Entertainment

About 200 people gathered on Paramount’s Melrose Avenue lot for a screening of “Red Alert,” a four-part scripted drama portraying the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel from the perspective of six victims. The host of the Sept. 30 event was Paramount Chairman and Chief Executive David Ellison, who shared how he had chatted…

Rugby star Ilona Maher is a two-time Olympian, a “Dancing With the Stars” alum, a social media favorite and now a Barbie doll. Mattel announced Monday that it had assembled a team of four international rugby athletes to help encourage girls to embrace their confidence and stay in sports. The new “Team Barbie” campaign is…

Christopher Soto, the founder of the Center for California Literature. Los Angeles is, historically, a haven for writers and poets. In its city sprawl and California light, L.A. has fostered legendary writers from Joan Didion to Octavia E. Butler, created countercultural literary communities like the Watts Writers Workshop, and inspired Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye”…

p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> This 1882 L.A. phonebook includes just 90 names. (William Liang / For The Times) On April 3, 1882, the city permitted the Los Angeles Telephone Co. to string lines within city limits. A week later, L.A. printed its first phone book. Most early directories were tossed once a new one arrived, but Peter…

The “Reading Rainbow” is officially back, with internet-famous librarian Mychal Threets at the helm. Following the reboot’s premiere last Saturday, the new host responded to the audience’s wishes for a Latino lead in a recent social media post. He wrote, “You’re not going to believe this… I am [Latino]! My dad is Black, my mom…

Paramount has acquired the Free Press, a four-year-old digital news platform, and will make its controversial co-founder Bari Weiss editor in chief of CBS News, the company announced Monday. The official announcement came after months of speculation on the deal and Weiss’ high-profile role within the news division. Weiss, 41, will report to Paramount Chief…

Over the last decade or so, publishers of American genre fiction have borrowed a page from Hollywood’s playbook by essentially packaging novels like films, grafting together collaborators from two different A-lists: those that feature bestselling novelists and major celebrities. Large commercial rewards have been reaped from these crossbred literary partnerships. Bill and Hillary Clinton, to…

In a pop era where personal messiness is the oxygen of fame, Dua Lipa is the rare unfazed professional. Just as Taylor Swift and Charli XCX’s (extremely asymmetrical) feud spilled over the Hot 100 trenches, in comes Lipa’s Radical Optimism tour for four nights at the Forum to reassert that it is, in fact, possible…

Lauren Perlmutter is a “Gilmore Girls” superfan. She’s watched the show on a loop for the past 10 years. It’s mostly been in chronological order, and sometimes just in the background while she’s working on something else but craving the show’s comforting familiarity. “It’s like my bowl of chicken noodle soup,” she said. Perlmutter, 23,…

The problem with betting on a sure thing over and over is that eventually your luck will probably run out. “Saturday Night Live” has bet multiple times on Bad Bunny, an incredibly charismatic performer who was all over the show’s 50th anniversary specials earlier this year and who was an excellent host and musical guest…