Yesterday, enough people showed up at the AMC Century City for the $23-a-ticket LA Philharmonic North American live movie theater broadcast to necessitate the use of two screens. Overall, LA Times reviewer Mark Swed gives the first of three planned 2011 such events a marginal thumbs up, having gone so far as to measure the decibel level at Disney Concert Hall last Thursday on his cell phone in order to be able to compare.

Swed makes an interesting observation about the way movie screen visuals have the power to alter an audience’s perception of the music being played:

Many factors affect how one hears. With the musicians so big on the screen, they sound bigger. With the camera in constant motion, the ear tends to follow the eye. That proved effective when, at the beginning of “Slonimsky’s Earbox,” you could follow the musical line around the orchestra.

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Ebony magazine threw a big party in LA last Thursday in honor of its 65th anniversary. Somehow we missed the invite (ahem, get it together Ebony, ahem) but the mag’s website has details of the event.

Though the cocktail was fabulous and the dinner divine, the party really got started when Ebony’s Editor-in-Chief Amy DuBois Barnett kicked off the Soul Train line.

Tony Award winner Viola Davis, The Event’s Blair Underwood, Tron’s Yaya DaCosta, True Blood’s Rutina Wesley, Desperate Housewives’ Vanessa Williams, Vogue fashion editor Andre Leon Talley (who brought an actual princess with him to the party) and Johnson Publishing Company CEO Desiree Rogers shook and shimmied down the aisle – all to celebrate Ebony’s 65th anniversary.

Wolfgang Puck catered the event (ahem, seriously Ebony, let us know about his stuff, ahem). We’re also told comic Robert Townsend insisted on doing “the butt.” Which we would also have insisted upon too ahem, if we were invited, ahem.

HBO has picked up Academy-Award nominated doc. A Taxi to the Dark Side, after Discovery chickened out.

Barbara Walters will interview Ellen Page, Harrison Ford, Vanessa Williams, and Mylie Cyrus. Pick the two with shows on ABC.

Who will be forgotten in the Montage of Dead Stars this year?

Joel Stein invites George Clooney home for dinner, and alas, merriment does not ensue. Stein claims Clooney is the only movie star “we have now”, rather than telling the truth–Clooney’s the only star on Stein’s sofa. When Liz Smith eventually passes on, Joel Stein will be ready.