'Idol' finalists deliver in L.A. show

Not a single gold or purple jersey was seen at the Staples Center on Monday night. Instead, the arena was filled with thousands of "tweenie bops" and "American Idol" fans who waited anxiously for what would be a full night.
L.A. was stop No. 5 for the top 10 "Idol" contestants, who have started on their American Idols Live Tour 2008.
The three-hour concert was packed with energy, as the contestants each delivered a three-song set, aside from runner-up David Archuleta, who sang four songs, and winner David Cook, who sang five.
The arena was packed with die-hard fans, and "Idol" judges Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson attended the concert as well.
The opening was none other than the lovable Chikezie, who was voted off the show as No. 3. In between his three songs, Chikezie demonstrated his "nice guy" persona as he sang a touching a cappella tune dedicated to his parents.
Soon after, Ramiele Malubay delivered a rockin' performance with her huge belting voice in her sleek, black stilettos. People wondered how that huge voice came out of such a petite body.
The crowd got up on its feet as Michael Johns confidently came out with "We Will Rock You" and "We are the Champions." It seemed appropriate considering the concert was in a basketball arena and really got the audience going.
Country singer Kristy Lee Cook soon took the stage with a set of country songs along with Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." The song was a crowd pleaser and seemed to be a touching moment for many of the audience members.
Carly Smithson blew the house out with her powerhouse voice while the oh-so-sweet Brooke White charmed the audience playing the piano and guitar. With a ukulele in his hand and his usual grin, dreadlocked Jason Castro soon started his set with his rendition of "Over the Rainbow." Dressed stunningly, third-place finisher Syesha Mercado came out with an unforgettable performance as she chilled the crowd singing "Listen" by Beyoncé.
The night was heated and the crowd got up for the last performances of the two Davids. Runner-up David Archuleta sang a couple of his usual soft, ballad songs including "Angel," but got the crowd going with enthusiasm as soon as he started "Stand By Me."
Finally, the anticipation was relieved as "Idol" winner, David Cook came out on stage where he sang a few tunes that he performed on the show as well as Foo Fighters' "My Hero," which he dedicated to his brother Adam, who is being treated for brain cancer.
The 10 finalists, freed from worrying about "Idol" judge Simon Cowell or the votes of America, appeared extremely confident and comfortable on stage. Each thanked the fans and couldn't express enough how grateful they were.
Now that L.A. is done, the rest of America awaits to watch the new "Idols" rock the stage.

'Meet Dave' is Eddie Murphy's sweetest film in a while

Review: The comedy about tiny aliens invading the Earth is tame in both humor and stereotyping.
By ROGER MOORE

The Orlando Sentinel
It says volumes about the state of Eddie Murphy's comedy career that "Meet Dave," his latest, is his least hateful film in years. For an actor known for making funs of gays, women, fat people, white people, gays, Asians and homosexuals, that's saying something.
In fact, this banal little goof about tiny aliens who invade the Earth in a spaceship they've disguised to look like Eddie Murphy (with Murphy playing the ship's captain) is downright soft, a movie about humanity's saving graces that amounts to the sweetest thing he's done since "Trading Places."
It's not all that funny. It has the obligatory swishy gay cliches. But Murphy and his "Norbit" director, Brian Robbins, pretty much repent and err on the side of "family friendly" in this one. Murphy, who has made threats about quitting the movies in interviews in recent weeks, may want to rethink that. Redemption is almost within sight.
He swaps his fat suits for a white Tony Manero suit from "Saturday Night Fever" as the spaceship Dave, sent from the Planet Nill to recover an orb that will help them suck all the salt water out of the Earth's oceans for Nillians to use. The Dave crew (Gabriel Union is the lovesick "Number 3" to Murphy's captain) sit inside his head and try to decipher how to interact with "these gargantuan savages," chiefly the lovely Elizabeth Banks, as a widow, and her son, Josh (Austyn Myers).
Dave has to learn American colloquialisms and think up quick lies to explain his dated attire ("Saturday Night Fever" wasn't his inspiration, a TV show was), his robotic, birdlike movements and his cluelessness about New York, America, Earth and the human race. "I don't get out much."
Murphy manages some vintage bits as Dave – reciting the Bee Gees back catalog, learning to smile, laugh, dance and fit in. Banks and Union give the picture hints of charm.
But everything outside of Dave's "Coming to America" naivete founders as comedy. The crew become infected by the sass, hipness, sexuality and show tunes of New York, sparking mutiny. Dave gratuitously visits the toilet. A couple of cops (Scott Caan, in an annoying performance topped by his most annoying hairstyle ever) track the alien they suspect is among us.
None of that works. Nor do such stock situations as Dave's treatment of bullies, his handling of an attempted robbery and the like.
But the "Starman"/"Visit to a Small Planet" elements ring true, from Dave's blundered improvisations in social situations to the video everyone on Earth "is forced to watch once each year" ("It's a Wonderful Life"), which truly explains our humanity.
That's what gives one hope that maybe Murphy, who seemed bitter long before he lost the Oscar for "Dreamgirls," can be saved. When he lets go of the hate, the infantile takes over. He can almost remember being challenged by a movie, and being charming when he was.

Orange County women ready to make up for U.S. water polo performance in 2004

LOS ALAMITOS — Natalie Golda can still feel the emotional tug from her first Olympics.
From the overwhelming spectacle of the opening ceremonies to the indescribable joy of having a medal placed around her neck, Golda has a reserve of experience to draw from when the 2008 Olympics get underway next month.
But the feelings that course through her body will be different this time around.
She is no longer a bright-eyed kid but a veteran leader on a young U.S. Olympic women's water polo team, and Golda acknowledged this is probably her last go-around with the national team.
"Most likely," Golda said before the U.S. kicked off a four-game exhibition series against Australia at Joint Forces Training Base in preparation for its Aug.11 Olympic opener against China.
If the U.S. does well in Beijing it would cap a long run for Golda, 26, who is in her 10th year with the national team. The Rosary High graduate has a lot invested in these Games as one of three remaining players who have unfinished business from the 2004 bronze-medal performance.
Golda was one of the younger players on that squad. Now she's one of the better defenders and outside shooters who plays a larger role in and out of the pool
"I think the first time I didn't feel like a contributor," Golda said. "Now I feel my role has increased and changed and this is going to be completely different Games for me."
Golda defers to three-time Olympians Heather Petri and Brenda Villa for vocal leadership, but she has been known to fire up the team before games or pick up a teammate after a bad practice.
That energy and attitude will be valuable to a U.S. team that has 10 first-time Olympians and an average age of 24.
Despite its youth, it is the same team that won the Pan American Games last year to qualify for this Olympics. The U.S. enters Beijing as the top-ranked team, although Coach Guy Baker says his team is behind Italy and Russia.
Golda remains confident.
"This is probably our more veteran team," Golda said. "I definitely trust these girls. They're all phenomenal athletes and they all know what they're doing and they want to be standing up on that podium."
Golda is still motivated by 2004. She thought the U.S. was the best team that year, but it failed to collect its ultimate goal.
Not that Golda isn't proud of her bronze medal. She keeps it in her mother's China hutch and brings it out for speaking appearances.
A gold medal would be the first for the U.S. women, who won silver in 2000.
It would also close the door on a solid career and neatly allow Golda to start another chapter of her life — she is getting married in January — although she left that door open.
"Part of you wants to go out on top," Golda said.
"But then those successful performances kind of feed that hunger to continue playing and seeing how much better you can become and other things you can accomplish. That's why you keep playing. There are those games where you feel like you can play another game right afterward and you feel like you played mistake-free water polo and every single shot was going for you. That's why you keep playing through all the bad practices and bad games … those good ones keep you going."
HAYES MAKES CUT
While Golda's selection to the Olympic team might have been a formality, it was a bit more complicated for Brittany Hayes.
Hayes was cut from the Pan American Games last year although she had scored a team-leading eight goals in two FINA World League matches. She grinded over the next year, and it paid off when Baker called her into his office June 30 to tell her she made the team.
"It was a mixture of emotions — crying, excitement, awe, shock," Hayes said.
"Definitely tears of joy. It's been a lifelong goal, dream. To have that become a reality was life changing."
It was what Hayes, 23, had thought about since before she starred at Foothill High. It was also a natural progression for someone who is a product of the pipeline, having been a four-time Junior Olympic All-American.
"Personally it was just about learning the system," said Hayes, a left handed attacker.
"I'm not as experienced as some of the veterans — two-time, three-time Olympians. It was about really understanding the system, getting to know who I was playing with a little bit better and getting to understand my role."
Hayes is the first lefty picked to the Olympic team since Maureen O'Toole in 2000. She's also the only member of Foothill's trio of star players, the so-called Big Three that includes Gabbie Dominic and Emily Fehrer, to make an Olympic squad.
"I owe a lot to my high school and my team and my coaches there," Hayes said. "It's a huge honor, not only, to represent my area, my high school, my club team, my country. It's awesome."

A Love Without End in a World Beyond Time

Published: June 25, 2008
American Ballet Theater’s production of “La Bayadère,” choreographed by Natalia Makarova, can leave you feeling as if you’ve stumbled, perhaps after a few drinks, onto a dusty old movie set. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” comes to mind, though no one in the ballet, alas, has his still-beating heart pulled from his chest.
Skip to next paragraph

Erin Baiano for The New York Times
This American Ballet Theater production of La Bayadère features Veronika Part, left, and Marcelo Gomes at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Related
Times Topics: American Ballet Theater
The ballet’s perfume of musty cinematic romance has its good elements, like Pier Luigi Samaritani’s fantastically fake sets depicting lush vegetation, gilded palaces and sinister temples, and its bad — Orientalism is alive and well in this silly, exoticized vision of earthly intrigues and eternal love.
On Monday it fell to Marcelo Gomes, as the warrior Solor, and Veronika Part, as the temple dancer Nikiya, to deliver the love. The machinations came via Michelle Wiles, as the rajah’s daughter, Gamzatti, plotting to thwart the union and snare Solor for herself. Ms. Wiles is a powerhouse, but not well suited to this role: she creates meaning through speed and technical ability, not acting, and wickedness is not her forte.
Offstage there were also intrigues. This has been a strange season for Ms. Part, a polarizing soloist who left the Kirov Ballet to join Ballet Theater in 2002. Chat rooms have been abuzz since a March article on Ballet.co.uk, a British Web site, reported that she had given notice. But according to a Ballet Theater spokesperson, she is signed on for next year. Depending on whom you ask, her staying is news for rejoicing or eye-rolling. Ballet is full of camps, but the divide between those who find Ms. Part divine and ones who find her disastrous is particularly marked.
In truth, she is a bit of both, now flubbing point work in astonishing fashion (her turn as Aurora in “The Sleeping Beauty” premiere last season was especially nerve-racking to behold, and she was not given the role this year), now projecting a plush, old-fashioned grandeur. Nikiya is a good role for her, allowing her to capitalize on her long, sinuous extensions and sensual allure without demanding too many punishing technical feats.
And any dancer would feel safe in the arms of Mr. Gomes, a sure and generous partner who manages the rare trick of standing out while letting his ballerinas shine. Not many men can get away with turbans and lilac-colored tights (Theoni V. Aldredge designed the costumes) or delirious opium dreams, but he manages with an aplomb containing a delicious hint of camp. After dramatically arching his back while kneeling at the end of one passage of space-eating leaps and turns, Mr. Gomes presented to his cheering public an equally arch face. He is a delight.
Sarawanee Tanatanit was terrifically spooky as Gamzatti’s servant, and Craig Salstein, resplendent in a ridiculous wig and loincloth, was an amusingly wild head fakir. Yet the heart of “La Bayadère” lies not in any individual performer but in the corps de ballet, which appears to Solor in an opium-fueled haze as an endless, winding line of ethereal Shades in white tutus and gauzy veils. Tortured by the death of Nikiya (Gamzatti gets her with the old serpent-in-a-flower-basket trick), Solor seeks refuge in oblivion. This being ballet, his oblivion takes the form of classical transcendence, with the slow, unison unfurling of arabesques meant to conjure a world beyond time.
Of course, the women offering this vision are very young, and it’s difficult to imagine any of them having spent much time pondering immortality or its obverse. The juxtaposition between their reality as ambitious but vulnerable workhorses in an elite company and the hoped-for projection of effortless purity has a terrible beauty to it, one that exists, like the Kingdom of the Shades, outside the ballet itself. The eye travels again and again to the multiplied image of fragile supporting legs, shaking with the tremendous effort of maintaining that line. Night after night they hold it. The cost is glorious, and high.
American Ballet Theater performs through July 12 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000.

A 19th-Century Classic With All the Traditions Intact

American Ballet Theater’s season ends on Saturday. Before Monday’s performance, scores of people were standing outside the Metropolitan Opera House begging, applying, accosting for tickets. Afterward, amid the cheers and prolonged curtain calls, flowers and some kind of outsize confetti were thrown.
Skip to next paragraph

Erin Baiano for The New York Times
"Giselle," with Nina Ananiashvili in the title role and Angel Corella as Count Albrecht, at the Met in American Ballet Theater’s production.

The work was “Giselle,” which is more or less the company’s best production of a 19th-century ballet classic. And the ingredient that gave such buzz on Monday was the casting of

Nina Ananiashvili as Giselle. She has been loved in New York since her first season here with the Bolshoi in 1987, and it has recently been announced that 2009 will be her final season with Ballet Theater.
There is reason to take major exception to the company’s current productions of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake.” There is cause to argue that the 19th-century ballets “Le Corsaire,” “Don Quixote” and “La Bayadère” — each also in repertory this Met season — are scarcely classics (merely popular war horses). But “Giselle” is certainly a classic, and in this production little gets in the way of the traditional ballet.
If I say it’s “more or less” Ballet Theater’s best, that’s because this staging has no episode as full of radiance as the opening of the company’s “Swan Lake.” This is just the traditional “Giselle”: the pretty tree-surrounded village of Act I with its castle in the distance; the nocturnal glade of Act II opening onto the lake; the story of heartbreak, madness, death; the dangerous wilis rising from their graves at night; the hero’s remorse; love beyond the grave; and dancing until dawn.
And in Act I Ms. Ananiashvili seemed to be dancing just like any traditional Giselle. She knows how to play the charmingly modest maiden. Her doe eyes, so often downcast, are ideal for the role; so are the lines of her still ravishing physique. There is about her nothing of the hard glaze so often apparent in experienced Russian ballerinas. Yet these general virtues apart, she seemed in Act I unusually unfocused and hectic, often ahead of the music or rushing her phrasing, making no precise contact with those around her, although always indicating every moment of the role in appropriate style.
She looks younger than I, having first seen her Giselle in 1986, know her to be, and she delivered the famous hops on point with blithe lucidity. Even so, her performance was not that of a ballerina in assured possession of the technique needed for the role.
By contrast, her partner,

Angel Corella, played everything to her and for her. His Count Albrecht has strong hints of the noble cad when Giselle is offstage, but we never doubt that his infatuation with her is sincere, and his combination of sunny commitment and personal distinction make him a natural for the role. Yet even he could not stop Act I from seeming lackluster.
The conductor was David LaMarche (good in a recent “Sleeping Beauty”), who here elicited precise orchestral playing without showing much evidence of close rapport with the dancers. Maria Riccetto and Jared Matthews danced the peasant pas de deux with skill and some admirable technical features. But why, even with the excellent Victor Barbee as the Prince of Courland, did this seem like just another Act I of just another “Giselle”?
As if in answer, Act II fell into a keener dramatic focus. Gillian Murphy has few finer roles than Myrta, queen of the wilis. She never overdoes the vindictive side, and instead, by dancing every aspect of the choreography with full value, she allows the character’s magisterial allure to gleam. Mr. Corella’s engaging ardor — there is always something of the happy boy about this highly sophisticated artist — kept rising and rising, and the fresh fluency with which he delivered all the role’s brilliance was very welcome.
And in this act everything about Ms. Ananiashvili’s performance as Giselle’s ghost seemed in focus with the music and her colleagues. Here you saw not just the loveliness of the limbs, but also how beautifully the long arms continued the sloping lines of the neck. Even that slender, long neck seemed freer. She seemed weightless in jumps, and her series of fast, small jumps (soubresauts and entrechats-quatre) were even more distinctively poetic than the large bounds carrying her, gazellelike, across the stage. In the air her feet become her most luminous feature, stretching, crossing, twinkling, breathing.

Lustrous Visions, Cut From Stone

Art Review
Lustrous Visions, Cut From Stone

By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: July 11, 2008
Despite signs to the contrary, conspicuous consumption is not what it used to be. Most exhibitions of decorative arts from the past, especially Europe’s monarchical age, drive that fact home in thrilling, and sometimes off-putting, fashion. But few shows do so with quite the dazzling vehemence of “Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure From the Palaces of Europe,” a stealth blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Slide Show
Regal Visions

A sumptuous sprawl of 170 objects borrowed from palaces and former palaces (that is, museums) all over Europe, it is the first in-depth survey of the arts and crafts of pietre dure. That Italian term, which translates as hard rock or hardstone, refers foremost to an intricate inlay of finely cut, highly polished slices of semiprecious stones: agate, lapis lazuli, jasper, carnelian, alabaster, rock crystal, amethyst.
Pietre dure could be flat. Fashioned into radiantly colored geometric patterns, floral designs, landscapes or mythological scenes, it was incorporated into tabletops, cabinets of all sizes, wall panels, portable altars, jewelry boxes and other furnishings. Such works could also be in the round: carved hardstone sculptural busts, statuettes, vases, snuff boxes, cameos, jewelry and miraculously thin-walled bowls.
Flat pietre dure was sometimes garnished with the sculptural kind: for example, garlands of perfect marzipanlike fruit. All these objects were, to say the least, nexuses of extraordinary allure, prestige and let-them-eat-cake presumption — just the thing for diplomatic overtures, royal dowries, peace offerings and plunder.
And yet pietre dure, which began its ascent in Renaissance Italy, had an almost self-effacing quality. Like Chinese scholars’ rocks or topiary, it is self-evidently a collaboration of human and natural ingenuity; it should appeal as much to rock hounds as to the art-fixated. Pietre dure was a quintessential art of the Renaissance, with its expansive attitude toward science and knowledge in general, and its optimistic view of human possibility. This art faced outward, exploring natural history while pushing manual craft to rarefied extremes.
The show traces pietre dure’s emergence in Italy in the late 16th century and then follows its spread, often with Italian master craftsmen lured northward, throughout Europe and Russia and into the early years of the 19th century. It was organized by a guest curator, Annamaria Giusti, director of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Florence, and, from the Met, Wolfram Koeppe, a curator in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts, and Ian Wardropper, the department’s chairman, aided by Florian Knothe, a research associate.
Ms. Giusti’s expertise comes from her years as director of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, first established in Florence as the Galleria dei Lavori in 1588. It was set up by Grand Duke Ferdinand I de’ Medici in the Uffizi Palace primarily to produce pietre dure and other luxury objects that would broadcast the Medici glory. In the mid-19th century it changed its name, and its mission shifted from production to conservation.
The history of Lavori pietre dure is one of the subtexts of the exhibition, and you will find examples of it in nearly every gallery. Since great pietra dure in general and the Lavori variety in particular never lost value or went out of fashion among aristocrats or their cabinetmakers, the French and English recycled it into the designs of later periods. This is most evident in the final gallery, where there are four splendid neo-Classical pieces from the 18th century: three French commodes and an English cabinet designed by Robert Adam.
But stone had been treasured and constantly reused for millenniums, as suggested by the show’s small opening gallery devoted to “origins.” The displays reach back to ancient Egypt, in the form of a lion-size sphinx, and ancient Rome, in a tiny perfume bottle in swirling agate, and to 12th-century Italy, as a hefty jug in rock crystal from a Norman workshop attests. Closer to home is a small, house-shaped reliquary casket tiled and shingled in fiery shades of pietre dura. It comes from the workshop of the Florentine sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, dating from around 1490.
The 16th-century Romans used stone tiles from the Baths of Caracalla for their monumental tables, whose scrolling, geometric designs sometimes evoke the ceilings of Baroque churches. A large vase and pedestal from Versailles, both in a brown-flecked stone with gilded bronze mounts, were cut from a single column of Egyptian porphyry that probably came from a building in ancient Rome. The Met owns a gobletlike cup that began life as a sardonyx bowl in medieval Byzantium (900-1100), but acquired a stem and gold-and-enamel trim in Paris in the 1650s.

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.
Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.
Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.
Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.
Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.How to eat: Just drink it.
Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.
Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.'’ They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.
Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,'’ it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.
Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.
Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

You can find more details and recipes on the Men’s Health Web site, which published the original version of the list last year.
In my own house, I only have two of these items — pumpkin seeds, which I often roast and put on salads, and frozen blueberries, which I mix with milk, yogurt and other fruits for morning smoothies. How about you? Have any of these foods found their way into your shopping