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MUSIC
A selection of Valentine’s Day mood-music artists: Queen Latifah, John Legend, Luther Vandross, Vanessa Williams, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, Il Divo, Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, Cheyenne, Selena, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Colbie Caillat
OPERA
This summer, Arizona Opera will be opening an Opera Center, which will serve as the company’s new production and administration headquarters. The new center will feature a 6,500-square-foot rehearsal theater; an opera atrium and learning center; an upper-level patron viewing gallery; an outdoor landscaped public pavilion; two vocal studios; state-of-the-art scenic and prop shop as well as costume, wig, and makeup workshops; and an Arizona Opera archive and music library. Opera lovers can support Arizona Opera by buying a brick that will literally pave the plaza of the center. Bricks cost $250, $500, or $1,000, depending upon size, number of lines of text, and the grand-opening invitation package. Visit azopera.org for more information.
MOVIES
March 23: The Hunger Games
Based on the popular book series of the same name, the movie will star a lineup of familiar faces, such as Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, and even Lenny Kravitz. The Hunger Games is a tale of teen gladiators battling to the death for a reality show in a territory that was once the United States of America.
TV
Flat-screen televisions have been around for some years now, but people are still making the transition from the standard-issue square postage-stamp-size screens. But in a high-definition world in which BluRay technology is replacing DVD players and terms like LED and LCD sound too similar to decipher the difference, what should your next TV purchase be?
LCD (Liquid Crystal Display): LCD TVs have pixels composed of twisting liquid crystals that produce a picture by blocking out the fluorescent-light backlighting.
LED (Light Emitting Diode): LED TVs are LCD TVs that simply use LED instead of fluorescent lights for the backlighting. They use less energy and feature a brighter white, which make for better color and contrast. They can be as little as a half-inch thick, and some use LED edge lighting, which means the backlight is distributed evenly from edges to the entire screen.
Plasma: Plasma TVs are made up of pixels that each contain live red, blue, and green phosphors and are controlled individually by electric charges. Because of this, these TVs can be viewed from nearly any angle without losing picture quality. The picture is brighter, and action sequences are crisper (LCD’s crystals are slower moving). However, a static image left on the screen for an extended period of time (if you pause something, for example) can cause burn-in.
LCD TVs are better for gaming, hooking up your PC, daytime viewing, and energy conservation, while plasma TVs are optimal for movie and sports viewings. However, as both technologies continue to improve, they are at bottom line pretty comparable.
3-D: 3-D TVs generally employ stereoscopy technology, which presents two offset images separately to the left and right eyes and then combine them to create the illusion of 3-D depth. Special eyeglasses are still required for most TVs, although some use a light source to split the images. Despite progress in 3-D technology over the years, it has been linked to migraines and nausea, and some people simply prefer 2-D tech. Action sequences in particular make it difficult to focus.
