ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

Arts, Music, Movie Reviews, Celebrity News & Events from New Orleans

The New Orleans Film Festival kicks off seven days and nights of film, it's your last chance to catch "Speech and Debate" at Southern Rep, Buddy Guy teams up with Dan Aykroyd at the House of Blues, DJ Soul Sister brings her spin on 80s night to One Eyed Jacks, the Big Easy Rollergirls open their season and those zany Von Trapps return to the National WWII Museum for another sing-a-long.

All this and much, much more in this week's "Hittin' the Town."

Matthew S. GunbyMedia and visitors tour the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center during a media day Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008 in Indianola, Miss. The museum will be open to the public Saturday, Sept. 13.

Translucent images of long ago, of black men and women, backs bent, picking cotton under an unforgiving sun, are artistically displayed on standing glass panels in a museum carved out of an old brick gin mill in the Mississippi Delta.

They're a reminder of those who labored by day in a segregated society. But at night they escaped to Indianola's Church Street to be entertained by a young man later known as B.B. King, who would throw his hat on the ground to catch coins as he conjured devil's music from his guitar.

Ellis Lucia / The Times-Picayune archiveSoftshell crab and trout meuniere at Galatoire's.

If you are a New Orleanian, eating out is as essential as breathing -- even in tough economic times.

Tell us about the dining experience that will always have a secure place in your budget -- that restaurant whose tables feel like an extension of your own dining room, that special dish that can't be spared, that waiter who feels like part of the family.

We'll publish a sampling in the fall edition of Lagniappe's Dining Guide on Oct. 26.

Chris Waddington, Concert Scene

Great singers make the connection between words and music to create a narrative whole. That's a harder job for instrumentalists, but violin virtuoso Ida Kavafian did just that on Thursday with her blazing, powerful reading of a 2003 concerto by Michael Dougherty -- a work inspired by Diego Rivera's famed murals of industrial might in 1930s Detroit.

With grit -- and phenomenal bow speed -- Kavafian soared and roared above the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, filling the First Baptist Church New Orleans with weird close-to-the-bridge harmonics, vibrato-draped melodies and motoric rhythms as she charged through this clangorous, colorful work.

Keith I. Marszalek / NOLA.comShoppers wander up Freret Street in Uptown Saturday, October 4, 2008.

View more images from the Freret Street Market.

With the fat part of hurricane season in the rearview mirrror, local film production is starting to ramp up again.

Exhibit A: Local officials are once again sending out reports of anticipated traffic interruptions due to film activity.

Here's a quick rundown, courtesy of the New Orleans Office of Film and Video.