Get ready to dive down the rabbit hole when Southridge High School presents Alice in Wonderland as its first play of the 2009-10 theater season.

It will be a close encounter of the comedic kind when Broken Leg Entertainment presents its next dinner theater production -- Clothes Encounters -- next month.

SUNNYSIDE -- It'll be a Cinderella story for Sunnyside High School's first play of the season.

Skillet frontman John Cooper is looking forward to bringing his band's AWAKE and ALIVE tour to the Tri-Cities.

I'm still trying to pinpoint why vampires and their ilk are all the new hotness. My best theory so far is we all secretly yearn to get drained like a bottle of pop, but I'm working on that one.

This Is It is an adequate documentary. It's more event than movie, so a review doesn't really work. Michael Jackson wades through his biggest hits in a video shot of rehearsals for 50 concerts he was to do in London between July and March. Producers poured buckets of money into the project. The massive stage, techno tricks and state-of-the-art effects, especially the Humphrey Bogart chase sequence, are stunning.

SEATTLE -- You can take a non-Hollywood look at the life and legacy of Amelia Earhart when an exhibition about her life opens Oct. 31 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

For Christian songwriter Todd Agnew, going on tour with Building 429 and Kimber Rising was like learning to ride a bike again.

Who'd believe a little bunny could pose such a danger?

For Rick Papineau, coming up with outrageous ideas for Disney is an exciting way to make a living.

If heaven is a half pipe, then Warren Miller fans can die happy, especially after watching the latest Warren Miller Entertainment film Dynasty.

Saw VI just opened in theaters. FYI: Chop and slash is gorror not horror. Want to be scared? Want to see the real deal? Bag the "ew"-inducing killing and maiming of Saw and catch the real deal. Paranormal Activity is the best horror flick in years; a creepy, heebie jeebie producing scare fest.

C.A. Hurst has a vision: to incite change through creativity.

Alex Saenz is an old school cat whose futuristic dreams brought together more than 40 Mid-Columbia up-and-coming hip-hop artists for one giant collaborative effort, The Mighty Mixtape Vol. 1.

A former Tri-Citian is coming home with dreams of wowing a hometown crowd again.

The Dark Knight is an American institution. He's right up there with baseball, apple pie and childhood obesity. And like all American institutions, Gotham's protector has been exploited in every way imaginable, be it in a campy '70s TV show, lunchbox or a string of terrible video game adaptations.

After seeing Tim Roth whine his way through Reservoir Dogs (so you got shot in the stomach, walk it off already), it's always been a dream of mine to watch a two-hour movie about him getting tortured.

The Tri-City Independent Fan Film Festival on Oct. 17 will feature 15 short-form films from around the world.

Max Records is an angry young boy. The kid throws a snit, screams at his mother, runs away from home, steals a sailboat and takes it across the ocean to an island. There he finds huge, furry creatures and one that looks like a large chicken. He is made their king and leads them to -- yawn -- adventures like building a gigantic fort and having a dirt clod fight. Max isn't much of a king and becomes a king-sized disappointment to his new subjects.

Hanford High drama will bring a good old-fashioned Western to its stage when it presents the melodrama, Deadwood Dan.

It wouldn’t be Halloween without a few corn mazes and haunted trails to wander through to scare you.

YAKIMA -- The Brubeck Brothers Quartet, with guest Imani Winds, will open the Seasons Performance Hall's fall festival on Oct. 9.

I was recently in Japan. This is a total fabrication, but please bear with me. While in Japan I was able to check out the new fighter exclusive to the Nintendo Wii: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes. Capcom is responsible for such titles as Street Fighter, Mega Man and Viewtiful Joe. Tatsunoko is responsible for Battle of the Planets aka Gattchaman and ... an anime about a giant golden lighter that presumably fights crime. Or causes the crime. I'm not 100 percent sure on this one. Needless to say that in America the popularity of the Tatsunoko team might not be as strong as it is in Japan. Why the Samurai Pizza Cats aren't represented in this game I'll never know. That would have been a guaranteed success.

This is how much I love you people: at this moment, it's 3:30 on a weekday morning, and I've spent the last three hours watching a 40-year-old western musical that features an intermission, two distinct forms of polygamy, and a singing Clint Eastwood. The unlucky among you will have already guessed I'm wrapping up Western Month with Paint Your Wagon, one of the most bizarre movies I've ever stumbled across.

Rising up from their ashes, L.A. punk rock group Orange is heading on tour to promote their third album, Phoenix -- and no, it's not named after a Harry Potter book.

With hundreds of theater movies, straight-to-DVD movies, TV movies and TV shows produced every year, originality has become a thing of the past. Depending on who you talk to there are six to 10 original plot ideas and all stories are worked into and around them.

The Academy of Children's Theatre will take audiences off to see the wizard with its first show of its 2009-10 season.

The International Folk Dancers of Richland are breaking in their clogs and other cultural attire at the 55th annual Richland Folk Dance Festival from Oct. 2-4 at the Richland Community Center and Kennewick First Methodist Church.

Get out your Big Gun, take the Highway to Hell and prepare to be Thunderstruck at 97 Rock's second annual Rocktoberfest.

Actress Scarlett Johansson lends her vocals to indie rocker Pete Yorn on his latest album Break Up, released earlier this month.

Proof that zombie movies, grand as they are, are probably played out: when I do these theme months, I don't even have to try to find a zombie movie that fits the bill. I could probably do "Giant Space Crocodiles Who Conquer Earth for the Sole Purpose of Making Us All Pinochle-Slaves" Month, spend three seconds on the Netflix website, and have a theme-appropriate title in my mailbox the next day.

Fans of drumlines, horns, flag dancers and intricately positioned human patterns can cheer on their favorite high schools at the 28th annual Southeastern Washington Cavalcade of Bands.

Textbook teeth, gorgeous smile, perfectly coiffed, tan, fit and decent acting chops, George Hamilton had it all. Rave reviews for now forgotten 1960s movies got Hamilton a Golden Globe and some important nominations. Unfortunately, superstardom wasn't in the cards. No problem. Hamilton switched gears and became a professional pretty boy and celebrity. He didn't take himself seriously, so why should anyone else? Films like Where the Boys Are, the Hank Williams biopic Your Cheatin' Heart and Evil Knievel followed. So did my two personal favorites, the campy Love at First Bite and Zorro, the Gay Blade.

Raman Ramakrishnan and Byron Schenkman will bring a blend of cello and piano and a selection of classical music to the Tri-Cities on Sept. 26 for the first concert in the Camerata Musica series.

The Greater Prosser Balloon Rally lifts off Sept. 25-27 at the Port of Benton's airport in Prosser.

Many wineries in the Columbia and Yakima valleys are offering special events during Catch the Crush weekend, Sept. 26-27.

Camerata Musica has lined up a season of music like no other.

Community Concerts seasons begin this month all over the Mid-Columbia from the Tri-Cities to the Lower Valley, to Wenatchee and Moses Lake.

Ask renowned classical pianist Rudolf Budginas the correct way to pronounce his last name and he'll keep it simple.

The sisters who front Heart proved they could rock with the best of them 30 years ago with hits like Crazy on You, Magic Man and Barracuda.

Tempted as I am to break Western Month to cover the works of the departed Patrick Swayze, a man whose films I only just began to love, I am, like the gunslingers of the Wild West, honorbound to see my mission to the very end. This isn't the only way I'm like those men of yore, but since I promised my editor I wouldn't mention soiled doves again for the rest of the year, let's move on.

The title alone tickles the taste buds. Flint Lockwood is the geekiest of geeks, an inventor of a machine that makes food out of water. A slight snafu sends his machine into orbit above his Georgia island town of Swallow Falls. Pretty soon it's raining food and temporary meteorologist Sam Sparks is the hit of a weather channel.

SUNNYSIDE -- The second biggest city in Yakima County is gearing up for its second biggest community festival of the year.

Celebrate the end of summer and fall's arrival at the West Richland Harvest Festival.

The Pendleton Round-Up is called one of the toughest sports on dirt for good reason, even though some say it's more of a show than a sport.

Satisfy your craving for a brat at Christ the King's annual Sausage Fest.

Is irony at work here or what? Two controversial films based on excellent short features are released in the same year and both have the number nine in their titles. And both should have remained critically acclaimed short films because neither has enough substance to be a full-length motion picture.

The Battelle Film Festival launches its 2009 Fall Film Festival on Sept. 11 with the French film The Class.

If you swapped out the horses for cabs and the Stetsons for fedoras, a western becomes a crime noir pretty easily. They've both got bad dudes who drink straight from bottles, hold themselves to strict personal codes, and learn a thing or two about money along the way, like how fast people start dying for it once there's enough to fill a large burlap sack.