Films This WeekCheck out the movies playing around town.With: Reviews, Movie Times click here.Santa Cruz area movie theaters > ....... New This Week BLENDED Adam Sandler teams up with Drew Barrymore for the third time in this romantic comedy about two single parents and their respective kids thrown together at an African safari resort for families....

With the Felton and Scotts Valley farmers markets both happening every week into the fall, the summer fruit season is officially in swing. We thought it’d be a good time to check-in with Santa Cruz Community Farmers Markets director Nesh Dhillon, who oversees those two markets, and three others in the county—downtown, Live Oak and on the Westside. ...

T-Pain Rapper turned singer T-Pain has a handful of albums to his name, and has lent his talents to dozens of recordings, including Grammy-winning singles with Kanye West and Jamie Foxx. But perhaps his biggest contribution to pop culture was popularizing auto-tune by using it on a ton of chart-topping tracks. A multi-faceted artist who also...

Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes “pop music.” Elisha Kim, lead singer/songwriter of indie-rockers Totoake, sees one unifying attribute. “To me, pop is just kind of structuring: Verse, chorus, verse chorus, then you have a bridge. You can be as weird as you want to be, if you structure it correctly, and it will...

State lawmakers haven’t taken a close look at the death penalty since its last execution seven years ago Clarence Ray Allen was put to death in San Quentin State Prison’s death chamber, making him the last person executed in California. That was Jan. 17, 2006. The “cocktail” administered to Allen was similar to the one used...

Specialty food conference in Watsonville, plastic bag ban roundup To Market, to Market County residents are spoiled for choices when it comes to shopping for specialty food products. Numbers show the love we have for artisan breads and handcrafted cheeses is increasingly shared by consumers across the country. Americans spent $86 billion on specialty food items...

Sauvignon Blanc 2012 If you have not visited the tasting room of Bernardus Winery in Carmel Valley, then you are in for a treat. The wines are good, the staff knowledgeable and friendly and there’s an outdoor patio where you can relax and enjoy the experience. It’s good to know in advance that Bernardus now charges...

Mixed-race gentlewoman inspires anti-slavery politics in ‘Belle’ The history of slavery in the Americas did not begin and end with the American South. For centuries, the economy of the lucrative Caribbean sugar islands colonized by European powers depended on imported African slaves. Yet slavery was abolished in the British islands 30 years before the American Civil...

How can ‘Neighbors’ be Seth Rogan’s best movie? Strange how Neighbors is Seth Rogan’s most all-killer, no-filler film. It’s so muscular it seems like a breakthrough. The bear-like icon of the Apatow-era comedy is funny—when he’s on a roll and grousing he reminds you of Albert Brooks at his best. But Rogan works in films that...

Irene Herrmann lives the sound of music   Fresh from a concert in Tangier, Morocco, Irene Herrmann was busy whipping up a dish of quail in tamarind sauce when I stopped to visit. A highly sought-after piano teacher and chamber music coach, Herrmann is also known in the Santa Cruz community as the mandolin player with long...