highland or Los Feliz for a makeshift landing spot. He gripped the controls and expected the engine to give out at any second, until he spotted a parking lot. He watched for the wires, watched for the trees and set it down. The motor never gave out.

Pilots will constantly eye one another in the formation.

News helicopter pilots will normally stay around 1,200 to 1,500 feet above the ground, Lynn said. That is to stay above police helicopters, under commercial flights, and still have enough space in case they need to perform an emergency autorotation procedure.

Although news helicopters are touted as a cornerstone of local news broadcasts, the aircraft are owned and operated by third-party companies. KTLA and NBC4’s helicopters, for example, are owned and operated by Angel City Air, part of Welk Aviation. ABC 7’s helicopter is operated by Helinet, and KCAL’s helicopter is owned by Helicopters Inc.

Many of them are flying the same kind of helicopter that crashed Tuesday, the AS350 B2, which aviation experts said is a popular helicopter for news stations and police departments.

Deetz said he flew that helicopter for his entire career in news, and never once had a dangerous mechanical issue.

‘We all know each other’

It took minutes for word of the NBC4 crash to spread across the world of Los Angeles news chopper pilots and journalists.

“I immediately wondered who. We all know each other,” Lynn said.

One of Lynn’s former colleagues told him they saw a tail rotor on the ground, and Lynn quickly learned it was Moreno and Marciniw who were onboard.

A former police pilot for Huntington Beach and a retired news helicopter pilot after 16 years, Lynn said pilots have established rules in the air to keep each other safe.

He and others have shared several of those rules for new pilots and reporters who joined the business over the years, including Moreno, whom Lynn said he helped train when she first joined Angel City Air as a reporter.

Lynn remembers when she joined the company, he said. She picked up quickly on the equipment she had to use and eagerly sought advice to get better at the job.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, is expected to release a preliminary report on the incident in the coming days. A complete report on the incident is expected to take up to 18 months to be completed.

Poorna Jagannathan has played everything from a ruthless gangster (“Deli Boys”) to an overbearing immigrant mom (“Never Have I Ever”). Now with HBO’s “Lanterns,” she adds an all-powerful galactic android to her acting resume.

Her character’s identity was a secret for much of HBO’s DC Comics series until a reveal in Episode 4 that a rancher’s trophy wife, Zoe Macon (Jagannathan), was, in fact, the deadly Manhunter. Then another great surprise rocked the “Lanterns” universe Sunday when in Episode 5, she is killed by Lantern trainee, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre).

“She is dead, for sure. Maybe …” teases Jagannathan, who had to take a crash course in Green Lantern lore before assuming the role in the eight-episode series from showrunner and co-creator Chris Mundy (“Hell on Wheels,” “True Detective,” “Ozark”).

Jagannathan’s character belongs to an ancient, shape-shifting race created by the Guardians of the Universe as the galaxy’s first police force, but they’ve since gone rogue and are now out to eliminate the human race. Green lanterns are interstellar peacekeepers who wear rings that give them extraordinary powers. When veteran Lantern Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and his mentee Stewart are tasked with solving a murder in rural Nebraska, they trip upon a great mystery that included ferreting out which resident in the small town of Rushville is the Manhunter.

The series has been lauded for elevating the superhero genre while presenting as a gritty crime drama. In this edited conversation, Jagannathan explains the demise of the Manhunter, how she morphed into a comic book villain for the role and what it’s like to feel all powerful at this stage in her career.

John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Zoe Macon (Poorna Jagannathan) in a scene from Episode 5 of “Lanterns.”

(HBO)

How much did you know about the DC universe before taking on this role?

I didn’t understand a lot of this world, but I did grow up on Wonder Woman. I twirled my way into my teens. So at least there’s that. It’s such a huge property, so there’s a lot to learn. But I realized that there’s a lot of similarities between Lucky (the gangster she played in “Deli Boys”) and Zoe. Lucky was originally written for a man. So with “Lanterns,” when I was first reading the script, I just kept looking at the cast of characters and thinking who might it be? I just expected a man would be playing the Maneater.

Maneater?

I mean Manhunter. I kept messing up and saying that when we started working on the show, too. It’s the name of an old Hall & Oates song. [Jagannathan hums, “She’s a man eater… .”]

Explain who or what a Manhunter is.

Manhunters were created by the galaxy as part of a police force, and then they went rogue. They were created to enforce justice, but it was a very particular kind of justice. There was no gray in the Manhunter. No emotion. It was either right or wrong, and they would eliminate what was wrong. But then they started feeling things.

The guardians saw it was an operation that went wrong so they closed it down. She [Zoe] is a sole survivor. She runs away to a place where she adapts quickly to the creatures around her, and learns how to feel. So she’s this feeling machine that battles against her own programming, but at the end of the day she can’t help her programming. When there’s a conflict, she resolves it by killing half the population.

Jagannathan on her character in “Lanterns”: “She’s a sole survivor. She runs away to a place where she adapts quickly to the creatures around her, and learns how to feel.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Manhunters morph to fit in with the population around them, but the skin your character chooses is that of a brown Indian woman. She does not look like anyone else in the small, predominantly white town of Rushville. Her explanation of why she made that decision — to essentially not fit in — is really powerful. Can you recall what she said?

I remember that monologue. [John Stewart] asks, “Why did you choose this skin?” I say, “Power.” “How do you conquer a civilization and a people?” You come to it from the outside. “How do you learn about things from the outside?” In your world, you don’t want obstacles, but in my world, I need those obstacles to get a higher vantage point, to see a deeper purpose.

The absolute outsiderness is a relatable point. I did ask Chris about it and he basically said that as an Indian woman in Nebraska, you’re an outsider. You’re already alien. People are not going to ask you a lot of questions. You’re not going to be part of any power structure. So she just is an anomaly, and there’s no more questions around it.

Did you know Zoe would turn out to be the Manhunter when you first auditioned for the role?

No. The scenes that I got were the one at the bar where I’m picking up Stewart, and the scene right before I die, which is [when we’re] in bed and I’m trying to get him to leave. Like “You gotta go or you’ll die!” They didn’t indicate she was extraterrestrial in anyway. There was no E.T. flair to [the dialogue]. It was so grounded that it was easy to inhabit this character. I’m happy because if I had had even an inkling she was the Manhunter, I might have brought an alien touch to the scene. But I couldn’t quite figure out her place in the story. Definitely not during the audition, and definitely not till I read the last [scene].

Your first big breakthrough on American television was in 2016’s “The Night Of.” That was 10 years ago. Now you’re landing all these powerful, commanding and sometimes villainous roles.

I’m telling you, it’s like I couldn’t have imagined a future like this. If you’d asked me back then what kind of role do you want, I’d have no idea. Between Zoe and Lucky, they’re my two favorite TV baddies. Then Nalini (the overbearing mom in “Never Have I Ever”) and Salma (who has an affair with the title character in “Ramy”). All these characters are very strong women.

What is it that you channel to embrace these powerful roles?

The second I turned 50, I just felt an inexplicable comfort in my own skin that I never felt before. A belonging in my own skin. That translates into belonging in different spaces where I could have been uncomfortable in before, so it’s a great time to inhabit these characters. Before I would have really s— myself with a character like Lucky or Zoe, but now it feels a lot more accessible.

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1. Jagannathan as Aunt Lucky in Hulu’s “Deli Boys.” (James Washington/Disney) 2. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Devi, left, and Jagannathan as Nalini in Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever.” (Isabella B. Vosmikova/Netflix)

Do you see similarities between the characters you’ve played over the past few years?

They’re untethered, powerful women. They will do anything to keep their power. Their north star is power over anything else. Usually with female characters, everything always hearkens back to the family. Zoe is older. She is confident. She weaponizes her femininity right away, and she’s unafraid. She does it with nonchalance. She appears to not give a [damn].

All villains and warriors have an Achilles’ heel, and for female roles in particular, it’s usually sacrificing themselves to protect their family. Family is their kryptonite.

But a character like Zoe is willing to destroy everything, including her family, to keep power. She’s untethered from love and responsibility. You always expect a very masculine force to come in with this kind of power, and the fact that it never does with “Lanterns” is so unique.

You spoke on a “Lanterns” panel at San Diego Comic–Con? Describe the experience.

The [people who come in costume] are better humans than I am. To go somewhere and have your entire family dressed in Spider-Man regalia, roaming the streets of San Diego. It’s a manifestation of pure, unbridled passion from youth then passed down through generations. I wish I too had a passion like that.

“The second I turned 50, I just felt an inexplicable comfort in my own skin that I never felt before,” Jagannathan says. “That translates into belonging in different spaces where I could have been uncomfortable in before, so it’s a great time to inhabit these characters.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Were you terrified somebody would ask you a complicated question …

… about Green Lantern?

Yes.

I had to be really upfront and honest and explain that I know so little. It’s Aaron [Pierre] who is really into comic books. He really got into this world. I did speak to a Green Lantern expert as part of the preparation for the role. I do remember him telling me how special John Stewart was in the universe. One of the first introductions of a Black superhero [in mainstream comics] was in Green Lantern, so it holds a very sacred space in comic book history.

Can you talk about your forthcoming Apple TV drama series, “Nocturne.”

It comes out Oct. 30, and it’s basically like if “Silence of the Lambs” was a documentary on Florence Nightingale. That makes it seem so tame, but it’s so, so frightening. The serial killer genre is new for me. I read the book [it’s based on] and had to install a security system in my home. I couldn’t sleep anymore! It’s with Stephen Graham, Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz. I play an overworked FBI agent who was brought in to help solve a crime that [law enforcement] initially tried to deal with internally and they messed it up. So they decided they decided to bring in the big guns.

You said earlier that Zoe is an outsider. Did you consider yourself an outsider, too?

Growing up, we moved around a lot. I was literally changing languages every three years. I needed to adapt quickly to whoever was around me, and it often came at the expense of never really knowing myself. You just had to quickly read the society. The language. The gestures. You had to decode quickly in order to fit in.

Even as an adult, I was not fully settled into a point of view until my 40s. That was maybe the allure of acting — getting to show a little bit of my insides through acting. It’s finding out who you might be.

Boxer Fernando Vargas Jr. was arrested on suspicion of DUI following a multi-vehicle collision at a Universal Studios Hollywood parking lot, according to law enforcement and multiple media outlets.

California Highway Patrol responded to the incident on Thursday after receiving a call at 7:51 p.m.

CHP confirmed to The Times that one arrest was made at the scene for “suspicion of DUI.” No other injuries were reported at the scene.

Reports by KTLA confirmed that the 29-year-old was the individual arrested after officers observed “signs of alcohol impairment from Vargas” and conducted a DUI investigation.

Officers took him to the CHP Central Los Angeles Area office. The case will be submitted to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office for possible charges.

Hours before the arrest, Vargas posted a video to Instagram of himself and a woman inside a vehicle, who appeared to be in the passenger seat, TMZ reported.

The super welterweight boxer is the oldest son of two-time middleweight world champion Fernando Vargas. The famed Mexican American fighter from Oxnard — who at one point was the youngest U.S. national amateur champion — also faced legal troubles of his own for his role in a 1999 assault case.

Since fighting his first professional match in 2020, Vargas Jr. himself has built a steady record in the ring with 15 knockouts in 17 wins. His last bout was during the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford card in September 2025, where he lost to Irish boxer Callum Walsh.

There is a lost EastEnders Christmas special which showed groundbreaking gay character Barry Clark come out to his homophobic dad.

In 1986, bosses on the BBC drama cast the first ever gay couple on the soap with Michael Cashman and Gary Hailes playing Colin Russell and Barry.

The two characters were the first openly gay couple to share a kiss in a British soap. Gary Webster joined EastEnders in 1987 playing Barry’s protective older brother Graham Clark who accepted his sibling was a homosexual man.

Former Minder star Webster has now revealed that an entire Christmas episode was filmed in 1987 around Barry emotionally revealing his sexuality to their father, who hated homosexuals.

Webster insists the unique episode was in the can and due to air on Christmas Eve but when he sat down to watch it, bosses had lost their nerve and left it on the cutting room floor instead airing an episode forcing on Pauline and Arthur Fowler’s broken oven and Sharon Watts coping with Christmas with her parents Angie and Den separated.

None of the scenes were ever shown on the soap.

Webster said: “I was very proud to be a part of that storyline, absolutely. “That was really groundbreaking writing. Not only having Colin and Barry’s relationship out there, accepted or not accepted. It wasn’t for effect it was a reflection of what was happening to people in those relationships.

“It was fantastic writing, the idea that his brother would be fully accepting of it as well, when everyone thought the brother would find it unacceptable. At that time they could have gone further. I remember we shot a whole Christmas episode of the father of Barry and Graham – my character – finding out his son was gay, and he wasn’t accepting of it. It had all been building to that culmination of the father coming into the pub.

“We filmed 15 scenes and it was a whole episode at Christmas. I sat down to watch it at Christmas and they had pulled it and had shot something else. I think they just lost their bottle a little bit at that time.

“No, never broadcast. I don’t what happened to it. All I know is that my parents were sitting down with my aunt and uncle, my current girlfriend at the time was sitting down with her parents on Christmas Eve. I’d told them I’m featured in this episode a lot, this is going to be a big episode. I was sat down on my own, I saw the opening scene and I suddenly realised, ‘Oh my god! This has changed. This is not the episode that we shot.’

“Back in those days if you got an episode on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day it was the pinnacle of your career. Then I thought, ‘I just look like I’m a big liar. Now I’m going to have to take the flak of people going, ‘Right, so you were going to be in a big episode?’ Everyone doubted me for years afterwards.”

Webster – who stars in new independent British horror movie Harbinger – believes the episode was dropped because bosses on EastEnders feared the British public weren’t ready for it.

Despite that history-making episode never making it to television screens, Webster says being a part of the Colin and Barry story is one of the proudest acting jobs of his long career.

He said: “To be a part of that storyline, to work with Gary Hailes and Michael Cashman who played Barry and Colin – I still keep in contact with them both – I look back on that and I am proud of my part of that storyline. It was EastEnders at its very best. “What everyone forgets, people in my industry and in that London scene, we probably lived in a bit of a bubble than what was going on in the rest of the country.

“I felt that maybe people at that time weren’t ready for that yet. But I think people are ready for it at any time. You have to have more faith in the public.”

Webster made a return to EastEnders in 2016 as new character Neville Peacock. The actor still watches the soap and insists it is vital it remains on screens as it is a hotbed of new talent.

He said: “EastEnders is in a battle but I still think the basics and foundations are great, the same with Coronation Street and all the soaps. They are a great breeding ground for great talent whether it’s in front of the camera or behind the camera. People still like that regularity of storyline and characters they now and love. It’s just getting it out there, because there are so many other platforms.

“I did about four episodes of EastEnders as a different character in 2016. There was some hope that I might return. Hope is one thing, reality is another. It doesn’t bother me if something doesn’t quite work out, that’s just the nature of the business we’re in.

“If they called me again I would be thrilled and honoured to be in the show. “I still think there is a lot of value to the soap operas. In this country we do them extremely well. It’s a hot bed for new talent, discovery of new talent across the board that we would lose at our peril. If we allow that to just slip away I think the industry would suffer across the board. I’m a great advocate of retaining all those returning dramas.”

The BBC declined to comment but a soap source said EastEnders had “a rich history of championing LGBTQA+ storylines and characters over its 41-year tenure”.

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“It felt like a movie” — that’s what we all said in the days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when a Michael Bay action film slammed uncomfortably into real life. But with the perspective of 25 years, what’s lingered for the most part aren’t the most literal depictions of the day, but oblique dramas that capture something more subtle: the free-floating anxiety of a nightmare. In our list, you’ll find titles that confront Sept. 11 directly, but others that bring to mind a deeper, broader canon of trauma.

‘Donnie Darko’ (2001)

Jake Gyllenhaal in the 2001 movie “Donnie Darko.”

(NewMarket Films)

Going to the movies in the fall of 2001 was a solace and escape for many New Yorkers, though the films themselves often had an eerie, unplanned timeliness that made them resonate in an unshakable way. You could ache for the cozy city of the past in “The Royal Tenenbaums” or grapple with the schism of everything suddenly feeling different in “Mulholland Drive.” Or you could envelop yourself in Richard Kelly’s moody “Donnie Darko,” a teen drama touched by metaphysical doominess in which plane engines fall from the sky and death wears a rabbit costume. The movie has since become an unexplainable piece of comfort for a spooked generation. In its weather, its soundtrack and the haunted stare of Jake Gyllenhaal, it evokes the weeks after 9/11, even if it anticipated them. — Joshua Rothkopf

‘25th Hour’ (2002)

Edward Norton in the movie “25th Hour.”

(David Lee / Touchstone Pictures)

Only months after the attacks, Spike Lee took on 9/11 with a boldness that only 15 years of provocative filmmaking — and a lifetime of loving New York — could sharpen into an artist. This interpersonal drama, about the fallout of a drug dealer (Edward Norton) going to prison, was deep in development when real-life events altered its trajectory. Lee insisted on including the American flags dotting lawns, the general sense of unease and, in a somber touch, a credits sequence featuring the Tribute in Light. Overwhelmingly, one scene takes place in a Tribeca hi-rise with a view of ground zero, and even though the conversation itself concerns a friend in trouble, it quickly shifts onto metaphorical grounds of guilt, responsibility and rage. There still may not be a better 9/11 film than this one. — J. Rothkopf

‘Munich’ (2005)

A scene from the movie “Munich.”

(Karen Ballard / Universal Pictures)

On the surface, Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” released earlier in 2005, may seem like his more obviously 9/11-coded film (“Is it the terrorists?” Dakota Fanning’s character asks). But “Munich,” which followed six months later, goes straight to the questions of terrorism and endless cycles of retaliation that hung over the period. Eric Bana plays Avner, a Mossad operative sent to hunt down the Palestinians whom Israel holds responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. As the revenge killings mount, the mission begins to eat away at him — and Avner’s belief in closure is shaken. Spielberg makes the contemporary connections hard to ignore. In a final scene, set in mid-’70s New York, after Avner and his handler Ephraim, played by Geoffrey Rush, argue over what they have done, the camera pans across the Manhattan skyline southward, toward the Twin Towers, which Spielberg had digitally added to the shot. — Josh Rottenberg

‘United 93’ (2006)

A scene from the movie “United 93.”

(Jonathan Olley / Universal Pictures)

Five years after 9/11, it still wasn’t clear whether audiences were ready for a Hollywood movie that directly re-created the attacks. Director Paul Greengrass, then most recently of “The Bourne Supremacy,” took on the hijacked flight whose passengers fought back before it crashed in Pennsylvania. He used a largely unknown cast and shot with an almost documentary immediacy, cutting between the plane and air-traffic controllers trying to make sense of what was happening. There’s no movie star to take charge, and Greengrass doesn’t inflate the passengers into larger-than-life heroes. We simply watch as they piece together the situation from phone calls and scraps of information and realize what they have to do. We know from the beginning that none of them will survive. Watching them slowly come to that realization is what makes “United 93” so devastating. — J. Rottenberg

‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)

Christian Bale in the movie “The Dark Knight.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

It was probably inevitable that the anxieties of the post-9/11 era would find their way into a Batman movie. In “The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan fills Gotham with bombings, acts of mass surveillance and questions about how far is too far. Heath Ledger’s Joker is an enemy who doesn’t play by the rules, attacking the city with no clear political goal beyond creating panic and chaos. Christian Bale’s Batman, meanwhile, builds a Patriot Act-like system that turns every cellphone in Gotham into a tracking device and uses increasingly brutal methods to stop him. Nolan folds all of that into a hugely entertaining superhero movie without turning it into a lecture. — J. Rottenberg

‘Man on Wire’ (2008)

Philippe Petit, as seen in the documentary “Man on Wire.”

(Jean-Louis Blondeau / Polaris)

By the time James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary arrived in 2008, the Twin Towers had been gone for seven years. The film recounts French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s astonishing 1974 stunt, in which he and a small band of co-conspirators secretly rigged a cable between the towers, allowing Petit to walk high above lower Manhattan. The movie never needs to mention 9/11 to feel devastating. We already know what became of those buildings. Watching Petit step onto the wire lets us see them differently, not as the site of catastrophe but as the setting for something beautiful and absurdly daring. A ghostly montage of the Twin Towers being constructed, set to composer Michael Nyman’s “Fish Beach,” brought New Yorkers to tears. For me, that feeling is also personal. I was living in New York on 9/11 and had been at an outdoor concert in the plaza beneath the towers just weeks before the attacks, so there was something especially moving about seeing them again as part of the city’s everyday life. — J. Rottenberg

‘The Hurt Locker’ (2009)

Anthony Mackie, left, and Jeremy Renner in the movie “The Hurt Locker.”

(Jonathan Olley / Summit Entertainment)

Has there ever been a better cinematic metaphor for the War on Terror than Jeremy Renner in a bomb suit, kneeling over a device in a Baghdad street while everyone around him scans the rooftops for danger? Kathryn Bigelow’s film narrows the Iraq War down to the nerve-shredding work of an explosives-disposal unit, with Renner’s Staff Sgt. William James almost eerily comfortable in situations that terrify everyone around him. The suspense often comes down to the simplest question: Is this thing going to blow up? Bigelow, the action expert behind “Point Break” and “Strange Days,” mostly leaves the larger politics offscreen and stays with the men doing the dangerous work, their detachment a survival tactic. Though initially little-seen, “The Hurt Locker” pulled off its own improbable feat, becoming, at the time, the lowest-grossing movie to ever win Oscar’s best picture — while Bigelow became the first woman ever to win best director. — J. Rottenberg

‘Margaret’ (2011)

Anna Paquin and Matt Damon in the movie “Margaret.”

(Myles Aronowitz / 20th Century Fox)

Kenneth Lonergan shot this seething, richly authentic New York City drama in 2005, when the rawness of post-9/11 NYC was already a part of everyday life. But the trauma feels ingrained in every frame, and there are shots of wary street life — an occasional flinch or look upward — that New Yorkers could watch and think: Yes, that’s what it felt like. The plot itself concerns a teenage girl, Lisa (Anna Paquin, never better), whose hyperdramatic tendencies are both recognizable and lovable. She is involved in a bus accident that results in a fatality and, with the crusading passion that so many people felt after 9/11, decides to get involved as a witness and truth-teller. The need to fix things — amid so much that was unfixable — is a marker of all the movies on this list. — J. Rothkopf

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012)

Jessica Chastain, center, in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”

(Jonathan Olley / Columbia Pictures)

Perhaps the most explicit film on our list, Kathryn Bigelow’s daring military procedural about the 2011 midnight raid that took out Osama bin Laden was a political hot potato in its moment. Now with distance, it impresses as a skilled piece of political moviemaking, one that captures the era’s sense of moral compromise and queasy vengeance. It contains scenes of torture and goes deeply into the CIA’s planning and execution of the operation — choices that remain provocative. But the movie’s most lingering piece of drama is a silent shot of one woman crying in a cargo plane: a high-level analyst played by Jessica Chastain, who has accomplished the unthinkable but doesn’t feel relief. The fight will not end. Only a filmmaker who had just won Oscars and made history would have been granted the artistic freedom to make this movie, arguably Bigelow’s finest. — J. Rothkopf

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Standing ovations at film festivals are a rite: part appreciation, part obligation, part a need to stretch your legs after sitting for a couple of hours.

But for an audience to explode and roar their approval in the middle of a movie? That rarely, if ever, happens.

Except it did, midway through the Telluride Film Festival world premiere of Jesse Eisenberg‘s delightful comedy “The Debut.” The applause followed a scene between Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti that took its audience on such an exhilarating journey that there was almost no choice but to cheer in admiration, as if to say: What did we just see?

Sitting in the theater, Eisenberg, producer Emma Stone and Paul Giamatti looked at each other and asked themselves the same question but for a different reason.

“It was hard to process and, at the same time, just so affirming,” Eisenberg told me a couple of hours after the premiere.

The next day, sitting down to grab a quick bite with Moore and Giamatti, that giddy feeling had not dissipated, though, truth be told, they knew this scene was an all-timer from the moment they read it.

Let’s set the stage for you in a way that won’t spoil this constantly surprising film when it arrives in theaters in December and starts piling up acclaim and awards for all concerned.

Moore plays Mona, a meek, thoroughly unseen wife and mother who impulsively decides to audition for a community theater production of a musical titled “Nosy Neighbors,” despite having no experience apart from singing in the church choir when she was 13. The director Jerry (Giamatti) cuts her tryout short, sending her home, only to relent when the woman he’d already cast (Bernadette Peters!) drops out and he has nowhere else to turn.

Mona is, as Moore puts it, a “nice lady.” But she’s not a natural performer. She can’t get into character playing Miss Danielle, the show’s tough, toolbelt-wearing building super. So Jerry takes Mona aside because that’s what he does. As her cast mates note, “He’s going to drag you through the s— and the mud and you have to be ready for the s— and the mud.”

It turns out, though, that Jerry is the one who isn’t ready for what’s about to happen. Sitting in a chair on the theater stage, Jerry holds an envelope containing cash, telling Mona that it’s her job to make him hand over the rent. It’s an acting-class exercise designed to make you listen, react and dig into your character’s truth. Moore begins with a whisper and builds to a roar as Mona improvises a manic rant that involves rats and the plague.

Suffice to say, Jerry hands over the rent.

“When I read that scene, I stood up, put my iPad down and started doing laps around my dining room table,” Moore remembers. “I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. I was just like, ‘Oh my God! Aaaaaaagh!‘”

“It was five pages long,” Giamatti marvels. “Jerry just needs Mona to be better. And then he sees that maybe she could actually be kind of great. He cracks her open and he’s like, ‘Oh wow, who is this lady? Who the hell is this?’ The funny thing about that scene is s— like that happens in classes.” He turns to Moore. “Did that ever happen to you?”

“I had an audition for a university, actually, where they threw chairs in front of me while I did the monologue and made me climb over the chairs,” Moore says, laughing. “I look back on that now. I was 18 years old and I was like, “What?’ Yeah. It was really strange. They’re trying to get you to react authentically and be alive.”

She smiles at Giamatti. “Hopefully when you get to be our age, you don’t need that.”

Though the scene has Mona improvising, it was performed as written, down to every last pause.

“Everyone keeps asking if we improvised and I’m like, ‘Hell, no,’” Moore says. “Jesse’s like the Coens. Everything’s there on the page.”

Adds Giamatti, “It’s incredibly specific. You follow his punctuation. The commas matter in his writing.”

“What’s so f—ing delightful about about working with Paul is that his sense of timing and rhythm is so tight,” Moore continues. “That scene is a set piece that requires you to work in tandem and you need somebody to hit it back with the same intensity and the same speed.”

When Eisenberg first met Moore, he told her flat-out, “I don’t want you to worry about this scene.” He knew it was a bear, with pages and pages of lines, so he told her he’d have a teleprompter on set.

“That section, all that crazy s— she goes off on, that would be really hard,” Giamatti says.

“And I was like, ‘Phew, that’s fantastic,’ because I knew all I would do would be to worry about all those lines and be so scared,” Moore says. “But because he said that to me, I never worried. And I didn’t need the teleprompter.”

They shot the scene in one morning, just Moore and Giamatti alone on the stage with the rest of the crew downstairs in the video village. There was an energy on set, spiked by an unusual number of visitors (“People knew,” Giamatti says) and then they went to work.

“I remember the first time you really hit that speech and they called cut, I just couldn’t stop grinning,” Giamatti tells Moore. “And I reached out and just kind of held you for a second because I was like, ‘That was amazing.’ I wanted to convey just how great it was, what you were doing.”

Moore beams. “I just love him. Just love him, love him, love him. I have so much gratitude for Paul.”

“To watch you be a bad actor was so hilarious and then you would you would modulate it and change it,” Giamatti continues. “Watching her was the experience that Jerry was having. It was such a joy.”

The scene is the beginning of a simpatico relationship between Jerry and Mona, mentor and protege, predicated on the power of imagination and how it can make outcasts feel seen and heard.

“Everyone wants to be known as who we are, even though it’s so scary for us to really reveal it,” Moore says. “There’s a real mind-altering power in just being yourself.”

VENICE, Italy — “My actual personality is not very friendly, I’m afraid,” claims Korean actor Jeon Do-yeon. “Myself and actor Sul Kyung-gu, we can be a little bit brusque. We don’t really have the talent to make the set fun.”

As she says it, though, Jeon and co-star Cho Yeo-jeong are laughing — making the assertion rather harder to believe when it arrives in English from Korean via an interpreter. Throughout our conversation, in fact, the pair chuckles, nods along to each other’s answers, interjects sounds of assent. Enough for me to understand that their chemistry comes naturally, whatever Jeon’s protestations.

“In the film I play a character that chases [Jeon’s character] and it really suited me, almost to the point where I didn’t really need to try and act this role,” as Cho puts it. “I was almost like a sunflower, constantly facing and chasing actor Jeon.”

The actors needed every ounce of the sublime chemistry they forged to portray the magnetic but fatally flawed relationship at the heart of auteur Lee Chang-dong’s first film in eight years, “Possible Love,” which premiered Sunday at the Venice Film Festival. South Korea’s international feature submission for the 2027 Oscars, the Netflix film sees Ye-ji (Cho), a documentarian married to a wealthy businessman (Zo In-sung), cozy up to Mi-ok (Jeon), whose husband (Sul) has been seriously injured in a brutal crackdown on striking factory workers, in order to secure an interview with him — only for divisions of class and professional ambition to expose the fault lines in their relationship, and in turn their marriages.

“It seems like they want to be friends with each other, but then there seems to be a line that just cannot be crossed between them,” says Lee, also through an interpreter, of the actors’ accomplished double act, referring to a scene in which Ye-ji bristles at Mi-ok’s suggestion that her high-end clothes are out of place interviewing unemployed laborers. “[Jeon and Cho] knew of that and they went into shooting that scene knowing that it was quite challenging to express. There were, of course, some things that were up to the camera in bringing that about, but I think that was a scene where the two were able to express just how nuanced and quite strange the relationship can be.”

The film itself is just as slippery and multi-layered, down to Lee’s heady admixture of documentary and dramatic aesthetics. Inspired by real-life labor conflict in South Korea, “Possible Love” uses Ye-ji’s nonfiction study of laid-off workers as a window into the lives of ordinary people swept up in large-scale social change, against the backdrop of which the two women’s competing priorities are thrown into stark relief. Can a filmmaker who totes a $4,000 Lora Piana backpack, however well-intentioned, truly understand the plight of the working class? Is a subject eager to publicize a political struggle prepared for the risk that her personal privacy will be invaded in the process?

To choreograph the film within the film — so compelling that I almost missed seeing its conclusion when “Possible Love” shifts the focus to interpersonal fireworks in the third hour — Lee cast a real-life documentary director and cinematographer as Ye-ji’s crew, lending what Cho calls their “natural energy” to the movements of the camera. Cho herself prepared by consulting the late master of the form, Frederick Wiseman, who was unabashed about the tension between documentary filmaking’s often radical politics and the privilege required to turn it into a profession.

“[Wiseman] was posed the question by some students studying film and documentary: ‘How can I pursue this work in reality?’” she recalls. “And he replied with the immortal words, ‘Marry a rich man.’ And you know, I was preparing for the role of Ye-ji, so it was such an apt response for her situation.”

Jeon, left, and Cho in “Possible Love.”

(Joo Jae-bum/Netflix)

The potential for conflict bursts into the open at a seaside home that has been in Ye-ji’s husband’s family for years, where the group has decamped for a supposedly restorative holiday. Reminded of the setting by the location of our conversation — a set of green-curtained, pink-carpeted suites at the Hotel Excelsior, overlooking the northern shores of the Adriatic — I ask the actors what’s going through their characters’ minds when Mi-ok and Ye-ji’s promising connection ultimately severs.

Mi-ok “doesn’t really want to reveal to anyone else what’s going on in the family … She only wants to show the good side that they are trying to live their best life and trying to improve and move forward with hopefulness,” Jeon says, citing an early scene in which Mi-ok asks the crew not to film her son’s awkward taekwondo at a school field day. When the camera’s prying eye becomes more intrusive, though, she “feels a great sense of betrayal, that her family is being used and exploited.”

For Cho, who says Ye-ji is “constantly balancing the ethical dilemma” between documenting the truth and treating her subjects with care, the break was always inevitable, and no amount of Ye-ji’s remorse or guilt can repair the damage.

Against this microcosm of the class war Lee sets the emergence of artificial intelligence, which threatens to further destabilize labor across a range of industries — including his own. Although he’s uncertain if, when or how AI will “intrude” on the “entirely creative” filmmaking process, the “Poetry” and “Burning” director is already using it for everyday tasks.

“Before going to see the doctor, I like to ask AI all the symptoms that I have, ask what’s wrong with me. Or I would ask, you know, ‘What’s the weather like in Venice?’” he says. “AI gives us instant answers, and it goes even beyond that to where it gives you advice these days. And in that sense, AI has indeed really gotten deeply intertwined in my daily life.”

Similarly, Jeon is open to using AI for more “trivial” matters, such as simultaneous translation from English to Korean and vice versa. But she admits to more “extreme thoughts” than Lee about the technology’s role in the future of screen acting.

“I’m going to be starring in a [Korean-language adaptation] of Anton Chekov’s “The Cherry Orchard” upcoming in New York. And I was wondering, actually, is the stage the last place that cannot be conquered by AI, and will not be replaced by AI?”

Perhaps. But the scene in “Possible Love” that best captures the finely honed chemistry of its female leads, in which Mi-ok and Ye-ji drunkenly bond over soju and Korean barbecue as their bemused husbands look on, seems to me beyond the capabilities of AI — it’s too warm, too meticulously rendered to be anything other than fully human, the sort of acting one hopes the Venice jury will remember when it hands out the Volpi Cup for best actress on Saturday.

“It is quite difficult technically and practically — it was a scene that we shot all night long,” Cho says. “But I remember shooting it with a lot of pleasure.”

No protest there.

I’d like to pen an ode to the once-L.A.-based artist Mel Kadel on the occasion of the release of her first coloring book for women and girls, published by Secret Headquarters in Atwater Village. Titled “Dream Drops,” the detailed hand drawings allow blossoming artists to participate in Kadel’s elaborate, imaginative world of fragile, brave, timid, hopeful, brash, adventurous women — characters she’s drawn for decades now.

I first met Kadel more than 25 years ago when I moved to L.A. from Boston with my then-up-and-coming indie rock band called the Movies. The band moved into a two-bedroom triplex in Silver Lake that cost $845 per month and immediately fell in with a ragtag group of iconoclastic and wildly talented artists including Kadel, photographer Alex Prager, painter America Martin, artist Mercedes Helnwein and bands and musicians such as the Silversun Pickups, Jimmy Tamborello, the Jealous Sound, Earlimart, Radar Bros. and Irving.

Kadel and her then-partner Travis Millard — another prolific and accomplished artist — lived in a cabin near the wild mountainy edges of Echo Park, and friends would gather there to draw, drink and make music. Kadel always had her head bent over her work, page after page of detailed line drawings that later appeared on friends’ bedroom and living room walls and sometimes on fliers for shows at Spaceland or the Silverlake Lounge.

It was Kadel who encouraged many of us to try our hand at creating art, and she once staged a group show at an Echo Park record shop called Sea Level that was owned by a friend of ours. I painted a self-portrait on a piece of wood for the show that still hangs on my wall today.

Kadel created the album cover for the Silversun Pickups’ debut EP, “Pikul,” which was released on Dangerbird Records in 2005, and later, after the band and the label soared to new heights, she covered Dangerbird headquarters near Sunset Junction in Silver Lake with a building-sized mural featuring her otherworldly woman clad in blue stripes with forever flowing flowered hair.

In many ways it is Kadel whom I credit with opening a young me up to the magical world of art and the ideas that flow from it — Kadel and those early L.A. friends, many of whom I no longer see regularly, but whose accomplishments I relish in when they come to my attention. Which is just what I did when I saw that Kadel had released her coloring book — a project that she has worked on (no doubt in the same intentional, intense way that she always has) for the past year.

I’m arts editor Jessica Gelt, glad for what was and looking forward to what will be. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Eleanora Owen in “Being Piaf.”

(Doug Engalla )

Being Piaf
Written and performed by Eleanora Owen, this solo theatrical piece explores the life and songs of French singer and lyricist Edith Piaf. Directed by Tim Byron Owen.
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays; through Aug. 30. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com

Green Corridors
The West Coast premiere of Natalka Vorozhbyt’s darkly humorous drama about the plight of four Ukrainian women — refugees from the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. Translated by John Freedman with Natalia Bratus. Directed by Frédérique Michel and produced by Charles A. Duncombe.
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays; through Sept. 27. City Garage Theater, Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave T1, Santa Monica. citygarage.org

Tercera Raíz
The contributions of the African diaspora to Mexican culture are celebrated with dance and mariachi music. Produced in partnership with Grandeza Mexicana Folk Ballet Company.
8 p.m. The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East. theford.com

SATURDAY

New–Music Game Night!
Brightwork Ensemble and People Inside Electronics present an evening of game-inspired works by Cristina Lord, Isaac Schankler, Siobhán Dougall and Richard An, and audience participation.
8 p.m. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

SUNDAY

Eileen Cowin: Between Panic and Paradise
The Los Angeles–based photographer and artist’s 50-year career has produced visual narratives that incorporate cinema, literature, poetry and painting, erasing the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction.
Through Jan 3, 2027. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org

Jamar Gilbert and Amber Liekhus in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” at a Noise Within.

(Daniel Reichert)

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
A Noise Within opens its season with the seventh of the 10 plays in August Wilson’s Century Cycle to be produced by the company. Amber Liekhus stars as an iconic blues singer during a tempestuous recording session in 1927 Chicago. Directed by Gregg T. Daniel.
Previews, 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Aug. 28; Aug. 29-Sept. 20. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. https://www.anoisewithin.org/play/ma-raineys-black-bottom/

TUESDAY

Beethoven’s Fifth with Anna Handler

Da-da-da-DUM. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s incoming conductor-in-residence leads the orchestra in one of classical music’s most iconic pieces, along with the composer’s rarely heard Triple Concerto and the U.S. premiere of Grace-Evangeline Mason’s “Ablaze the Moon.”
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra will play Blue Note LA on Tuesday and Wednesday.

(Blue Note LA)

Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra
As they’ve been doing for three decades, the actor-musician and his band perform contemporary arrangements of classic jazz and American Songbook standards.
7 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Blue Note Los Angeles, 6372 Sunset Blvd. bluenotejazz.com

Looking West: How the Myth of the Western Frontier Got Its Start
Muse/ique takes a deep dive into the legends and reality of the American West through classic Hollywood film scores, folk songs and contemporary compositions that reclaim the era’s diversity. Led by artistic and music director Rachael Worby with Damon Daunno, Raye Zaragoza, Glynn Turman and Muse/ique Orchestra.
7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino; 3 pm. (premium RSVPs only) and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 30. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. muse-ique.com

WEDNESDAY

California African American Museum
The museum augments two of its ongoing shows with special events. On Wednesday, Justen LeRoy of Art + Practice offers a curatorial walkthrough of “The Sound of Gordon Parks,” an immersive exhibition highlighting the sonic dimension of the photographer, composer, author, poet and filmmaker’s work. Thursday night, poets Pam Ward, Luis Rodriguez and Lynne Thompson share original work inspired by “A New Song: Langston Hughes in the West.”
Gordon Parks, 2 p.m. Wednesday; Langston Hughes, 7 p.m. Thursday. CAAM, 600 State Drive, Exposition Park. caamuseum.org

“Conscience” by playwright Joe DiPietro will have its L.A. premiere at International City Theatre in Long Beach.

(Justin Patterson)

Conscience
The Los Angeles premiere of Tony Award-winning playwright Joe DiPietro’s drama about pioneering politician Margaret Chase Smith, who famously challenged Joseph McCarthy’s tactics and was the first woman to serve in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Directed by Caryn Desai.
Previews, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; through Sept. 13. International City Theatre the Beverly O’Neill Theater, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach. ictlongbeach.org

THURSDAY

Rachmaninoff & Adams
Gemma New conducts John Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” ahead of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (with Jeneba Kanneh-Mason in her L.A. Phil debut) and Symphonic Dances.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

— Kevin Crust

Retrospective

L.A. Times arts coverage from the past …

Eisa Davis, playwright and actor, who appeared in Melissa Jane Gibson’s play “This” at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City in 2011.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

A double life as actor, playwright

Aug. 14, 2011

“I’m in a play called ‘This.’ ”

“OK, what is it called?”

“No, no, it’s called ‘This.’ ”

“Yes? What? It’s called what?”

With a lighthearted laugh, Eisa Davis says she often encounters this response when revealing that she is in a new production of “This,” which recently opened at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. The perplexity may be fitting for the universe playwright Melissa James Gibson has created: a world of confusion in which close friends enter a vulnerable time of unforeseen circumstances testing their expectations — a time also known as middle age.

Davis’ work as an actor and a playwright has contributed to a textured career. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 2007 for her play “Bulrusher,” about a biracial orphan infant found in a basket and raised by a quiet schoolteacher. She went on to write and star in the autobiographical “Angela’s Mixtape,” which was among the New Yorker’s best plays of 2009. Other plays she has written include “Ramp,” as well as “The History of Light,” which is returning to the stage this fall in New Jersey. READ MORE

– Jasmine Elist

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Conservators examine “Portrait of Mai” by Joshua Reynolds at the Getty museum.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A 250-year-old portrait by painter Joshua Reynolds recently arrived at the Getty and is being examined by conservators before going on view in its West Coast debut later next month. “The Portrait of Mai” was acquired by the Getty for $61 million in a rare joint purchase with the National Portrait Gallery in London and depicts a young, regal-looking Tahitian man who arrived in London with Capt. James Cook in 1774.

If you’ve seen the recent national tour of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, you may have wondered how on earth the actor playing the living chandelier Lumiere sings and dances for more than two hours while wearing lighted candles on both of his hands. The answer has arrived via this fun story written by Times contributor Jenelle Riley, who headed backstage during a recent performance to trail Danny Gardner as he donned the 7-pound props and went about the business of performing in the rigorous show.

The group show “To Share a Stomach” recently opened at the Brick in East Hollywood. Times contributor Sharon Mizota wrote a review that included her take on the unique and difficult-to-execute concept. The show was made manifest when 25 Iranian artists, working under challenging wartime conditions, sent instructions to artists counterparts in L.A. for how to create artworks using various levels of collaboration. Mizota found the results understandably uneven, but deeply touching and impactful.

The Kennedy Center’s National Symphony Orchestra performs at the Hollywood Bowl under musical director Gianandrea Noseda on Aug. 18.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

The newly homeless National Symphony Orchestra, whose fate has become uncertain as a court battle wages over whether or not the Kennedy Center will close down for two years, performed at the Hollywood Bowl earlier this week. Times classical music critic Mark Swed was there to watch, along with many effusive supporters of music director Gianandrea Noseda’s now wandering orchestra. Swed found the program lacking in imagination, but noted, “with its smooth strings, creamy brass, pungent winds and friendly percussion, Noseda’s NSO came across as a gracious orchestra meant to please, and, consequently, a seemingly marvelous anomaly in an otherwise divisive present-day D.C.”

Speaking of the Kennedy Center, last week proved a pivotal one for its fate. The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted late in the week to move forward with President Trump’s plan to close the building for renovations for two years. According to multiple news reports, the board also voted to inscribe Trump’s name on the building using the language “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

Brett Littman has been named the new director and chief executive of the the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

(Don Stahl)

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego announced earlier this week that it has appointed Brett Littman as its new director and chief executive. Littman is replacing Kathryn Kanjo, who left to become the new director of the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. Littman has previously served in a variety of leadership roles in the arts in New York City, including as director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum; executive director of the Drawing Center; and deputy director of MoMA PS1. He was also co-director of Dieu Donné Papermill and associate director of UrbanGlass. He will start at MCASD in early October as the fifth director and chief executive in the museum’s history.

The Perenchio Foundation has awarded a $2,040,000 grant to the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, representing the largest grant in the Grammy-winning organization’s history. The 2026 General Operating Support grant, which aids many aspects of the organization’s programming and community offerings, will be distributed over three years, and arrives at LACC celebrates its 40th anniversary.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Here are 16 burger and drink deals for when you need an “adult happy meal,” from The Times food section. Who doesn’t?