Arts & Events

FRIDAY, JULY 21 -more-

Two retrospectives starting today (Friday) at Pacific Film Archive will illuminate the work of actress Janet Gaynor and director Frank Borzage, both sterling talents in their day but unjustly overlooked in ours. -more-

If you’re a soccer fan still looking for a way to get the poisonous image of Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt out of your mind, the solution may have arrived in the form of a new documentary. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos tells the story of soccer’s arrival in the United States in the late 1970s, when media mogul Steve Ross set out to make the “the beautiful game” a national phenomenon. -more-

The metamorphoses of Madonna, or Elton John changing fashions and overburdening specs ... Judy Garland as Dorothy, belting out “Over The Rainbow” while absent-mindedly petting a pinwheel-headed Toto ... and just how does a paraplegic Venus De Milo line-dance to Zorba The Greek ? -more-

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Matt, We need to reinforce the cripple walls in our 1906 one-story house. But we live in the Berkeley flats and we are worried about potential flooding. We are not that far above sea level and we don’t think that global warming is a fairy tale. -more-

It’s midsummer, more or less, and the other inhabitants of the garden are showing up in numbers. Aphids and whiteflies and thrips, oh my! The first flush in spring gave rise to another generation or two, multiplying all the way, and most of the birds have about finished raising their first and maybe second broods for the year, so fewer insects are being turned into babyfood. -more-

Are You Inside or Out? -more-

FRIDAY, JULY 21 -more-

The Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition was misidentified in Tuesday’s Daily Planet. While nonprofit organizations participate in the coalition, BAPAC itself is not a nonprofit organization, as stated in the article. -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 18 -more-

Now that Mozart has turned 250, you would think that not much more could be discovered about the world’s most popular and most scrutinized composer. Then, along comes Austrian musicologist Michael Lorenz to dismiss a few old and new Mozartean myths. -more-

To a Californian, there has to be something charming about an opera in which the mysterious stranger who wins the heroine’s heart is a man named Johnson from Sacramento. The Berkeley Opera makes full use of this charm in its production of Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West, which opened Saturday, with a new English adaptation by David Scott Marley. -more-

One more scary invasive exotic plant has shown up in the East Bay. Susan Schwartz of Friends of Five Creeks issued a bulletin: -more-

TUESDAY, JULY 18 -more-