The little injured dolphin they called Winter couldn't have come along at a better time for the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, a rustic sea life rescue center occupying the city's old sewage treatment plant.
The nonprofit public aquarium was about ready to go belly-up at the end of 2005 when the baby bottlenose dolphin was brought there after getting her tail tightly entangled in a crab-trap line. She lived, but her tail fluke withered away, forcing the young animal to learn how to swim with just a stump and then adapt to a revolutionary prosthetic. Winter's inspirational story of perseverance made her a global media star, quadrupled attendance at the aquarium and spawned a lucrative line of toys, books and other merchandise.
Full StoryA continent away from where the towers fell, the horror of that September morning 10 years ago is being recreated on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House.
The attack on the World Trade Center comes in the climactic scene of "Heart of a Soldier," an earnest and at times compelling work that was given its world premiere by the San Francisco Opera on Saturday night.
Full StoryOn the surface it looked like an open-and-shut case: A pair of thieves drop by an art exhibition at the Ritz-Carlton in Los Angeles and, while one distracts a curator, the other snatches a valuable, centuries-old Rembrandt drawing and bolts with it.
Apparently finding the small pen-and-ink work by the Dutch master too hot to fence, the thieves had second thoughts. They abandoned it, undamaged, at a church on the other side of town.
Full StoryVirtuoso Chinese pianist Lang Lang joined the celebrations at the Last Night of the Proms, the culmination of the world's largest classical music festival and a unique celebration of Britishness.
Concert goers partied in eccentric style at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which was packed to its 5,500 capacity Saturday night for the colorful annual event.
Full StoryA more discreet crocodile, now in silk, a touch of leather and plenty of flow: Lacoste has presented its Spring 2012 collection with a focus on women, the first under its new artistic director Felipe Oliveira Baptista.
After the show, presented at New York's annual Fashion Week Saturday, the 36-year-old creator beamed as reporters and fashion industry insiders clamored for the attention of the Portuguese designer.
Full StoryActor George Clooney always thought of himself as a movie star, even when he was cast in "crappy TV shows" early in his career, he said Saturday.
"Even when I was on some pretty crappy TV shows ... you always think of yourself as a film actor, you know, I'm a film actor but I just happened to doing this crappy TV show now and soon I'll have this fabulous movie career that I wasn't actually having (then)," he said.
Full StoryRussian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov won the Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival on Saturday for "Faust," a visceral take on Goethe's play about a man who sells his soul to the devil.
The grotesque film is the final installment of Sokurov's cinematic tetralogy on the nature of power, following his acclaimed fictional portraits of Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin and Emperor Hirohito.
Full StoryMel Gibson, who reportedly made anti-Semitic remarks during a drunken driving arrest five years ago, is now producing a film about the life of Jewish hero Judah Maccabee.
Gibson's publicist, Alan Nierob, told The Associated Press Friday that Gibson is working on a deal with Warner Bros. to develop the film through his company, Icon Productions. Nierob said the studio also would like Gibson to direct, but Gibson will decide whether he wants to do that once a script is finished.
Full Story"Boy, this is a great city," says Woody Allen, lounging on a park bench that overlooks Manhattan's East River and the 59th Street Bridge. "I don't care what anybody says. It's really a knockout, you know?"
The scene comes from Allen's 1979 film "Manhattan," an enduring, romantic portrait of the director's hometown, "a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin."
Full StoryA New York City gallery will be exhibiting 18 drawings and paintings by Bob Dylan created while the musician was touring Asia.
The Gagosian Gallery says Dylan's Asia Series will run from Sept. 20 to Oct. 22.
Full Story