Features

“The Great Gatsby” is possibly the greatest American classic ever written. It tells an interesting story while having huge themes that we can all learn from, such as money doesn’t bring happiness and the rich are corrupt.

Naturally, when hearing this F. Scott Fitzgerald novel was going to get a new turn at the movies, I was ecstatic. But after seeing previews, I wasn’t so thrilled anymore.

However, the previews didn’t do the film much justice, as I thought it was amazing.

It’s two weeks before her due date and Sara Bell’s hospital bag is already packed with two cute baby outfits.

One is pink. One is gray.

No, this Ogden mother isn’t expecting twins — just one baby, gender unknown.

As unusual as it may seem, Sara and Ryan Bell don’t intend to find out whether their dear little Baby Bell is a boy or a girl until he or she is born.

“To find out in the moment, when everything is so emotional and intense — here’s your son, here’s your daughter ... just picturing that is so exciting,” Sara Bell says during an interview, often patting the expected child growing in her round belly.

Adds husband Ryan Bell, “You’re always going to be curious; I think it’s just natural to want to know. But I think the reward for waiting will outweigh the curiosity.”

How can you not find out?

It’s a question Top of Utah parents who choose not to learn the gender of their babies before they are born say they hear again and again.

“Nobody likes surprises anymore, I guess,” says Dionna Mestas of Ogden, who is waiting until her baby arrives in September to see if it’s a boy or a girl.

Some folks almost seem a little put off when Mestas tells them she doesn’t know the what she’s having.

“It’s kind of like they think you’re keeping a secret from them,” she says.

CBS will finish the 2012-13 broadcast season as the No. 1 network in viewers, which is par for the course over the past decade, but CBS is also expected to be No. 1 in the 18-49 age demo, which hasn’t happened since the 1991-92 TV season.

Success does not breed complacency at the Tiffany Network, which will add a quartet of new comedies this fall, including a two-hour comedy block with Robin Williams on Thursday that will go up against an NBC comedy block. In addition, two of CBS’s comedies are single-camera shows similar in look to NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and ABC’s “Modern Family,” a style CBS has not embraced in the past.

NEW YORK — ABC has collapsed “Dancing With the Stars” to just one night a week — Monday — as the network looks to minimize the fallout from the show’s ratings decline.

That opens up Tuesday nights, which will become home to four of ABC’s 13 new series.

ABC Entertainment Group President Paul Lee, who got on the phone with reporters Tuesday morning, said that the condensing of “Dancing” from two nights to one will give the show a “sense of occasion” and will open up Tuesdays for an all-new lineup of “four-quadrant crowd-pleasers.”

By four quadrants, Lee means programs that appeal to men and women — and young men and young women. “Dancing” appeals heavily to older viewers.

NEW YORK — CW will use its biggest hit, “The Vampire Diaries,” to launch this fall its first crunchy-gravel period drama. And the network’s most successful freshman drama, “Arrow,” will be used to launch a series about teens who have supernatural powers.

“The Vampire Diaries” spinoff, “The Originals,” will not be paired with the mothership show on Thursday nights, as you might expect. Instead, “The Originals” will kick off CW’s Tuesday nights and be paired with those still-kicking demon-hunting brothers of “Supernatural.”

And that crunchy-gravel drama, “Reign,” will get the “Vampire Diaries” lead-in because “Vampire Diaries” is the CW’s most-viewed series among young chicks.

WASHINGTON — Isabel Allende has a cold. Bronchitis, actually.

She’s normally a hugger. Not today.

“Don’t touch me,” she warns, thrusting her arms up to avoid the slightest possibility of skin-to-skin contact. “I’m all germs.”

It’s Wednesday and the Chilean novelist is in a plush, sun-streamed sitting room in the Madison Hotel in downtown Washington, one of 15 cities she’s visiting on a nearly monthlong book tour for “Maya’s Notebook.”

Allende “despises” book tours.

The airports, the lines. “Traveling is just really for young people.”

She loves The People.

“The people who show up at readings love your books. They’re not going to throw tomatoes at you.”