As it was a technical dress rehearsal with four days to go before opening night, it was understandable that the March 19 presentation of Quad City Music Guild's Beehive encountered a few glitches. The scene transitions were on the poky side; it was often unclear, during the frequent medleys, whether musical numbers were supposed to end with applause or not (there were a few too many uncomfortable pauses); and the sound, during Act I especially, obviously needed polish - the over-amplification on the opening number, in particular, was painful.

But when all was said and done, there was only one thing sorely missing from this presentation: An audience. Because when Beehive's performers finally get one, this thing is gonna go through the roof.

Before introducing longtime mentor Don Wooten, host Kai Swanson said of his morning's duties, "My job is simply to keep things moving along, which I'll fail at right now. I understand from the program that our next speaker has five minutes, and when I saw that on the program, I told the organizer [New Ground Theatre's Chris Jansen], 'Good luck.' Because although he is one of the most gifted communicators I have ever known, he does believe - as do the ends of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings - that anything worth saying is worth saying lo-o-o-ong."

300

Whatever its problems, and they are myriad, you can't say that Zack Snyder's 300 doesn't give you plenty to look at. Adapted from Frank Miller's and Lynn Varley's graphic novel, the film - which follow s the ancient Spartan army in a wildly violent, self-sacrificing battle against Persian forces - is filled with memorably outré images: an enormous tree and a 20-foot-high wall, both composed entirely of corpses; a triad of elephants, backed over a cliff, that plunge to their deaths; the sky blackening with what appear to be locusts, instead proving to be the incoming trajectory of thousands of steel-tipped arrows. In 300, Snyder shows a remarkable gift for graphic-novel composition, and continually keeps your eye engaged. Too bad the same can't be said of your brain.

With all due respect to The Departed, the actual best picture of 2006 was one that didn't come to a theatre near you ... or, for that matter, to a theatre near anyone else.

Director Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, a four-hour "requiem" focusing on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has a scope, grandeur, and emotionalism that put the rest of 2006's output to shame - the documentary, available on DVD, made its debut on HBO last August - and much of its power can be traced to the extraordinary contributions of jazz musician Terence Blanchard, the acclaimed trumpet player here as the latest Quad City Arts Visiting Artist. (Blanchard will give a public performance at the Capitol Theatre on March 10.)