A&E

Sonoma County residents are set to participate in Earth Day celebrations throughout the area in late April. Officially, Earth Day is designated as April 22 according to the Earth Day Network, the organization responsible for organizing events on a global scale, but many of the festivities in the local area are staged over the course of the month.

The Healdsburg Museum’s Day of the Dead bilingual exhibition celebrates the holiday with an ofrenda (altar), art and traditional clothing from around Mexico. The exhibition is now open and runs through Sunday, Nov. 10, 11am to 4pm. Free admission. This and other events listed in our weekly calendar...

Live theater returns to the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center (CPAC) with Elvis Has Left the Building.  It’s a farcical look at what was going on in the Colonel’s office that December of 1970 when Presley went to Washington. Written by mother and son team V....

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle opens in 1996, with the  discovery of the old board game on a sandy beach. When the box is opened, a video game cartridge is inside which just happens to fit the Sony Play Station the teen-aged son has in his bedroom. We then flash forward 20 years, where (echoing the plot points of the The Breakfast Club), four teens end up in detention for various reasons: Spencer, the Wimp (Alex Wolf) is called into the principal’s office for writing a history paper for  Fridge, the Jock (Ser’Darius Blain); Bethany, the Babe (Madison Iseman) is busted for using her cell phone during a test;  and Martha, the Brain (Morgan Turner), talks back to her PE teacher. The foursome discover the Jumanji video game in the school basement, and are magically transformed into the game avatars they select. The wimp becomes  Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), a muscular, self-effacing “expert” with a “smoldering look.”  The brain develops sex appeal, long, shapely legs, and deadly martial arts skills as Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) who is clad in a ridiculous,  midriff-baring jungle outfit.  The Jock becomes the wise-cracking, short-statured zoologist named Franklin “Mouse” Finbar (Kevin Hart), and when the babe selected “the curvy genius cartographer” named Dr. Shelly Oberon, she did not envision Jack Black’s body. It takes awhile for the teens to learn to utilize their avatar’s skill sets, but fortunately, the game gives them two extra lives.

There’s something downright weird about L. Frank Baum stories. There are scarecrows and robots that come to life, flying monkeys, and both terrifying and comforting witches, to say nothing of interdimensional travel and a small dog named Toto.