Gladys Knight Performing in Las Vegas

Headline entertainer Gladys Knight will begin an open-ended run of performances starting February 12th at the Flamingo in her hometown, Las Vegas. Knight will perform seven shows over five nights each week with tickets running $45 and $55.

Mormon Columnist Jack Anderson Starts Comic Strip

LDS Church member Jack Anderson, a long-time syndicated columnist sometimes called "The Mormon Muckraker," is starting a comic strip exclusively in the Salt Lake Tribune. The strip, called "Kilroy-Go-Round" after the fabled World War II American icon "Kilroy" and Anderson's own column, "Washington Merry-Go-Round," will bring Anderson's view of Washington to the comics.

LDS Filmmaker Draws on Mormon legends

A forthcoming LDS-oriented film by director Rob Sibley includes Mormon pioneer legends woven into the plot. Sibley, who is directing his first feature film, includes lost treasure, disappearing wagon trains and Montezuma sending his gold to Kanab in the film. The film was written by Sibley five years ago, and is aimed at a general audience. "There's nothing embarrassing that makes Mom and Dad cringe," Sibley said. "It's a compelling mystery: What happened to the pioneers and the treasure?"

'Other Side of Heaven' Passes $800,000; Hale's Next Project

"Ocean's Eleven" and "Behind Enemy Lines" continue to exhibit legs, each dropping only one place in national rankings this week. Despite its weirdness and off-putting themes, "Mulholland Drive" continues its wave of critical buzz and has crested $6 million in U.S. box office sales.

Veteran LDS Actor Robert Peterson to Perform at the Utah Shakespearean Festival

The Utah Shakespearean Festival recently announced that popular Utah actor and Broadway veteran Robert Peterson has been signed for the 2002 season. Peterson, a favorite of Utah audiences for many years, will be playing the roles of Cervantes/Don Quixote in this year's production of Man of La Mancha and Judge Omar Gaffney in Harvey.

LaBute's "Bash" Back in California

LDS playwright Neil Labute's trio of plays about Mormons turned bad, "Bash: Latter-day Plays," is being presented by Santa Ana's Hunger Artists Theatre Company. Reviewer Eric Marchese admits that LaBute's work is "not the kind of material mainstream venues would be comfortable with," but says its just right for a small, edgy, storefront troupe. But he adds that while the plays could be seen as an indictment of Mormons, " 'Bash' also rings, though, of the unsettling, unwittingly self-revealing monologue poems of Robert Browning, which places LaBute in the company of literary greatness."

[an error occurred while processing this directive]