For the professional company's latest rendition of Love Stories, its annual collection of choreographed vignettes that makes for a sensational Valentine's Day gift, Ballet Quad Cities' February 9 and 10 presentations at Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center will be filled with sounds and sights to make audiences swoon. Compositions by George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. Beautiful figures moving to live instrumental accompaniment. Executions by gunfire. You know – all the romantic standards.

This morning's announcement of contenders for the 96th Annual Academy Awards was da bomb. Kind of literally.

If you liked the 2004 version, you almost can't help but enjoy this latest one, because it's the same movie, albeit with songs.

They've taken us to a purportedly haunted house, the interior of a video-game, labyrinths out of Greek mythology, and even, at one point, Colorado. But with the debut of Haus of Ruckus' latest comedy Punk Rock Lobster – running at Moline's Black Box Theatre January 19 through 28 – company founders and figureheads T. Green and Calvin Vo will be bringing audiences somewhere entirely new: under the sea.