Feedback: Sunday Calendar letters

Small theater from both sides of the curtain

Here’s my two cents on small theaters. [“Small Theaters: Having Impact,” Aug. 8] I’m just a regular middle-aged guy who loves the magic of theater, especially 99-seat-or-fewer, where I can spend 20 to 30 bucks for engrossing entertainment, a great seat and free-easy parking. Yes, I know it’s not fashionable, but I like a plot, with catharsis. And I like music to have a melody and directors who move actors beyond the proscenium and encourage them to fully engage in witty and emotionally layered book and lyrics. I like the stagecraft of sounds, light, sets, costumes and of course, the “smell of the greasepaint.”

So thank you small-theater L.A.

Paul Nisenbaum

Los Angeles

As the artistic director of Watts Village Theater Company, a multicultural urban company that seeks to inspire positive social change through innovative theatrical work, I read “Small Theaters: Having Impact” with great interest. I wanted to read what Steven Leigh Morris and Charles McNulty consider impactful and was a little disturbed that none of the theaters in the article makes their home south of the 10 Freeway. It would appear that the “collective myopia” was in full display.

If impact is important then there were a handful of companies that should have been on the list.

Guillermo

Aviles-Rodriguez

Watts

‘Inception’s’ dream setting

I didn’t feel that the movie “Inception” was “unarchitectural” [“Grand Dreams Indeed, but Only in Some Forms,” Aug. 8] but rather I was fascinated by the remix aspects of how it deals with the built environment. New architecture does not mean coming up with things that are instantaneously recognized as “new.” Subtle shift between the expected and unexpected off of known elements can be just as powerful.

Posted by: frostbite#

From: latimes.com

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The architectural settings the Ariadne character provides are supposed to be believable to the team’s “dream scam” victim; this is a point made early in the movie. No one would be convinced if they were thrown into a Piranesi sketch and it would probably ruin the film’s message on the border between illusion and reality. It is also implied that Ariadne takes advantage of her imagination in her free time in dreamscape, like other characters do.

I think the critic missed the movie’s point entirely.

Posted by: nuno

oliveira

From: latimes.com

Dora has fans, detractors

Not bashing her multicultural-multilingual approach to education, [“The Ambassadora,” Aug. 8] I’ve always believed Americans would be better served if more were multilingual. I find Dora to be as annoying as a giant idiot purple dinosaur.

Posted by: EdgeXXI

From: latimes.com

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Nice story. Dora took off because of perfect timing as children in cities needed a new hero to relate to. Dora fit the part. Her creators kept her in a role that was easy for kids to be drawn into. Dora related to them. The choices of color and images are also gentle on the eye for kids to be drawn into. A jungle was fresh and allowed the adventure to unfold almost like a story book set in motion.

Posted by:

bradlyedwards

From: latimes.com

Movies that transport you

As a devoted reader of the Sunday L.A. Times, I enjoyed reading Stephen Farber’s splendid little essay [“These Movies Conjure Up the Spirit of Their Cities,” Aug. 8].

I value the attention that Farber gives to the sense of place to other movies and movie makers that served as precedents, parallels and inspiration. I especially appreciated his comments on the “rarely seen” parts of London. Farber has quickened my desire to see “Dirty Pretty Things.”

I also appreciate Farber’s personal comments about “Cairo Time”; they remind me of one of my favorite films by Alain Resnais, “Hiroshima, mon Amour.” The film captures the city of Hiroshima dramatically, with powerful documentary footage of the disastrous effects on human lives of the bombing.

Eliud Martínez

Riverside